Elephant Dawn

  An international documentary will certainly help with my mission to increase awareness of the Presidential Elephants. If I can entice an even wider audience to fall in love with these elephants, then their ongoing safety and survival might be more assured. There can’t be any pre-prepared scripts to work to in such a wild environment, and how the footage will be edited is entirely out of my hands. I’ve obtained assurances however that neither Zimbabwe or my ongoing work with the elephants will be compromised, and I have to trust that these promises are honoured.

  Once news of the documentary gets around, those dragons emerge once more.

  I’m presented with a document from the group that currently owns the land where my rondavel is located. It announces they will evict me from my tiny home of ten years, and try to stop me from patrolling the estate, unless I sign what they have termed a ‘partnership agreement’. They’re demanding that I turn myself into some sort of unrewarded marketeer, contracted exclusively to them. If I don’t agree to this, they say I will have to leave.

  This is the same group that I scooped pans for only last year and who, despite having me on their doorstep for the past nine years, have never shown any interest in working with me to conserve, promote or market the Presidential Elephants. Now, suddenly, they’re demanding exclusive, unpaid rights to my services.

  The ‘partnership agreement’ insists that I promote their lodge as the preferred destination for all Presidential Elephant tourists. It requires that I must serve only their interests, and that I must never ‘provide service’, ‘advertise’ or ‘promote’ anybody else. It also introduces a clause allowing them to give me only 30 days’ notice to vacate my rondavel, which they can do at any time. If I don’t sign on to this ‘partnership’, they will try to halt my work altogether.

  It is soon made clear to me that there’s no room for negotiation. It’s very evident that this group is trying to ensure that it alone benefits from the documentary, which I simply can’t stomach. These elephants are meant to be the nation’s flagship herd after all. I have seven days to sign their document or I must leave within 30 days.

  I try to phone Ministers Nhema and Mutasa, but neither is available. And then like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, my decision is immediately clear to me. I email that I will not be signing their pathetic document.

  ‘If they want a dancing bear,’ I say to Carol over the phone, ‘they’d do better to try the circus.’

  As distressing and disheartening as this all is, it’s the push I need to finally get out of the living conditions that I’ve come close to loathing over the past few years. I’m tired of living with constant booming voices and blaring music, filthy grounds and rubbish pits that I spend hours tidying and sanitising every month. There are light-fingered children, with items regularly disappearing from my 4x4 and garden. When there’s no water, human faeces, topped with toilet paper, have been known to appear in the grounds.

  ‘But that is baboon,’ I’m assured by one lady.

  ‘Baboon?’ I ask gently, with my eyebrows raised. ‘So baboons use toilet paper?’

  It is people’s indifference to all of this that disappoints me most of all. It is not the same place that I moved into so many years ago. You only have to look around to see that. Like much of the country, everything looks broken.

  One lodge offers me a temporary option on its grounds, but the offer is withdrawn just days before I’m due to move there after it receives veiled threats from the same group who presented me with the partnership agreement, and who are now trying to ensure that I have nowhere to go.

  Finding alternative accommodation isn’t going to be easy. I have nowhere to move to, no way to transport what I own, and no clue about what I will do next. I give many of my things away, sell a few pieces of furniture for the pittance that I can get for them in the bush, and burn what is of no use to anyone else and can’t be carried. I decide to store my 30-year-old 4x4—which won’t likely make it to Bulawayo in one piece—at my friend Henry’s property in nearby Gwayi. Henry lives in South Africa but runs a humanitarian project on this land. His wildlife-loving son, Caleb, was just eight years old when they cornered me soon after my arrival in Hwange, eager to hear about the elephants, and have been friends and keen supporters of mine ever since. Somebody is trying to claim their land too but hopefully my vehicle will be okay sitting there for a while. A new neighbour called Craig thoughtfully offers to help me transport what I can to Bulawayo to store in Shaynie’s dining room.

  I will never see my sausage trees produce flowers and fruit after all.

  I let the filmmakers know that I have no choice but to pull out of the documentary. They make it clear that there’s no story without me. Colleagues encourage me to stay on a little longer and participate, but my land access now needs to be sorted out by the ministers in Harare. And I don’t feel confident that I can appear happy and positive on film under the current circumstances.

  I’m not ready just yet, and I realise it will take time, but I know that I will eventually rebuild. I’m simply not going to give them the satisfaction of doing anything less.

  MUGABE’S CAVALCADE

  2010

  After spending weeks in Bulawayo at Shaynie’s flat, I travel by bus to Harare to help Carol celebrate her birthday and to try and relax after this awfully unsettling period. I’ve decided that I also need to look for a replacement vehicle. My faithful 4x4, currently sitting under a tarpaulin in Gwayi, has served me well, but it’s decrepit after a decade of field work. What’s more, its fuel consumption has become a nightmare with the hikes in petrol prices, and it currently has no brakes at all and a shattered back window after I recently reversed, tired and distracted, into the low-hanging branch of a tree that I swear hadn’t been there the day before. If I am to return to Hwange, I will have to purchase something else.

  But first, Carol takes me back to the beautiful Bvumba Mountains, the hidden jewel in Zimbabwe’s crown, which I visited previously with Dinks and Shaynie. A visit to Tony’s coffee shop is on the itinerary. Carol loves this classy cafe, loves Tony, loves the scrumptious selection of cakes always on offer, loves the list of hot drinks that’s almost a metre long and especially loves the truly divine hot chocolates.

  ‘I am absolutely not going to pay US$10 for a single slice of cake,’ I declare. ‘That’s an awful lot of money to spend on one slice of cake, especially when I’ve earnt no salary for the past ten years.’

  Carol decides that I simply must have a piece for her birthday. ‘My treat,’ she decides.

  The slices we order are enormous. And absolutely delicious. It’s many years since I’ve tasted anything quite so good. I unashamedly demolish my entire slab of chocolate-laden cheesecake, unlike the tourists at the table behind us, and am tempted to ask if I can take their leftovers home with me in a doggy bag! I contact both Dinks and Shaynie, bragging about what they’re missing out on.

  We waddle back to our cottage, nestled high on a ridge, with soothing water views below and luxuriant forest all around. I plonk myself down on a comfy chair outside, wrap a duvet around me to keep out the crisp air of the late afternoon, put my feet up and settle down with a glass of red wine to enjoy the changing colours of another mesmerising African sunset. Samango monkeys scamper unseen through the treetops and a red-chested cuckoo sings his ‘quid pro quo’ song over and over and over again. For the first time in two years I find that I want to write seriously again, and it is here that I draft the preface for another book. The Bvumba has managed to quieten the growing rage within me.

  Life here would be just perfect, I think to myself, if only there were some elephants to enjoy . . . and if only I’d managed to get that doggy bag of cake.

  During the weeks that I’m in Harare on the hunt for a replacement 4x4, Carol and I twice encounter President Mugabe’s cavalcade. It is a display of utter extravagance. Everyone knows the telltale sounds of their approach and drivers scurry nervously to get off the road. Police motorbikes zoom past first
, with lights blazing and sirens blaring, sending shivers down my spine, as traffic is halted at every intersection. Then a string of police cars rocket past, their sirens also blaring. Next comes a knot of speeding black limousines, with blackened windows, driving two abreast. One presumably has the president inside. A troop of soldiers in sturdy helmets, sitting alertly on the open back of a truck, their machine guns at the ready, zips past next. And finally comes an ambulance, just in case, emergency lights flashing. All of this at breakneck speed, and in perfect formation.

  ‘And all I want is a vehicle that isn’t 30 years old,’ I groan to Carol, wondering if the president himself, sitting right there inside one of those posh black limos, remembers anything about the Presidential Elephants.

  Before being evicted, I drafted a reaffirmation of the Presidential Decree in the hope that President Mugabe might agree to sign it. But I don’t yet know what level within Minister Nhema’s office and the Office of the President my proposal has reached, and if anyone there really understands its benefits. I figure that if we can get his signature on something reaffirming the Presidential Elephants’ importance to the nation, the challenges besieging them might lessen. It’s a long shot and I’m not getting my hopes up, but it’s worth a try. Now though, I need to get my accommodation and transportation problems sorted out before chasing this up.

  The end of 2010 is fast approaching, and there are power cuts almost every day, sometimes for as long as fifteen hours. This is even more frustrating than usual. To top off the year, reports of elephants being killed by sport-hunters inside Hwange National Park are now being openly acknowledged by some Parks personnel. Photographic tourists and hunters, together in the same areas, simply don’t mix. The whole situation is shameful, to say the least. There is little festivity in this holiday season, and I spend time wondering if Hwange can even be called a national park while hunting is occurring within it.

  ‘Santa clearly doesn’t know where Zimbabwe is,’ I text wearily to Henry in South Africa.

  He responds as quick as a flash. ‘Santa doesn’t go to Zimbabwe anymore. He’s scared somebody will shoot his reindeers.’

  After no success at the second-hand car dealerships, Carol’s mechanic sends out word to the local 4x4 club that I’m on the hunt for a reliable vehicle that isn’t too expensive. I eventually settle on a 1989 Land Cruiser wagon. A slightly younger vehicle with a shorter wheelbase might have suited me better, but I console myself that at least there’s plenty of room for me to sleep in the back, if I ever find myself homeless again. The engine has recently been rebuilt and it promises better fuel consumption. I decide that I’ll get the roof cut out to give it a similar feel to what I’m used to. Every purchase of a used vehicle has to go through not only a change of ownership and a tax payment, but a new set of number plates as well. This process takes weeks, and it is indeed well over a month before all of my necessary paperwork is approved and returned, even with constant chasing.

  Zimbabwean bureaucracy is incredibly frustrating for everyone these days, and no longer amusing. Once again I can’t help but wonder why I don’t just leave. Like me, Carol has been talking of leaving for years now and continues to assure me that she’ll soon be on her way. But deep down inside we both know we love it, still.

  Little is improving under the Unity government though. People everywhere remain poor and desperate, despite Zimbabwe’s wealth of platinum, gold, coal, chrome and nickel. Diamond deposits, believed to be the second largest anywhere in the world, have recently been discovered. Yet little money finds its way to the Treasury.

  ‘You know who the mines minister is these days, don’t you?’ Carol asks.

  I do. The fabulously rich ex-governor, now cabinet minister—who accused me of being an Australian government spy—holds this post.

  GRANTHAM

  2011

  The new year arrives and I am still in Harare, finalising alternative accommodation in Hwange and the paperwork for my 4x4. I’m missing the elephants, but seriously wondering how much longer I can possibly stay in Zimbabwe. Then, news of a disaster in Australia reaches me.

  On 10 January, floods ripped through the Lockyer Valley, where I’m from. A wall of water eight metres tall hit Grantham with deadly ferocity, smashing into homes in this small farming community where I grew up. This was no ordinary flood. It was described as an inland tsunami, arriving with deadly speed and fury. Some residents are reported to have been swept to their deaths.

  Nobody has been able to reach my parents. ‘Why haven’t they evacuated Mum and Dad?’ I blurt into the phone to my sister Deborah. ‘Just because their house is still standing doesn’t necessarily mean they’re okay.’

  Deborah is only 30 kilometres away from Grantham, in Toowoomba, although she may as well be in Africa with me. All roads leading into Grantham are closed. Phone lines are down. My eldest sister Genevieve lives closer, in the small township of Placid Hills, on a hill right next to Grantham. She can see helicopters making rooftop rescues, hampered by pouring rain, but the magnitude of the tragedy isn’t yet understood by anybody.

  ‘There are obviously others in more urgent need,’ Genevieve texts.

  Far away, and not comprehending the enormity of the situation, this makes little sense to me. The torrent of water that levelled the town had hit on Monday afternoon. A second flood hit on Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon we still don’t know if our parents are okay. Genevieve can see that water levels have receded in some parts of the cordoned-off town, but still has no information. Finally, in darkness, at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday, rescue personnel reach my parents’ home, which is built on stilts, and confirm that they’re okay, although they’re without electricity, drinking water or plumbing. They will be evacuated by boat the next morning.

  It has been an emotional and nerve-racking time. Compared to others, my parents have been relatively lucky. At the height of the flooding there had been two metres of raging water underneath their house. The violently swirling floodwaters were full of huge trees, concrete water tanks, vehicles, whole houses and masses of other debris. Their own house could easily have been knocked from its stumps, with them inside. But with tall hedges and trees all around their home they couldn’t see much of this. Only now do they learn the fate of their friends and neighbours, and of the many houses that were destroyed or floated away, of the myriad vehicles thrown through the water like matchsticks, of people stranded inside these houses and cars screaming for help, of precious lives lost.

  A convoy of army trucks rolls into Grantham to join the police and other emergency services already there. The town is designated a crime scene while the gruesome search for bodies gets underway.

  Nine days after this catastrophe the 350 or so residents are finally allowed into what is left of their homes, but it will be many more long weeks before my parents can return to live in theirs. The once-picturesque town resembles a war zone, smashed to smithereens. On 26 January, instead of celebrating Australia Day, a memorial service is held in Grantham.

  A week later I fly out from Zimbabwe and arrive in my hometown, which is still in lockdown. After weeks of cleaning and clearing by hundreds of soldiers and emergency-services personnel I still can’t believe what I’m seeing. The scale of the devastation is shocking. It looks like a bomb has gone off.

  The Lockyer Valley is now being referred to as the valley of lost souls. My parents’ house is indeed still there, perched high on the wooden stilts that saved their lives. A kilometre away where there was once a general store, a fuel station and a pub, there are piles of rubble, deserted buildings and eerie spaces where homes had been. It feels like a ghost town, especially at night when dark shells of houses haunt the road through the forlorn little town. I’m not sure how people will recover from this. Politicians remark on the community’s ‘toughness’ and I’m thankful to have grown up in this neighbourhood.

  My parents are still taking stock of their losses and their good luck. They’d received a warning phone call just ten minutes
before the floodwater reached Grantham. Not realising the fury of what was heading for them, my 77-year-old mum jumped into her car to take it to higher ground; another vehicle was organised to bring her back home. But by the time she was making her way back, the initial stages of the raging torrent had arrived, and she found herself waist-deep in wild water before managing to get safely back to the house. Had she been just a few minutes later, it would likely have been tragically different.

  Nor was I spared the devastation. My entire pre-Zimbabwe life was stored underneath my parents’ house in a shed my dad built for me, with a raised cement floor. Everything was stored above the highest flood level he had ever known but this was a flood like no other. All of my possessions had sat drenched in filthy water and stinking, thick sludge for nine days while no one was allowed into the town. They were sodden, ruined and broken. Genevieve and Deborah had collected what was salvageable and painstakingly washed and scrubbed the little that could be saved.

  Scores of beautifully framed photographs and original prints and paintings were destroyed, along with hundreds of books and thousands of photos spanning nearly fifty years of my life. And then there were the thousands of enlarged photographs of the elephants stored here too, along with years of video footage. Yet a half ream of useless printer paper was untouched and still gleaming white. I couldn’t even work out why I’d packed it. Also perfectly intact was an envelope full of insurance photos of my household contents for annual insurance that I’d paid religiously over the last 25 years. I’d cancelled it just three years ago, when donor funds had dried up and buying fuel to enable daily patrols of the estate seemed a better use of my ever-dwindling savings.