Born Wild (36 page)

We now had eight rhinos living in the sanctuary, all named, I should add, by their former keepers in South Africa. One of them, Elvis, spent his whole time either picking fights or looking
for them. Badger was not at all well and, despite many visits from Pete Morkel, we still couldn't work out what was wrong with him. We had wormed him, given him antibiotics and special food, but he was still failing to digest properly and was fast losing muscle condition. Our main concern with the rhinos, however, was their security. The Wildlife Division rangers with whom our security teams were obliged to work were becoming ever more slack and manipulative. They had stopped wearing their uniforms, often didn't turn up for work and were always disappearing with the keys to the sanctuary gate. Sadly Lusasi seemed unable to recall them to their duty. Once when Pete Morkel – whom they all knew – flew in from South Africa to check Badger, the Wildlife Division guards at the rhino sanctuary refused to let him in. The atmosphere was ever more unpleasant.

When we heard news from Danny Woodley in Tsavo that their poaching problems were increasing we became extremely worried. There is no fence between Tsavo and Mkomazi so if the well-trained paramilitary anti-poaching teams in Tsavo were losing rhinos to poachers, then our ill-trained and badly led Wildlife Division rangers would be no match for them. It was a great credit to our security teams that they managed to maintain security in the sanctuary and protect the rhinos from the ever-present threat. We've not lost one to poachers yet but it remains a worry.

Another worry was more personal. We now had four children running wild in Mkomazi. There are risks to living in the bush, like snakes, disease and skin cancer, but they were living a wonderful life of adventure and fun. Like the rhinos, they were free to roam within certain boundaries and were always watched over by our extended family. Dickson, Isaya and Happy Ndaskoi all took time to watch out for them and taught them how to do whatever they were up to. We decided, however, that they were going to need more if they were ever to survive in the world outside Mkomazi. By the age of four Mukka could make and shoot an
excellent bow and arrow and he spoke two languages but he needed some more formal education. Gill Marshall-Andrews, ever the educator, put an advertisement for a tutor in the
Times Educational Supplement.
It started, ‘Looking for Something Different?' And it produced excellent results. Over the next seven years we had six sets of teachers who managed to get the children up to a standard at which they could start boarding school at nearly nine in Kenya.

We were thinking ahead on that front too. My education had been incredibly important to me – an opportunity to do something different and surprising with my life. We decided early on that, although we would love to have them with us throughout their childhood, it would be cruel not to give our children the best chance we could. Palle and Caroline Rune had given us a wonderful wedding present of a plot in Naivasha near where I had first met Joy. It was the only thing in the whole world that we owned and we love them for it. Even more brilliant, the plot was just a few miles from an excellent school where the kids could go from seven to thirteen. We were already used to having to drive thousand-kilometre round trips to buy spare parts and Parmesan so an i,ioo-kilometre school run would be child's play. Bob and Gill Marshall-Andrews offered to build two houses on our plot, one for them and one for us. It would be a joint company in trust for all of our children. Over the next couple of years our plot above Lake Naivasha was furnished with houses for both families, and a tasty garden has come up where buffalo still roam. And we can take the kids out from school whenever we want.

Bob and Gill came out to make plans for the houses in the middle of 2002 and came down to Mkomazi with some friends. Princess Michael of Kent came out shortly afterwards and she didn't bat an eyelid, flying around in my rather battered old aircraft. The princess was wonderful at enthusing people about our projects. They were all happy to see how well everything
was going. The rhinos, except poor Badger, were thriving. Nina was in and out of camp whenever she felt like it, and Jipe had become a brilliant hunter, capable of taking down oryx and eland as well as easier game, like impala. We were all worried, though, by the mixed signals emanating from parts of the Wildlife Division. The permanent secretary had written to us to say what a great job we were doing but at the same time we were being given no help with our work permits and, of course, the Wildlife Division employees in the reserve were appalling. It was ever more important that Mkomazi was raised to national park status. This would offer a much higher degree of protection and we hoped that TANAPA – the national parks authority – would be much easier to deal with.

Bob and I put together an advocacy campaign. We would work and push for national park status for Mkomazi while diverting some of our efforts towards Kora and its reconstruction. After all, we were the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust. It seemed like the perfect time to do it. At the end of 2002 there was a new government in Kenya and a new ambition to reclaim the country from the bandits and thieves. We would take advantage of it to help Asako and Kora, the places George had loved most. And some significant advantages had just come into play. My great friend and trustee Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka was a key member of the new government and, even better, my old friend Mike Wamalwa was vice president. But would the two of them be able to help us with our ambitions for Kora?

11. No Free Parking

My old partner in
the Mateus Rosé venture Mike Wamalwa never managed to serve Kenya as he would have wished. Aged only fifty-eight, he died in a London hospital just eight months into his vice-presidency. Heartbreaking as it was, it was important to celebrate his life and achievements rather than bemoan his early departure. It was magnificent that Mike had managed to achieve the ambition he had professed to then Vice President Daniel arap Moi when we had met him in Parliament all those years ago. ‘I'm after your job,' Mike had said to the professor of politics. And he got it. I was very proud of my old drinking partner and I resolved to make him proud of me by concentrating more of our efforts on the Kenya we both loved. At the same time as pushing for Mkomazi to become a national park, we would work on restoring Kora to its former glory. Keen to help me in that goal was my other great friend in Kenyan politics, Foreign Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka.

Now a trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, Steve was as anxious as I to get Kora up and running again. I took full advantage of the goodwill that his interest stimulated. And this was a time of great goodwill, with the whole Kenyan population believing that the dark days were over. Policemen soliciting bribes at roadblocks were beaten up and stripped by angry drivers chanting, ‘Corruption is over.' If only it had lasted.

In those early months of Kenya's new regime, we put in a lot of hours on the plane, flying up and down to Kora. Thank God, Fred Ayo was always meticulous when looking after it. Early in the year I had good reason
to thank him for his professionalism. It is obligatory in East African countries to have your aircraft checked by the authorities every seventy-five flying hours or ninety days, and because we were so remote Fred always went over the plane both before and after we sent it off to be checked. When I was flying the plane back from its January Check III tests I noticed a vibration while I was in the air. Fred stripped back the cowling as soon as I landed and started poking around in the engine to see what was wrong; I thought maybe there was a loose engine bearer somewhere. He soon discovered that the maintenance facility had failed to tighten all the nuts when putting the propeller back on. Once again Fred had saved the day.

When you are living in the bush, such obsessive checking and rechecking is not always life-saving but it is still very important. Fred is inherently meticulous and he caught the rest off me. It's one of the great lessons I'd learnt from Terence and George in the early days at Kora. When you live in a tiny camp built on sand where there are snakes and scorpions under everything, silverfish to eat all your documents, rats to steal the food, leaking roofs, lizards and thieving fan-tailed ravens, it makes sense to keep everything neatly in tin trunks or metal boxes. Terence only had one suit, which he would seal up by soldering it into a four- gallon paraffin container. On the rare occasions that he needed it, he would break it out with a hacksaw then weld it back in again the next day, clean and ready for the next funeral.

If you weren't careful, everything in the workshop at Kora used to fall into the sand and get lost. Springs would fly out of automatic pistols during maintenance so I always spread sheets out when I was cleaning them. It was at Kora that I started nailing the lids of screw and nail jars to the underside of shelves so they could be undone by turning the glass bottom and were always where I could find them. The diaries I used to write this book only survived because I sealed them in a tin trunk where they languished for decades.
As we were given ever more sophisticated equipment it was important both to look after it and to make sure it didn't stray. In Mkomazi we have six airtight shipping containers with racks and shelves where everything has its place. There are stencilled crime-scene outlines round every tool so you can see where something belongs or if anything is missing. Even with the most cursory of glances I notice if something is not where it should be, and if one of the mechanics needs a tool I can tell him exactly where it is.

A few years ago, Lucy was in England and I was at home listening to a World Service programme on which Tony Benn was being interviewed. I have no idea what he was going on about but I did hear the interviewer drawing amused attention to the fact that everything in his office was labelled. We were meant to join with the presenter to laugh
at
the veteran politician but when he said he couldn't live without his Brother labeller, I got on the phone immediately and asked Lucy to buy me one. Now everything I own has been Benned so I always know which phone I'm using, when the car needs servicing or what a dusty drawer contains. I have the same problem with rubbish. Stanley Murithii, my predecessor with the lions at Kora, was killed beyond the rubbish dump, Shade the lion got Terence in the dump and almost my last sight of the world was the very same rubbish dump when Shyman tried to kill me. I now recycle or burn everything in a huge pit, then bury the remains really deep.

Kampi ya Simba was filthy when I started going back there regularly. There were tins and bottles lying all over the place, a vivid example of how rubbish doesn't just go away but hangs around for generations. The first thing we had to do when we started rebuilding was clean up all the garbage and dispose of it outside the reserve. I now had two full-time jobs – one in Kora, the other in Mkomazi. Life at Mkomazi continues, and although Lucy takes a lot of work off my hands, it is still the major project demanding most of my
time and funding. Lucy handles all Mkomazi's administration, the newsletters and the dog programmes, and we now have a staff of forty-five to help us out. Nevertheless, there is always as much work as you have time for. There were at least some new members of the Mkomazi family to remind us of what we were doing there. Zacharia had seen Jipe mating a few times and we knew that she was pregnant but we were not sure that she would reach full term as she had aborted a litter the year before. In January 2003, however, she gave us all a great treat. She had three tiny, still spotted cubs each about the size of a domestic cat. Two were playful and brave but, sadly, the smallest female died almost immediately.

Jipe had become very well known in the area around Mkomazi and after she gave birth the most unlikely people would offer us their congratulations just as they had when our kids had arrived. Shopkeepers in Same and Arusha would say, ‘Well done,' as though we had done something clever. It was charming but also a sea change in people's attitudes. Very soon after she had given birth, Ombeni led me to Jipe, who collected her cubs and dumped them at my feet. Still with their blue eyes closed, they were in pretty poor condition but they were feisty and lively. We were inordinately proud of her. We cured the cubs of mange and immediately treated them for worms, which would give them a much better chance of survival. They were feeding well and in much better health than Freddie the lion had been when I'd first seen him all those years ago in the army mess at Garissa so I had plenty of confidence. Jipe, though, was going to have to do a lot of work on her own. Solitary lionesses struggle to bring up their cubs as it is both dangerous to leave them when hunting and hard to hunt alone. Jipe, however, was a great hunter and, with a lot of help from Zacharia and a bit from me, she took it all in her sinuous stride. The cubs soon began to grow and thrive.

The new life in Mkomazi seemed to symbolize our greater ambitions for the reserve.
Jipe was not the only lioness breeding there. The lion population was recovering from the terrible effects of the ‘sport' hunting and elephant numbers were going up too. We kept on pushing for Mkomazi to be elevated to a national park and were gratified to be receiving plenty of support. The Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA) – like the Kenya Wildlife Service – is a vibrant organization with proper management and clear lines of command. In Tanzania, national park status offers the highest level of resource protection available so it was logical that this should be our goal. In addition, we did everything else we could to keep Mkomazi at the top of the conservation agenda. I was particularly pleased to hear that Mweka College of Wildlife Management was now teaching a course about our work at Mkomazi. We had been hosting each class of students for years. Every term they would come out to Mkomazi so I could give them my ‘Make mistakes and learn from them' speech, but for them to be teaching our methods was a signal honour. Since I had first arrived in Tanzania, I had always encouraged our guys to make mistakes and own up to them so that we could all learn from them. It was incredibly flattering that, twelve years later, I could leave Elisaria to host the Mweka students – I hear he gives them pretty much the same speech as I do, if with a lot less cursing.