Born Wild (41 page)

I smelt her first. After all her hundreds of miles of roaming, Nina had come back to camp to give birth to her second calf. But she had died while delivering. The smell and the buzzing of flies guided us to the spot where she had died. The calf had been wrongly presented and had become stuck in her birth canal. Poor Nina – she wasn't old in elephant terms and had had many years of roaming left in her. We could have done nothing for her but it would have been nice to be with her as she died or even to put her out of her misery. Semu and I did a quick autopsy – our tears washing away the blood amid the stink of death. However many times an animal that's been close to you dies, it's always shock- ingly painful. I have never
mastered the ability to be unaffected by it and I don't want to. It's part of what keeps me going. Nina was an individual to us – we knew her habits, her funny ways, when she would compromise and when we shouldn't mess with her – but the death of any elephant upsets me. There are not enough of them left for me to be able to look lightly upon even one. That evening, Lucy and I walked down to the airstrip in the evening, both of us feeling sad, as though a part of our lives had been taken away. We watched as thirty elephant crossed silently in front of us and I vividly recalled the day George and I had watched a herd cross the Tana from Kora and pull themselves out on the Meru side. He had asked me then how long I wanted to stay at Kora. I should have replied, ‘A lifetime.' It was what I'd felt even then.

There was no time for reminiscing, though, or moping over the loss of one of our friends. We had given Nina a good life and we had problems with the wild-dog reintroductions. With the perversity we had observed in them before, they were soon leaving the safety of Mkomazi to raid goats in nearby villages. They had discovered a taste for them as a result of illegal grazing but that argument held little water with the pastoralists on our borders. We pleaded with them not to put down poison and, with Salum Lusasi, agreed compensation terms but the dogs were soon killed. Since then we have done all our releases on the Kenyan border – in the middle of the protected areas of Tsavo and Mkomazi – but wild dog roam so widely that all we can do is hope for the best. So far, so good.

Overall, I suppose a little more than half of our wild-dog reintroductions have been successful – not much of a success rate for all the effort but a lot better than nothing and comparable to survival rates in the wild. There are so few ecosystems in Africa that remain good for wild-dog packs, but Mkomazi/Tsavo is one of those areas so we are obliged to try to help them. We breed them, vaccinate them,
patiently wait a year until the first-born group of pups helps raise the next litter, translocate them to holding
bomas
on the Kenya border, then reintroduce them to the wild and help them if they need feeding. It sounds simple but the work behind doing that is enormous and can be very wearing. We saw that when all but three of the first batch of dogs died. And trying to find an effective vaccination programme had almost been Aart's life work. When – through brilliant detective work and close collaboration with Erasmus University and Professor Osterhaus – he pioneered a new method, it took years to get permission to bring the vaccines into Tanzania.

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 the 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.