My Staffordshire bull terrier Max followed me. He was a magnificent specimen of the breed, forty pounds of brawn and muscle. I had got him as a just-weaned puppy and from that first moment he had tottered after me with unconditional devotion. His pedigree name was Boehringer of Alfa Laval, but Max suited him just fine. He would have been a trophy winner at shows except for one physical flaw: he had only one testicle. Which I thought was ironic – Max had more cojones than any creature I knew, man or beast. He was absolutely fearless.
And yet, he was an absolute pushover with children, who could pull his ears and poke his eyes and get nothing but a sloppy lick in return.
Max flopped at my feet, tail thumping on the floor. He seemed to sense my dismay, nudging me with his wet nose.
Stroking his broad head, I mulled over the day. What had possessed the herd to smash through two electrified fences? Why had the Ovambos made such a careless mistake with their tracking? Why had they then abandoned the search?
There was something that didn’t gel; some piece missing from the jigsaw.
Max’s low growl jerked me out of my thoughts. I looked down. He was fully alert, head up, ears half-cocked, staring into the dark.
Then a soft voice called out: ‘Mkhulu.’
Mkhulu was my Zulu name. It literally means ‘grandfather’, but not in the limited Western sense. Zulus venerate maturity and to refer to someone as an Mkhulu was a compliment.
I glanced up and recognized the shadowy figure squatting on his haunches a few yards away. It was Bheki.
‘Sawubona,’ I said, giving the traditional greeting. I see you.
‘Yehbo.’ Yes, he nodded and paused for a while, as if pondering what to say next.
‘Mkhulu, there is a mystery here. People are making trouble,’ he said, his tone conspiratorial. ‘They are making big trouble.’
‘Kanjane?’ How so?
‘A gun spoke next to the boma last night,’ he continued, aware that he now had my full attention, ‘and the elephants were shouting and calling.’
He stood up briefly and raised his arms, mimicking an elephant’s trunk. ‘They were crazy, maybe one was even shot.’
‘Hau!’ I used the Zulu exclamation for surprise. ‘But how do you know such important things?’
‘I was there,’ he replied. ‘I know the elephants are valuable, so I stayed near to the boma last night, watching. I don’t trust the amagweragwer.’ The word meant ‘foreigners’, but I knew he was referring to the Ovambo guards.
‘Then the big females came together and pushed a tree onto the fence. There was much force and it fell hard and broke the fence and they went out, they were running. I was afraid because they came close past me.’
‘Ngempela?’ Really?
‘Ngempela.’ It is true.
‘Thank you very much,’ I replied. ‘You have done well.’
Satisfied that his message had been delivered, he stood up and stepped back into the darkness.
I exhaled loudly. Now that would explain a lot, I thought, my mind racing. A poacher shooting next to the boma unaware of the elephants’ presence would certainly have put the jitters into the herd, particularly as their previous matriarch and baby had been shot barely forty-eight hours ago.
But much as I liked Bheki, I had to treat his suspicions about the Ovambo guards with caution. Tribal animosity in Africa often runs deep and I knew there was little love lostbetween the Zulus and the Namibians. There was a possibility that the indigenous staff may use the confusion surrounding the escape to implicate the Ovambos so locals could get their jobs.
However, Bheki had certainly provided food for thought.
As dawn glimmered we drove to where we had left off yesterday and saw Peter’s helicopter coming in low, circling like a hawk to select the best landing spot on the ribbon of potholed road. Seeing the chopper landing in billowing dust a group of Zulu children came running up from the nearby village, gathering around the thudding machine and chattering excitedly.
The tracking team plunged back into the thorny bush to pick up the spoor on the ground, while I assisted Peter in tracking from the air. As we took off, I gazed out over the endless panorama of this charismatic stretch of Africa, so steeped in history. Originally home to all of Africa’s onceabundant wildlife – now mostly exterminated – it was where conservationists like us were making a stand. The key was to involve local communities in all of the benefits and profits of conservation and eco-tourism. It was a hard, frustrating struggle but it had to be fought and won. Tribal cooperation was the key to Africa’s conservation health and we neglected that at our peril. It was vital that those rural kids who had been clamouring around the helicopter – kids who lived in the bush but had never seen an elephant – became future eco-warriors on our side.
We flew north along the Nseleni River, scanning the spear-leafed reed beds for jumbo tracks and barely skimming the towering sycamore figs whose twisted roots clasped the steep banks like pythons. It was difficult to see much as the rains had been good and the lush growth could have hidden a tank.
Then at last some news. KZN Wildlife radioed in sayingthey had a report of a sighting: the herd had chased a group of herd boys and their cows off a waterhole the previous afternoon. Fortunately there had been no casualties.
This underscored the urgency of the situation, but at least we now had a confirmed position. Peter dropped me near the team, lifted off and dipped the chopper as he altered course while I jumped into the waiting Land Rover.
Then we got another call from KZN Wildlife. The elephants had changed direction and were heading towards the Umfolozi game reserve, KZN Wildlife’s flagship sanctuary about twenty miles from Thula Thula. They gave us an estimated
