We lit a small fire and brewed coffee. There was not much to say. I was not going to tell David that I thought I had connected for an instant with the matriarch. It would have sounded too crazy.
But something had happened. It gave me a sliver of hope.
Each day was the same. As the sun came up, the herd would start endlessly pacing up and down the length of the fence, turning on us and charging if we dared get too close, halting only at the electric cable. The naked aggression and agitation, the fiercest I have seen from any animal, blazed nonstop whenever we approached the fence. And they would glare ferociously as we backed off and watched from a distance.
As they were in a confined area we had to provide them with extra food. This posed a problem as whenever we attempted to get close to the fence to throw bales of alfalfa into the enclosure they ignored the food and erupted in paroxysms of rage.
The only alternative was to arrange bales at oppositesides of the boma, and as I distracted the elephants at one end and they came at me, David – an immensely strong young man – would leap onto the back of the truck and toss more bulky bales over the fence on the other side.
Then they would spot him and turn and charge in his direction. As he backed off I would throw food over from my side. Then they would come at me, and David would continue. They would only eat when we moved well away.
The belligerence see-sawed back and forth until we finished. There was no doubt that in their fury they would have killed us were it not for the fence. The hatred was so concentrated that I began to wonder what had previously happened to these creatures, especially as Marion had told me that while still babies Nana and Frankie had had some human contact. As far as I knew, they hadn’t been physically maltreated, so was it something deeper? Was it some learned fear passed down from their ancestors who had been hunted to the brink? Was it because they instinctively knew humans were responsible for their confinement? That because of us they could no longer stride the great migration trails across the continent as their forebears had? Or was it simply that the death of their matriarch was the final straw?
I spent the rest of the day just watching them, trying to pick up some vibe other than rage. It now seemed that Frankie, the second-in-command, was the main aggressor. Nana was fractionally calmer – although by no means settled. Could I get through to her? I didn’t know; I just hoped.
David and I were pushing up to 2,000 pounds of food a day over the wire and we shed weight like a snake sloughs off its skin. In a week alone, we each lost ten pounds, most of it in sweat. If I hadn’t been so worried, I would have relished being in such good shape.
But one thing was certain: the elephants always knew David and I were around. I would spend hours walkingaround the boma, checking the fence and deliberately speaking loudly so they heard my voice. Sometimes I would even sing, which David uncharitably remarked was enough to make even him want to jump straight onto the electric fence. If I ever caught Nana’s attention I would look directly at her and focus on positive gentle communication, telling her time and time again that this was her family’s new home and that everything she would ever need was here. Most of the time, though, I spent sitting or standing still at a chosen spot near the fence, purposefully ignoring them, just being there doing nothing, saying nothing, showing I was comfortable whether they were close by or not.
Slowly but surely we became an integral part of their lives. They began to ‘know’ us, but whether that was a good or bad thing, I wasn’t sure.
However, the alarming ritual that took place during uvivi, when they seemed most determined to break out, continued. Every morning at precisely 4.45 – I could virtually set my watch by it – Nana would line up the herd facing their old home in Mpumalanga. She would then tense up, yards from the fence, and for ten adrenalin-soaked minutes I would stand up to her, pleading for their lives, telling her that this was now their home. The words I used were unimportant as Nana obviously didn’t understand English; I just concentrated on keeping the tone as reassuring as I could. It was always touch-and-go and my relief as she ghosted back into the bush with her family was absolute.
When the sun eventually rose, David and I would retire to the truck, shattered by these tense stand-offs, saturated in sweat even in the early morning chill.
Silently David would start a small fire near the Land Rover and put the coffee pot on, each of us wondering what the day would bring. Why were they always so aggressive, even while we were giving them food? Why did they hate us so much? Elephants are intelligent creatures; surely theymust know by now that we meant no harm? I could understand them wanting to escape. Maybe I too would be frantic at being locked up … but this was something else. There had to be a way to breach this bulwark of torment.
‘Are we going to win?’ David once asked over a steaming mug, demoralized after yet another awful day. We were drinking coffee by the gallon to keep alert.
‘We have to,’ I replied, shrugging with despondency. ‘Somehow we just have to calm them down.’
The fact was I still didn’t know how to do it. All I did know was that the price of failure was unthinkable. But I was starting to wonder whether we could ever break through, whether we could ever settle
