En route back to my bakkie I walked past a memorial, erected by the M.O.T.H.S., to honour Nylstroom’s fallen soldiers. On the plaque I read: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.” Not so very different from the Tswana injunction to honour the ancestors.
I dealt with the bank and set off for home, my mind still on that wartime memorial. The regrets of war, the hopes of war. Why did millions of people go into combat, to frontlines and into trenches and to death, if not for some hope? They fight and sacrifice for some outcome which they may not see themselves, but which they nevertheless rate higher than their comfort and safety, even their lives. While the battle rages, and victory is yet uncertain, the hope itself has to serve as reward.
Of course it isn’t only when we go to war that we discover our capacity, and need, for hope. We’re born hoping. No child needs to be taught to hope – it’s who we are, the hopeful species. More than 60 years earlier I toddled around the Lobethal mission station and discovered the world through that optimistic lens. Never a doubt that promises would be kept and that hopes would deliver. Never a doubt that a need would be met, an illness healed, a family split by the war reunited. My parents spoke of Faith. I was far too young to fully understand or examine for myself matters of religion, but I grew up trusting life in this, that one doesn’t hope in vain.
As a child during WWII I saw it all around me. Even when our horizons were limited to survival of that day, that hour or that minute, there was the stubborn flicker of hope to cling to. I felt the dark bomb shelter shuddering under the impact of bombs mercilessly aimed at destroying what remained of Berlin and us with it, but I was held close and told: “Du brauchst keine Angst haben.” Don’t be afraid, this will be over soon. The war will end. We shall have peace, just you wait and see. I believed it, and I did see.
But then, hard on the heels of WWII, there followed the Cold War, slicing the world and most visibly Berlin in two. A different kind of war, and in some ways no less poisonous and destructive than the one which had finally ended with a handful of signatures in Berlin just before midnight on 8 May 1945. Still there remained something which would not give up. Peace, freedom, democracy – on both sides of that abominable Wall, people kept hoping.
In early September 1989 that hope enflamed protests in East Germany. The first of the Monday demonstrations began in Leipzig, and spread. In November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. Five years later, in September 1994, almost half a century after the US Army had begun its role there in post-war occupation and administration, it closed its headquarters in Berlin. A signal, it seemed, that the hope of a unified, free and democratic Germany had finally delivered.
In South Africa the national election of April 1994 was such a signal. People were dancing in the streets, calling it Liberation. The hope that had sustained generations of disenfranchised South Africans had delivered. Under the wise and benevolent rule of their new president, Nelson Mandela, South Africans would be united in a free and democratic society.
Regrettably, inevitably, peace did not mean the instant cessation of all wars. Some battles continued. As day after day millions of people still woke up every morning to the reality of impoverished circumstances, frustration grew at what they experienced as an unjust extension of that companion requirement of hope: waiting. In a groundswell of discontent, hopes became specific and insistent, demanding a deadline.
In September 1994 the Review of African Political Economy published its 61st issue: “Land and Freedom in South Africa.” It made the case for what was to become the Land Reform policies of the ANC-led government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme and the creation of a Land Claims Court. Land Claims became the Holy Grail. Millions of people, disenchanted with their New South Africa, found a renewed focus for their hope, and a rallying cry: Land.
That same September saw Clive at Onderstepoort attending a symposium on the future of rhino conservation. He delivered papers on rhinos in Africa and black rhino on private land. A Chinese delegate spoke about measures to curtail trade in rhino products; the South African Police’s Endangered Species Protection Unit detailed their role in combatting rhino poaching and the smuggling of rhino horn; conservationists and scientists proposed and analysed strategies for ensuring the long-term survival of rhino: increased armed protection within national parks, ranching, de-horning, utilisation as a commercial commodity, the scientific management of captive rhino.
The unstated but unmistakable theme of the symposium was that enduring hope, the credo of conservationists everywhere: If we do enough, the species will survive. Better days will come. This war will be won. It was not a new hope and not a new war. The competing interests of human development and political aspirations on the one side, and biodiversity conservation and the preservation of wilderness on the other, were age-old adversaries. But the stakes were growing ever higher and in Southern Africa the board was set for an endgame. The prize: Land.
All the while, far from the debates and the chessboard moves of politics, I was at Doornleegte, taking my more modest hopes on daily walks between the house and the river. Mothlo had accepted the Palala rock pool as her playground. After a lot of coaching she’d learnt to eat grass in addition to the lucerne and game feed pellets with which we amplified her diet. I felt cautiously optimistic about the steps towards setting her free in the wild.
It was time for her next lesson, and this one confused her thoroughly. After the fuss I’d made about her having to follow me home after her daily dip in the river, I was now telling her to stay there while I left. This clearly made no sense to her. She got out of the rock pool and followed me, obediently as she’d been taught. I said, No, and led her back to the river. Once she was in the water I told her to stay and walked away. She got out and followed. I stopped, took her back to the water and tried to make her understand that I was leaving, but she had to stay. For long seconds she just looked at me. A human child could not have made a more heart-rending appeal: Please don’t … Look at me, I’m still small …
I swallowed the lump in my throat and repeated the procedure, telling myself it was not cruelty. It was the small price for the big reward. This step was crucial. She had to learn to spend her whole day in the river and on its banks, and then in the evenings she could return to her old home and to me for all the food and attention she needed.
We made it to 10 metres, then 20, 50, 100 before she’d hurry out of the river and after me. At last she got it. She stayed while I took my worries and mixed feelings across the floodplain. We followed this routine for many days. Sometimes it took a dozen returns to the river while the morning warmed up and the vervet monkeys moved further away on their daily forage upstream.
At dusk Mothlo would wander up to the house and find me waiting for her at the railing of the verandah. Before Mothlo we hadn’t needed a railing; soon after her arrival, however, she had discovered what seemed to be her mission: transporting as much mud as possible up the stairs and into the house. She went about it with stealth and surprising agility. For us, the ones who had to clean all the rooms into which she had dodged, the floors, walls and furniture that bore the muddy smears of her passage, the amusement wore off very quickly. I insisted on a sturdy railing that would keep her well away from the front door. In time we had to extend the barricading beyond the verandah: doors and windows were no match for her inquisitiveness and determination. We also learnt that it was a really bad and expensive idea to allow her to get into the garage or anywhere near a visitor’s car. Vehicles were toys to be bashed and shoved around with her impressive bulk while she grunted her pleasure and resisted all efforts to interrupt her fun. As the third largest land mammal by weight (after the elephant and the white rhino) she was already well on her way to her adult load of 1.5 tonnes, with strength to match. If for no other reason, her excellent physical progress – resulting in Doornleegte becoming an ever less suitable environment for her – made her re-wilding imperative.
I began to dela
y setting off with her in the mornings. She had become so completely used to our regular morning stroll down to the river, she’d find the wait unusual and I hoped unwelcome. After one particularly extended delay she stomped and shuffled about impatiently, and then started walking. I watched from the lounge window. Mothlo’s portly behind disappeared among the umbrella thorns as she sauntered off on her stumpy legs, independently, to the river which was to be her natural habitat. It was a beautiful sight.
For a while we stayed with this schedule. She’d accept her feed in the morning, enjoying being close to me, opening her mouth wide so I could tickle her tongue; then she’d leave for her day at the river until it was time for her to return to overnight at her old home. I was waiting for the next step, but this was one which she would have to take on her own.
It would be dishonest to pretend that I had no concerns for her safety. Crocodiles were at the top of the list. But I wanted her to live free with others of her kind, and that meant sharing their world, crocodiles and all. An adult hippo would usually be able to defend itself against even as canny and dangerous an attacker as a grown Nile crocodile, especially if assisted by other members of its pod. But this would be a young, hand-reared hippo on her own, pitted against razor-toothed jaws that can bite down with a force of 5000 pounds per square inch – 30 times the strength of a spotted hyena’s bite, 75 times that of a great white shark.
One morning I was getting ready to leave Doornleegte for a few days – a trip I’d been looking forward to immensely. A friend from Europe was visiting Africa. Lore and I had met as children in post-war Germany, and over more than 40 years our long-distance friendship had matured into something I valued greatly. The last time we had seen each other was in 1949, when my family left Germany to return to Africa. Now she was waiting for me in Pretoria.
Having packed and left notes and instructions, I was saying my goodbyes when something made me go out to the verandah. I don’t know why, I hadn’t heard anything. But there was Mothlo at a time when I was not expecting to see her, and obviously in pain. I dropped everything and ran down the steps. Her tail was hanging in tattered, bleeding strips. Crocodile? I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed likely.
I sprayed disinfectant on her wounds and made arrangements with my assistants for her care. And then I left. I drove away from an animal that seemed to be pleading for my help. Anyone who thinks that that was easy is grossly mistaken. My Pretoria trip did enable me to consult with a supplier of veterinary medicine on the best way to treat Mothlo’s injury and that was some small consolation.
Back at Doornleegte Mothlo surprised me. Her injury was painful, but she stayed with her daily routine: down to the river, and then back to us for the night. She’d come past our bedroom window and hint at her desire for some attention. She hinted strongly: one after the other the window panes cracked and broke. Then one evening I noticed a change. There seemed to be such urgency in her wanting to get to me that I began to wonder if there was something more to it, some threat disturbing or frightening her, something I had not detected. Another hippo perhaps?
My hopes for her soared.
All along I had assumed, with good reason, that the re-wilding of a hippo would be a very different matter to that of animals that are essentially solitary, such as black rhino. Mothlo’s chances were even more favourable. A male would have had to contend with territorial bulls defending their turf – their stretch of river – and their pods; as a female the interest she’d attract from a territorial bull would be of a very different nature.
By the time she was two years old Mothlo was roaming as she wished. We still left out her night-time ration of lucerne and pellets, but often when I’d check early in the morning I’d find that she had already left or was just setting off. Occasionally I received reports from the wilderness school, several kilometres downstream, that she’d been seen there. The school was situated virtually on the banks of the Palala and the shallows where the river tumbled and eddied among black rock sheets was a favourite place for fun and water-based projects. Now it was also a place for observing Mothlo. She would be attracted by the children’s voices and approach to investigate. Although she was used to humans, curious rather than aggressive, the teachers wisely always made the children calm down and retreat to a safe distance.
I made a point of keeping well clear of her day-time activities. Sometimes, when I’d come across her spoor and then spotted her, I’d allow myself to watch from a distance. But she was a hippo on her own terms now, and apart from the contact she initiated during her night-time visits I felt I no longer had the right to a role in her life.
Some time later, on my way back from inspecting camps and needing a few quiet moments by myself, I pulled off the road and parked in the shade of a massive weeping boerboon. I switched off the engine, closed my eyes and waited for the silence to come alive again: high, sharp twitterings and the whirring wings of sunbirds feeding on the scarlet blossoms. I got out to watch: white-bellied sunbirds, their iridescent heads and napes flashing cobalt, gold and green in the sun. As is always the case around mature trees there was ample evidence of life: the neat hoof prints of antelope, the touchingly child-like handprints of vervet monkeys and a little further away to accommodate the reach of their necks, the spoor of giraffe.
There was also something else: large, four-toed prints of an animal heavy enough to have pressed deeper into the soil than the other animals. Hippo – more than one. I wanted to believe that something seemed familiar, but in the loose sandy soil I couldn’t be sure. The tracks went past the tree and down to the river, 30 metres away. White and velvety brown butterflies flitted around my legs as I balanced awkwardly on grass tussocks to avoid stepping on spoor in what was evidently a hippo path. There were many of these along the Palala, highways between the water and the hippos’ night-time grazing grounds. The path became a tunnel through tall grass and reeds, and then a muddy gouge down to the water. On the far side of a long pool stretching away to my left and around a bend were water lilies and a solid fringe of bulrushes. On the nearside was a narrow muddy bank and there was my proof. I bent down for a closer look. There was no doubt: Mothlo, and she had company.
The pool was quiet. No sign of hippo or crocodile. A pied kingfisher torpedoed down, splashed into the water and, having missed, immediately rose again to its hovering position. I was tempted to stay and watch it at its fishing. If I kept quiet enough for long enough, there’d be a lot more happening. A cryptically coloured bittern suddenly visible among the reeds and bulrushes; herons and moorhens, a jacana stalking across the lily-pads; the snap and rustle of vegetation as an animal comes down to drink; the warm musky smell of it. Where I now saw only dragonflies and the reflection of clouds and sky, there might be a pinkish-grey mound rising to break the surface of the water, and the bubbly hiss and spray of expelled breath.
But I had vowed to let be, to let nature take its course; I had to accept that it would do so without my supervision or prying. I got up and left. By the time I was back at Doornleegte I knew it was useless. I was embarrassed enough at my lack of resolution not to want anyone to know about the lucerne I put out just beyond the perimeter of our garden. That night, with a clear line of sight from my observation post in the house, I got my confirmation: dim, distant glimpses of two hippos. But I wanted more.
The next day I waited until everyone was out of sight and then put out the lucerne at the carport. After dark I snuck out and hid in the car. It couldn’t have been long, but it felt like hours before there was something moving on the far side of the garden, at the spot where the lucerne had been left the previous night. A hippo, and then another one. As they slowly came closer I could hear – amazingly clearly as one does at night – the ripping sounds as one or the other pulled and tore at a patch of long grass. Then they found my little offering of fresh lucerne. I watched as Mothlo and her companion – a wild hippo bull – mere metres away, contentedly nuzzling and fondling, fed together. My little orphan had grown up.
After a while they left. Quietly, as wild animals can do so well, they melted away in the dark. I crept back into the house. Clive pretended to be asleep. I pretended to wake him. He pretended to be surprised at my news. Of course he knew. He’d been watching me watching them, and was as delighted as I was at the evidence of what really began to seem like a successful re-introduction into the wild.
My dreams for Mothlo were coming true; my dreams for Bwana were not. He was well, recovered from his injuries, and within his expanded enclosure he was amply provided with all the care and natural black rhino browse he needed. But between him and the life that I’d wanted for him there was a stockade.
In the period immediately after that dreadful encounter with a wild black rhino bull, Bwana’s recovery from his injuries was the concern we discussed. The bigger concern about his future was not yet something we could talk about. If people other than Clive or I had opinions about that, they didn’t mention it to me. Nor did anyone voice the questions I’m sure plagued them as it did me. Where did we go wrong? Was it the way I had been rearing and gradually training him, or was it his precipitate release into the reserve while I was away? What if no one had done anything wrong? Black rhino bulls are about as tough a challenge for re-wilding as one can get. Perhaps we’d been over-ambitious; perhaps we’d been foolish; perhaps we’d just been unlucky.
A Rhino in my Garden Page 9