The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  "Remember our deal," I say.

  And they answer, smiling, that they remember.

  The wide-open arms of the marula trees welcome us back to Marula-Puku after every village trip, when for days we have slept on the truck, eaten canned food, and bathed in cold streams. A roaring campfire, started by Simbeye, Mwamba, and Kasokola at the first sound of our truck, brightens the reed kitchen boma as we pull into camp. On the far side of the slow-moving Lubonga we can see puku and buffalo grazing. The guys greet us, no matter what time of day or night, and help unload the muddy truck.

  The stone and thatch cottages, all but swallowed by the giant trees, are now complete. In a semicircle along the riverbank is an office cottage, a kitchen cottage, a bedroom cottage, and an open n'saka, the traditional Bemba meeting place. Solar panels power the few lights and two computers. At the back of camp is a workshop, stocked with tools and spare parts for the trucks. The camp is neat and efficient, yet its structures of local stone and grass blend into the riverbank so well that they are hardly noticeable from the far side.

  One day as we pull into camp, Simbeye rushes up to us.

  "Bosses, come, you must see," he shouts. As we climb down from the truck, he pulls on Mark's arm and leads us to the grassy area between the office and bedroom cottages.

  "See, the tracks; he was right here." Simbeye points to the large footprints of an elephant only fifteen yards from our bedroom. "He has been coming here every night to eat the marula fruits. He is one of the Camp Group. There are eight, but only one comes here. The others feed on the hill."

  "That's great, Simbeye! Did you actually see him? Isn't he afraid of you?" I ask.

  "He comes only at night. He moves like a big shadow, so you cannot hear him. But I wait in the grass by my hut, and I see him come. He does not know I am there."

  "Are you sure that it is the same elephant every night?" Mark asks.

  "Yes, sir, I am sure. He is the one with tusks as long as your arm," Simbeye holds his hands about three feet apart, "and he has a small hole in his left ear."

  After an early supper of cornbread and beans, Mark and I take up positions by the window in the bedroom cottage. Whispering in the darkness, we take turns peering into the night for large, moving shadows. But the elephant does not come. Finally, we fall asleep in our clothes on top of the bedcovers. In the morning there are no fresh tracks. The elephant must have known we were inside the cottage. After all, he is clever enough to have survived poachers' bullets for many years.

  Early that morning, anxious to get back to the wildlife work, we drive to the airstrip to fly an antipoaching patrol. Suddenly Mark stops the truck. Eight bull elephants stand in a tight group only three hundred yards away, on the steep hillside overlooking the river. Wrapping their trunks around the bases of the tall grass, they pull up large clumps and munch on them. Not one looks in our direction. I hold my hands to my face, and Mark squeezes my shoulder. This may happen often in other parts of Africa—people watching a small group of elephants feeding—but never before have we been able to get so close. Instead of fleeing at the first sight of us, the elephants ignore us completely.

  After that they show up regularly here and there. We see them from the plane near Hippo Pool, across the river feeding on marula fruits, late one afternoon in the valley beyond the airstrip. They keep their distance, but they do not run. Perhaps they have learned that they are safe near our camp.

  The other elephants in the park are not so safe. Mark has been flying patrols daily, whenever he is not on a village trip with me. Every week he discovers four to six dead elephants. With each discovery we plead with the game guards to go on patrol, but there is always some reason why they cannot. They have not mounted a single patrol on their own since we arrived last year. The radios we ordered months before still have not been approved by the government. Every time we want to get a message to the game guards, we have to make the long drive up the scarp to Mano, or else Mark has to fly over their camp and drop a message in a milk tin.

  A week after first seeing the elephants near camp, Mark takes off on a flight to drop a message to the game guards, asking them to patrol the hills around our camp to help protect the herd. No sooner is he airborne than he flies into a flock of vultures. Hitting one can be fatal, so Mark quickly banks the plane starboard to turn away from the birds. Looking down, he sees the mutilated carcasses of three male elephants, sprawled in pools of blood and splashed white with vulture dung. Swearing and flying dangerously close to the treetops, Mark circles the area looking for the poachers. Seeing no sign of them, he lands and drives madly up the scarp to collect the scouts. Four hours after spotting the elephants, we stand with the guards around the carcasses—huge, gray monuments to a dying continent.

  "Bastards!" Mark paces around. "They're laughing at us. You know that, don't you?" Mark stares at Gaston Phiri. "They're laughing at you! They know that they can poach right here and get away with it."

  "We know who shot these elephants," Phiri announces proudly. "We can tell by their boot tracks in the sand. It is Chikilinti, Chanda Seven, Mpundu Katongo, Bernard Mutondo, and Simu Chimba from Mwamfushi Village."

  "Well, good," Mark says. "If we know exactly who the poachers are, we can go to the village and arrest them."

  "Ah, but we cannot get these men," Phiri tells us. "They have juju."

  "They have what?"

  "These men are real men, but they have a magic from Zaire. They can make themselves invisible, so that we cannot see them. They can stand right here among us, but we will look through them. We ourselves can never capture them."

  "Come on, Phiri! You don't believe that."

  But Phiri insists, sounding hurt. "It is fact. It is like this: they stand under a tree, put on a special hat, pour magic potion over their heads, and turn in circles. Then they disappear."

  "Phiri, don't you know it's impossible to be invisible?" Mark looks anxiously at the other scouts, hoping for support.

  "Maybe for you, but not for these men. You may know what is written in your books. But these men, they know magic from Zaire!"

  I drop my hands to my side and walk around in a small circle. Mark stands in silence, trying to control his anger, unsure of what to do.

  "The men from Mwamfushi are the hunters," Phiri goes on, "but they use the men from Chishala as carriers."

  "From Chishala!" I cry out. "Those men we gave jobs, and the soccer ball?"

  Phiri just looks at me, and I get the message. How could we be so naive? Did we really believe we could win them over with a soccer ball and a few jobs?

  "There is something else," Phiri says. "That man, the one who calls himself Jealous, the man who told you informations about the poachers. He was poisoned. His stomach is very sick, and his lips are burned very bad. He has been taken to the hospital in Mpika."

  Mark lowers his head into his hands and stares at the ground. I walk away and look out over the golden, rocky hills. Something catches my eye. Five elephants—all that is left of Camp Group—move silently away through the trees. I make no sign that I have seen them, but I watch. As they reach the crest of the hill, I see the male with the small tusks—the one with the hole in his left ear. He has survived one more time. "Go well, Survivor," I whisper. "Go well."

  9. Survivor's Seasons

  DELIA

  Here you must look at each thing with the elephant eye: greeting it now for the first time, and bidding, forever, good-bye.

  — ANNIE DILLARD

  SURVIVOR, FOLLOWED by the four young bulls of his group, trundles slowly up the small, rocky hill. It is May and the elephants are on their way from the plains to the great scarp mountains. Even though it is a short migration of only fifteen to twenty miles, they take several months to pass through the belt of hills along the base of the escarpment. The tall, waving grasses and small trees and scrubs (Terminalia, Colophospermum mopane, Combretum) make good forage at the end of the rains, while the rushing rivers and hidden lagoons provide water. But one of the
main attractions of the area is the large, spreading marula trees (Sclerocarya caffra) that drop their sweet fruits at this time of year.

  The elephants know where the marulas are. Well-worn paths lead from one to the other, and under each the grass is matted down where the large beasts have fed for hours on the yellow fruits. They walk to one of the marula groves near Khya Stream. Swaying gently back and forth, they feel and sniff along the ground with their trunks, then pluck the fruits into their mouths with loud slurping noises.

  The five animals are in their twenties and form a loose-knit group of independent males. Survivor was born into a "family unit" of closely related females, the oldest of whom was the matriarch. She was more than fifty years old and led the group to traditional feeding areas and watering points. A female calf born into a family unit will usually remain in it for the rest of her life unless the group becomes too large. Males, on the other hand, leave the group when they are ten to fifteen years old. Sometimes they wander on their own, sometimes they form groups with other young males.1

  After eating all the fruits they can find in this grove, Survivor and his group move to a floodplain along the stream, where they feed on the tall elephant grass. Only their gray backs show above the grassy plumes as they pull up bunches of stems and eat the tender shoots. By late afternoon they become thirsty, but do not go to the river because the poachers know the elephants' watering spots and often ambush them when they come down to drink. Since the poachers do not shoot at night, the elephants wait until dark to quench their thirst.

  Maybe Survivor can remember the days when his family unit went to the river every afternoon to drink and play. He and the other youngsters would frolic and splash in the water, while the adult females used their trunks to spray their broad backs. But it is no longer safe to linger there. After dark Survivor's group goes to the water's edge and drinks quickly, looking around frequently and listening. They move away immediately and return to the thick vegetation where they cannot be seen.

  Day after day, the group feeds on the fruits, small trees, and grass, walking along familiar paths and drinking in the safety of darkness. There is plenty of grass left, and although it is drying along with the season, it is still nutritious.

  In mid-June the sky dims from the smoke of the first wildfires started by the poachers. With nothing to stop them except the rivers, the fires sweep across the plains and hills, gobbling up the vegetation that would feed the entire elephant population for months.

  Forced by the fires to move on, Survivor and his group turn west and trek toward the scarp mountains. Many of the streams are now diy, so the elephants often walk on the parched riverbeds hemmed in by steep banks. Their large feet leave readily identifiable tracks in the sand.

  One afternoon there is a rustling near a tree just above Survivor. He whirls in alarm, lifting his trunk. One of the other elephants backs into him as they all lurch about in confusion, holding their trunks high to take in the scent. They watch for signs of men with guns. Then they turn and run along the streambed, their feet kicking up sprays of sand. But they are trapped by the banks and cannot escape. Eventually they find a gully and scramble to the top, their sides and rumps bumping one another. Survivor pauses briefly and looks back to see a small troop of baboons climbing into the lower branches of the tree where he had heard the noise. He stops. It's okay. This time.

  When the elephants reach the rocky foothills, they often follow the well-worn paths their kind have used for generations. Along the way they feed on scrub mopane and small combretum trees. The trails continue over the mountains, winding around the steepest peaks and into deep ravines. The grass in the mountains is not so plentiful, nor is the water. The group feeds on small trees of the miombo forests, twisting each plant off at its base. They drink at clear springs and streams tucked away in the creases of the range.

  On the other side of the small mountain, also walking an ancient trail, is the matriarch One Tusk and her family unit of females. Well over thirty years of age, she leads Misty, Mandy, and Marula—three young adult females—a three-year-old calf, and an infant. Halfway up the mountain they reach the meadow known as Elephant's Playground, where a few palm trees tower over a small stream. The elephants fan out and feed, staying within twenty yards of one another. Misty, who may be the daughter of One Tusk, accidentally backs into the matriarch, but neither of them moves. With their huge backsides lightly touching, they continue to pull up the grass and stuff it into their mouths. Often the females reach out their trunks to sniff each other's faces, or lean against their neighbor. The calf lies flat on the ground, sleeping near the front feet of his mother. Now and then she reaches down with her trunk and moves it along her baby's head.

  Soon the three-year-old swaggers over to the small calf and plops down on his rump. The calf lifts his head and wiggles his bum out from under his playmate, who sinks to the ground. The babe staggers to his feet and the two youngsters entwine their trunks, gently pushing against each other. The calf turns away and runs through the grass, his ears and trunk flopping up and down. Within seconds the three-year-old catches up and lays his trunk over the calf's back. They face each other again and push their heads together in miniature sparring.

  Abruptly the elephants stop feeding and playing, to listen. A rumbling sound drifts across the clearing from the north, and One Tusk's group returns the call. The temporal glands on the sides of their faces begin to seep, the liquid streaming down their cheeks. One Tusk gives a loud, short rumble and they walk quickly northward. The mother softly prods her infant with her trunk, and he follows the adults in a half-run.

  In the trees beyond the meadow, Long Ear and her small family unit emerge at a trot from behind an outcropping of boulders. Their ears held out and rumbling loudly, they rush toward One Tusk and her group. The greeting elephants swarm together in a confusion of purring, twisting of trunks, and clanking of tusks. All of their faces are streaked with the temporal gland secretion. One Tusk and Long Ear wrap their trunks together and flap their ears vigorously; the others do the same, all the while rumbling loudly.

  Long Ear, whose left ear has been torn off at the bottom, making her right ear look long, is the "child matriarch" of her group. She is only in her mid-twenties, not old or experienced enough to be a matriarch (in stable elephant populations, matriarchs can be as much as fifty or sixty years old). But the three older females in Long Ear's group were shot by poachers. Now she and the two other young females—one is probably her sister, one her daughter—roam together. They have no young. Last year one of them gave birth, but the small, squiggly baby died the next day, never having found the teat of her inexperienced mother. Sometimes Long Ear's family joins that of One Tusk, and they forage together. The two units make a "bond group"2 and probably are all closely related.

  Groups of female elephants are not haphazard formations that simply bump into one another in the bush. They are close-knit families of relatives whose kin lines are generations old. They communicate with a variety of vocalizations—rumbles, trumpets, screams—except that in North Luangwa they rarely trumpet, apparently afraid that they will betray themselves to poachers. Odors in the secretions of their temporal glands contain important social messages, but they may communicate most by touching. They usually stay within thirty yards of one another and often reach out their trunks to stroke, caress, or sniff their kin mate.

  One Tusk gives a loud rumble and the two groups move a short distance into a thicket of miombo woodlands, where they calm down and stand napping in the midday heat. The elephants are quiet and still. Now and then a tail swishes at a fly; now and then a trunk is lifted and sniffs gently along the face of a sister.

  In days gone by, the family units and independent males continued over the mountains to the plateau beyond, grazing the lush grass of the extensive glades and dambos. But now these areas are cultivated by man, and poaching is intense. So the elephants must remain in the mountains feeding on the small trees during the months of June, July, and August
. Sometimes Survivor and his group come upon small family units of females. Occasionally they approach the females to feed nearby or to check if any of them are in estrus, but most of the time the males are on their own.

  In September—the heart of the hot, dry season—Africa performs a miracle. Long before the first raindrop falls, many of the trees, large and small, burst into growth as green and tender as spring. While the grass is still parched by the fires or dried by the sun, the leaves of almost all the trees and scrubs choose this moment to unfold. The valley and mountains are covered with this new life that is so fresh and bright that it seems to glow. And once more the elephants begin to move.

  Following many of the same paths down the mountains, Survivor's group and the family units walk back across the foothills toward the river valleys. They pass again through the belt of marula trees, but now there are no fruits. They feed instead on the abundant new leaves and seedpods of the mopane, combretum, and terminalia trees. Since the rains have not begun, many of the rivers and water holes are still dry. The elephants, who must drink every day, are forced to find water wherever they can. One Tusk and Long Ear move along the Mwaleshi floodplains; some elephants forage along the Mulandashi River; Survivor and his group stay in the area of the Lubonga.

  In late October and early November, the legendary Luangwa storms build towering monuments of cloud in the sky. Windstorms and sandstorms slap and tease the valley, now trapped in a stifling heat. Some of the most spectacular lightning displays on earth flash across the silent savannas. Many of the new leaves have begun to wither and droop, as though their early burst of energy was too optimistic. All of life, both plant and animal, seems to pause as if waiting. Then in mid-November the first rain falls. Almost immediately the elephants, wherever they are—along the Mwaleshi, near the Lubonga, or still in the foothills—begin moving slowly toward the plains.