Born Wild (42 page)

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 Shora. 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.

‘Tony,' they said, ‘the board of TANAPA are very happy with your investment here in Mkomazi and we would like you to continue for as long as is practical and possible.'

It was great to hear it said
out loud. Over the twenty years we have been at Mkomazi we have had all sorts of problems with individuals but the central relationship between us and the government has always been good. The authorities have always let me get on and do the job in the field. They trust us and the Tanzanians who work here to do the best we can for the wildlife and the area. I am extremely grateful to them for giving me the chance. Brigadier Mbita has announced his intention to step down as chairman as soon as the agreement with TANAPA is signed so they can take as long as they like: we don't want to let him go.

The great thing about both our projects is that they are vibrant and flourishing and moving forward. The wild dogs continue to breed, we continue to vaccinate, wait a generation and then release them. The rhino sanctuary is a going concern with a viable population from various gene pools. The rhinos are breeding, there's no fighting and they browse happily away – being rhinos in the place where they belong. More importantly, we have trained up an entire team of people at Mkomazi to know how to run a game sanctuary, look after the most valuable animals in the world and bring a species back from the edge of extinction. I'm not redundant yet but I'm working on it.

Of course I'm desperate to have some more lions or leopards in Kora and it will come. Julius Kipn'getich told me the other day I have his blessing. And we are going to train up a new team in Kora. I had some great people working for me in George's day but I didn't manage them as well as I should have done. I didn't give them enough chances to make mistakes and I didn't help them to exceed their expectations. I'm so proud of my team in Mkomazi – Elisaria and Fred at Headquarters and Semu and Sangito with the animals. And they have brought on teams of their own too. I want to do the same again in Kora and I know George will be watching over me as I do.

In earlier days, my constant urge to keep going forward may have prevented me from reflecting
enough on the past. Now I try to do both. I was asked by a film crew the other day why it had taken me so long to go back to where George had been killed. I was with Ibrahim Mursa, a Kenya Wildlife Service game scout from Asako, who was the driver of the first vehicle on the scene after the ambush. The reporter asked why I was writing a book and taking so much time to look back when normally I only looked forwards. I didn't know how to answer for a while but then said that I felt I had to reflect on the past a little more responsibly. They asked me what I'd learnt or found out. I recalled the carefully prepared words of Winston Churchill that George had once read out to me: ‘Success is not final,' he said. ‘Failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.'

I have found that courage.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As I reach the
end of this book I feel as if I should embark on an Oscar-winner's speech of thanks. There are so many people I need to thank and so many debts to be paid but I'll never manage it. All of you, all over the world, who have helped me so much over the years know who you are and I couldn't have done it without you, and whether it's been a bed for a night, a tractor, a year's running costs or pure moral support, my gratitude is immense. Thank you, all. This book is for you as well.

I also know that without George's guidance I would never have succeeded in half of what we have done. George devoted his life to the wildlife of East Africa and he showed me how to walk with lions. I miss the Old Man every day as I try to live up to his beliefs - working to give animals a chance to live with dignity in their own land. I know there'll be problems ahead but I also know that Lucy and I will be able to find a way around them. If we continue to care enough and 'keep going forward one step at a time', we'll walk with lions again.

And this book would never have taken off, let alone been completed, without the friendship, professionalism and sheer lunatic energy of Miles Bredin, my co-author. An accomplished journalist and author, he 'got it' and was often way ahead of me on this journey of reflection and adventure. I was amazed at both his perceptions and feelings, and the historical context that he provided as background was invaluable.

Eleo Gordon at Penguin worked tirelessly and with formidable and enormous enthusiasm to make sure that the book was a fitting tribute to both George and all the animals. The way she steered the project across
continents and still allowed us to be able to continue with our work was a coup of some genius. It was always a great pleasure when we got together in London, but even I almost crumpled at the pace!

Without my wife Lucy no one would have had anything to work from. She produced three hundred pages of chronology from both our diaries and was critical at the end stages when I didn't quite get it right or went a bit overboard. But that's just work. She has been an amazing friend and companion in two of the more remote areas of East Africa under, at times, some very trying and difficult conditions, and managed to raise four lovely children at the same time as doing all the field administration of the project. It's all We now, not Me, and without her love and support there would have been a very different story. Many men have said it before, but love is all you need. . .

KORA FAMILY TREE