Elephant Dawn

  ‘Okay everybody, it’s a wrap!’ Kira finally declares.

  I’m surprised to learn that Lawson Mabhena, a journalist from the Sunday News—a newspaper that’s a mouthpiece for the government—prepared a feature on me while we were filming, since few newspapers carry stories on whites, especially not the government press.

  ‘When I first heard that Ms Sharon Pincott, an Australian wildlife enthusiast living with elephants near Hwange National Park, could talk to the jumbos,’ he wrote, ‘I thought: well that’s a load of rubbish. Living with elephants, I could imagine as something easy for anyone with a passion for wildlife, but talking to them—that was a claim worth proving false.’

  I can’t help but laugh.

  Like Minister Nhema, Lawson admited to ‘a rude awakening’ and concluded: ‘Seeing Pincott talk to elephants as one would have regular talk with humans, was indeed amazing, but even more amazing was the fact that no Zimbabwean I know—myself included—has such passion for our wildlife.’ I am taken aback by such candour in the government press.

  Lawson had enjoyed his brief close encounter with the elephants after the decree reaffirmation ceremony. It’s something that still relatively few of his countrymen get the opportunity to experience, a situation that I hope to help change.

  Everything still seems to be heading in the right direction.

  With filming over, I take a few days off and try to relax in Bulawayo. During the spring months of September to November, before the rains, Bulawayo’s unusually wide, dusty and littered streets are transformed by the stunningly beautiful mauves of flowering jacarandas and the flamboyant red of flame trees. In among these, Australian silky oaks with dark-yellow blooms add an extra splash of colour.

  ‘It’s much less dreary and drab in town when all of these beautiful trees are flowering,’ I say to Barbara.

  ‘I hate those jacarandas,’ Barbara moans. ‘They’re messy and they smell.’ Why is it that city folk so often fail to notice nature’s beauty? ‘Oh, get a life,’ I tell her with a grin.

  When the first rains fall in town, after the seven-month dry, people hardly seem to notice. Windows and doors are quickly shut and everyone races inside. There’s no getting away, though, from the rank odour of piles of wet garbage and the grease slicks on the roads. When the first rains fall in the bush I’ve been known to dance around in joyous thanks, arms raised skywards, soaked to the skin, inhaling every last particle of the wonderful earthy fragrance. There is so much to celebrate in Hwange when the rains come.

  VISITORS

  2012

  As the months pass, it becomes clear that we’re not heading in the right direction at all. Lady is missing again. This time, it is different. Her youngest calf, Lantana, is missing too. All other members of her family are around but they’re visibly stressed and anxious. Lady’s adult daughter, Lesley, usually friendly and welcoming, stays with me for only a minute or two, before moving off into dense bush. All of the elephants are agitated.

  I need more encounters with this favourite family to determine what is really going on. Based on my knowledge of Lady’s last known mating session with the bulls, she should have a new baby by her side by now. If she lost her baby before it was full-term, she could have found herself quickly in oestrus again, and she might be temporarily off with the bulls. But I’ve seen the family several times now, over the course of a few weeks, and Lady and Lantana have not returned.

  I’m desperately worried about them. I have never been so afraid for a life.

  Then, inconceivably, Dee’s best friend, Stephanie, dies just a few weeks short of her twenty-first birthday after a night-time car accident on the way to Hwange. Stephanie survived the crash and was taken to the nearest government hospital, but Zimbabwe’s rapidly declining health facilities let her down terribly.

  Dee raced around buying what Stephanie needed, which the hospital did not have. In fact the hospital had next to nothing. Pain medication, drips, bandages, gauze, cotton wool, plaster of Paris, none of it was available until it was privately sourced and paid for. Stephanie was lying naked on a bed, without even a screen around her. There were no hospital gowns, no pillows, no blankets. The ward was overcrowded, with eight beds where there should have been four. There was an awful smell of dirty toilets. Dee brought in a clean bucket to wash her friend.

  Stephanie also needed blood, and at the back of everyone’s minds was the nagging question: in this country where so many people are HIV-positive, were blood donations properly screened? Even blood had to be paid for in cash before it could be administered.

  When Dee merely questioned why they had nothing at all to ease her friend’s pain, the matron responded, ‘Why don’t you go back to England? Ask for what you want there.’

  Thanks to a company’s financial generosity, Stephanie was transferred as quickly as possible to a more reputable hospital in Bulawayo. Tragically, she died from complications a few days later. It is no surprise to any of us that the president chooses to fly overseas to have his own ailments treated, at the expense of the Zimbabwe people.

  While I watch my friends reeling from this trauma, I am silently convinced that Lady has met a similar fate but I’m not yet ready to talk about it.

  My next book, Battle for the President’s Elephants, is released in South Africa and supportive correspondence and words of encouragement flood in. Yet more people now know and care about these elephants.

  The documentary is also finalised. It’s been quite a challenge getting this far. Over the last few months I’ve had to keep reminding the South African filmmakers that I still live in Zimbabwe, and that they’d agreed not to compromise my work here—or my life. This wasn’t a documentary about President Mugabe and his government but rather it was about some of Zimbabwe’s most extraordinary wildlife, and it shouldn’t be political. I couldn’t understand why some footage made the final cut while segments I considered so important were discarded. I was also surprised to discover that my own words were used as the narration. And why the cameras had to be so close to my face I just couldn’t understand at all!

  But, the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing. Screen Africa, Africa’s leading broadcast and film publication, describes All the President’s Elephants as ‘unforgettable’ and ‘touching and profound’. Intrepid Explorer magazine calls it ‘riveting’ and ‘graphic and powerful’. It’s selected to premiere at South Africa’s Durban International Film Festival. I get no royalties from it, but increased awareness, as always, is my top priority.

  I post a copy on DVD to Minister Nhema. His part has been beautifully edited. The world will now see a completely different side to this man, a side that I’m starting to believe really does exist.

  My Kiwi friend Andrea and her friend arrive for a visit in June. After sharing my triumphs and tragedies for so many years via email, Andrea can hardly believe that she’s finally here. I’m waiting for them at a crossroads, where Andrea greets me in tears. They’ve already encountered their first family of elephants crossing directly in front of their car and she is overcome with emotion. When we review her video we discover they’d seen members of the A family, including her namesake Andrea and daughter Alessandra.

  Andrea has helped with editing my books and so I’ve pre-arranged (not without some hassles) that they be permitted out with me in my own 4x4 as a thank you. We leave their hire car on the side of the road and race to sit by a pan for sundowners. Within minutes we’re surrounded by some twenty-five members of the P family, with matriarch Priscilla. What Andrea had dared hope to experience at least once during her visit has occurred within half an hour of arriving. She’s unable to stop her tears of happiness.

  During one of our outings I need to ‘find a bush’. It’s a hazard of spending hours in the field. Sixty seconds beforehand there wasn’t an animal in sight but at the most embarrassing possible moment I’m suddenly surrounded by elephants, as I pull up my pants and try to shield myself behind a termite mound.

  ‘Oh my go
odness! It’s the Ms with Misty and Masakhe,’ I call out, much to Andrea’s delight. I manage to return safely to my vehicle before greeting these shining stars of the documentary.

  Over the next few days, we spend time on the estate and inside the national park. So many elephant families inside the park have far too many youngsters for the number of adults. I choose not to share my fears about what has happened to their mothers, and instead we enjoy the spectacle. We’re also fortunate to have some splendid encounters with many Presidential families on the estate, but there is no Lady. And I am much more worried than I let on.

  The full moon is more beautiful than ever as we sit out on the estate and watch it rise, Baileys in hand, to the magical sounds of the Out of Africa soundtrack that is echoing from my laptop. Andrea refills my glass as the sky fills with stars. I had no idea there were so many different flavours of Baileys! I’m a decade behind everything now.

  I go on with my friends to the breathtaking rocky outcrops of the Matobo Hills, and we spend a night at Shaynie’s flat on the way. Barbara and Dee cook up a delicious traditional sadza meal for us and we walk the streets of Bulawayo, and visit the street markets, so Andrea can get a feel for day-to-day African life.

  I’m able to pretend that everything is okay. After just a few days in this country, tourists always manage to leave thoroughly enchanted. Even though Andrea understands more than most, she too leaves on a high. So much looks grubby, barren and broken, yet it’s still a beautiful country to visit in so many ways.

  Soon I’m back in Bulawayo, struggling with permits yet again. There is so much inefficiency and corruption in the Immigration Department, but I refuse to pay them more than I’m already forced to. When I’m told that if I leave the country I may not be allowed back in, I decide not to go to Durban for the premiere of the documentary.

  Instead, I relax with CJ and her partner Herbie as they watch the documentary for the first time on DVD. ‘Right now, you should be washing the sand from your toes, and getting ready for its public debut,’ Herbie says to me, with a note of regret.

  But I’m happy to be here with friends and am thrilled to eventually hear that there’s standing room only at the premiere. Dee breaks into floods of (mostly happy) tears every time she watches this DVD. I’m not sure whether to laugh, or to cry with her.

  CJ and Herbie will soon be off to live in South Africa. Another two bite the dust. They don’t quite know what they’ll do there, but they’ve decided they at least need to give it a go. Nothing is improving very much in Zimbabwe, despite the Unity government. My friends always seem to be on the move, searching for a better life.

  At least Shaynie will soon be returning to Bulawayo, back at last in mobile phone range. If nothing else, working in the bush at Wilderness Safaris has helped her overcome her fear of lions. She got her own back at the big black-maned Cecil, with whom she’d had many scary moments, when he was recently immobilised so the battery in his satellite collar could be changed. ‘I squeezed his balls, just to let him know who’s boss.’

  She also discovered that he is longer than she is tall. His paw is twice the size of her hand. She’s brave when he’s knocked out!

  Land-owners and operators continue to not even try to pump sufficient water on the estate, and the elephants suffer. My hippo friend Karen arrives to see a young Presidential Elephant dead, stuck in mud that should have been a water-filled pan.

  One night shortly after Karen leaves, I hear twelve gunshots from my cottage. A few nights later, I hear another six. No matter how many times I report these incidents, they never stop, even around these photographic lodges.

  My friends are visiting all of a sudden, moved by the documentary and book interest. Mandy, from Melbourne, decides to visit too. Her time in Zimbabwe doesn’t begin well. She travels with her friend to Hwange on a pre-paid road transfer from Victoria Falls. Their driver is made to stop at one of the many roadblocks and then disappears with a policeman. They’re left sitting alone in a vehicle, in a country known for bribery and abductions, wondering what the hell is going on.

  Things improve dramatically once they finally reach their Hwange lodge and head out with me to the bush. ‘Holy shit,’ Mandy exclaims, when my elephant friends come when called. She instantly feels connected and fully appreciates why I’m still here.

  But there is still no Lady.

  When Mandy hands me a small rectangular gadget as a gift, I have no idea what it is. ‘It’s an mp3 player,’ she tells me.

  I look at her blankly. ‘I still don’t know what this is,’ I say. Remembering that I was once the head of information technology for Ernst & Young in Australia, we laugh as Mandy gives me lessons on how to use it. ‘That was as bad as teaching my mother,’ she later smirks. She also bequeaths me her old mobile phone, and my model, discontinued more than a decade ago, is finally abandoned.

  Uncharacteristically, Mandy sheds a tear as she leaves and for days I notice the silence of her not being around.

  More and more now, I also notice the terrible silence of Lady not being around. The L family has split and is in disarray. Happily Lantana, Lady’s youngest, has shown up and now wanders with her adult sister Lesley. But this is bittersweet. If Lady was alive, Lantana would be with her. It is still too distressing for me to face.

  BECOMING BRITNEY SPEARS

  2012

  Soon to be 89 years of age, President Mugabe is at it again. ‘Trust white people at your own peril,’ he has now publicly declared. In 1980, on the eve of Zimbabwe’s Independence, he had said: ‘The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten,’ and, ‘Oppression and racism are inequities that must never again find scope in our political and social system.’

  Lest he forget.

  A few years ago, the Mugabe government signed into law the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act. The controlling interest (51 per cent or more) of all businesses of a predetermined net value, owned by either foreigners or white Zimbabweans, has to be disposed of, within a set timeframe, to black Zimbabweans. The desire to empower black Zimbabweans and have them benefit from their own natural resources is a commendable concept, but surely this is not the best way to achieve this goal. Not surprisingly, new investors are scared off and the economy continues to plummet. Western governments continue pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into Zimbabwe in food, educational and developmental aid regardless.

  ‘Trust whites at your own peril.’ It’s enough to make my eyes roll so far back in my head that I don’t know whether I’ll ever see straight again.

  My email runs hot. ‘What are you still doing there, with his elephants? He’s become a ranting racist.’ I have no answer—except that the Presidential Elephants are supposed to be a flagship herd for the nation, regardless of who the president is. What I do have is a sense of growing unease.

  After Mandy returned to Australia, she thoughtfully set up a Facebook page for the Presidential Elephants. My internet connection in the bush is still too slow, unreliable and expensive to do this myself. In the towns, where the signal is better, Zimbabweans are starting to embrace social media at last. But it’s not easy yet, in the bush. (Mobile phones though, are here in profusion in back pockets, despite their owners struggling to feed children and pay school fees.)

  Overall, the Facebook page turns out to be a really positive development. I sincerely appreciate the interest and moral support from so many people all around the world, happy my enthusiasm for these elephants is so contagious. It’s great to hear more people are enjoying my books and the documentary. I decide to also use the page as an educational tool, to share all sorts of general elephant facts and observations. Within a few weeks followers swell to over 5000 and I try my best to personally reply to all of the messages received.

  One message in particular really touches my heart. It’s from a young black Zimbabwean named Faith, who was my neighbour ten years ago. Sometimes, she’d come out to the elephants with me. All these years later, now living elsewhere and ha
ving given birth to two children, she writes with love and passion about her encounters with the Presidential Elephants: ‘I wish I had followed to the elephants’ watering hole every day.’ In a country where many people care so little for wildlife, it is special to me that she has never forgotten her encounters with Faith, Freddie and Fantastic. She still calls me Mandlovu (‘Mother Elephant’) and I take comfort that President Mugabe has not succeeded in segregating blacks and whites. Faith and I are just two people, separated now by distance, and not colour.

  It’s only after strangers start turning up on my doorstep, unannounced, that I realise all of the exposure is a mixed blessing. Eventually I become a little resentful of being viewed as public property.

  ‘I don’t understand this. I’m not Britney Spears or anybody, and heaven help me if I was,’ I moan to Mandy. Knowing just how out of touch I’ve been, she is simply impressed that I’m aware of who Britney Spears is!

  Strangers on holiday drive their cars right into my yard, parking just metres away from my open front door. They expect me to be pleased to see them. Some are lovely of course, and want nothing more than to say hello and thank you, and then they leave. Others are not quite so gracious.

  I consider putting no entry signs on the short sandy road leading to my cottage, but this just seems ridiculous. Things eventually settle down. As always, I spend as much time as I can in the field, which is better, I think, than being at my home with uninvited strangers—and uninvited snakes.

  I glimpse what I think is only a small slithery thing heading behind my couch. I am beside myself nonetheless. I grab my mobile phone and call the lodge gardener.