After the devastating Battle of Paardeberg the defeat of the Boer nation was slow but certain. The Empire’s loss of 22 000 soldiers, tragic as that was, was dwarfed by Boer losses, which extended well beyond the battlefield. Close on 30 000 Afrikaner women and children died of starvation and disease in British concentration camps. The real toll was even higher: many thousands of black people, who’d found themselves caught up in this conflict between Brit and Boer, also perished in the so-called “black” concentration camps. But that was not enough for the would-be conquerors. Even the possibility of survival in the rural areas of the Boer republics had to be obliterated: more than 30 000 farmsteads were torched, livestock killed and left to rot, water sources poisoned and crops destroyed in execution of the coup de grâce, Lord Kitchener’s “Scorched Earth” campaign. On 31 May 1902 it was over. The Peace Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in Melrose House in Johannesburg, the city built on gold. The Empire had secured another prize.
The young man from Hatton Garden survived the war. Africa still promised adventure and, a civilian now, he chose to make a life for himself in the conquered territory. His name was Charles Walker.
Today his grandson, Clive Walker, is engaged in another war in which I find it impossible not to see dreadful similarities. Again it is fought on African soil, again the primary instigator is a foreign appetite for an African resource, again the opposing forces are unevenly matched, again it leaves devastation in its wake.
Ask people who are closely involved with wildlife conservation and they will tell you that the term “war” is appropriate. For more than 50 years I have been married to a conservationist fighting on the front-lines of that war. I have no illusions about just how brutal and bloody it can be. Ask conservationists what their true feelings are upon discovering yet another elephant carcass, or yet another dozen of them, indiscriminately mowed down by automatic rifles from helicopters, their ivory chain-sawed out of their skulls. Sometimes those are cows, matriarchs, their calves left traumatised and lost.
Now ask those conservationists about what has been dubbed “The Rhino Wars”. Ask them about an animal staggering blindly, half its face hacked off – just one of many nightmare scenes left behind by ad hoc armed bands or well-organised internationally connected syndicates who come equipped with rifles, poisons, hi-tech immobilising drugs, pangas, axes and chainsaws and a total disregard for considerations of law, ethics or morality. Against them the rhinos don’t stand a chance. Sometimes they are not killed first. Sometimes the cows are pregnant or nursing a small calf. Sometimes the calf doesn’t escape: its hornbed is gouged out too.
Why? Because rhino horn feeds a fantasy which lives on the other side of immense oceans. It is not a magical elixir for restored health and sexual vigour, yet the myth persists. And Africa, defenceless against such an insidious invader, loses its rhinos.
Africa’s most abundant rhino (abundant being a relative term here) is the southern white. Once plentiful throughout the natural grasslands of Southern Africa, by the beginning of the 20th century only a 100 or so survived in KwaZulu-Natal. It got worse. The species was 30 animals away from extinction when an unprecedented effort by the then Natal Parks Board managed to turn the tide.
Black rhino too were once plentiful throughout countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. In the 1950s and ’60s their numbers fluctuated between 60 000 and 100 000. Those days are now long gone. Over the last 60 years the black rhino population has decreased by over 90%. On the IUCN Red Data List Diceros bicornis bicornis, the Southwestern black rhino and the southeastern sub species, D. b. minor both of which occur in South Africa, are classified as Critically Endangered. Extinction is a real possibility. The loss of a single black rhino is one step closer to that unthinkable eventuality.
Now there was Bwana. So rare, so vulnerable. So many hopes of so many concerned people invested in the survival of that fragile little life.
ARC’s Karen Trendler was taking on a challenge. In terms of rescuing wildlife, a baby black rhino was a very different matter to, for example, antelope species. In Kenya two justly famed wildlife rescuers, Daphne Sheldrick and Anna Merz, had successfully raised black rhino calves, but never from such a young age. Bwana was premature and at 21 kilograms just half the weight he should have been at full-term. His survival would be of interest to wildlife scientists and conservationists well beyond the borders of South Africa.
The Onderstepoort veterinary facility partnered with ARC in the project and two commercial firms generously came on board. One of them, Nestlé, even going as far as stopping their production line in order to manufacture the first supply of 25-kilogram buckets of fat-free milk powder needed to prepare Bwana’s feeds.
Karen was already known for her work in animal rehabilitation, but Bwana’s arrival would prove to be a turning point for her too. As she nursed him devotedly through his battles with diarrhoea and polyarthritis, she gained the kind of experience and exposure that resulted in ARC, in time, becoming a wildlife rescue centre of choice, also for rhino calves.
Bwana stayed at ARC for eight months. In that time I went to see him there. So did Dale Parker. Whenever he travelled up from Cape Town he made the detour to ARC and watched the boisterous little animal in his small enclosed yard from which, once a day, he was taken on a short walk into a field. Then Dale would travel on to the Waterberg and, with his henchman Clive, gaze at the expanse of wilderness – ideal free-ranging black rhino habitat – at Lapalala. Then, inevitably, their gaze narrowed: they contemplated the area around Doornleegte. Behind the house was a rocky hillside, literally covered with the kind of trees and shrubs that black rhino love to browse.
A meeting with Lapalala staff was called at Kolobe Lodge and the dilemma explained: Dale and Clive wanted to bring Bwana home, but they could only do so if someone undertook to devote him or herself entirely to his care, to rear him until he was ready to be re-wilded. There was no lack of volunteers. Such a cute little animal – of course they’ll adopt him.
Did they realise that this meant 24 hours a day for however many years while his needs have to come first, always? Oh.
I sat at the back of the room. I knew that what they were talking about was, essentially, motherhood. I’d brought up two sons, I did not volunteer.
“Conita? We were just wondering…”
They had to ask more than once. But not for the first time, nor the last, there was someone who wore down my resistance. I was told to be ready on 31 March.
For every doubt that approached via the Seven Sisters en route to Lapalala that day, I had several more. Their concern was on Bwana’s behalf: even a few days’ guidance from Karen Trendler couldn’t turn a 55-year-old untrained caretaker into anything but a death sentence for this valuable little orphan. I shared that concern and agonised about a few others which, for the press and for Karen, were off the radar. I had a family that included dependants, and my husband’s professional life, which I shared, was already very full and ranged well beyond the responsibilities at Lapalala.
My own tasks at the reserve included supervision of staff. It was probably that, as much as anything else, that convinced me of the truth of that clichéd preconception about the German temperament. We like to have things right. Almost-right is not good enough. Perhaps we are genetically predisposed towards a love of order, and a discomfort with sloth and half-measures. I was also brought up to admire diligence and discipline, and to enjoy the rewards of hard work. When someone like that is placed in charge of people whose performance or lack thereof would directly reflect on her own performance, it is a recipe for wakeful nights.
Thank heavens for Glynis Brown. She had been Clive’s secretary at EWT and had been persuaded to trade her Johannesburg office for a rustic stone and thatch building surrounded by Waterberg bush. As director of Lapalala’s bush camp operation I would have been lost without her as our manager. She was immensely popular with guests for many of whom she was the first introduction not only
to Lapalala, but to the Waterberg. Still, even with Glynis as my right hand, responsibility for personnel was the least favourite part of my life at Lapalala. I expected much of people, even more of myself, and now my innate urge to do my best, to have things right, was to have an additional focus where lack of performance would be a matter of life and death.
I feel compassion now for that poor, under-slept, anxious woman waiting with her pages and pages of research and advice, schedules and feeding charts, her kitchen turned into a hyper-hygienic feeding station with buckets of formula ingredients and outsize feeding bottles, her laundry turned into a cleaning and sterilisation unit, and her office space for record-keeping positioned in such a way that she could keep her charge under observation.
Outside, Doornleegte had also been customised. Fenced and gated sleeping quarters led into our front garden which now had a generous mud-pool, a large pile of sand and troughs for drinking and feeding. The enclosure also opened into a fenced 10-hectare area at the back of the house where, it was hoped, Bwana might in due course be introduced to his natural environment.
Around lunchtime I was on the verandah, listening to the sound for which I’d been waiting since before first light that morning. Vehicles going slowly, then speeding up a little as they reached the bottom of the rutted and rocky incline that brought them from the plateau down into the Palala valley. The easier run on fine gravel and sand. The slow-down for the sharp right onto the track winding its way through a stand of knob-thorns until the view opened up. Ahead of the visitors and to their left they’d see the floodplain’s umbrella thorns. To their right: the house and the woman waiting for them.
I debated my options. I could wait on the verandah – dignified, self-possessed, unflustered by the arrival of guests, whatever their number and importance. But that might seem unwelcoming, disinterested, even timid. I could walk down and meet them at the gate. That would certainly be welcoming and show enthusiasm. It might also betray things I’d rather keep hidden: my anxiety, and my need for approval. I was annoyed with myself, a grown-up woman ruled by her insecurities.
“Come, sweetheart,” Clive had appeared behind me. Together we started down the verandah steps. The first vehicle drove into sight, then another and another. Then a heavy truck, with more vehicles behind it. Hands waved to us as we, halfway between verandah and gate, strolled up to welcome them.
There were flashing cameras and plenty of goodwill. Everyone had something positive and encouraging to say. Karen Trendler looked assured, but to my eyes also concerned. She accompanied Bwana right to the gate of his enclosure. He looked so small. Robust, sturdy, highly alert. But small. A baby after all. And right there was our biggest worry. Baby rhinos attach themselves very closely and exclusively to their mothers. For Bwana, that was Karen. If he was to survive, he would have to do the most unnatural and unlikely thing: accept a new mother. Me.
THREE
Matriarchs and motherhood
ABOUT AN HOUR’S DRIVE from Lapalala is Vaalwater, a mixed blessing of a country town with which I’ve enjoyed a love-hate relationship for more than 30 years. Way back when we first got there this tiny commercial hub of the central Waterberg was a telling picture of the market forces operating in the district. No competition at all for the single farmer’s co-op, supermarket and café, but at opposite ends of the narrow strip of gravelled main road there were two fuel stations vying for business, and two churches doing the same. A minuscule police station managed to keep the peace.
In the ensuing years Vaalwater has grown into the kind of town of which visitors, after an embarrassed hunt for something complimentary, might declare: “The people are very nice.”
The place isn’t entirely charmless, but it is the awkward charm of a gangly teenager overtaken by growth and not yet sure of direction. It sprawls in inelegant angles, its gentler contours hidden behind a utilitarian purposefulness. Vaalwater frowns and flexes commercial muscle. It doesn’t aim to be pretty, it aims to be useful. Function above form.
It didn’t take me long to realise that, for someone who lives in the Waterberg bush, Vaalwater was a lifeline. It was where one took things that broke (a limb, a drive-shaft, freezer, water-pump), stocked up on essentials (food, fuel, candles for power outages, first-aid supplies for smaller emergencies, whisky for bigger ones). It was where you dropped off donations for the school, the church fête, various charities; where you collected your mail, the latest news, and passengers needing a lift to neighbouring farms. It offered community – essential contact with the world beyond the bush. It was all I needed it to be and I was staunchly loyal in my support. But when I suddenly found myself with a hungry baby rhino on my hands my expectations of Vaalwater escalated.
After the excitement of Bwana’s arrival the previous day, Thursday 1 April dawned and with it the realisation of the size of this animal’s appetite. I stood in the kitchen and stared at my notes. Bwana required five bottle-feeds per day, seven litres at a time – 1050 litres just for his first month at Doornleegte. I counted, again, the buckets of fat-free milk powder I’d stacked ready for use. While the Nestlé sponsorship was in place our supply was assured, but it would be unrealistic to expect that to continue until he was weaned – usually at around 18 months for black rhino. What then? I was all for supporting local trade, but in my mind’s eye I saw Vaalwater’s supermarket shelves with, on a good day, a small stack of half-kilogram packs of milk powder. As eager to please as Vaalwater was, local wouldn’t do it – I’d have to look further afield for an alternative.
Bwana didn’t only need milk, he was used to consuming basins-full of fruit and vegetables. In a more urban or peri-urban environment one could draw, as Karen Trendler’s Animal Rehabilitation Centre did, on plentiful leftovers from greengrocers for items like watermelon, pawpaw, apples, grapes, salads and wholewheat bread.
An almost daily there-and-back foraging drive to Vaalwater would not be sustainable, even if I could assume, which I couldn’t, that the shops there would be able to supply sufficient quantities and do so on an uninterrupted basis. Bwana’s nutritional needs would not be a matter of negotiation due to seasonal availability of shop-bought produce, or labour strikes, road conditions, fuel shortages or any of a number of contingencies that are the realities of life in the bush.
I walked to the back door and looked out. The spiny thickets of sekelbos, so pretty and oriental-looking in early summer with their fluffy yellow and pink flowers, were now laden with nutritionally rich brown bunches of curled-up seed pods. There were many other species, including horn-pod trees, the common spike thorn and wild pear. My research had told me that was black rhino browse. Bwana’s mother would have taught him that that was his food.
He was a black rhino at home in black rhino country – we’ll be fine. Step by step, but we’ll be fine. That’s what I told everyone, hoping that if I heard myself saying it often enough I’d start to believe it myself.
My lessons began as soon as Bwana’s did. He learnt that I was now the source of his food and I learnt that he didn’t like waiting for it. He liked his milk, he wanted lots of it and he wanted it now. I didn’t mind as I knew that the feeding routine was the first key to him accepting me.
As soon as I could I coaxed him into the front garden, a safe and shady semi-wild environment with plenty of scope for exploration and play. He stayed very close to me, right from the beginning. Wherever I wandered he did too, but every so often he would simply stop and lean heavily against my legs. After a while I got the message. The preferred habitat for black rhinos is dense bushy terrain. A small calf follows closely on its mother’s heels, for protection and so as not to get separated from her and lost in the thickets of shrubs and trees. Bwana was signalling his instinctual need for that behaviour: I was to walk in such a way that he could follow as closely as he liked in order to feel safe and comfortable. I was expected to behave as if I was his mother.
I stood there with the solid, well-muscled, remarkably weighty little animal almost pus
hing me off my feet. If anything more was needed to win me over, that was it. It was an excellent beginning. Lapalala echoed to a collective sigh of relief.
Then came the moment everyone dreaded and many of them expected. Bwana became ill. He suffered the worst diarrhoea and try as we might we could not arrest it. Day after day I watched his weight drop and his boisterous manner fade into a listless, weakened state. I consulted every expert I could reach. I didn’t sleep. As mothers do under such circumstances I prayed rather a lot.
Somehow, for some reason, Bwana got better. For a while.
Karen Trendler had warned me to be on the watch for certain stress-related conditions, and perhaps that was a factor. That first severe attack of diarrhoea was followed by other similar attacks, extremely dangerous for him and intensely worrying of course for me. Wildlife vets and veterinary scientists were generous with support and advice and twice, to my intense gratitude, Karen came to Doornleegte to help me.
We were never able to identify a cause, but after taking himself almost to death’s door every time, Bwana would rally and we could all breathe again.
One day, just after he’d recovered from his latest bout of illness, Bwana and I were on one of our dawdling walks around the garden. I’d climbed into a tree and was bending down the thinner branches for him to sniff, hoping that he might venture onto a first nibble. He did. Tentatively, to be sure, but it was a beginning. A baby black rhino beginning to do what black rhinos do: browse on natural vegetation.
As I sat in that tree, my hands and arms scratched by the branches I was urging closer to his inquisitive face – his pointed, prehensile upper lip lifting and twisting for the grip – I couldn’t bear the thought of him getting so desperately ill again. All the regimes we’d put into place for his wellbeing had been scrutinised and vetted over and over again, but still we’d been unable to prevent recurrences of that first dreadful diarrhoea attack. Who was to say there wouldn’t be any more?
A Rhino in my Garden Page 4