Born Wild (37 page)

Elisaria has always been integral to our work in Mkomazi but, more and more, he was becoming crucial to the Trust's work outside the reserve. He had built up the outreach programme to a point at which he was helping to upgrade dozens of schools. We decided about this time that we also needed to be doing things another way. If we could bring the school children into Mkomazi, like the students at Mweka, they would have a much better and less abstract understanding of what we were doing and how that could help the country. It is always a surprise to outsiders how few Africans visit game reserves and national parks; it is a tiny percentage of the population.
We were slowly coming to realize that one short visit to Mkomazi would be ten times as effective as one long lecture in a classroom many miles away.

Another part of our strategy was trying to make Mkomazi pay. Of course, it paid for itself in preservation of wilderness and species terms but there was no reason why it shouldn't also have a cash income. After all the years of trying, we still didn't have very much tourism. A few intrepid visitors came every month but Mkomazi just didn't have the facilities to attract larger groups. It was hard to get to and not very rewarding for the kind of travellers who just wanted to tick off the Big Five and move on. We had a great discussion about the problem with Pete Silvester and the local MP,John Singo. Pete had recently set up the muchneeded Kenyan Professional Guides Association and thought it would be a good thing to have in Tanzania. We talked about setting up a guiding school and study centre at Mkomazi and even got to the stage of deciding where to put it. Seven years later we haven't pulled it off but we're still trying. We always try anything that might bring in revenue for the government and raise our profile both within and without the country. It always pays off in increased recognition and respectability but sometimes achieves even more.

In early 2002 the collaborative artists Olly and Suzi came in to paint the wild dogs. It was the fifth time they had come and was a perfect example of how it's always valuable to put ourselves out to raise the profile of our projects. Olly and Suzi don't mind getting their hands dirty and have done some wonderful work with the dogs, producing fabulous paintings that capture the very life force of their subjects. They have become close friends as well as seriously raising the dogs' profile with their beautiful two- handed paintings. They have painted together for years and have not painted a solo canvas since art college. Extremely famous and successful, they have exhibited work done at Mkomazi in London and New York, and have
invited me to talk with them at the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute and the Natural History Museum. It has been a lot of fun, but also a great way of disseminating the importance of our work to a completely new sector of society, one with which we had no previous contact at all.

While they were staying I was asked to go to Arusha by a friend to give a talk to a group of car dealers from Holland. I thought that might be pushing friendship too far so, as I drove the five hours to Arusha, I was feeling a bit put upon and ‘Why me?' Nevertheless, I gave them a talk and was about to drive home when their leader, Ted van Dam, gave me a cheque for 15,000 euros. I couldn't believe it. And since that time the Netherlands Suzuki Rhino Club has covered almost all the running costs of the rhino sanctuary as well as giving us some wonderful cars and quad bikes. We now have little Suzukis that are not only fun to drive but they go anywhere for half the running costs of the big Land Cruisers and Land Rovers that we use to move more people or heavy equipment. The dealers and staff of the company have been immensely supportive and are keen to make sure the project works. It saves me a lot of running around the world looking for funds. This was a telling example of how it behoves us to get out and spread the word that the world's wildernesses require protection. We can't just sit there and enjoy them on our own. The rewards are not always as spectacular, and we don't expect them to be, but every time we have a chance to tell someone about the perils faced by the world's wildlife we should do so.

It's not just in the rich world where these messages are important. If anything, it is more important closer to home. When people in Tanzania – who have to live with dangerous animals on their doorstep – don't appreciate their worth, our projects face a constant battle. Initially a sceptic, John Singo MP helped us a huge amount with getting our message across to as many Tanzanians as possible. By
encouraging us to publicize our donations to communities living near Mkomazi he has helped to safeguard its future. We used to assist local schools by giving them cement or helping them to build dormitories and classrooms. It was just something we did for our neighbours rather than something we shouted about. John persuaded us that we should do both. He started giving rousing speeches whenever we did something for a local school or church. When we helped build a new secondary school in Same, we all went along to the opening and the minister for natural resources and tourism, Zakia Meghji, gave a great speech about George, about the Trust's work in Kora and Mkomazi and how we were bringing jobs and money to the area. Elisaria and Lusasi were happy to see that our work was being appreciated, that there were only a few bad guys trying to make life hard for us and that most people thought we were doing a good job.

Another way of getting the word out within Tanzania was when rangers from other parks came to see how we did things at Mkomazi's rhino sanctuary. Even though we hadn't known much about rhinos when we started, we had managed to create a sanctuary that is used as a model in Tanzania and beyond. The professional interaction with other rangers and wildlife guardians was just as useful as the visits from Mweka College that had been going on for so many years. In 2003 rangers visited from the vast Selous Game Reserve and, even more excitingly, a few months later the national parks authority sent in twelve of their rhino rangers from the Serengeti – the very people we wanted to come into Mkomazi. This was recognition and appreciation on a wholly different level.

It remains hard to surf the wave between travelling to spread the word and actually getting things done. I was lucky to have such a good team at Mkomazi that I could do things like visit the Czech Republic, as I did that year, 2003, secure in the knowledge that everything would carry
on without me. There was a zoo there with East African black rhinos and I spent years persuading its board that they should come home to Mkomazi. There was already a lot for our staff to look after. Badger was still in very poor condition and Pete Morkel could not understand what was wrong with him. There was a possibility that he couldn't masticate his food properly so Pete flew in a horse dentist from Zimbabwe who filed his enormous rhino teeth down. Badger had to be lightly sedated, sat upon by six men to hold him steady then worked on by the resolute horse dentist. It was a horrid job for all concerned – particularly Badger – and sadly made little difference. Badger was fading. Semu had to organize people to be with him twenty-four hours a day and we were spending a fortune on feeding him supplements just to keep him alive.

One of the aspects of helping animals that I try to get across when I give speeches and meet people is that it's not always fun. It's wonderful being in the bush but queuing for permits and listening to academics at conferences is torture. Even trying to help Badger was hard work and ultimately not very rewarding. The same can also be said of caring for Spike, the serval cat, a beautiful long-legged cub that our friends Charlie and Serena Mason gave us after he was orphaned on their farm. We always stay with them when we're in Arusha and they come to Mkomazi when they can. Spike was no purring kitten that liked having his tummy rubbed. Indeed, he had been called Spike only because he was so difficult. He hissed at anyone who came within twenty feet but we couldn't let him free until he was old enough and large enough to look after himself.

Dickson Kaaya, who was helping to raise our children, was put in charge of Spike's welfare and devoted many hours to him, including feeding him two large birds a day – in vain. Spike hated Dickson even more than he disliked the rest of us. He was a spectacularly effective killer but he needed a bit of help at the start. Once he had got the
hang of catching and eating his own food, he played with his prey then dismembered it with a peculiarly sinister relish. His room, which was also our bathroom, came to look like a voodoo torture chamber with blood and feathers daubed all over the walls, viscera and fur on the floor. One morning I stepped gingerly over the threshold to brush my teeth, expecting to be pounced on by the hissing ball of rage. I was relieved to see a Spike-shaped hole in the mosquito mesh. He had gone without a backward glance. We saw him a few times over the next couple of years but never if he saw us first. He hated us way too much.

Spike's nemesis, Dickson, was absolutely brilliant at looking after the kids. It was always embarrassing that when we took them for walks they would return covered with cuts and bruises. With Dickson no harm ever befell them. But he had it pretty easy compared to the guys out in the reserve where elephant, rhino and lion roamed. We had a very nasty shock in August when Mollel, one of the rhino-sanctuary team who had been with us from the beginning, was attacked by a buffalo. The poachers had been hard at work in Mkomazi and the buffalo's testicles had been ripped off in a snare. Understandably this had driven it mad with rage. Mollel was badly gored but we managed to fly him to Moshi in time and he made a remarkable recovery. He fared much better than the poor emasculated buffalo, who was put out of his misery by one of our security team.

Dramas like the one with Mollel are inevitable when you are living far out in the bush, surrounded by nature at its most red, but they became a lot more easily manageable over the years as our communications systems clawed its way into the modern world. From the days when we used to have to drive to Arusha to use the telex machine things had moved on apace. We now had a radio linked up to a phone in a friend's office sixty miles away. It meant that we could make phone calls without driving to Same, and when Mollel
was hurt, we were able to alert the hospital that we needed to be met at the airport by an ambulance. The improvement in communications made us feel much better about having the kids with us, although I'm not sure Lucy agreed on the day we discovered a spitting cobra in the schoolhouse.

My flying had been significantly helped by technology too. We hadn't realized quite how invaluable the global positioning system all pilots were now using had become until America and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003. Rumours circulated around the flying community that the GPS system would be turned off or made inaccurate so as not to ‘give succour to the enemy'. It's astonishing to think how much my life has been changed by the GPS: I would literally be lost without mine, although I always have a map as a back-up.

Just before Saddam Hussein was captured in December, Badger had another incident. His back legs gave way as he was drinking and he collapsed into his water trough. For two whole days the staff down in the rhino sanctuary had to try to keep him upright with ropes. Pete Morkel – who was now based with his family in nearby Ngorongoro Crater – flew in to have a look at him but didn't hold out much hope for his recovery. Sadly he was right. Two months later Badger collapsed again at that grimmest of all hours, four o'clock in the morning. He had fallen over, been pulled up again with ropes, then immediately fallen over again. In the cold darkness he gave up after his long struggle with illness and died with his head in Semu's arms at eight thirty a.m. The only consolation was that he had died on home soil, but it was a miserable end for a lovely and trusting animal that had struggled so bravely with years of illness. I remembered the happy day when he had first arrived and the kids had been able to feed him by hand. Indeed, some of the sanctuary staff continued to do so until his death.

Pete came in and did an autopsy where Badger had died in the middle of the sanctuary.
The top rhino vet in the world, he was worried that the autopsy needed to be done as quickly as possible, so instead of messing around waiting for the right equipment, he did the whole thing with a Leatherman pocket-knife. There are so many prima donnas in the wildlife world who wouldn't dream of doing things the rough and ready way, but if Pete hadn't done the autopsy then, we would have been unable to do it at all. We at Mkomazi and Kora have been incredibly lucky to have people like Pete and Aart coming out to help us over the years. And when, later in the year, Aart resigned from looking after the wild-dog programme, Pete immediately took his place. Now Pete has moved to a home in Namibia and has a roaming rhino practice but before he left us he worked with the capable Tanzanian vets who have taken his place.

In the course of Badger's alfresco autopsy, Pete discovered trauma to his spinal cord that was likely to have been caused by an injury sustained while he was in South Africa. He felt that this was probably behind all Badger's mysterious illnesses over the years. Pete had been unable to save him – but if he couldn't save him then nobody could. I wish we had been told early on that Badger's mother had been killed by an elephant and that Badger had possibly been injured at the same time. We might not have saved him but it would have helped in our diagnosis.

As always happens in the natural world when it is sufficiently protected, new life soon replaces the old. Nina had disappeared almost a year earlier and we had all given up hope of ever seeing her again. After six years of freedom, her radio collar had long ago been dumped or fallen off and we hadn't been able to track her down despite my flying all over Mkomazi searching for her while checking on illegal activity for Lusasi. There were all sorts of threats to elephants in Mkomazi and in neighbouring Tsavo. We thought that she might have succumbed to the drought or to the increase in poaching on both sides of the border. Nina had become a great part of our
lives since that monumental move in 1997 and we all missed her. Then, just as Badger was facing his final illness, and after nearly a year away, she strolled into camp and came up to the workshop to say hello. She was looking fat and healthy although there was still plenty of room for the children to feed her a few bananas. Just a couple of days later we discovered why. On the night before England won the rugby world cup, Nina put her trunk through Elisaria's window at four in the morning and encouraged him to come outside. There, between her legs, was a newly born calf. She had come home so that she could have her son in safety. One memorable drop goal later, we decided to call him Jonny Wilkinson in honour of England's cup-winning fly-half.