For the polygamous Zulus, what was taking place was contrary to their way of life and they were never going to let me live this down. Indeed, my Zulu friends are genuinely mystified why I don’t have multiple wives. You white men are so stupid, they would say. Everybody knows one woman is too strong for one man. Two are even worse as they will gang up against you. You must have three, as one will always be fighting with the other two to take the pressure off you.
Chauvinism? Sure, but then every woman I’ve told this story to has battled to hide a knowing smile. Well, at least for the first proviso.
My train of thought was broken by appreciative murmurs from the crowd as Françoise walked in. I turned as she came up the aisle looking absolutely gorgeous and as her beautiful eyes fixed on me everything came together and made perfect sense. I was willingly caught up in her magic and totally agreed to the surprise proceedings. It was all just so right.
‘Look,’ she said as she arrived at the podium and pointed across the river. Mnumzane was there browsing quietly.
‘He loves weddings,’ she said, smiling. ‘He seems to arrive for so many of them. Now he’s at ours.’
A ring magically appeared and when asked if I took this woman to be my wife, a chorus rang to the rafters: ‘He does!’
And I did.
We never have loud music at the lodge, but that night the bold rhythms of Africa throbbed across the reserve in celebrations that went on until the early morning.
chapter thirty-nine
Something strange was going on with Mnumzane. It happened out of the blue. A young ranger was on a game drive with two guests, a married couple, when they rounded a sharp corner and unexpectedly ran into him coming in the opposite direction.
He started ambling over. The ranger panicked and reversed too fast, smashing into a tree. They were stuck with Mnumzane coming straight for them. To the frightened ranger’s credit he didn’t reach for the rifle. Instead he told his passengers to sit tight and make no sound as Mnumzane strode up to the vehicle. I know first-hand that this is one of the most frightening sights imaginable. A six-ton bull literally breathing down your spine is something else all right. Then he lightly bumped the Land Rover and his tusk actually grazed one of the guest’s arms. Somehow the man didn’t scream.
Showing great presence of mind, the Zulu tracker jumped off his seat on the front of the vehicle and sneaked around to the other side, surreptitiously helping the guests off the vehicle. They all fled into the bush. Mnumzane fiddled around the Land Rover for a bit without causing any damage, and then moved off. Once they were sure he was gone, they crept out of their hiding places and drove at speed back to the lodge.
From initial accounts, Mnumzane was just being inquisitiverather than aggressive. The ranger also played the incident down, so I didn’t take it too seriously. I only got the full story months later when I was phoned by the couple.
After that encounter, Mnumzane started on occasion approaching our open guest game-drive vehicles. But again, the reports I got was that he was never angry, just curious. It was not dangerous as the rangers would merely drive away as soon as he approached. The bigger problem was that this was totally out of character; he simply was not behaving as an elephant should. Elephants automatically ignore us humans as long as we don’t move into their space.
Then I discovered the reason for his sudden interest in game-drive vehicles. Prompted by a few pointed questions, a staff member told me that two of our young rangers had been teasing the bull, driving up and playing ‘chicken’ with him, daring each other to see who could get nearest then speeding away when he approached. They had seen me with Mnumzane before – totally without my knowledge as my interactions with him were deliberately kept private – and thought that they would also try to get up close. It never occurred to these two idiots that taunting the ultimate alpha male from a game-drive vehicle that normally carried guests on viewing safaris was teaching him a terribly bad habit. Both rangers had resigned before I found this out and hopefully they have since embarked on careers far removed from wildlife.
The most non-negotiable rule on the reserve was that no one was allowed to have any self-initiated contact with the elephants. Anyone who disobeyed that law would be instantly dismissed. Perhaps my biggest failure was to trust that all my carefully chosen staff had the same ingrained ethics and common sense that David and Brendan had shown. Sadly, that does not always hold true.
A little later a trainee lodge manager left without notice. The dust had barely settled as he sped from the reservewhen I heard that he too had been using a game-drive Land Rover to approach Mnumzane, trying to imitate my call. These were the worst possible scenarios. Mnumzane had always been a very special case and the continuous teasing by strangers was dangerously altering his attitude to humans. He considered the shouting and revving of engines as a direct challenge and as a result game drives were forced to move off whenever they saw him. My concern was mounting.
I had also just bought a brand-new white Land Rover station wagon. The faithful old battered bush-green Landy had now gone around the clock a good few times and had to be retired, her innards due to be cannibalized for other vehicles. It was a sad day for me. The well-weathered seat, the simplistic dashboard, the worn-smooth gear stick, the bush-smell of the cabin … I loved her.
Taking delivery of this spanking new vehicle, I decided to do a
