Elephant Dawn

by Sharon Pincott

  Although there are people ‘holding thumbs’ (as the saying goes here) for a change of wildlife minister, it’s considered a lowly portfolio in Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF’s Francis Nhema retains the position, despite the shocking levels of poaching and the unprincipled sport-hunting that has occurred over the last nine years on his watch.

  ‘Mugabe is 85 years old. He can’t be president for much longer,’ people are still saying. But these ZANU-PF guys are here to stay. I have no choice but to try harder to work with them.

  Shaynie and I enjoy a splendid weekend of wildlife on the estate. We search for Lady and her family, but they’re in hiding once again. It’s like Shaynie is destined never to meet them. We do bump into the Ms however, and Shaynie is thrilled to meet ‘her’ little Masakhe, who she immediately falls in love with. She is becoming much more relaxed around these elephants and better understands why I’m still here.

  It’s Anzac Day in Australia. After the undisguised threats on my life, and my ongoing conflicts and battles, I feel like something akin to a war veteran myself. Shaynie’s supportive presence is comforting.

  ‘Please explain this to me like I’m a three year old,’ I beg her. ‘How is it that I’ve remained on the wanted person’s list for more than twelve months when I live right here?’

  ‘The unscrupulous harass only those they fear,’ Shaynie declares. ‘If you were insignificant to them they’d leave you in peace. You must be doing your job better than you should be,’ she decides.

  By now I’m just tired of it all.

  ‘You really must find out what’s going on with that,’ Shaynie urges.

  The next morning I tuck my hair under a cap, keep my sunglasses on, and ensure that I have a reputable lawyer’s phone number in my bag. We drive together in Shaynie’s vehicle to the police station, knowing that if recognised I could well be thrown into jail. The camera on her mobile phone is ready for action; she just needs to stop shaking long enough to be able to take the photograph that I’m after. We are both uneasy, but I want a photo of the list.

  After a nervous glance at each other and a deep breath, we nod our heads in solidarity and open the car doors. We walk together in silence towards the cabinet displaying the list. Shaynie nervously runs her finger down it. My name is there, with the charge against me. It is all still clearly legible. But a neat horizontal line has been drawn through the middle of it.

  We share a sigh of relief. Shaynie glances around and, with nobody in sight, takes a photograph with unsteady hands. Only when we’re back in the car do we shake our heads and laugh at last at the absurdity of it all.

  We’re nearly back at my rondavel when Shaynie’s phone rings. Mobile phone reception is finally available, albeit sporadically, in these remote parts. It’s her older sister, Caroline, calling from Bulawayo.

  ‘It’s all fine,’ Shaynie declares, sounding upbeat, ‘we’ve just left the police station.’

  But there’s been much more going on. Caroline’s husband, John, is dead. He has died, suddenly and unexpectedly, from a suspected aneurysm, at 49 years of age. Shaynie is distraught.

  I race around and throw a few things in a bag. I drive her the three hours back to Bulawayo. My own trials and tribulations are once again put in perspective.

  While Lantana, Masakhe and their age-mates have been keeping me thoroughly entertained in the field, I’ve become a properly published author. I’d decided that I needed to raise the profile of these elephants outside of Zimbabwe, if there was to be any chance of keeping them and their land areas safe and secure. The Elephants and I has been published by Jacana Media in South Africa. I fly to Johannesburg to do television, radio and magazine interviews. It’s a whirlwind trip, and interest is high. More and more people are falling in love with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe, and that can only be a good thing.

  If I want to remain in Zimbabwe and stay alive, there are limitations on what I can say and write. When the legendary Cynthia Moss calls my book ‘brave and passionate’ I hope that I haven’t overstepped the mark. Delia Owens, another renowned American conservationist (and co-author of the international bestseller Cry of the Kalahari), writes of my ‘courage . . . grit . . . pluck’, which I attribute to growing up in Australia, ‘the plucky country’. I’m honoured to read comparisons to Joy Adamson’s 1960 book Born Free—with one newspaper editor calling me ‘the Joy Adamson of Zimbabwe’—and try my best to forget the fact that both Joy and George Adamson, like Dian Fossey, were murdered in the field.

  I’m also asked by South Africa’s popular Getaway magazine to become its ‘Elephant Ambassador in Africa’. I’ll have my own page to write about the elephants and their Hwange surrounds. Although there’ll be no payment, it’s a superb way of sharing the uniqueness of the Presidential Elephants and an opportunity to make myself more visible, in the hope enemies might be less inclined to harass me. But in Zimbabwe, as I know only too well, anything could happen.

  After eight years of leading a relatively solitary bush life, the attention feels incredibly foreign to me. But I know that by putting myself out there, I’m giving these elephants a better chance.

  Mandy emails an offer to set up a basic website for me. I have no idea just how widely used the internet has become in the years since I’ve been in the bush, but she assures me it will be beneficial. I’m grateful, especially as I know how busy she always is. Once it’s up I become inundated with kind and encouraging emails, all of which I endeavour to answer personally. It is Lady that people enquire about the most.

  The Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe are slowly but steadily finding their place in the spotlight.

  After the publicity that the book and website generated, I’m in a better position to help promote tourism. I’ve come to believe that the return of tourists is crucial to the preservation of Zimbabwe’s wildlife, including the Presidential Elephants. Without the tourists, sport-hunters and worrying land claims will determine the wildlife’s future. But while the waterholes on the estate remain so degraded it’s difficult to do this in good faith. With some goading, water is usually pumped satisfactorily into the lodge pans, but game-drives need to venture further afield. There’s no animals for the tourists to see if there’s no water out there. It’s exasperating that estate operators charge tourists up to US$50 per person for one game-drive, yet put none of this back into the land and the maintenance of other pans. Neither the Parks Authority nor the ministry enforce any rules. In a country where precious wildlife is such a draw-card for tourists, this is simply unfathomable.

  The local Ndebele people have a saying: ‘Ithendele elihle ngelikhala ligijima’ (‘Don’t just sit there bleating, get up and do something about it’). I’ve been bleating about waterhole neglect long enough. Now I’m determined to get on and simply do something more myself. The elephants have suffered with lack of water for long enough.

  I’ve been fighting the misinformed for years on this issue, since well before I organised the prior work using the Painted Dog project tractor and small scoop. Some of my critics, both black and white, mysteriously claim that the use of a bulldozer will break the natural seal of the pans so that they won’t hold any water. This, they say, is why they continue to do nothing. I can see no logic in such a claim if the work is done properly. And what if a ‘seal’ is temporarily broken? The pans have held insufficient amounts of water for years anyway.

  Shaynie works in Bulawayo for a company that has the right equipment to do the job, but I don’t have enough money. The SAVE Foundation in Perth has generously offered some help, as have a few other groups including Wildlife Environment Zimbabwe (the official wildlife society), but this is a US$20,000 job. I decide to try to win over Shaynie’s boss, Jim, regardless.

  We drive out together onto the estate, surveying existing waterholes and other dry, cracked sites like antbears deciding where to burrow. I’m still trying to convince Jim to assist when Lady and her family unexpectedly appear on the road ahead: a gift from above. I stop our vehicle an
d call loudly to her through cupped hands: ‘Lady! Lady girl. Come on, Lady. Come here, my girl.’

  Mighty trunks swing rhythmically as the entire L family lumber our way. It’s not long before Lady is holding my hand within the ‘fingers’ of her trunk, and fluttering her long, elegant eyelashes at Jim. The flapping of her huge ears is so near that we’re fanned by a cool breeze.

  Just like that, Jim will do this scooping for the couple of thousand dollars that I’ve managed to gather and will donate the rest. After five years of so much futile talk, it has taken me only five days and some flirting by Lady to secure a deal.

  Five weeks later the job is under way. The bulldozer equipment arrives on a long flat-bed truck. From dawn till dusk I oversee the work with Jim’s brother, Tom. We talk endlessly, and occasionally heatedly, about how each pan should best be scooped.

  ‘We need to remember that all of the wildlife, including the giraffes, must be able to drink with ease. We need gently sloping sides, on three sides at least,’ I insist multiple times every day.

  Tom whistles loudly over the din of the bulldozer to attract the driver’s attention and I motion with my arm in the air for a more gentle curvature. We need depth, but I’m insistent that there be no sharp edges or steep sides. There is a small amount of water in Kanondo pan, in the outer edges I had scooped four years ago. Given it’s the only water on the estate, we unfortunately can’t let this pan dry out to enable us to scoop it properly this time round. Instead we agree that we’ll create another pan here, separate but connected to the original one.

  One morning Wilma appears at the tree line. With the bulldozer operator and a colleague of his in my 4x4 with me, I call to her, and she lumbers straight to my door to say hello. Neither of these men has seen an elephant in the wild before, let alone one responding like this. One of them whispers with a half grin, ‘Arrhhh, but now I am scared of you. You have very special magic.’ From then on, they both bow their heads and pat their hearts whenever they see me.

  I come upon Lucky and her tiny newborn baby one afternoon by the roadside and take photographs especially to show Jim. I give him the honour of naming this special little bundle of joy. He calls her Langelihle—Lunga for short—the isiNdebele word meaning ‘good day’. I know that I’ll take great pleasure in saying ‘Gidday good day’ every time I see Lucky and her wee one.

  The days are awfully hot, glary and dusty. Every day by sundown we are bone-weary and grubby, our eyes irritated. My left one becomes blood-red and feels as if it’s been sprinkled with glass fragments. Months later, when I finally see an ophthalmologist in Bulawayo, a minuscule piece of plastic is removed from the surface of my eyeball.

  The scooping of three key pans and the creation of another three smaller ones (one of which I name ‘Lady’s pan’) go off without a hitch. Not surprisingly perhaps, I don’t receive any thanks for resurrecting these waterholes, at least not until I prompt the management of the group who should have organised and paid for this work themselves. Only then do I receive a thank you of sorts. For saving them tens of thousands of dollars, and in effect resurrecting the estate, I receive an email. It contains just two short sentences.

  My battles are far from over.

  After the arrival of new white management in the largest hotel in the area, sport-hunting trophies of all shapes and sizes suddenly adorn the walls, floor and shelf surfaces of every public area inside this lodge. This is supposed to be a photographic safari lodge. I had campaigned hard to get hunting banned and the ex-governor and his family removed from the land. I’ve just scooped the surrounding pans in order to help save the wildlife and yet here we are, surrounded by a huge collection of dead animals, heads even appearing behind the game-drive booking desk!

  It takes three long months, with repeated pleas that finally have to be escalated to board level, before the menagerie of hunting trophies is removed.

  ‘You’re still having wins,’ Shaynie says to me. ‘Keep remembering those eagles flying through that turbulent wind.’

  PIZZA AND ICE-CREAM

  2010

  It’s been a generous wet season. The scooped pans have filled to their brims, and the wildlife has returned. My elephant friends roll and splash in the new expanses of water. Given that females within each family often give birth within a few months of each other, there are always groups of playful youngsters about. They cavort in the water, legs and trunks waggling in the air, then find a place at the water’s edge to slip and slide in mud with their mothers, before tossing trunkfuls of sand over their heads and backs. And then they all come and share their dirty bodies with me.

  ‘You’re too clean,’ I imagine Whole, Whosit and Willa saying to me, as they touch my arms with their mucky trunks, leaving me streaked with mud.

  With the waterholes looking superb, I’ve started occasionally accompanying lodge guests who have a special interest in elephants, on game drives as my time permits. I do this on a voluntary basis only since there are plenty of people around who are indifferent to my project costs, and would immediately make it difficult for me if they thought I was earning any money on the estate. It’s satisfying when visitors leave with a deep respect for elephants and a new-found desire to stand up for their welfare. Hearing that their game-drive has been a highlight of their trip, and often of their lives, is another reward, and I meet some wonderful people.

  There’s another good reason for me to occasionally climb aboard the game-drive vehicles: the safari guides need to learn more about these elephants. Having me there also means that some of my close elephant friends come to know and trust their vehicles more readily.

  But problems soon start to surface. There are more game-drive vehicles out and about, and further failings in the estate management become glaringly obvious. Rubbish, including toilet paper, blows around; visitors are being allowed out of vehicles, wandering about, scaring off the animals for others; some vehicles drive off-road wherever they please and game walks come much too close to these habituated elephants. I write reports, flag problems and make recommendations, but rules and regulations are never enforced. It has become a free-for-all out there.

  Eventually I resign myself to this indifference, and just get on and do what I can. I patrol daily, always on the lookout for signs of poacher activity and snared animals (while picking up endless amounts of rubbish). I check on water flow and pan levels. I help secure the expensive immobilisation drug for use in animal de-snarings and monitor the de-snared animals. My monitoring of each of the Presidential Elephant families continues too, of course, recording family interactions, new births, those in oestrus and musth, and anyone who is missing or injured.

  At least currently there’s good water in all of the pans. It’s actually a fulfilling time.

  Shaynie has changed jobs and moved to the bush, although she has kept her flat in downtown Bulawayo. She’s now working in the back office at Wilderness Safaris, which has four luxury photographic lodges on two wildlife-packed private concessions inside Hwange National Park. Carol, Miriam and I have all visited these camps and love the area where Shaynie is now based.

  Uneasy with her new proximity to wildlife, she resorts to earplugs at night. ‘Sometimes it’s best not to know how close the lions are,’ she shivers.

  I can’t understand it. Their deep-throated bellows are among my most favourite sounds in the world; the closer the better.

  I still need to visit Bulawayo every three months to get a stamp in my passport. For these visits I have the luxury of the use of Shaynie’s flat in town, even though she’s rarely there.

  Barbara and her daughter Dee live in the flat next door, with Frank the landlord downstairs and an assortment of single folk who come and go. It’s a cosy little crowd where everyone looks out for one another. Shaynie’s sister CJ comes into town occasionally, and we often find ourselves sitting together on the outside staircase when the power goes off—which still happens just about every day—enjoying a companionable drink and a lively chat in the darkne
ss.

  CJ and her partner Herbie live and work on an out-of-the-way gold mine, and we compete for the best bush tale. CJ tells me about snakes and scorpions and spiders, of frosts flattening her veggie garden and of pesky wandering goats. Stray dogs pinch her braai meat, while vervets pinch my bananas. We text each other when we’re in the bush, now that I’m finally able to use a mobile phone there (although the signal is still not reliable). We fantasise about delicious morsels and make fantasy invitations to meet in an hour or two for cheesecake and cappuccino, which are both in agonisingly short supply unless you live in Harare, on the other side of the country. We share the ecstasy of our first shower of rain, and the misery of spotting our first ‘Kalahari Ferrari’ of the season.

  Shaynie’s neighbour Barbara is an alien, a bit like ET. She is in fact stateless. In 2001, the Mugabe government decided that children of parents who were born in another country had to renounce their foreign citizenship within six months if they wished to remain a citizen of Zimbabwe. Barbara’s mother was born in the United Kingdom and her father in South Africa. Barbara was born in Zimbabwe. She holds no foreign citizenship and therefore had nothing to renounce. Regardless, aged in her 50s, she suddenly found herself classed as an alien, no longer a Zimbabwean citizen, ineligible to vote and unable to acquire a new passport. Several hundreds of thousands of people, both white and black, overnight became aliens in the country of their birth, the only country they’ve ever called home.

  ‘I’m a citizen of nowhere,’ Barbara tells me with a laugh—because if you don’t laugh, you’re going to cry at the stupidity of it all.

  ‘And here I am, hoping that one day I might be granted permanent residency in this country, and then citizenship,’ I groan.

  Barbara, Dee and I regularly walk the streets in town, to the consternation of the well-to-do whites. It’s not the conventional thing to do. We play ‘spot the white’, and might see two or three others over the course of several hours. I wonder what they think might happen to them if they were to walk around too.