Elephant Dawn

  I stare into the glowing coals, desperately hoping that all of my elephant friends will be okay. And we toast to times that we will never forget.

  Zimbabwe is in meltdown, the economy once again teetering on the brink of total collapse. Sanctions are still being blamed for most things, although the new farmers’ lack of productivity is now the fault of climate change! Forget that agricultural fields aren’t being irrigated, there’s not even any water in Carol’s classy suburb unless you sink a borehole or truck it in. The electricity outages are increasingly outrageous. We’ve had no power for twelve, thirteen, sometimes fourteen hours a day, day after day. The pot holes are deeper than ever and could just about swallow a giraffe. There is litter everywhere. Indigenous trees are still being felled at alarming rates. It’s said that 70 per cent of the population of 14 million live on less than US$2 a day. Unemployment now sits at around 85 per cent, agriculture is in ruins and the government is broke, barely even able to pay its civil servants. Broke and broken. Except for the ever-increasing number of ostentatious houses and top-of-the-range vehicles belonging to the obscenely wealthy politically connected elite.

  ‘Zimbabwe will never be a colony again,’ is President Mugabe’s most well-known chant. At every opportunity he reminds the whites of their place in this country. Now he declares that they ‘can stay in apartments in our towns, but they cannot own land’.

  Hundreds of unemployed youths are given t-shirts and food and are bussed to the airport to greet the president on his return from frequent trips away. They carry placards, often professionally printed, that proclaim such things as whites, out, as they hail their president with rapturous applause.

  In his Hero’s Day speech (a day that honours the fallen heroes of the liberation war), while we struggle to cope with no power and no water, President Mugabe announces: ‘Zimbabwe has made tremendous progress in the provision and rehabilitation of infrastructure. In the energy sector, government has committed financial resources towards the rehabilitation and maintenance of existing power infrastructure in order to achieve optimal performance . . . Government is committed to the proper management of our environment, water . . .’

  I swear, for the past thirteen years, I must have been living somewhere else, on a whole other planet. Carol reminds me that the ZANU-PF headquarters in downtown Harare is located on a street named Rotten Row.

  This is a country just about ready to implode.

  There’s talk of Saviour becoming a future president. I decide to email him once more. ‘Saviour,’ I write, ‘I swear to God, if it turns out that one day you become president—after all that you didn’t do for the Presidential Elephants—I’m going to come back and shoot you myself.’

  Which, he tells me in reply, makes him laugh.

  I think about Keith and Raynel urging me to consider Botswana for future elephant work, and decide to keep my options open. I take a chance and ask Saviour if he’d mind passing to me the contact details of his counterpart there. Somewhat surprisingly, he tells me that he thinks Botswana would be ‘a very good idea’. Whether he’s taking the opportunity to make certain that I leave Zimbabwe, or whether he genuinely wants to help me, I’m not sure. But he forwards me these details, and I tuck them away safely for now.

  I sell my 4x4. Everything has become painfully real. Tears well up in my eyes as I watch it being driven away, laden with a million of my memories, to its own new life. Once again I feel my life crashing down around me.

  A hundred kilometres away, Lol and Drew are packing up their lives too, in preparation for a move to South Africa. When Andy died, Drew was just a toddler. Today he is a wise young man of eighteen, but there’s no way he’s going to leave behind the big soft-toy horse that I gave to him the day before Andy’s funeral. There were other similar gifts over the years. ‘Those furry things from his past, he guards fiercely,’ Lol tells me.

  This lifts my heart. This special family will forever be intrinsically entwined in my life.

  ‘Hold your head up our darling and keep walking,’ Lol urges.

  I wander around craft shops and outdoor markets one last time and buy myself a little wooden elephant with wings, to fly with me across the ocean. And to fly me back safely, when my mind feels a need to return.

  Carol drives me to the airport with my pathetic couple of suitcases in tow; all that I have of thirteen years and seven months spent in this country.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you in Hawaii,’ Carol says to me. She plans to live there for a while, in a house she already owns, once she finally gets around to leaving Zimbabwe. We all need to be somewhere else; anywhere but here. I hug her goodbye, not knowing if I’ll ever really see her again.

  I’m holding it together, feeling ready to finally leave. That is, until I allow myself to think once more about my elephant family. I decide to give it one last try. For them. I sit in the departures lounge, one of the few white faces in a sea of black travellers, and text Saviour. He wouldn’t expect anything less from me. He once said to me, ‘Nobody loves these elephants more than you.’

  ‘Please,’ I beg him, ‘for the elephants that I loved so much, won’t you at least fix . . .’

  Saviour reads my message and replies without delay. ‘It pains me that it has come to this,’ he says. And that, for me, sums up all that is so ludicrous, so implausible, so wrong, in this crazy country. Why, then, didn’t he do more for the Presidential Elephants? He could have done so much more. I simply can’t hold it together any longer. Tears stream from my eyes and over my cheeks like water spilling over the Victoria Falls. I don’t want to be having this meltdown in public, and I try hard to pull myself together. But still the tears flow.

  A black woman takes a seat beside me. ‘Are you leaving special ones behind?’ she asks me gently. And I lose it all over again, unable to speak.

  From the window of the plane I look down on Harare and across the troubled land that is Zimbabwe, feeling so desperately sad over how it all turned out. But also comforted, knowing that for so many years, I gave it my all.

  By the time I touch down in Queensland, more than 24 hours later, I’m feeling completely exhausted. And unexpectedly liberated. Huge tidal waves of immense relief are washing over me. I embrace the country of my birth with open arms.

  Everything looks so fresh and neat and thriving. I’m strangely comforted by bright, shiny shopping malls, and the polished hustle and bustle. It all seems so splendidly functional, rational and safe. For a while at least, I need a place of certainty—and here it is, all around me. From the Grantham home where I grew up, the Milky Way looks just like it does in the African bush; a dazzling path that you might skip and dance along. The immensely wide daytime skies are familiar too, vivid blue and filled with birds. It is the ocean that I’ve longed for most of all. After spending time with my family, I travel on to the Sunshine Coast to write and revive. And to reflect.

  The dry winds of Africa have shaped me. I’ve been bent and twisted, like the velvety pods of the Acacia erioloba. I’ve emerged wiser now, stronger and proud. My giant Hwange friends, I know, will live with me forever. As I gaze out over the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, at the golden path of moonshine on its surface, I see elephants ambling towards me, huge ears flapping in the stillness of the night. I feel their warmth and friendship, and hear their rumbles. I breathe deeply and pat my heart, in the African way. I am one with them. Still. And I know that I had a remarkable ride, with them by my side. Despite everything that happened, I relished it.

  This is where it all begins. Another path. Another place. Another new adventure, with my Hwange elephant family alive, inside of me.

  (Left) I grew up on a vegetable farm in Grantham, Queensland. I’m grateful for the ‘toughness’ I acquired from this small community. (Right) With Chloe, who lived until she was nearly eighteen, during my high-flying years Down Under.

  It was a very different life in Africa. (Photo courtesy of Brent Stapelkamp)

  (Left) Andy and his son Drew eighteen months
before he was killed in a helicopter accident. (Photo courtesy of Laurette Searle). (Right) The local people believe the bateleur eagle to be a spirit messenger.

  In 2000 Lol, Drew and I went together to visit Andy’s grave inside Hwange National Park.

  The grand Lady was the first wild elephant who truly accepted me into her world.

  (Left) The collared rhino that chased me up an acacia tree. (Right) John, my old-timer Zimbabwean friend, with a sample of his hand-tooled leather. (Photo courtesy of Laura Walker)

  The tiny one-room rondavel that was my home for more than a decade.

  Once I got to know her well, Lady came when I called her, with her offspring in tow.

  How could anyone possibly want to harm this?

  (Left) Gladys, who named me Thandeka. Later, I became known as Thandeka Mandlovu. (Right) Carol and Miriam both lived in Harare.

  My friends Shaynie and Dinks in the Matobo Hills.

  Whole has a distinctive hole in her left ear.

  Hanging out with Misty. (Photo courtesy of Mark Stratton)

  Members of the Presidential families often followed my 4×4 as if I were their matriarch. (Photo courtesy of Brent Stapelkamp)

  In the early years wildlife, such as this sable bull, relaxed right beside my 4×4, but with increased gunfire they became less trusting over time.

  Elephants have a sense of death like few other animals. Sometimes they move their feet over the remains of one of their own in a chilling gesture of awareness.

  Elephant youngsters are always entertaining. They helped keep me smiling.

  Barbara and her daughter Dee during a visit to Victoria Falls.

  Jabulani (left) and members of his anti-poaching team spent their days destroying wire snares.

  Eyelashes to die for! In the right light, an elephant’s lower eyelid takes on the colour of the ocean.

  Makwa pan, inside Hwange National Park, holds many special memories for me.

  Lady and her family.

  Cheeky vervet monkeys frequently kept me company in my garden.

  With the beautiful Whole as she catches forty winks.

  I didn’t often see other vehicles when I looked out the window of my 4×4, but I did see this.

  You know you’re among friends when they fall asleep right beside you.

  No matter where I parked, the elephants would always want to be there too. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  Joyce, like all the other elephants, liked to share her dust with me.

  When they weren’t showering me with dust, they were splashing me with mud.

  A live leopard in the field is infinitely better than a dead one at my rondavel.

  Sometimes when my elephant friends greeted me, their temporal glands erupted with liquid, a sure sign of excitement in the ladies.

  All shapes and sizes, desperate for some pumped water in the dry season.

  I will always remember the young elephant I named Future.

  Talking to tuskless Cathy, the matriarch of the C family. (Photo courtesy of Brent Stapelkamp)

  Sometimes while sitting in my 4×4, I’d look back over my shoulder and find a huge bull looking right at me.

  There was always somebody outside my 4×4 wanting to say hello.

  Arrhhh, but I can still see you.

  Willa and I share a tender moment. My relationship with the Presidential Elephants was said to be one of the most remarkable ever documented. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  The tall and the tiny of the elephant world.

  Mr Baboon, were you the one who stole my potatoes?

  My friend Lady.

  Lady brought baby Lantana so close to my 4×4 that it was difficult to take a photo, even with the widest angle lens.

  Ignoring my very close presence beneath them, Wonderful (left) is greeted by a bull.

  The gorgeous new-born Ayesha, named by my kind donor Roby.

  The lovable Whosit, with only the windscreen separating us. She loved to give me a fright, leaving me certain that elephants giggle in infrasound.

  I spent hours every day sitting on the roof of my 4×4 recording the lives of the Presidential Elephants. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  Esther doctors the awful snare wound on Adwina’s leg. It took time, but Adwina recovered well.

  (Left) My ‘Mother Elephant’ sign outside the cottage I moved to in 2011. The ‘snake blocker’, which didn’t always work, is in front of the door with Craig’s painting of Whole. (Right) Grace, who lost the fingers of her trunk in a snare, uses her foot to kick an Acacia erioloba pod on to her trunk before tossing it into her mouth.

  (Left) Not that it did much good in the end, the Presidential Decree reaffirmation certificate was signed by President Robert Mugabe in 2011. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa) (Right) Minister Francis Nhema (left) and Chief Dingani at the Presidential Decree reaffirmation ceremony. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  The elephants loved their mascot, who I named Fearless.

  Nothing beats sundowners in the African bush.

  My favourite elephants always preferred to be centre stage. This is Willa desperate for some special attention.

  Wilma loved to sleep on my bullbar.

  Cecil the Lion near Ngweshla campsite inside Hwange National Park in December 2013, eighteen months before he was killed by a sport-hunter.

  Members of the E family at Mpofu pan.

  The gentle Misty. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  Misty, Masahke and family enjoying the wet season.

  Wahkuna (Whole’s granddaughter) with a wire snare around her back right leg.

  Wahkuna recovered well after her snare was successfully removed. She kept the wound covered in mud and dust to help it heal.

  After arranging for waterholes to be scooped, I later had them de-weeded with the help of men from the nearby township of Dete.

  (Left) During a 2013 fly-over to check on poaching activity, I spotted these elephants inside Hwange National Park dead from cyanide poisoning. (Right) Minister Saviour Kasukuwere in 2014 at the commissioning of the solar pump installation that feeds Mandlovu pan.

  Who, really, is the king of the jungle?

  It was always such a privilege when mothers brought their babies right to the door of my 4×4 and stayed beside me for hours.

  This is the last photo taken of Dad with my mum and his four daughters before he died in December 2015. From left: me, Deborah, Genevieve, Mum and Catherine.

  Like my dad, Lady will live on with me, always.

  I am one with the elephants. Still. (Photo courtesy of NHU Africa)

  POSTSCRIPT

  OCTOBER 2014–JANUARY 2016

  The day after I arrived back in Australia in October 2014, Barbara died. She fell in her Bulawayo flat after suffering a debilitating migraine, but her injuries should never have claimed her life. Zimbabwe’s hospital system had let young Dee down once more. Her emails to me were heart-wrenching as she tried to come to terms with it all. She opted to scatter her mother’s ashes in the Matobo Hills. Dee has since left Zimbabwe, and moved to the United Kingdom. She, like so many others, needed to be somewhere else.

  I found it impossible to walk away from Zimbabwe’s elephants completely. On the surface I may have appeared silent, but I was never inactive. In late November, just six weeks after I left Zimbabwe, Johnny Rodrigues reported that 34 young elephants, some believed to be as young as two years old, had been ripped from their mothers in Hwange National Park to meet demand from Chinese zoos. They were being held in bomas inside the park. It was feared that up to 200 would ultimately be caught and transported. I began liaising with Minister Saviour Kasukuwere from afar, pleading with him to rethink his country’s policy on this. The idea of us still being in contact was perhaps absurd, but I had a direct line of communication with him so I needed to try. At one stage it sounded possible that the captures might actually cease, and an Australian television crew began preparing to cover the story of the elephants’ plight. But, once again, Minister Kasukuwere’s
story changed, time and time again.

  In February 2015, it was reported that several elephants had been shot to feed guests at President Mugabe’s 91st birthday celebrations. Again there was international outrage, although it is little known how common this sort of thing is in Zimbabwe. Unexpectedly, on the day of President Mugabe’s birthday, Zimbabwe’s NewsDay republished some of my interview with National Geographic about the private land claims in Presidential Elephant areas. Even so, nothing changed on the Hwange Estate. Tourists continued to complain bitterly about decent game-drive access, while others were being told they were viewing elephants from the Presidential herd, even if they were not. (As the years pass and populations grow, increasing numbers of elephant families regularly wander out of the national park and onto the estate, so there’s often a ‘mix’ of elephants on this land, and indeed inside the national park as well. Now, some people simply generalise about what they’re seeing.) The waterholes that I’d scooped were once again filled only with neglect. But at least there were people still watching, and applying pressure to fix the problem areas.