chapter twenty-two
Late winter, with its mantle of copper, chocolate and straw, had cloaked the land. The bush had shed its dense summer foliage and game viewing had soared magnificently for the increasing number of guests who were discovering Thula Thula.
‘We must put in burns this year,’ I said to David and Brendan, ‘we have to open up some of the thicker areas.’
All game reserves burn sections of the land in late winter, primarily because the act-of-God fires that have raged through the countryside since time immemorial are nowadays always extinguished as soon as they take hold. A wilderness needs fire for a variety of reasons, not least to regenerate itself. Dead growth is burnt off and the land is reborn as green shoots take root among the fertile ashes.
We always burned our lands late in winter as all smaller life forms were hibernating and thus safe underground. Burns are done in selected blocks usually defined by roads and rivers which act as natural firebreaks. They are called controlled burns, which is a misnomer for I’ve yet to see a fire that could safely be labelled ‘controlled’. Fires have an inconvenient habit of jumping breaks and wind shifts can switch their direction in an eye-blink. Thus even ‘controlled’ burns often end up with a lot of people chasing one crisis after another.
Malicious fires – arson, in other words – are even worse because by the time you reach them they are already at inferno stage.
David and Brendan nodded at my instruction. ‘When do you want to burn?’ asked Brendan, eyeing the skies. It was vital to pick the weather just right, with a mild wind blowing in the direction you want your fire to run.
‘Let’s select the areas, and if the wind is right do it the day after tomorrow.’
Within hours, the decision was wrested from our hands.
‘Fire!’ shouted David into the radio with binoculars fixed on the highest hill on the reserve. ‘Fire behind Johnny’s Lookout! Code Red! Code Red!’
Even with the naked eye I could see the first wisps of smoke streaking crazily into the sky.
Every able-bodied man on the reserve responds immediately to a Code Red: rangers, guards and work teams instantly stop what they are doing and rush to the main house as fast as they can. Those close by sprint; those far off leap into the nearest truck.
Within minutes we had about fifteen men assembled and David and Brendan gave a quick briefing and organized them into teams. They clambered onto the vehicles grabbing as many bottles of drinking water as they could carry. They knew from experience it was going to be a hard, thirsty day.
David was in the first truck and braked briefly to pick me up. ‘This was started on purpose,’ he said as I got in. ‘Three men were seen running away. I’ve sent Bheki and Ngwenya to the other side of the reserve to check for poachers in case it’s a diversion.’
Arson was a new poaching tactic – or at least new on Thula Thula. One group had cottoned on to the idea that starting a fire on the far side of the reserve would suck up all our manpower and thus they could hunt on the other side at will. It had worked, but only once, as we soon wised up. Bheki and Ngwenya were experienced veterans and would be more than a match for any thugs they came up against.
It was a mild day and as we already had plenty of firebreaks set up in preparation for the controlled back-burns to arrest the fire, I wasn’t overly concerned and expected we should wrap this one up quickly. Our teams split up with Brendan’s group driving a half a mile or so in front of the blaze, ready to set the first back-burn where fires are lit across the front of the approaching fire in order to destroy anything inflammable in its path. It’s called back-burning as the fire is set to burn backwards into the wind, towards the main fire coming at it.
‘OK, everybody is in place,’ barked David into the radio. ‘Go!’
Brendan’s team immediately lit clumps of grass and started dragging the back-burn along the edge of the road, spreading it out wide in front of the fast-advancing flames.
We couldn’t have timed it worse. Ten minutes later the wind switched and a squall came screaming out of nowhere, sweeping the back-burn away from us to join the main fire already flaring rapidly across the veldt. Instead of one fire to fight, we now had two. From a routine drill, we now were in big trouble.
Four hot, sooty hours later our water was finished, our back-burns were failing, and the flaming monster was ripping through the bush completely out of control. Watching it effortlessly jump block after block I realized with horror that we were now fighting for the life of Thula Thula itself.
All animals understand fire well. Their survival synapses instinctively know that fire is a friend as well as a foe as it re-energizes the bush. Provided they are not trapped, which can cause blind panic, they watch developments carefully and will either cross a river or backtrack behind the blaze and wait on the previously scorched patches where they know they’re safe.
This time the fire was a formidable foe with the intense heat popping burning clods of grass high into the sky. The Zulus call them izinyoni, bird nests, and these sizzling ashes caught in the super-heated vortexes were the dreaded harbingers of the main fire, sparking as they blew ahead and settled in tinder grass, starting new burns every few minutes.
Then incredibly the blaze jumped the river as nimbly as a galloping Derby contender. I stared from my vantage point with mounting despair. We weren’t going to make it. This was too big even for professional firemen. With the howling gale rendering the back-burns totally useless, my men armed only with buckets, hand-pumps and fire-beaters had precious little chance of winning the day.
The inferno then leapt across another break and the chaotic gusts swirling around the hill ripped into it, driving massive black-orange flames up the slope below me.
I froze, despite the intense heat. There was a crew directly in the blaze’s path that would be frazzled in seconds if we didn’t get them out. I hurriedly sent two rangers into the thick smoke to shout to the men to run for their lives.
Twenty minutes later as the ten-foot wall of flames roared ever closer the two rangers returned – but without the crew they went to find.
‘What happened?’ I shouted as they came out of the bush, gagging from the smoke.
‘They’re not there. We couldn’t see them!’ one yelled back.
My mind raced. Not only was the reserve under threat, but we were on the brink of losing people as well. There was no way the men at the bottom of the hill could survive two crackling walls of fire clashing together on top of them.
There was nothing we could do. Brendan had the only water tanker with him. And he was miles away trying to light the rearguard of back-burns, our last flimsy glimmer of hope in stemming the runaway flank that threatened to torch the rest of the reserve, including the lodge and our homes.
Without a word David sprang into the Land Rover, flicked the headlights on and drove as fast as he could into the smoke and flames. All I could hear was the vehicle’s horn blaring as he drove to let the trapped men know where he was. No one could see anything in the billowing soot.
Ten minutes later he broke back through the smoke. There, sitting on the back of the vehicle, was the missing fire crew. Biyela, our gardener, was calmly smoking a cigarette.
As he jumped off the truck I shouted to him: ‘Did you get a light for your bhema in there?’
He looked at his cigarette. ‘Hau!’ he laughed with delight.
We desperately piled onto the Land Rover and David sped off, just yards in front of the flames. There was only one road out of the area, and as long as David kept his foot to the floor, perhaps we could make it.
As we raced for our lives I scoured the bush below us looking for any sign of the elephants. The fire could not have come at a worse time for Nana and Frankie with their two new babies. I was terrified they would be trapped and as the situation worsened I could think of little else.
The road took us parallel to the advancing fire which was now a mile wide, flaring and roaring and leaping on our right, drown
ing us in toxic fumes and swirling tendrils of smouldering ash.
‘The elephants came through here!’ shouted David above the crackling bellow of the flames. He pointed to the ground. ‘Those tracks are as fresh as hell.’
I motioned for David to stop and quickly got out and felt the dung between thumb and forefinger. It was slimy and wet, sure evidence that they were nearby.
‘They stopped here!’ I shouted back. ‘Probably to rest the babies, but more so I think to let Nana assess the situation. I think she is trying to get to Croc Pools.’
I looked back at the barricade of flame and felt my stomach tighten. Trees were being incinerated whole without pause. Nothing in its path could possibly survive.
‘God, please make it, Nana,’ I said under my breath as I got back into the vehicle.
David gunned the engine and we bounced down the track as fast as we could. Suddenly he swerved wildly as a female nyala bolted out of the bush right in front of us. The poor creature, panicked out of her mind and blinded by a deluge of smoke and ash, ran straight into a tree and careered off into another. With a sickening crack that we could hear above the inferno, her leg snapped. Petrified and unable to get up, she lay there staring with stricken eyes as we drove past.
I grabbed the rifle off the seat next to me and David, seeing what had to be done braked hard in a cloud of dust, jerking the men at the back off-balance and then reversed.
‘Boss!’ he shouted as I got out. ‘Quickly! Quickly or we’re not going to make it ourselves.’
I lifted the Lee – Enfield, leaned on the open door, and two rapid shots later the poor creature was out of its pain and we were again hurtling through the bush in a race with the devil; to crest the hill and then turn onto another track that would at least take us out of the path of the raging monster. We didn’t even have time to load up the dead buck.
David made the top with the flames minutes behind and the men in the back cheered wildly. But I feared their jubilation was premature. The awful reality was that we were still trapped. There was no road out; the towers of flames were rampant on both sides, about to engulf us within minutes and for the first time I felt panic slithering into my thoughts.
‘Where to?’ yelled David. ‘Hurry or else we’ve had it!’
Then in a flash I realized what we had to do. Nana had shown the way.
‘Croc Pools!’ I shouted back. ‘If Nana thinks it’s safe enough for the herd it’ll be safe enough for us.’
Somehow amid the acrid blinding smoke David found the turn-off and ten bumpy minutes later we rounded the corner at the pools just as Nana was shepherding the last of her charges into deeper water. She and Frankie were standing at the edge of the dam in the shallows with babies Mvula and Ilanga, making sure the others were safe.
Nana looked up at us, and only then did I understand why they were there. It was not just because of the water; the veldt around every game reserve dam is always overgrazed and consequently there was little fuel for the fire to consume in a thirty yard radius.
‘Clever, clever girl,’ I thought. In our haste even we hadn’t thought of Croc Pools, let alone the natural safety barrier.
We drove to the opposite side, manoeuvred the Land Rover into a bare spot as close to the Pools as we could, splashed water over it to cool it down and then waded kneedeep into the pool. The coolness and relief was exquisite.
There is a good reason why this particular stretch is called Croc Pools and I looked around hurriedly. There in the reed beds to our left were two huge crocodiles lying still in the shallows, watching through hooded reptilian eyes. Fortunately because of the drama of the fire their major concern was survival, the last thing on their minds was lunch. We would be fine where we were. For good measure, though, I reached down and grabbed Max’s collar tightly. He was filthy with ash so I quickly washed him, which would also protect him against the approaching fireball.
And there we were, a herd of elephants, two huge crocodiles, a dog and a bedraggled sweaty group of men united by the most basic instinct of all – survival.
As Hades itself approached we watched yellow-billed kites soaring and swooping down on seared insects fleeing the flames, while flocks of glossy starlings darted in and out of the smoke doing the same. Two large monitor lizards came hurtling out of the bush and splashed headlong into the water next to us. Then a herd of zebra came galloping out of the fumes and stopped. The stallion sniffed the air before changing direction and speeding off with his family. They knew exactly where they were going – they would outpace the fire.
The thick smoke poured from the burning bush over us, obliterating the sun and we stood together in the surreal murk of midday twilight, broken only by the flaming orange and red of the biggest inferno I have ever seen.
Then it was on us, the heat sizzling and hissing across the water. Yet in that intense theatre I became aware of something transcending the din and fury and chaos. I felt Nana’s stomach rumblings roll across the water, a dominating, calming presence. There she stood, towering over the dam, shielding the babies with her body and spraying water over herself. I found myself doing the same, scooping water over my head as if I had joined the herd.
And then the sizzling abyss swept past and the sun broke bleakly through the murk and mayhem. We stared out at the blackened apocalyptic landscape, gulping air into smoke-seared lungs. We had made it, thanks to Nana. She had saved us all. How she drew us to Croc Pools was something I was to gain more insight into later.
Suddenly the radio came alive. ‘David, David, David! Come in! Where the hell are you guys? I’ve got big problems here, I need men fast.’
It was Brendan.
‘We’re on our way!’ yelled David as we scrambled for the Land Rover. ‘Hold on for fifteen minutes. We’ll be there.’
‘The fire’s jumped our boundary,’ shouted a soot-blackened Brendan as we arrived. ‘It’s gone over into the next farm trapping a troop of baboons. They came out of the bush screaming, burning alive. It was terrible. At least six or seven are dead.’
He wiped a grimy paw over his bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s those bloody chromolaena weeds. They burn so hot nothing can stop them and the farm next to us had hundreds of acres of that alien rubbish growing thick and wild on their land between us and their sugar cane. The fire’s right in the middle of the cane now. No doubt they’ll blame us for it.’ Chromolaena odorata is particularly bad in a fire as it has a high oil content and as each bush takes light it burns in a bright fireball destroying trees and bushes close by.
The ever-shifting gusts at last switched favourably and using that to our advantage Brendan got a last gasp back-burn going and I watched, throat in mouth, as his little fires gobbled up the bush in front of the flaring wall, starving the advancing blaze.
Now we were able to respond to the incessant calls for help on the other side of the reserve where all the remaining staff had gathered in a last-ditch Alamo-style stand to protect the lodge and houses.
Exhausted to our bones, there we confronted another wall of fire, and it was then I saw the most amazing sight. Driving along a remote road going straight towards the oncoming fire was a car with a family inside. They were completely lost. The driver pulled up and obviously unaware of the terrible danger they were in started jabbering away in Italian.
‘You are the luckiest man alive,’ I said laughing at the incongruity of the situation. ‘I will give you a tracker to take you out.’
As they left, the inferno thundered over the hill and then just as it seemed the thatched lodge and our homes were about to be atomized, a phalanx of 4x4s loaded with firefighting equipment came revving though the smoke down the road. Every nearby farmer had heeded our emergency calls and now a wall of water confronted the wall of flames. The cavalry had truly arrived.
Thirty minutes later the seemingly unstoppable holocaust had collapsed. It was now just a mopping-up operation. But in its wake, it had destroyed more than a third of the reserve.
Fortunately the chan
ge of wind, which so nearly wiped us out, also brought the first pre-spring showers. That night a torrent of fresh rain sluiced clean the charred black earth.
The next morning, elephant, rhino, zebra, impala and other animals were out on the burned areas, eating fresh ash as they always do after a fire, absorbing the salts and minerals their bodies craved.
Two weeks later the areas that had been so apocalyptically torched were emerald green. Thanks – unwittingly – to the poachers, the bush clearing was done perfectly and we now had thousands of new acres of virgin savannah.
None of us, however, forgot that we had almost lost Thula Thula.
Or that we had an elephant to thank for our lives.
chapter twenty-three
Most of my interactions with the herd had been from a Land Rover. This was deliberate as I wanted them to get used to vehicles.
It worked; our guests had great safaris and photo-opportunities as Nana and her family acted as wild elephants do, oblivious of the Land Rovers, provided of course the rangers kept a reasonable distance and respected their privacy.
But now I wanted to do it on foot, not only as I planned to introduce walking safaris, but I wanted the herd to get generally acclimatized to humans in the bush, or else labourers and rangers would always be at risk.
Taking Max with me I set out to find them for my first experiment. The herd was in an open area, grazing and browsing on the plentiful summer offerings. Nearby there were big trees for me to climb, a somewhat crucial consideration if something went wrong and I had to run for it.
Perfect! I pulled over next to a spreading marula and got out, leaving the Landy’s door open for hasty access if necessary. It’s vastly different communicating with elephants out in the open on foot compared with doing so from vehicles. If you step away from a vehicle with elephants close by, you wake up quickly.
Purposely going upwind so they could get my scent, I zigzagged toward the herd, ambling along as if on a Sunday stroll, Max by my side. Everything was going well until I was about thirty yards away and Frankie’s trunk swivelled near the ground as she got my scent. I immediately stopped as she peered myopically at Max and me, but after a short while she ignored us and continued feasting. So far so good, and I continued my erratic approach in their general direction.
The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild Page 17