Just before Christmas I did another of my talks with Olly and Suzi at the Royal Geographical Society. It was a really interesting evening with the two artists talking about endangered animals from their perspective and me talking about the harsh realities of trying to keep the dogs alive. After all the fundraisers that Tusk had organized for us in Kensington Gore I had become almost blase about addressing the RGS. Nothing, however, had prepared me for dinner that evening. I jumped into a cab after my talk and raced off to Kensington Palace for dinner with Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Queen and Prince Philip. As you do. It was nice to be able to thank the Queen in person for my OBE as it had been Prince Charles who had invested me on that memorable day at the other palace.
We had good news at Christmas when our old friend Erasmus Tarimo was made director of Wildlife. He had supported us from the very start of the Mkomazi project, warning us of trouble ahead and ensuring that we did everything correctly. He had helped Elisaria on his endless quests for agreements and work permits for Lucy and myself. We had our turkey that year with Pete and Estelle Morkel, quietly satisfied about how things were going in Tanzania but horrified at the news from across the border. Kenya was going up in flames after an incredibly divisive election in which politicians had whipped up their supporters to attack each other on the front lines between different tribes. It was very unsettling – not the kind of thing that’s meant to happen in Kenya. We observed from a safe distance, horrified, as pictures of places we knew and loved were relayed across the world – on fire and in ruins. Then, of course, the kids got sick and we had to fly them straight into the eye of the storm.
As everyone who could afford to was putting up the shutters and hunkering down until the unrest died away, I had to drive right into the centre of it with Imogen and Mukka. They were puking so much they could scarcely move. Nairobi was empty – no traffic, few people, the occasional scared-looking passer-by or unruly mob. I put the children in hospital and headed out to Pete and Julianna Silvester’s house in the suburbs. I drove down the usually heavily congested Ngong Road at 150 k.p.h. It was just like the 1960s when you could drive that fast everywhere. There were lots of young guys on that side of town who gave me the thumbs-up as I drove past, amazed to see a mzungu on the roads at such a volatile time. The start of 2008 was a very disturbing time in Kenya. After forty-five years of peace and stability, the country teetered on the very brink of civil war, only pulling back under enormous international pressure from the likes of Kofi Annan and George Bush. The kids turned out to be fine but we had become nervous after Jemima’s appendicitis the year before.
Back home at Mkomazi, 2008 was a time of consolidation spent continuing to prepare for the handover to TANAPA and getting the education programme working properly. It was sad that Salum Lusasi would not be there for the long-awaited handover: it had taken so long that he came up for retirement before it happened. Although his rangers had been a constant thorn in our sides, Lusasi had been a great man to work with, yet more so after the horrors of Swai and Marenga. We missed him when he went into retirement although he still had a house in Same and we caught up occasionally.
Lusasi had been particularly supportive of our environmental education programme that was launched shortly after his departure. You have to be careful when arranging outreach and education that it doesn’t take away from the bigger picture. Elisaria was our operations manager, but over the past few years he had spent way too much time in Dar es Salaam dealing with bureaucracy and yet more working on the education programme. We were very fortunate that Chester Zoo was able to help us arrange the programme more effectively and efficiently. Chester is renowned for its education programme, which is planned on the well-known premise that children have a very brief attention span. The plan we devised was all short sharp shock – ten-minute lessons and nice activities, lunch for all the kids, a ten-minute DVD, a quick, well-thought-out game, meet the rhino trackers for ten minutes, see a rhino and then go home. Elisaria and I were mightily relieved that we could do an effective programme for eight hundred children a year without it becoming a burden.
In Asako, too, education was in the ascendant. Gill Marshall- Andrews’s Trust for African Schools had agreed to assist Asako’s secondary school in Garissa. This meant that children born in Asako would attend a well-funded primary school in Asako and could then go on to Garissa to continue their education; the Trust was also helping with bursaries – attending school a hundred miles from home is not cheap.
After a lot of rushing around in the early part of the year I managed to break my collarbone in several places by falling off my motorbike on the way back from a picnic. After all the wrestling with lions and relocating rhinos, I managed to do myself serious damage trying to avoid a rabbit! In serious pain, I had to be medivaced to Nairobi and operated on immediately. It was by far the worst injury that I had endured since I was chewed up by Shyman in the seventies and eventually took three operations to put right. For the rest of the year I had to wear a sling and was unable to pick things up with my left arm. The guys at camp hated it because I was always in and out of the workshop, tidying up and, for the first time in years, focusing on rebuilding the camp and bringing it back up to the standards of the rhino sanctuary.
They were much relieved when we went on a family holiday for the first time in years. My great friend Rick Anderson of AFEW, who had helped us so much in Kora and Asako, lent us his beach cottage at Malindi and we spent long hours swimming in the sea, lounging around the house and going for long walks on the beach. Malindi is now very much in the twenty-first century but it has retained the charm that so drew me to it when I used to camp out on PA and Agneta’s sofa, swim out to the break with Attila the surfing dog and pick up girls on the beach in the evenings. And it was in Malindi that I had had the fateful call from George asking if I’d like to come and help him at Kora.
Despite the constant pain in my shoulder I was much refreshed when I returned to Mkomazi and a similar call from Mark Cheru- yiot, the warden in Kora. Mark had been down to visit earlier in the year and had looked at what we had achieved in Mkomazi. He must have been impressed because when he returned in September with Robert Njue, a senior officer, it was an official visit on behalf of the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service. On the night before he left, we had a long chat by the campfire outside the mess tent and Mark asked Lucy and me formally if we would move back to Kora and continue the work I had left off in 1989. I was dumbfounded. And quietly excited.
The excitement grew when the invitation was backed up by the director – in person. Lucy and I went to see Julius Kipn’getich at his headquarters in Nairobi. He repeated it, and we went on to discuss rhino sanctuaries, outreach programmes and the thing I really wanted to do: lion and leopard reintroduction. It truly looked as though a return to Kora might be on the cards. They even wanted to put up a statue of George and start a museum at our old camp.
We had dinner with Steve and Pauline Kalonzo Musyoka, who were just as keen for us to return. Steve had just become vice president so his ever-present support was now even more valuable. There was, however, a lot to think about. Lucy and I were very happy in Mkomazi. We had brought all our kids up there. It was safe, we had good friends and we had built up a wonderful team. On the other hand, although we had been there for almost twenty years, it remained pretty stressful living under insecure conditions, always facing mysterious delays with our work permits and memorandums of understanding with the wildlife authorities. We knew TANAPA would be better for Mkomazi and its wildlife – but would TANAPA be better for us?
We would soon find out for during September the handover finally took place and Mkomazi at last became a national park. It was just around the time that Barack Obama – a fellow exiled Kenyan! – became President of the United States. It was as if the whole world had turned over a new leaf. The TANAPA rangers soon started patrolling and the Wildlife Division rangers were moved out. The new rangers were immediately effective and by the end of t
he year there were hardly any cattle in the park. It wasn’t all perfect, though. In fact, in many ways it was a total disaster. In September the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) changed its rules overnight in a way that could well have bankrupted the Trust. We were not alone – the TRA targeted every charity and non-governmental organization working in Tanzania – but that didn’t make it any better. Until 2008 we had been granted a tax exemption on any equipment we used to help the government restore Mkomazi. Since tax on imports is extremely high in Tanzania, this made a huge difference to our operations. Withdrawing our exemption meant that we suddenly had to pay tax on gifts. Right then we had two extremely expensive gifts just arriving at the port in Dar es Salaam, the two rally-built Suzuki Vitaras that I had seen and been given by the Suzuki Rhino Club in the Netherlands the previous year. They were worth a fortune: to pay tax on them would cripple the Tanzanian Trust.
Elisaria and our trustee Bernard Mchomvu were in and out of government offices trying to obtain an exemption since the cars had been given to us long before the tax laws were changed while they were on the high seas. The problem was made doubly difficult and urgent since the port authorities wouldn’t release the cars until the tax had been paid. They charged us port fees for every day we left them there. We despaired of ever sorting the problem out and, indeed, it was another four months before we did. In the end, the government agreed to pay the tax but we had to pay the port fees. It’s lucky they turned out to be such fabulous cars for all the trouble they caused! Ted van Dam’s mechanics will come out in 2010 to check them and train Fred.
The Suzukis were not the only financial problem we had. Like everyone else in the world, we have been seriously affected by the recession that started to bite at the start of 2009. Many of our donors were having problems. Expansion seemed even more daunting: some of our longest-standing supporters have been obliged to reduce their funding or pull out completely. On the whole, though, we have been pretty fortunate since we now have institutional donors, like the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and US Fish and Wildlife.
Lucy and I were still not sure what to do about the Kora question. I desperately wanted to go back to the place I loved but I was very torn as I loved Mkomazi too and I had responsibilities as a husband, a father and an employer. I couldn’t just cut and run as I had in 1989. In March we took the children up to Kora to see if it would help us decide. Imogen and Tilly were nine and just about to go off to school as well, so we wanted to spend some time together as a family before Lucy and I were left alone. A lot of people don’t ‘get’ Kora – it’s as hot as hell and never easy or gentle. Thank heavens the children did. We had a wonderful safari, camping under the stars. I showed them where Christian and I had slept away the afternoons down by the river. I took them to the places I had lived with thirty lions and ten leopards. We visited Kampi ya Chui where I had stayed with Squeaks and Bugsy. We went to George’s grave and slept at the foot of Kora Rock where I had spent so many happy years. I really think at last they understood me a little better as the strands of their childhood stories came together.
It became much easier for them to imagine my life when I was in my twenties and thirties after they had seen the place where Shyman had tried to kill me and they had driven up the hill towards Kampi ya Simba, aiming the car’s bonnet at the three great rocks that you can see from miles away. I hope, now they understand a bit more, they can forgive me for being the oldest father at the school gates. Jemima was doing brilliantly at Pembroke and was soon to run in the Kenyan national stadium. We would miss the twins terribly but we knew that Jemima would look after them at school. But who was going to look after Mukka? I had bumped into the headmaster of Stowe, the English public school, at a friend’s house a few years earlier and he had told me about the bursaries offered there. Mukka had done his bit and passed Common Entrance and now he was about to go to school five thousand kilometres from home. I don’t know who was more upset at the prospect – me or Lucy. Mukka, though, took it in his stride and is now doing brilliantly at the world’s most beautiful school. There was two foot of snow on the eighteenth-century palace when we sent him back this time, unaccompanied on the plane from Dar es Salaam.
Our visit to Kora helped us make a lot of decisions. We would get Kora going again and we would try to start another lion and leopard project there but it would not be at any cost to Mkomazi, which was in the best of hands while we were away. We would do both. Lucy and I were going to need a hell of a lot of help but we would get there – one step at a time. On our last night at Kora we spent the evening with three of the guys who, we knew, would help us – senior warden Mark Cheruyiot, Kora warden Joseph Nyongesa and Kenya Wildlife Service pilot Samwel Muchina. All three were from different tribes and different areas. High fliers all, they were on their way up. And they weren’t afraid. They shared a love of their country and a commitment to making it a better place that transcended any tribal barrier. We discussed the political situation and they told us of their plans for their own futures and for the future of their nation. And my family sat there with them, flipping back and forth between fluent Swahili and English, accepted and welcome in the place where I had grown up. My God, I was proud of them.
We’ve made great strides forward since that holiday in Kora, but that was the turning point. We’ve completely rebuilt George’s old camp and we’re well ahead with our plans for a visitors’ centre and study camp. The chain-link fence that I was worried would not be strong enough to keep out the lions has stood the test of time. The camp has been burnt down and abandoned, rained on and scorched by the sun, but the wire still holds. We just put up some more posts, buried the wire three feet down, curled it over with rocks on top and stapled it back on. Bob and Gill have given us a set of encyclopedias just like Terence’s old ones, and Fred and I rebuilt the huts using Terence’s old method of chucking cement at a sheet of hessian. We’ve made another elephant-jaw loo seat like the one Prince Bern- hard loved and I’ve even found the same ugly vinyl tablecloth that we used to have. The only visible difference is the seating arrangements. Now I sit in George’s chair! And it still feels a bit weird!
The work we are doing in Kora, though, is not just cosmetic and retrograde. Lucy and I decided that a simple return to Kora was pointless. If we were going anywhere we must be moving forwards, not backwards. Fred and I have put in a solar system under the antiques; we have a water filtration plant instead of the old diatomite candles, and a container for a workshop. We’re fixing the roads and making plans to build an historical education centre at the proposed tourist camp. We need to put in a radio network for our own security and see if the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority will make it easy for us to bring the aircraft back and forth from Tanzania. At the moment we have to apply well in advance for permission to fly into Kenya, then fly over the Pare Mountains and land at Kilimanjaro International to clear Customs. We get airborne again and fly on to Nairobi between Mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru. We land at Nairobi where we have to clear Customs again and pay our dues. Then we fill in more forms and fly on to Kora, past Ol Donyo Sabuk and over the Tana hydro dams, the dryness of Ukambani. It takes most of the day and is exhausting.
We need to employ full-time staff and temporary labourers to work on the road and camps at Kora. We have to involve nearby communities, provide employment and make people love and believe in our projects as we do. Mark Cheruyiot is spearheading the effort from the Kenya Wildlife Service side, and we’re making huge progress. In Asako we’re mending the windmill that Prince Bernhard paid for and digging a little deeper to where the fresh water is. Trusts for African Schools have put a new roof on the school and built good housing for the teachers to make sure they stay in the area and don’t go off to the towns eighty miles away. The elephant are back in Kora too. The other day I flew down the river with my old friend Mike Harries (the priest who married Lucy and me). We’d been checking the windmill in Asako and attending a trustees’ meeting at the school in Garissa with Maalim Sho
ra. As the sun started to weaken at the close of the day, we flew low along the twisting Tana and surprised a large herd of elephant playing on a sand bar not far from camp. We saw lion tracks by Christian’s Crossing and there were plenty of water-buck, lesser kudu, gerenuk, bushbuck and dik-dik. It’s taken a terrible thrashing over the years but Kora now has a warden who cares and we’re going to help him every step of the way.
Things are looking good in Mkomazi too. We’ve had more births in the sanctuary and in mid-2009 we brought in three more rhino from the Czech Republic. Ted van Dam and the Suzuki Rhino Club in the Netherlands sponsored the translocation but even he balked at paying the Tanzanian government $60,000 in Customs duty on priceless endangered animals that we were giving to the nation. This time we took it to the top and explained to the commissioner of Customs that the rhinos had no financial value. Erasmus Tarimo, the director of Wildlife, reminded Customs it was illegal for them to charge on endangered species on CITES permits. The exemption was granted and came through four days before the translocation but we thought we’d better cover ourselves anyway. We paid the $340 import tax on their meat value!
It was a great and happy day when the rhinos arrived, this time by truck from Kilimanjaro airport, Pete Morkel as ever jumping about on the crates, keeping the rhinos just sleepy enough to do themselves no damage. Brigadier Mbita and Rose Lugembe flew into Mkomazi to greet the director of Wildlife, our trustees and the director general of TANAPA. Mkomazi is now a fully operational national park and the Trust has a great relationship with TANAPA. Just the other day I met some of their board members and asked them if we had a future at Mkomazi or if they wanted us to look for an exit strategy.
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