All at once I realised that all our walks together had been daytime ones. Safer of course, but still: more than a decade’s worth of nights and I had not experienced even a single one like this. What might I have learnt? Would he have allowed it? More pertinent probably, would Clive have allowed it? Perhaps, but only under his protection. It wouldn’t have been the same. It was a bonus then, this star-lit encounter of a woman – unarmed, unprotected, unsupervised, un-afraid – with the most dangerous of rhinos in dangerously exposed circumstances.
Was that my moment? A companionable ramble back to his enclosure, and to a different outcome? But I heard the men returning. Lazarus had brought a bucket of game feed pellets. I stretched out to take it from him, but Clive said, “No, let him. I’ll go along.” I couldn’t make out Lazarus’s face, and didn’t need to. All of his earnest affection was in the voice with which he called to Bwana. The rattle of the pellet bucket had always been a reliable enticement – Bwana turned towards Lazarus.
As the little procession disappeared in the dark, I became aware of hushed voices and nervous laughter, faces appearing around corners and in doorways. We can all go to bed now, I told them, it’s over. I walked back home. At the kitchen door I stopped, turned and listened. Nothing. Just the winding down of the evening, someone saying good night, then footsteps disappearing. From inside the house came the muted complaints of a small dog scratching at the door of the bedroom to which she’d been banished. It was too soon to let Button out; she’d be bound to go in search of Clive and might upset what could be a tricky situation. I called to her from the kitchen and she subsided.
It was 11 o’clock. A cup of tea when Clive returns, I thought, and come daylight we’d investigate the breakout: somewhere there had been a weak point in Bwana’s enclosure. Probably a workman taking an unsupervised shortcut while sinking poles into concrete. A powerful, heavy, fully grown rhino leaning against a pole that gave a little, then more and more as he heaved a playful shoulder against it – that’s all it took. But we’d take care of it in the morning.
I switched on the kettle, then switched it off. There was shouting, then screaming, then rapidly approaching pounding as Bwana stormed back into the museum grounds. Mere minutes between the calm animal sniffing through the museum garden, and this one wheeling and charging towards the voices of terrified people once more scrambling up onto vehicles and garden walls.
Clive yelled at everyone to be quiet and stay out of sight. He pushed me back indoors, “Call Anton. And get that vet!”
How many of those futile phone calls? Anton unreachable, and no one else able or willing to help. How many agonising arguments with Clive? He wouldn’t allow me to approach Bwana again. I tried to edge away; I needed to gauge Bwana’s mood. Aggression and fury, of course, but what was fuelling it? The smallest shift in temper, a hesitation in his rage, and I might be able to connect directly with the fear that drove this ferocious attempt to protect himself. He was aiming everywhere, turning in all directions. A darkly spinning shape, huge and prehistorically fearsome, half-hidden, half-revealed by dark and dust.
“Conit! Please!” Clive was pleading with me.
Did I retreat? Up on Lonetree I couldn’t remember. But I must have, because at some point I became aware that Clive had left; he wouldn’t have gone to phone again if he hadn’t considered me safe enough for the moment. A loud snort, and someone screamed as Bwana charged towards a Land Cruiser on top of which staff members were whimpering and clutching each other. I called Bwana, again and again. He didn’t seem to hear; there was too much noise and I was too far away. I moved in closer, imploring him to listen to me, to believe me that he was safe. I no longer cared about the danger, I had to reassure him – my beautiful brave rhino in such torment. I realised I was crying. He circled back, in that strangely swift-footed gait of heavy rhinos, and lowered his head as if to ready for the next charge. But then Clive was back, positioned between me and Bwana, and I knew he hadn’t gone to phone. He lifted the rifle, and it was over.
There was another anniversary now for Lonetree. 13 November ended with Bwana’s collapse after a faultless, painless heart-shot. No struggle, no sound. The only sound I heard, and that was enough to haunt me, was that of the man lying with his head and hands pressed to the dead rhino’s massive, still-warm shoulder, weeping. The choice of the night, and the consequence of it.
What of me? Weeping too, I suppose. But more clearly I recall Bwana’s hide under my hands, the great curve of his chest, so quiet; no last breath or heart-beat. I stroked his head, all the features and angles I knew so well. In the torchlight his eyes had dulled.
Then it was midnight, I was in the kitchen, someone was forcing me to drink something. I didn’t want to drink or eat, I didn’t want to speak or be spoken to, I didn’t want to be helped to go to bed. I did not want to know what I had witnessed.
SEVENTEEN
Lonetree II
HALFWAY DOWN THE SLOPE a pair of francolin exploded into flight. They didn’t go far – rapid wingbeats on the rise, gliding descent to disappear in vegetation a dozen metres further. Their indignant calls continued to protest the presence of what I guessed were Lonetree’s kudus. I’d seen their spoor down at the enclosures, drawn there perhaps by the easy pickings of ready-cut rhino browse.
Had they been the trigger for Bwana’s breakout? Had he been startled or annoyed by their presence? Unlikely. A couple of head-shakes, a bit of huffing, perhaps a mock charge, nothing more. If there had indeed been shoddy work on the construction of his enclosure, Bwana might have broken out, but not in such a blind rage, and not to get to kudu. There were no free-roaming rhino in the area. What else could have been there? Or who else?
From my rocky lookout I could see movement on the roads below. People walking and cycling to work. The previous night there had also been passers-by. Might some of them have climbed fences to get to the rhinos? A deliberate, perhaps drunken piece of mischief, to tease Bwana into breaking out? A poaching attempt? It was certainly no secret that we had a fully grown rhino, complete with impressive horns, on the premises. Small comfort to me that, if there had been such people, they didn’t get away with their trophy. Bwana was still dead, his horns removed to be registered with the authorities and lodged in safe deposit. Clive was taking care of it. Clive was always taking care of things, putting himself between the threat and those endangered by it. That’s what a conservationist does: he stands between elephant and poacher, between wilderness and exploiter. If he is, like Clive, a board member of both the national and provincial environmental conservation agencies he also has to stand between members of the public and his own rhino. And if that same rhino had already nearly killed a man and now appears to be threatening the lives of others and most immediately that of his wife, he is the one who has to pull the trigger and live with it.
Over the years he’d let slip something of his feelings when he’d had to shoot to kill. On more than one occasion he’d had to stand in front of an animal that had been terribly wounded by a poacher or an incompetent hunter, and relieve it of its pain. An elephant that couldn’t walk anymore would just look him in the eye, and wait. He was the one with the gun, he said, but he felt as helpless as that animal waiting for death – he couldn’t undo the grievous suffering inflicted on such innocent lives by humans. Sometimes it was nature’s own cruelties that were hard to witness. A white rhino, weak and starving with a broken jaw after a plunge down a cliff, watched as Clive walked up to him, gun at the ready. He didn’t move. Head raised, he held Clive’s gaze. There was recognition and acceptance, a communion before death.
However merciful such a killing, there was no joy in ending something as magical and irreplaceable as a life. What then if the life you had to destroy was one you’d known intimately, had personally watched over from baby to adult?
In the dawn light, en route to Lonetree, I’d seen the Toyota, lying on its side, smashed beyond repair. Somehow, in between Bwana’s raging charges, Clive had managed to cra
wl out of the rocking, up-ended vehicle and run for his life. Just in time. And yet, in order to protect me, he then took another risk and accompanied Lazarus to walk Bwana back to his enclosure. He was there when that attempt failed. Bwana had followed the pellet bucket all the way to the far end of the enclosure, but then raced after Lazarus who, in running back to the gate, had neglected to leave the food with Bwana on the far side of the enclosure. A mad fumble with gate poles, but Bwana was out again, running wild and heading for the museum. If I’d been the one to go with Lazarus, it might have turned out differently, either successfully or even more disastrously, with someone’s death. Perhaps mine. The night had ended well then, you might say. No one was hurt or killed, except an animal. What’s the big deal?
What was the big deal? Why did it leave me feeling so lost?
A conservationist’s existential crisis? I’d dedicated so much of my life to saving that rhino. I followed all the rules, and devised ones for situations where there weren’t any at the time. Through all his health crises, his breakouts, his attack on David Bradfield, I would not give up on Bwana. If he’d committed any transgression it was simply that of being a strong young black rhino bull in a world changed, mutilated by and for humans. We make concessions to accommodate wild creatures, but on our terms; our priorities always trump theirs. Even those of us, the conservationists who go against this deadly current, make mistakes, and almost invariably the animal is the loser. Perhaps Bwana’s fate was sealed that day when I drove away to Johannesburg and left the coast clear for the Lapalala decision makers to release him into the wild. I wasn’t there to caution, to protest or oppose, but might I not have agreed with them? Some risks have to be taken, and risks don’t come with guarantees. 20/20 hindsight from the top of Lonetree was of no use whatsoever, except insofar as accepting that there had been lessons to learn and we’d learnt them the hard way.
But my grief was also personal.
Why couldn’t I have been like those extraordinary black women I’d known over the years? Rosina at Doornleegte; before her, Constance Desimela who’d become our anchor and indeed family member during our Johannesburg years; my parents’ friends among Modjadji’s subjects at Duiwelskloof; and further back still, my first introduction to the open heart of the African woman: my childhood friend, Regina, and the tribal women of Sekhukhuneland. They could gather in their dozens, hundreds sometimes, and give way to their grief. Wail and writhe in a full-bodied lament for their loss. I envied them: they could shatter in community, the splinters and shards of their lives held by many hands. That wasn’t my way. African to the bone as I regarded myself I still had to flee – to be alone, to bleed in private. Perhaps I felt unjustified in my mourning. Bwana had been my job, no more; life goes on. Yet, who decides the conventions of grieving anyway? Who’s to say which death is worth mourning and which one isn’t? Who’s in charge of weighing the allocation of sorrow appropriate to each kind of loss? And how does one prevent one grief from unlocking others?
Up on Lonetree there was no need to be brave and quiet, and I wasn’t. I wept for everyone I’d lost, and for the ones I feared to lose. For every graveside and sickbed and heartbreak where I’d had to be strong, I now howled from some deep, ruptured place that I hadn’t acknowledged before.
Halfway through the morning I left Lonetree, not really sure anymore about who it was who was walking down to her most important tasks of the day: to reassure Lazarus and to comfort Clive – the blame was not theirs.
Moêng was my lifeline. Responsibility, work, distraction. Our environmental education sessions continued with her as the star attraction. And on my walks to her, past the museum garden where Bwana was buried on the exact spot where he’d fallen, through the repaired gates and up the winding track past the now mended, empty enclosure on my left, I could face my demons in private. Every day another batch of questions, another insecurity or disappointment or difficulty. Long-buried vulnerabilities resurfaced and had to be wrestled into acceptance. Until one day, all at once, it was done.
I was crouching, eye-to-eye with Moêng. She teased me with a mock head-butt and pranced away, then spun around and stood waiting, swinging her head at me in expectation of a game. Several rounds of pretend-chase and counter-chase later she was positioned exactly where I wanted her. I lifted the catch, the gate swung open and I walked through.
She didn’t know this part of the game. After a few hesitant steps towards the open gate she stopped, gave a small snort and then shuffled back a little way. I kept walking, slowly, and calling to her to follow. She had her head up, ears searching for clues, with as puzzled a look on her little face as I’d ever seen on any wild animal. I walked a little faster and took the turn onto the track. She bleated after me and then, in a nervous little rush, dashed through the gate and headed straight for my knees. After a reassuring hug and scratch around the ears, we were off.
Just as well I didn’t expect her to do the predictable thing and stay with me, because she didn’t. As a little rhino whose only experience of freedom in the bush had been as an infant, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d felt too insecure to venture far on her own. But she raced off towards a large hornpod tree – I assumed for a snack of her favourite food. But not even a pause. She disappeared behind a tangle of old raisinwoods. I kept on down the track, calling to her all the time. The brittle crackling of twigs and clatter of dislodged stones signalled her progress as she charged through the undergrowth until, to the right and ahead of me, there was the screeching protest of francolin and suddenly there she was on the track, panting, looking around excitedly. She spotted me and charged back up the slight incline, overshot, and all but knocked me over. Reassured as to my approval she shot off to the left and was soon gone from my sight again. A hundred metres further on she emerged from the bush, and proceeded to jump up and down as if spring-loaded, before darting off and flushing the harried francolin once more.
Seldom had there been a happier walk at Melkrivier. My little rhino was revelling in her taste of freedom, and she was proving me right. Black rhinos have a reputation for unpredictability and aggression, but I knew my rhino and felt confident about letting her out without any safeguard other than the trusting bond between us. I hadn’t wanted any other people around, certainly no one with a rifle. I was not in the mood to be cautioned and second-guessed into doubting my own instincts about a rhino.
I would not pretend to be an expert, certainly not a scientific one, but more than a decade of rhino care, with all the learning that had gone along with that, had been useful. Just that morning the phone had rung with another cry for help. The caller was terribly apologetic: he’d called before, more than once, with the same problem. I was happy to reassure him, again, that this particular problem was more likely his rather than that of the baby white rhino, the first on his property, over which he was watching with such anxious care. The problem was simply lack of prior experience. I told him he could trust the mother. It sounded as if she knew exactly what she was doing, just as Munyane without being taught had known how to raise Mokibelo.
Over the years there had been calls from owners or carers of rhinos that had been wounded, or were otherwise ailing, or behaving in an unusual way. I’ve answered the phone and heard a worried voice saying, “What does it mean when it does this …” followed by a sometimes rather amusing attempt at rhino vocalisations – coughing, barking, snorting, grunting, bleating, moo-ing. I was very sympathetic because I well remembered the days when rhino behaviour seemed to me too to be just one puzzle after another. And how well I understood the anxiety of dealing with serious illnesses or wounds. One desperately wants someone to tell you exactly what to do, and precisely how to do it. But I could only share my experiences, tell them what I’d done in similar situations and refer them to the same excellent veterinarians, like Dr Richard Burroughs, who had helped me with advice.
No one in my extended family of fellow rhino carers had yet called to tell me that their rhino had been killed. After
Bwana I hoped and prayed that no one ever would.
I took my time down the track, all the while calling to Moêng, and as was my habit stopped here and there to pick up bits of broken glass or rusty wire or tins; even after years of veld restoration one could still find evidence of the reckless and wasteful presence of man. The track straightened out and I saw Moêng up ahead. She was standing completely still, her sides heaving after all the exercise, and staring intently at something in front of her feet. Water. Good rains had set seasonal streamlets flowing down off Lonetree to the Melk River, and one of them crossed our path. Moêng didn’t know what to make of it, and it was only after I had walked through – it was no more than ankle-deep – that she dared to put one reluctant foot after another into the water. She crossed at the pace of an elderly chameleon and at the other side turned back to stand and stare at the water some more.
We strolled on, her energy somewhat abated, and came to the wooden railings and open gate of Bwana’s boma. She went straight past, sniffing at everything. I walked into the boma and called. Oh, the temptation: she heard me clearly of course, wanted to obey, but couldn’t. Indecisive pauses to glance back at me and then, with a toss of the head, she bounced away in pursuit of the next fascinating smell. Eventually she circled back and joined me. That was when I realised that however unpredictable black rhinos might be they’ll never match Lazarus. He was supposed to have lain in wait for the right moment and, as soon as Moêng was inside the boma, quickly close the gate without spooking her. Early that morning, after we’d scrubbed and refilled the water-trough and dug out and replenished Bwana’s mudhole, we’d rehearsed Lazarus’s manoeuvre, and he’d repeated his instructions back to me, but here we were, Moêng and I in the boma, and Lazarus – predictable in his unpredictability – nowhere to be seen.
A Rhino in my Garden Page 27