Elephant Dawn

by Sharon Pincott

  Zimbabwean author and conservationist Bookey Peek writes to me: ‘Your leaving is a tragedy . . . You have done everything a person could possibly do, and so much more . . . You must be proud, so very proud, of that . . . There is no stronger testimony to love, dedication and absolute trust than that picture of you leaning out of your cruiser and giving your girl a kiss . . . They will never forget you.’

  Craig Rix, the publisher of Travel Africa magazine, echoes Bookey’s sentiments from the United Kingdom. ‘You selflessly battled away, in a way that most of us wouldn’t have the courage to do. Take heart that you did everything you could.’

  Ever-supportive Ayesha in South Africa sends me a little online plaque that reads, ‘Sometimes you have to chuck it in the fuck-it bucket, and move on.’

  I hear nothing from Minister Kasukuwere until two weeks before my 52nd birthday, and then I don’t hear directly from him: he sends a Parks Authority person to my door on Easter Sunday night to tell me that I must report to him in Harare, on Tuesday, for an 8 a.m. meeting.

  ‘He can’t talk to me himself?’ I ask. ‘Has he all of a sudden lost my phone number?’ I’m as cranky as a snared buffalo about this, and not careful with my words. ‘Do you guys honestly expect me to just get up in the morning and drive more than eight hours to Harare, on the last day of a busy public holiday? Are you serious?’ I know that scores of people will likely die tomorrow on the awful Zimbabwe roads—which makes me wonder, fleetingly, if the plan is to simply add one more.

  And then he tells me something that he’s probably not supposed to. ‘That one who took Kanondo,’ he says, ‘you will be there together. You have to go.’

  I simply shake my head, close my door and email ministers Kasukuwere, Mutasa and Nhema. I write that I am absolutely not interested, at this late stage, in entertaining any land grabber who they may have now decided I should work alongside. I know what I believe to be right and wrong with all of this. I have compromised enough over the years, more often than I should have. I simply cannot compromise myself further now.

  I need to stand in my own truth. I make it clear that I will not be travelling to Harare to be a part of this sham.

  I know that attempts to discredit me will now intensify.

  The next day I can’t even bring myself to risk going back out on the estate to try to find my elephant friends, who by now number over five hundred. I just can’t face it. It will be easier not to say goodbye. I still need to figure out the logistics of leaving. What do I try to take with me, and what do I leave behind? Should I attempt to ship anything? What about my 4x4?

  I learn that in Australia, activist Jude Price, under the banner ‘For Elephants International’, has created an online petition protesting the Presidential Elephant land grabs. These days it seems there are a million online petitions about a million different issues, most of which go nowhere. Activists come in all shapes and forms, not all of them necessarily helpful and skilled. A good advocate is one who is focused, diplomatic and knowledgeable; someone who doesn’t run on emotion and ego and who follows through. Jude is one of these. And she does more than just advocate. From her home in Adelaide, she actively raises funds. ‘I know that your mind is made up, and I understand your decision to leave,’ Jude tells me. ‘We’re proceeding regardless.’

  She’s been working with another committed online group called ‘March For Elephants’ and the petition is live. A few Zimbos concerned with animal welfare are involved too. I’m grateful for their interest and concern, but I am feeling completely drained. I leave them to it. In a country like Zimbabwe, where the government cares little about public opinion, and where so many suspicious deals are done, I don’t hold out much hope that their efforts will change anything for the elephants.

  My friend Reason, who I’ve known for many years by now, unexpectedly arrives on my doorstep, unaware of everything going on. We sit together on my sofa.

  ‘Mandlo, your sofa is broken,’ he exclaims, clearly startled by how he has sunk down almost to the floor. ‘Broken like Zimbabwe,’ he adds without even a hint of a smile.

  I fill him in on all of the latest.

  ‘You must be angry,’ he declares.

  ‘Angry?’ I think about this for a moment. ‘No, I’m not angry,’ I say. ‘I’m just really very disappointed.’

  ‘Arrhhh but that is much worse than angry,’ he says. ‘You’re leaving, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘This time I really am.’

  ‘Having to step away from these ndlovus, is like stepping away from an overcrowded kombi [Zimbabwe’s notoriously dangerous minibuses]. It might save your life,’ he says.

  We sit in silence.

  ‘Do you know what the worst part is?’ he asks me.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Arrhhh, but there are too many worst parts,’ he decides, shaking his head. ‘It is best to leave now now,’ he tells me. This is the Zimbabwean way of saying right now. ‘Nothing will change. This government, they always want to send hyenas to investigate other hyenas over what has happened to the missing goats. It never works.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, ‘it doesn’t.’

  ‘It matters, no, if a goat or a cow or a cat is black or white. You, Mandlo, are white, it does not matter, you and me are the same. Stand up proud that you caught many mice. You are not hungry now. You can leave happy. I will be seeing you back one day.’

  Reason’s words are comforting in a way that only those from a black African can be. He puts the back of one hand into the palm of the other and pats his heart. He wishes me well as he walks away.

  I’ve lived in Hwange longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life, including my childhood home, which I left when I was twelve for boarding school. This is my home. It will not be easy to leave.

  Johnny Rodrigues has become aware of further plans to rip young elephants from their families inside Hwange National Park to send to Chinese zoos. He fears this could involve hundreds of young elephants this time around. My mind and stomach reel from this news. None of this would be happening without Minister Kasukuwere’s approval and support.

  Just as concerning, Minister Kasukuwere has been urging Zimbabweans to ‘lobby the world’ so that more of its stockpiled ivory can be legally sold to China and other Asian countries. One elephant is being poached in Africa every fifteen minutes and this is how Zimbabwe responds to the crisis, despite the Parks Director General recently acknowledging that ‘poaching will remain a threat in the country’s vast game parks as long as there is a ready market for ivory and rhino horn’.

  On the evening of my birthday I sigh wearily when I once again hear repeated gunfire from my cottage, and I make one final report. I’m disgusted now, not just disappointed, that shots continue to be heard from photographic lodges. I email Minister Kasukuwere one last time and don’t mince my words. ‘You surely need to clean this sport-hunting industry up, or you need to shut it down,’ I tell him.

  Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t reply. He knows as well as I do how many well-connected people operate in this industry. Right now, Zimbabwe is ranked among the most corrupt nations in the world. A failed state. And Minister Kasukuwere knows that I am leaving. He no longer has to pretend to be listening.

  There’s another brutal attack on a white farmer and his daughter. While taking their dogs for an afternoon walk on their own land, they had been bound with wire and attacked with axes. Both subsequently die from their horrific injuries.

  I can’t bear to think about any of this anymore. I once believed that watching a sunset and a moonrise alongside my elephant friends in this Hwange wilderness could repair anything. But it has gotten so bad, so mad, that not even this can now ease my pain. I arrived in Zimbabwe 21 years after the War of Independence ended. It’s now 34 years on, yet I frequently feel as if that war is still being waged.

  I take another look around at all of my books and photos and files and thirteen years of possessions and mementos. I lost it all once before, in the Grantham floo
ds. Does any of this really matter now? I can live without it all, I decide, too many strange phone calls and unusual noises now disturbing my dark nights.

  I can’t face one more day of it. I need to make myself get out of here.

  GODSPEED

  2014

  The next morning, I throw what is most important into my 4x4 and I leave. Just like that. I don’t plan to ever come back. Shaynie will deal with the rest of my things, carting everything away, distributing what my friends can use and discarding the rest.

  Barbara is waiting for me in Bulawayo, relieved that I’m safe and out of that place. I am shattered, but I also share her sense of relief. She looks at me with eyes filled with pain and sadness. ‘I should have taken your advice about the green bananas,’ I say to her, trying to smile.

  Later, I realise that in my haste, I’ve left a folder of important documents behind, locked in a tin trunk. ‘You’re not going back there by yourself,’ Barbara declares. ‘If you go back, I’ll have to go with you.’

  We don’t go immediately. I am tired and need to sleep—which I do for days on end. Then, I begin making enquiries about selling my 4x4 and booking my flight out.

  A one-way flight.

  A week later an article appears in the Bulawayo Chronicle. It quotes the provincial Minister of State for Matabeleland North (previously known as the governor; the same office that had previously caused so much trouble). His name is Cain Mathema, a man who I have never met. ‘We are under siege,’ he says. ‘They want us to be seen as failures because they don’t want us to benefit from our resources and some Western agents in our midst influence that. One of them is an Australian woman . . .’

  Although it is hilariously ridiculous, this time I don’t laugh. Shaynie is quick to remind me that ‘they target only those they fear’: ‘It’s a mark of how well you’ve done your job with the elephants, that these deceitful people even bother to be concerned with you.’ They’re not worth losing sleep over, I know. But I do lose sleep—over their pitiful lies and deception.

  I’m indescribably tired. I stay off the internet. I change my phone number and put an automatic response on my email. My friends know how to contact me, including Mandy. ‘So this little girl from country Queensland is still managing to unsettle those who run Zimbabwe,’ she writes. ‘I’m so glad you’re out of there.’

  Meanwhile I hear that interest in the petition is building all over the world. It’s now clear to even more people that private claims on this land should never have been allowed. Predictably, the ministers targeted by the petition (including those from both Lands and Tourism) are passing the buck among themselves, which is, surprisingly, even reported in the government press. Minister Kasukuwere is being bombarded with correspondence, urging him to enforce the Cabinet directive. I’m pretty much staying out of it all, still declining to speak to journalists and wanting the whole thing to end.

  Eventually, I travel with Barbara back to Hwange. All I feel is a desperate need to be away from this place, and a deep sadness that it’s come to this. We are back at my cottage for no more than twenty minutes, grabbing my documents and some extra things that Barbara and Dee can use, and then we are out of there for good.

  Just down the road, we come upon two elephants by the roadside, the last Presidential Elephants that I will likely see. It’s Louise from Lady’s family, and her eighteen-month-old daughter Layla. Behind them are Louise’s older two offspring, Laurie and Louie. There is no one else in sight. The L family is still split up, following Lady’s tragic death. This is still so sad for me.

  All of the elephants have, however, enriched my life in ways that I will never forget. They’re my family. I can’t bear to think I won’t be seeing them again. ‘I need to keep going,’ I say to Barbara, choking back my distress. And we do, stopping for only a few seconds to wish all of my elephant family godspeed.

  ‘I wish we had taken your Thandeka Mandlovu signs,’ Barbara says to me sadly as we drive along. ‘I would have liked to keep them.’

  Shaynie is once again working hours away from Bulawayo, but she returns for a couple of days and joins me in her home, where I’ve been spending more time than she has. It’s an emotional time for both of us. We enjoy a chat and an Amarula before bed.

  There are all sorts of rumours flying, including one that I’ve gone off to study penguins in Antarctica! ‘Shaynie,’ I probe, ‘did you have anything to do with that one?’

  ‘So, what about the bateleurs?’ she asks, keen to change the subject. ‘Did they stop looking down on you?’

  ‘You know, I haven’t seen one all year. In fact I haven’t felt Andy’s presence through any of this. Maybe he’s gone away too.’

  The next morning I drag myself out of bed and decide to check my emails. My heart skips a beat when the first thing I see is a story about the reclusive creator of the cartoon strip, Calvin and Hobbes. It was one of Andy’s most favourite things in the world. His obsession had me searching far and wide in Australia for books missing from his treasured collection. ‘I’m not sure that I believe in coincidences anymore,’ I smile over my hot chocolate. ‘Perhaps it’s a sign? Maybe Andy’s not gone after all.’

  ‘Maybe like all of us, he just wanted you out of there too,’ Shaynie says.

  After having not heard from him for two months, I decide to email Saviour. Because my professional relationship with him is over, I no longer feel a need to call him Minister Kasukuwere. The amount of activity generated from the elephants’ Facebook page is often staggering now, despite no new posts. He needs to know that this issue is not going away quickly and that many potential tourists are fast losing all confidence in Zimbabwe. My tone is one of disappointment. I ask him to at least fix up game-drive access and monitoring restrictions now in the grabbed areas. I tell him that nobody in the Parks Authority or the Wildlife Ministry has requested any information from me—none of my thirteen years of notes, reports, files, schematics and identification photographs—so there is no point in me leaving anything behind. I ask him, yet again, to think about these Presidential Elephants as a flagship herd to benefit the nation. Then, I say goodbye and wish him well.

  He replies, simply saying that my email is ‘appreciated’ and that he has ‘noted all’ that I said.

  I decide that I will travel on to Harare and spend some final time with Carol. I’ll take with me two trunks of useful bits and pieces to store with Keith and Raynel, in case I return one day to work with elephants somewhere else. They’re urging me to think hard about opportunities in the more peaceful, sane Botswana. I’m thinking about my previous offer in South Africa.

  More frequently though, I’m just focused on getting out of here. I can’t help but feel that I’ve had my fill of Africa for a while, although I know I’ll never give up the battle for elephants entirely. Attempting to sell my 4x4 in the capital makes good sense, since there’s more activity there and I need to find somebody with ready cash. I’ll book my flight once it’s sold.

  First though, I try to enjoy some ‘last times’ in Bulawayo. ‘Last time’ walking the city streets with no other whites in sight; ‘last time’ searching for designer labels at the street markets; ‘last time’ buying fruit from the ladies with their pyramids of produce; ‘last time’ ordering pizzas from the friendly attendant at Pizza Inn who always ensures there’s extra sauce on the base; ‘last time’ in the peaceful Matobo Hills.

  In Matobo, Shaynie and I lie on our backs on a huge rocky boulder, gazing up at the fish eagles. It’s been nearly eight years since she first told me that ‘an eagle flies further when in a turbulent wind’. ‘Even eagles get unbearably tired, Shaynie,’ I sigh. ‘I’ll miss coming here.’

  We share texts and photos with Dinks in South Africa. ‘Oh, what a sadness,’ Dinks wails. ‘Do you know how these photos tear at my heartstrings? I could just curl up and commit harikari. Love and miss you both to the moon and back.’ And then, a few minutes later: ‘If longing could cause me to sprout wings, I would tell you to pou
r coffee. I’m coming.’

  Barbara and Dee join me as I say some goodbyes around town. We keep our sunglasses on to hide our tears. I give Dee my baby names book, from which I chose names for the elephants, which breaks our hearts a little more. Every day, I wonder if the elephant families I named and came to love are still intact.

  It didn’t work out for CJ and Herbie in South Africa. Now they’re back, and I’m the one who is leaving. There are hugs all around, long and tight.

  Shaynie is being forced to give up her home, unable now to afford the rent in this crazy country.

  ‘I hope you find another home soon, Shaynie,’ I say, as we tackle our sad goodbyes.

  ‘You too . . . ’ she whispers.

  I drive through the city centre before turning towards Harare. Last time, last time. Everything is as run-down and filthy as ever. But still my heart is torn in two. I know that I’m unlikely to ever be back.

  ANOTHER PATH

  2014

  I am relieved to finally be across the country in Harare, with Carol. Now, at last, I can start trying to disentangle myself from it all. After the winter sun disappears, we sit gazing into the flames of a log fire, sipping Amarula.

  ‘You no longer had a choice,’ Carol tells me.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asks.

  ‘I will . . . I still don’t know what I will do,’ I confess.

  ‘You would’ve had to keep compromising yourself year after year,’ she says. ‘You need to keep remembering that. And when you forget, you just need to ask your friends why you left. They won’t have forgotten . . . You gave those elephants thirteen years, and you shared them with the world. That’s a victory in itself. Now there’s other elephants needing your help.’