Daniel Armstrong had built with his own hands almost ten years ago. At the time he had been a junior game ranger in the National Parks administration. Since then the building had been converted into a veritable treasure house.
Johnny Nzou slipped his key into the heavy padlock, and swung open the double doors of hewn native teak. Johnny was chief warden of Chiwewe National Park. Back in the old days, he had been Daniel's tracker and gunbearer, a bright young Matabele whom Daniel had taught to read, write and speak fluent English by the light of a thousand campfires.
Daniel had lent Johnny the money to pay for his first correspondence course from the University of South Africa which had led much later to his degree of Bachelor of Science.
The two youngsters, one black and one white, had patrolled the vast reaches of the National Park together, often on foot or bicycle. In the wilderness they had forged a friendship which the subsequent years of separation had left undimmed.
Now Daniel peered into the gloomy interior of the go down, and whistled softly. Hell, Johnny boy, you have been busy since I've been away. The treasure was stacked to the roof beams, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it.
Johnny Nzou glanced at Daniel's face, his eyes narrowed as he looked for criticism in his friend's expression. The reaction was reflex, for he knew Daniel was an ally who understood the problem even better than he did. Nevertheless, the subject was so emotionally charged that it had become second nature to expect revulsion and antagonism.
However, Daniel had turned back to his cameraman. Can we get a light in here? I want some good shots of the interior. The cameraman trudged forward, weighed down by the heavy battery packs slung around his waist, and switched on the hand-held arc lamp. The high stacks of treasure were lit with a fierce blue-white light. Jock, I want you to follow me and the warden down the length of the warehouse, Daniel instructed, and the cameraman nodded and moved in closer, the sleek Sony video recorder balanced on his shoulder. Jock was in his middle thirties. He wore only a pair of short khaki pants, and open sandals.
In the Zambezi valley heat his tanned bare chest was shiny with sweat and his long hair was tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He looked like a pop star, but was an artist with the big Sony camera. Got you, guy, he agreed, and panned the camera over the untidy stacks of elephant tusks, ending on Daniel's hand as it stroked one elegant curve of glowing ivory.
Then he pulled back into a full shot of Daniel.
It was not merely Daniel's doctorate in biology, nor his books and lectures, that had made him an international authority and spokesman on African ecology. He had the healthy outdoors looks and charismatic manner that came over so well on the television screen, and his voice was deep and compelling.
His accent had sufficient Sandhurst undertones remaining to soften the flat unmelodious vowel sounds of colonial speech.
His father had been a staff officer in a Guards regiment during World War II and had served in North Africa under Wavell and Montgomery.
After the war he came out to Rhodesia to grow tobacco. Daniel had been born in Africa but had been sent home to finish his education at Sandhurst, before coming back to Rhodesia to join the National Parks Service. Ivory, he said now, as he looked into the camera. Since the time of the pharaohs, one of the most beautiful and treasured natural substances. The glory of the African elephant, and its terrible cross.
Daniel began to move down between the tiers of stacked tusks, and Johnny Nzou fell in beside him. For two thousand years man has hunted the elephant to obtain this living white gold, and yet only a decade ago there still remained over two million elephant on the African continent. The elephant population seemed to be a renewable resource, an asset that was protected and harvested and controlled, and then something went terribly, tragically wrong. In these last ten years, almost a million elephant have been slaughtered. It is barely conceivable that this could have been allowed to happen. We are here to find out what went wrong, and how the perilous existence of the African elephant can be retrieved from the brink of extinction. He looked at Johnny. 'With me today is Mr. John Nzou, chief warden of Chiwewe National Park, one of the new breed of African conservationists. By coincidence, the name Nzou in the Shana language means elephant. John Nzou is Mr. Elephant in more than name alone.
As warden of Chiwewe, he is responsible for one of the largest and healthiest elephant herds that still flourish in the African wilderness. Tell us, Warden, how many tusks do you have in this store room here at Chiwewe National Park? There are almost five hundred tusks in store at present four hundred and eighty-six to be exact, with an average weight of seven kilos. On the international market ivory is worth three hundred dollars a kilo, Daniel cut in, so that is well over a million dollars. Where does it all come from? Well, some of the tusks are pick-ups, ivory from elephant found dead in the Park, and some is illegal ivory that my rangers have confiscated from poachers.
But the great majority of tusks are from the culling operations that my department is forced to undertake. The two of them paused at the far end of the go down and turned back to face the camera. We will discuss the culling programme later, Warden. But first can you tell us a little more about poaching activity in Chiwewe. How bad is it? It is getting worse every day. Johnny shook his head sadly. As the elephant in Kenya and Tanzania and Zambia are wiped out, so the professionals are turning their attention to our healthy elephant herds further south. Zambia is just across the Zambezi river, and the poachers that come across this side are organised and better armed than we are. They shoot to kill men as well as elephant and rhino. We have been forced to do the same. If we run into a band of poachers, we shoot first.
All for these. . . Daniel laid his hand on the nearest pile of tusks.
No two of the ivory shafts were the same; each curve was unique. Some were almost straight, long and thin as knittingneedles; others were bent like a drawn longbow. Some were sharptipped as javelins; others were squat and blunt. There were pearly shafts, and others were of buttery alabaster tone; still others were stained dark with vegetable juices, and scarred and worn with age.
Most of the ivory was female or immature; a few tusks were no longer than a man's forearm, taken from small calves. A very few were great curved imperial shafts, the heavy mature ivory of old bulls.
Daniel stroked one of these, and his expression was not simply for the camera. Once again, he felt the full weight of the melancholy that had first caused him to write about the passing and destruction of the old Africa and its enchanted animal kingdom. A sage and magnificent beast has been reduced to this, his voice sank to a whisper. Even if it is unavoidable, we cannot escape the inherently tragic nature of the changes that are sweeping through this continent. Is the African elephant symbolic of the land? The elephant is dying. Is Africa dying?
His sincerity was absolute. The camera recorded it faithfully.
It was the most compelling reason for the enormous appeal of his television programmes around the world.
Now Daniel roused himself with an obvious effort, and turned back to Johnny Nzou. Tell us, Warden, is the elephant doomed?