The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  On my third pass over the area I finally see a clear way through the rubble on the ground. This time I bounce my wheels and the plane shudders. But they come free without any telltale grab that would indicate a soft surface. Once in Namibia I tried a similar trick, and when the wheels stuck in a soft pocket of sand the plane flipped on its nose, burying the prop and twisting it to a pretzel.

  The next time around I ease the plane onto the grass. As soon as the wheels are down, Zulu Sierra bucks like a mule, her wishbone undercarriage flexing. I stand on her brakes and we slide to a stop with less than a hundred feet to spare before the riverbank. The three scouts laugh nervously and immediately crowd through the open door of the plane. I grab the first by his shoulder. "Don't walk forward or the prop will chop you to pieces." He nods his head and they are out.

  Four trips later all the scouts are at Serendipity. Standing under a tree near the river, they wave cheerily as I fly over, heading for the spiral of vultures and the cloud of smoke that mark the poachers' camp little more than half a mile away. I come in low, dodging the big birds, and side-slipping the plane to avoid being shot. I cannot yet see the camp, but the sickly sweet odor of decaying meat—the honey of death—washes through the cockpit. And there it is, the rack—no, six racks, covered with thick slabs of brown meat—the fires, and the men, at least fifteen of them, naked to the waist, covered with gore.

  Flashing over the camp, I yank Zulu Sierra around and drop to the grasstops, bearing down on a gaggle of eight to ten poachers who are running away. I lower my left wing, pointing it at them, holding a steep turn just above their heads. They flatten themselves to the ground and stay put. Still circling, I climb out of rifle range and switch on the wing-tip strobe lights, signaling to the scouts that I am over the poachers. Far below, a spiral of vultures lands on the cache of meat, devouring it in a frenzy.

  For the next hour I orbit high and low over the poachers, waiting for the scouts to arrive. Finally, I have to break off and return to camp for fuel. After refueling, I write out messages describing the number and location of the poachers and stuff them in empty powdered-milk cans from the pantry. I add pebbles to each can for ballast and attach a long streamer of mutton cloth. Then I take off again and fly over the camps at Lufishi, Nsansamina, and Fulaza, dropping the tinned messages to the scouts there. The poachers will have to pass through or near those camps to get out of the park. It should be easy for the scouts to cut them off.

  By the time I land back at Marula-Puku I have been flying for almost six hours. Numb with exhaustion, I wince as I calculate that I have just burned up two hundred dollars worth of fuel. But it will be worth it if the scouts can capture twenty or thirty poachers. Others will think twice about shooting elephants in North Luangwa, and maybe some will accept the employment and protein alternatives that our project is offering them. For the first time I feel confident that we are about to make a serious dent in the poaching.

  We have no radio contact with the scouts and thus have no idea how the operation is going. Four days later Mwamba and I are fixing a broken truck at the workshop. "Scouts," he says, pointing to a long line of men wending their way toward us along the river south of camp. I shake hands with each of the game guards as they arrive. With them are two old men and a twelve-year-old boy dressed in tattered rags, their heads hanging, handcuffs clamped to their wrists.

  John Musangu steps forward. "We have captured these three men."

  "This is all?" I ask. "These are only bearers. What about the riflemen?" I have already heard over the radio from the warden's office that the scouts from the other camps have managed to catch only a single bearer.

  "They escaped," Musangu declares. He goes on to say that there were fifteen men and a rifleman in this particular group. But except for these three, they all got away. The operation has been a bust—except that the airplane and the vultures have denied the poachers their meat and ivory.

  Island Zulu, the gabby old scout, spreads his arms and begins soaring about, purring like an airplane as he mimes the airlift; then, hunching over, he stalks through make-believe grass, parts it, aims his rifle, and fires a shot. Turning in circles, he feigns a tackle of one of the three poachers, now sitting on the ground, scowling and rolling their eyes in disgust. Finally, a twinkle in his eye, he predicts, "With ndeke, now poaching finished after one year!"

  I drive the arresting officers and their captives to the magistrate's court in Mpika. The boy is not charged. Days later the two men captured in the operation are each fined the equivalent of thirteen dollars and are set free.

  11. The Second Ivory Coast

  MARK

  Yet, though the hope, the thrill, the zest are gone,

  Something keeps me fighting on!

  —BERTON BRALEY

  "THE ONE THEY CALL Chikilinti talked of coming to this camp to kill you and Madam and to destroy the ndeke," Mwamba whispers as we stand under the marula trees.

  "While on leave we were in a bar," Simbeye says, picking up the story, "near Mwamfushi Village, not far from Mpika. Since we are from Shiwa N'gandu, the people there did not know us—or that we work for you. We were there for some hours, standing near the counter, when we overheard four men talking." One of them, about forty-five years old and of medium build, was wearing a brown safari suit, his hair straightened, greased, and slicked back. He walked with a swagger as he moved about the bar. This was Chikilinti.

  "Who were the other men?" I ask.

  "Simu Chimba, Mpundu Katongo, and Bernard Mutondo," Simbeye continues, spearing a leaf with a twig. "This Chikilinti—the people say last year he went poaching for rhinoceros in the Zambesi Valley with his brother and some others. They ambushed game scouts from Zimbabwe. Chikilinti killed two of them, but the scouts caught his brother and dragged him behind a Land Rover through the mountains until he was dead. Chikilinti escaped by swimming across the Zambezi River back to Zambia. He now stays in Mwamfushi."

  Shaking their hands, I thank Simbeye and Mwamba. They cannot know how much their loyalty means to me. They turn to go, but Mwamba hesitates, looking back at me. "And Sir, just before Christmas Bernard Mutondo killed a game guard and wounded three others at Nakanduku."

  "Thank you; I'll be careful" is all I can think of to say.

  By late 1988 nothing is working, at least not fast enough. In the past month alone, from the air I have found twenty poached elephants; and there were plenty I didn't find. We are losing the battle for North Luangwa. For more than two years we have done everything imaginable for the Mano scouts, and our rewards haven't changed them. They still go into the park only when we find poachers and fly the scouts right in on top of them. Even then they rarely arrest anyone. The idea of a long patrol is about as appealing to them as a bad case of malaria. We can only surmise that it is more advantageous to them to cooperate with the poachers than with us. Our work with the villagers doesn't seem to be having much effect either; many of those we've helped most are still poaching. Loyal, dedicated scouts are our only real weapon against poachers. But the ones at Mano are hopeless. It's time to try some different scouts and some different tactics.

  Maybe scouts from Kanona, a game guard post about one hundred fifty miles south of Mpika, would be a better solution. Some are military trained, armed with AK-47s, and because they are so far from Mpika, perhaps they are less corrupt. But in order to use them efficiently, we need to know exactly when and where poachers are coming into the park. Only undercover agents can give us this information.

  Bwalya Muchisa is the son of Kanga Muchisa, one of the most notorious poachers in Africa. Using an AK-47—thousands of military weapons are floating around Zambia after Zimbabwe's war for independence—Kanga has shot more than a thousand elephants in Luangwa Valley, as well as uncounted numbers of rhinos. A year ago he was captured in South Luangwa Park, where Mfuwe scouts are very good, and is serving eighteen months in jail. Bwalya, determined to better his father's record, at age twenty-six has already killed sixty elephants. Recently, though,
the Mfuwe scouts warned him that if he continues poaching they will see him in a cell next to his father's. We have heard that Bwalya is now in Lusaka looking for a legitimate job, and through a friend we have arranged to meet him there.

  We drive to Kabalonga market, a row of shops made of concrete blocks and tin roofs. Out front a cobbler sits under a tree working on a four-foot pile of old shoes. As soon as we pull up in our truck, we are hustled by sleek young men like packs of jackals, hawking ivory necklaces and bracelets, malachite frogs and ashtrays, shiny rings, bangles, and beads. A short, well-dressed young man with a pock-marked face and nervous eyes approaches the truck as I step out. He introduces himself as Bwalya Muchisa. With him is Musakanya Mumba, a handsome twenty-two-year-old poacher, fine-featured, soft-spoken, and dressed in a T-shirt and slacks. Musakanya has hunted with Bwalya, using one of his guns, but he is willing to join us and can be trusted if we will give him a job—so he says. I am a little nervous about hiring poachers, and reluctant to take on two at once. But Bwalya says he cannot do the dangerous work of an informant alone. So they hop into the pickup and we drive a short distance to a friend's home, where we can talk without being seen by poachers at the market.

  Sitting in an alcove of bushes in the front yard, I ask, "Why would you give up poaching to work for us?"

  "Ah but Sir, you know the animals are finishing. There is no future in poaching anymore."

  "Okay, but the information you give me will tell me whether I can trust you."

  "Sir, you have nothing to fear from us. We are ready to help you in saving the animals," pledges Musakanya. "And I am from Mwamfushi Village, very near Mpika. Many of my friends are poachers. If you can offer employment to them, like me, many will turn in their guns and join us. I am sure of this. Poaching is hard and dangerous work."

  I explain that as soon as Bwalya and Musakanya offer poachers jobs with the project in exchange for their guns, the whole com munity will immediately know that they are working for us. So I tell them to recruit other reliable informants who will remain under cover.

  I also say that I will be very surprised if many of their friends turn in their guns for a job because, unlike Bwalya and Musakanya, they have not yet been threatened with arrest. But I give them three weeks to convince their cronies to do just that, and offer a thousand kwachas to each one who does. Three weeks from today we will meet at the hut where we stay in Mpika, and from there go to see those poachers who are ready to join us. I shake hands with Bwalya and Musakanya. We have agreed on their base salary, plus a handsome amount for every piece of information that leads me to one of the commercial poachers operating in the park.

  "One last thing," I caution before we part. "Be careful. Because they know you're working for me, your friends may play along but then set you up to get hurt by one of the big operators."

  "Ah no, this cannot happen," Bwalya says, both of them laughing. "We know these people and our villages too well. We can tell if they are serious."

  At Marula-Puku, three weeks after our meeting in Lusaka, we receive a radio message from the operator at National Parks in Mpika: "Bwalya would like to buy that old camera of yours." Using the code we had agreed upon in Lusaka, Bwalya and Musakanya are asking us to meet them in Mpika that night.

  Delia and I throw an overnight bag into the plane and fly to Mpika, where we pick up one of our trucks. At about seven-thirty in the evening a knock sounds at the door of our hut. I open it to find two bedraggled men, Bwalya and Musakanya. Quickly bringing them inside, we greet them with pats on the back. Their bleary eyes and sagging shoulders tell us at once that they have been working hard on their mission. We sit around the table as Delia hands them each a cup of strong, sweet tea and I ask what they have learned.

  Bwalya tells us four poachers are ready to work for us. "But they won't come here," he says. "They are afraid of being arrested. They are waiting now in the bush near Mwamfushi Village. You must come alone with us to meet them. We must hurry, or they will become afraid and run away."

  I agree; but as we are leaving, Delia grabs my arm, saying, "Mark, let's talk about this, please." I ask Bwalya and Musakanya to wait outside for a moment. As soon as the door is closed behind them, Delia hisses, "If you go with them, you're crazy. You don't even have a gun."

  "They've done what we asked them to do; now I have to follow through. Anyway, what choice do I have? If these men really do turn in their guns and join us, maybe others will follow. We have to deal with them in good faith. If I'm not back in two hours, go to the police."

  Minutes later Bwalya, Musakanya, and I are driving south from Mpika along the Great North Road. We have gone about two miles when Bwalya asks me to slow down. He stares out his window at the tall grass along the ditch bank.

  "Stop! You've just passed it." I reverse, swinging the truck's headlights over the berm of the road until I can see a footpath leading into the bush. Dousing my lights, I ease the cruiser off the road, barely able to follow the path by the faint light of the new moon. Grass as tall as the truck's hood swishes along its sides.

  We drive for perhaps half a mile in silence. A tree looms out of the darkness along the side of the track as Bwalya says, "Stop. Wait here."

  He jerks open the door and the two men run off into the darkness beyond the tree. Two or three minutes pass, and in the dead silence the pulse in my ears makes me uneasy.

  I unlatch my door, drop to the ground beside the truck, and crawl through the grass to some bushes twenty yards away. From here I can escape to the main road if this is a hit.

  Several minutes later I hear footsteps on my right, headed for the truck. Someone whistles, and in the moonlight I can just make out six men milling around the Cruiser.

  "Bwalya, Musakanya! Is that you?" I shout, keeping my head down.

  "Eh, Mukwai."

  "Okay, switch on the parking lights—the little knob on the lever by the steering wheel—and have the men stand in front with their hands on their heads, so I can see them."

  "Ah but Sir, it's okay..."

  "Do it, Bwalya!" After a minute the lights come on, and I can see all of them, including Bwalya and Musakanya, with their hands on their heads. I stand up and walk to the Cruiser.

  Musakanya introduces me to the four newcomers, two of whom are sons of Chende Ende, the headman of Mwamfushi. The other two have worked as carriers for Chikilinti and other poachers in the village. They are no more than eighteen years old.

  Bwalya asks me if I can take the four teenagers to our camp. "The people of Mwamfushi have beaten very badly some of those who are working with us," he explains. "Now these boys are very much fearing to go back there. Musakanya and myself, we are not afraid; we will stay in the village and continue to pass messages to you." I agree to take the youngsters with us, and tell them to be at our hut by ten o'clock the next morning.

  We all sit in the back of the pickup as Bwalya, Musakanya, and the others describe the poaching in North Luangwa. Virtually, everyone in Mpika District eats poached or "bush" meat, which is sold illegally in all the marketplaces and by scores of black marketers along the main road. A dealer, usually several dealers, pays a hunter up front for the numbers and kinds of animals they want killed, they agree on a secret rendez-vous near or inside the park, and then each dealer, or sometimes the hunter, hires fifteen to thirty bearers to stockpile mealie-meal.

  The hunters, bearers, and often the dealers meet at the rendez-vous, occasionally joining other hunting parties there, forming a combined force of up to one hundred forty. A gang this size may include as many as ten to fifteen riflemen, armed with everything from military weapons to muzzle-loaders homemade from Land Rover steering rods. The muzzle-loaders use a gunpowder of fertilizer mixed with diesel fuel, strikers made from the tips of matches, bark fiber as wadding, and balls of steel pounded into a roundish shape as bullets. The powder, balls, and Wadding are carried in an animal-skin pouch slung from the shoulder with a strap. The hunters decide who hunts where, then each takes his party to that are
a, usually in search of elephants and buffalo, large-bodied animals that carry a lot of meat. This information confirms my observations from the air: these splinter groups, consisting of mostly unarmed men, could easily be captured even by poorly armed scouts, if only they would patrol.

  As soon as a hunter kills an animal, he leaves it before vultures or smoke from meat-drying fires can attract my airplane. Often he doesn't even go to the animal he has shot, for fear of being caught with it. Some of the bearers stay behind to cut out the tusks, butcher the carcass, dry the meat, and carry it back to their village or to a truck waiting on some remote bush track outside the park. Meanwhile the hunter joins another group of bearers camped nearby, to kill again. When he has filled his contracts, he leaves the park along a route different from that taken by bearers.

  In an average three-week poaching expedition, one of the Chende Ende brothers says, each hunter kills from three to fifteen elephants and a larger number of buffalo and smaller animals, such as impalas, puku, and warthogs. An active poacher makes from nine to twelve such trips in a year. In the village of Mwamfushi alone are at least a dozen commercial poachers. It is no longer a mystery why the North Park is losing a thousand elephants each year, why it has already lost more than 70 percent of its elephant population.

  "Do they ever hunt rhinos anymore?" I ask.

  "The rhinos were poached out years ago," Bwalya reports without emotion. "They were the first to go, because their horns are so valuable. I haven't seen a sign of one since 1982." The others nod agreement. Reports from the early 1970s had estimated the population at seventeen hundred to two thousand. Now there are no more than thirty to fifty in the entire valley, and maybe none.

  "Do you think the game guards will ever be willing and able to stop this?" I ask.

  "Sir," Bwalya snorts, "they are not serious people in this work. Many of them are friends with the worst poachers. They regularly drink beer with them, sell ammunition to them, tell them where to find elephants and buffalo. The poachers give them meat and money."