A Rhino in my Garden

by Conita Walker

  Our arrival at the bottom disturbed a family of warthogs busily ploughing up the mulch of damp soil and leaf litter. The boar had his muddy snout and tusks up at us, the whole of his tough russet-maned body at full alert. And then they were off, tails to the sky, adults in front, five piglets following – seven erect aerials speeding through the undergrowth. I opened the door so that Button, barking madly, could indulge in her favourite chase. It was all bluster and no bite; she couldn’t have caught up and wouldn’t have done any harm anyway.

  We walked up to the first of the buildings. There was no door. The screed floor was sandy and damp, strewn with leaves, bits of bark and sticks and dead insects. There were drifts of brittle, transparent wings without the insect bodies they once belonged to. In one corner there was the muddy granular foundation of a termite turret. Marks on the walls betrayed that there used to be cupboards there, beds, blinds. The next room used to have a basin, a shower, a toilet, a mirror. We wandered to and through another of the buildings which once housed a stove, fridge, freezer, tables, food storage cupboards, shelves, gas cylinders, basins and taps for the water which used to flow from the big green tank halfway up the slope. The tank was still there, surrounded by what seemed like a solid curtain of sound – the throbbing hum of what must have been thousands of bees.

  In the shade of the wide sweep of a thatch roof, sagging and fraying at the edges, Clive put down our camping chairs and, on a few stones kicked together, our picnic basket. There used to be many more camping chairs there, and a large wooden table, shelves for lanterns and books, easy chairs and recliners and people relaxing in them, dozing or having meals or conversations or passing along binoculars to each other to admire something in the view stretched out in front of them. Children laughing and playing.

  Tambuti, an eight-bedded bush camp at the confluence of the Blocklands and the Palala, had been a favourite with families. When the news of its closure broke, we were swamped with letters and emails of regret and protest, pleas to reconsider, and floods of personal recollections. Of course it wasn’t just Tambuti. The entire bush camp operation was being discontinued, all the camps closed. The loss our bush camp aficionados were lamenting was not of only Tambuti, or Rock Lodge, or Mukwa or any of the others. It was the loss of access for the ordinary man, woman and family to the Lapalala wilderness.

  I comforted myself with the knowledge that they had their photographs, their home movies and memories, and whatever changes the wilderness had wrought in them. Their Lapalala would always remain exactly the way they remembered it. They would not see the slowly disintegrating shells of rondavels and log cabins, the floors with cracks and puddles and piles of bat or bird droppings. They wouldn’t see vines curling in through window and door openings, grass pushing up through cracks, thorny pioneer plants taking hold in the paths and around the fire pit. The bush reclaiming its own.

  Outside of the campsites there wouldn’t have been anything the bush needed to reclaim. The visitors had left footprints only; their presence as light and transient as the breeze I now felt through the sweaty back of my shirt.

  I settled down with my binoculars. The view was still there. The same skyline, the same reed bed, and after a few moments the same highlight that had drawn me to that rendezvous year after year. A flash of snow and amethyst: a male plum-coloured starling. I couldn’t spot any of the rather drab speckled females. I expected them to be at their nests, somewhere in the trees along the riverbanks. But it was the males’ brilliant plumage I’d wanted to see, the striking contrast of white underparts and iridescent purple head, wings and back. In the course of the afternoon I saw several of them as they flitted in and out and across the reed bed.

  The same breeze that cooled my back played among the reeds, played with them, I thought. I was beguiled by that movement of air – a thing alive which ruffled the fronds with their heavy, creamy seed-heads, made them sway and bend in one direction and then in another, or for minutes at a time left them undisturbed, immobile, an artist’s etching of lines and angles and planes. And then I’d hear a whisper starting in the trees behind the camp, feel it passing over me and wait for it to reach the still patch framed in my binoculars. The reeds would come alive again, dip and wave and flow as the breeze willed.

  In that picture is everything I felt that day. A connection with the place, the birds, and all those visitors who had seen them there. Gratitude that we could have facilitated such an experience for so many thousands of people. Acute regret too for so seldom allowing myself what we gave them: the chance to surrender wholeheartedly to simply being in the wilderness, so different from working as I did while based in a wilderness area. I felt the need to lose myself somewhere out there in the wild. To walk without route or plan or schedule except to follow the lie of the land where it led until exhaustion overtook me, or I arrived at some natural destination: a cliff-top, a lone tree, a bend in the river, a renewed serenity.

  Like that airy current in the reeds, events had affected Clive and me in our almost four decades together. We’d been nudged in this direction, then another, then allowed a respite for a time, before being tumbled and set a-playing again by the next change blowing through our lives. Now another re-ordering had come. Or more accurately, several of them that had piled one on top of the other and coalesced to shake my world.

  The decision to close down the bush camp operation was not easily taken, and was moreover not ours to take. It was but one of the cascade of unavoidable changes that had to follow in the wake of Dale Parker’s death. It was a fluid time, for Lapalala and for us. Dale’s son, Duncan, who had known Lapalala since he was a boy canoeing in the Palala, was ready to take on his father’s legacy, but it couldn’t happen overnight. Transitions, if they are to be wise, have a measured tempo to them.

  The focus of our own responsibilities was also shifting, widening to include the Melkrivier Museum complex. The Lapalala Wilderness School was well-established now, widely known with an excellent reputation; Clive could hand over the reins while continuing as patron of the school. Inevitably we arrived at a moment when one of us had to say it: What if we were to relocate away from Doornleegte? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be based at Melkrivier? Many discussions later, with our family and with the Lapalala directors, only one obstacle remained. But it was a big one: Bwana.

  With his history he couldn’t be released into the reserve. At Doornleegte he was integrated into a conservation education programme that everyone agreed had to continue. But who would take care of him? In the end there was only one conclusion: if we moved, Bwana had to move too. It wasn’t a simple solution; for one thing we’d have to construct rhino enclosures at Melkrivier. But at least the last of a series of difficult decisions had finally been taken. It was a relief. At last there was a definite shape to the future. We could begin our planning for the move to be as ordered and effortless as possible. I began making lists.

  Then one morning in August 2004 Lapalala received a phone call from Karen Trendler’s Animal Rehabilitation Centre: a decision had to be taken about Moêng, Lapalala’s black rhino calf rescued on Boxing Day 2002. After 20 months at ARC, although she was by no means fully recovered, the worst of her injuries seemed to have healed. Unfortunately she’d suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Her decline was so drastic and rapid ARC didn’t feel they could do anything more for her. They recommended that she should be returned to Lapalala immediately. Given that she was in such a desperate state, an attempt at rehabilitating her in her natural environment might not succeed, but without trying it she would die anyway.

  For the second time, Moêng’s life hung in the balance, and again the decision lay with Lapalala’s owners and directors. They couldn’t themselves manage the round-the-clock personal care required by such a sick animal, so they gave ARC the choice: try to sell Moêng to anyone who would be prepared to take her, or try on their own behalf to pull her through once more and should she make it then decide what to do with her, or just put her down immediately without
incurring any further trouble or expense.

  ARC called us. They couldn’t bear to simply give up on her; couldn’t Conita take her? There was no easy answer, just more questions. How long would it take to nurse Moêng back to health? How long after that to re-introduce her to the wild? We wouldn’t be at Doornleegte for very much longer, how could we possibly take on such a charge? I remembered the hot day of her rescue, and myself agonising over her survival. Then, the decision wasn’t mine. This time it was.

  If we were to take her on it would have to be at Melkrivier. It would mean more enclosures to be constructed in record time, and I’d be committing myself to another wild orphan. After raising Bwana, Mothlo and Munyane, I knew exactly what that meant.

  There were many reasons to say No, all of them rational, reasonable and justifiable. There was only reason to say Yes: I couldn’t say No.

  Clive and I pooled our finances and bought Moêng for an amount more-or-less equivalent to the cost of her 20-month stay at ARC. They were so keen for us to give that poor animal a last chance that they negotiated a reasonable price for which we were grateful.

  Months later, as I sat among the bedraggled remains of Tambuti, the worst of the relocation to Melkrivier was over. I was deeply thankful that Mother had been spared the upheaval at Doornleegte – she had moved into a frail care home in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, the previous year. Most of my household had already been moved, and there were two black rhinos in suitable enclosures close to where I would be living at the Melkrivier Museum. There Bwana would be waiting for me to pick up where we left off. Moêng was just waiting: for death or for someone to help her survive.

  I tried to look on the bright side. It was an exciting time to be involved with black rhino conservation. In July 2004 the World Conservation Union’s Rhino Specialist Group was able to state that, even in the face of continued threats like habitat destruction and poaching, black rhino numbers were finally edging away from the brink of extinction. The species remains critically endangered but it seemed that conservation measures put in place by the Southern African Development Community, aided by agencies like WWF, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had turned the tide. The dreadful rhino war that had begun in the 1980s was one which we couldn’t afford to lose, and we didn’t.

  WWF was responsible for another bit of welcome news. The organisation partnered with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (the former Natal Parks Board), the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Board and the Mazda Wildlife Fund, and established the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project. It was aimed at creating partnerships between neighbouring landowners who had suitable black rhino habitat. In conservation, land is always an issue – always in short supply, or threatened in some way. And the bigger the animal, the bigger its range, the bigger the land issue. Cooperation across boundaries, ideally virtual boundaries rather than fenced ones, could only be good news.

  I lifted my binoculars to scan the slopes beyond the reedbed. Not a single fence. No wall or obstruction to impede the movement of air or animals. A very very long time ago it was like that too, before man put his much vilified (and justly so) footprint in the Waterberg. Then the fates brought us here, and we became part of the effort to return the land to a pristine state – I saw firsthand that the human footprint didn’t always have to be such a negative one. The long life of the Waterberg, including the human-dominated period with its herds and herders, guns and fences and the mindset with which they ruled the land, would be remembered in the Melkrivier Museum. But out here all those people, and us, would be forgotten. The land would always outlast us. I found that comforting. I was surrounded by something ancient and enduring. A deep, living silence held me and consoled me that day between the Blocklands and the Palala.

  Button announced Clive’s return. They were dripping wet. Both rivers were running strongly and between rocky barricades where the water cascaded into foaming pools there were beautiful stretches for swimming, hopefully crocodile-free. I wondered how many times Clive would have had to rescue Button – she was notorious for under-estimating the current, over-estimating her own paddling prowess and getting swept away downstream. Lapalala’s rivers aren’t major ones, not to compare with the Limpopo or Zambezi, but send enough water hurrying down their twisting, dramatic gorges and to underestimate them is to die. It has always struck me as one of life’s paradoxes: we cannot live without water, but it has to be doled out to us in manageable rations. Too much and it becomes our executioner.

  The whole of that week we’d been watching television reports of the almost incomprehensibly destructive power of water – the Boxing Day tsunami. In a part of the globe that was the quintessential image of paradise, an undersea earthquake had triggered a killer surge that left hundreds of thousands dead in 14 countries. Thirty-metre-high waves engulfed coastal communities of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and India. Even 8500 kilometres away, on the other side of the Indian Ocean, it registered on our African coast. Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa reported drownings and structural damage to harbours where cars and boats were submerged under waters two to three metres higher than normal. I couldn’t begin to imagine the power of the natural forces unleashed in such an event, 9.1 on the Richter scale. Scientists were saying that for almost 10 minutes the entire planet vibrated. It set off other earthquakes in other places, even as far away as Alaska. The earth convulsed and people, buildings, animals, trees, anything that couldn’t escape, were destroyed.

  And this was the same earth that cradled me and soothed away my agitation and trouble. Was it nothing more than a fancy of mine, this notion of Mother Earth being a benevolent nurturer of life, including human life? Surely all those people killed by the tsunami couldn’t have been collectively guilty of some cosmic transgression and therefore deserving of punishment in the form of an immense calamity. Execution by water, like a latter-day Noah’s flood. Were their deaths random then? Caught in a cataclysmic readjustment of the earth’s own internal discomforts? The earth going about its own business, with no regard to the infinitesimal specks of life crawling its surface? Impersonal, uncaring earth, with no concern for one particular infinitesimal speck of life sitting for one brief unremarked moment at the confluence of two insignificant little watercourses and fancying herself known and noted and fed by the earth.

  I sat with my binoculars and watched the starlings and understood nothing.

  Clive and I finished our picnic, a modest one: sandwiches and tea. We took a few more photographs, shared a few more memories and then were startled by loud barks, unnervingly close-by. A baboon troop had begun their afternoon trek down the slopes to the water. Clive was thrilled and, in an effort to lighten our moods I suspect, insisted on seeing significance in the arrival of the baboons. It was 9 January, the birthdate of naturalist-poet Eugène Marais. Marais was famous for Soul of the Ape, his ground-breaking study of a Waterberg baboon troop. Our picnic had been intended to commemorate my survival, two years earlier, after the snakebite. But we couldn’t do it on the right date, the 6th, a Thursday. It had to wait until the Sunday, and so we found ourselves among Tambuti’s baboons on Marais’s birthday. We watched the troop moving down to the river, juveniles scampering and squabbling among the dishevelled bush camp structures while the largest male postured and barked from the crown of a mighty ficus. Since the Melkrivier complex which would be our next home also housed the Eugène Marais Museum, I allowed myself to be convinced: it was a sign, surely, of good fortune.

  We’d come to say goodbye, to Tambuti and to much else. I had braced myself for a painful experience, and it was. I will not pretend that there was no sadness. I was leaving a sanctuary. More: a way of life, a way of being.

  And yet there was no wish to stay. In the midst of packing up our lives at Doornleegte I’d become aware of a growing excitement. A new life was calling to us. Clive, as always, was looking ahead. For him, even more than for me, Lapalala had been a mission, and being Clive it had been a mission of the heart. At th
e end of every day over sundowners our conversations were, as they’d often been before, of the future. The Doornleegte verandah was still our favourite spot for planning and for dreaming, but now our plans and dreams centred on Melkrivier.

  Still, on that January day when the sun set – for me for the last time – over Tambuti, and I was overtaken by that particular brand of melancholy that belongs to quiet Sunday afternoons and farewells and guineafowl at dusk, it wasn’t easy. The light faded and stole the starlings from me, and then the reed bed, and then all the green of the bush. Swifts were still slicing through the darkening sky when I noticed the first bats flitting in and out between us and the ragged thatch roof. Then the night took over. Frogs – numberless tinkling, glittering voices. And two small rivers rushing to go and find the ocean.

  As we drove away through the dark I thanked the kindly fates that had arranged circumstances in such a way that there was important work waiting for me. It was work I loved, and it was waiting for me in a boma at Melkrivier. On the day of Moêng’s finding I had surprised myself with the urgency with which I’d prayed for her rescue to succeed. How could I have known that there would come a day when she would be the one to rescue me?

  FIFTEEN

  Moêng

  WITH A SICK RHINO on your hands you cannot be a delicate flower needing to be shielded from every ill wind. There will be many ill winds, literally. You’ll try to dodge the worst expressions of the animal’s discomforts, you’ll dance, contort, cavort and anticipate, but more often than not you’ll still find yourself at the wrong end of the beast at the wrong time. You will need a robust sense of humour.