ELEPHANT ENCOUNTERS
Africa’s pachyderms have entered Alexander McCall Smith’s life and have proceeded to make it a far richer place
Experiences with African wildlife have made Alexander McCall Smith's world a richer place
Some years ago, I had the good fortune to walk through a small tract of Botswana bush with a group of four fully-grown elephants. There is a widespread belief that the African elephant, unlike its Asian counterpart, cannot be persuaded to accept human company. It is true that African elephants have not been used in the same way as they have been in the East – they have never shifted felled trees as they did in India or Burma – but they can still become accustomed to people and allow human approach in certain circumstances. There are cases where humans have got to know individual elephants quite well: Iain and Oria Douglas Hamilton’s Among the Elephants provides a moving account of long-term familiarity, although people and these elephants usually give each other a wide berth.
There are exceptions, though, and the elephants I met at Mokolodi, a small game reserve in southern Botswana, the creation of the conservation-minded Kirby family, had been brought up to live in close proximity to human settlement. It was a bit of an experiment – handlers had been brought in from Sri Lanka and were working successfully with a small herd presided over by a large bull elephant named Shaka (after the late king of the Zulus). I was invited to meet the herd. Heart thumping, I approached Shaka and, having been instructed to feel the skin behind his ear, reached up to make my acquaintance. It was as smooth and soft to the touch as Florentine leather.
He looked at me, our eyes meeting over a couple of feet. His trunk moved slowly, exploring, while the handler spoke to him, making the introduction in calm, gentle tones. Then we set off for our walk to the waterhole, the four elephants plodding beside us with that slow, considered walk that elephants have.
Just before we reached the waterhole, a small pickup truck passed nearby in a cloud of red dust. Unfortunately, in the back of this vehicle was a dog, and this animal, picking up the scent of the elephants, barked loudly. This alarmed the elephants, who moved sharply away, not exactly bolting, but stepping away quickly and decisively in the opposite direction. Had the dog been on the other side, we would have been directly in their path, and would have ended up underfoot.
There is a sad coda to this story. A couple of years after our meeting with Shaka, an incident brought that elephant project to an end. Two of the Sri Lankan handlers had gone out to bring the elephants into a stockade near the camp. The men never returned, and were later found trampled to death. It was suggested that one of the elephants was in musth, the biological state in which bull elephants become irritated and angry.
I resolved that I would decline any future opportunity to get close to elephants, but life has a way of presenting one with unexpected developments. Recently I have spent some time in northern Botswana, in the Okavango Delta, where I have been involved in a programme set up by safari operators that allows readers of the Mma Ramotswe books to come to Botswana and encounter the country they read about. At the end of one of these trips, on a small plane flying out of Maun, I found myself sitting next to Debra Stevens, an American who had set up an elephant orphan project, Elephant Havens, with a friend, Boago Poloko. Debra invited me to become involved, and I recently paid it a virtual visit through the miracle of Zoom.
Debra’s scheme rescues young elephants whose mothers have been shot by poachers. The calf will stay with the body of its felled mother – that happened, of course, in the first of Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar books – and soon perish from dehydration. If these calves are found, they are taken to the camp, where they are kept alive on infant formula and introduced into a new family. Each small elephant has a keeper who sleeps in its pen, as a conscientious nurse might with a human baby. The keepers have raised sleeping platforms, but in the morning are often found sleeping alongside their little charges, arm and trunk intertwined. Presumably the night has terrors for baby elephants too.
‘Heart thumping, I approached Shaka and felt behind his ear – it was as smooth and soft as Florentine leather’
In conversation with Ipeleng Chabata, who manages the orphanage, I was told about the close bonds that will develop between elephant and human in such circumstances.
Once the elephants are reintegrated into a wild herd, they do not forget those who raised them, and are known to return to see them, even bringing their newborn young to show them to the people who once looked after them.
And word gets around. I am currently reading Animal Languages, by the Dutch
philosopher and naturalist, Eva Meijer. If you are curious about how animals talk to one another, and to us, this book is an eye-opener.
The author has a lot to say about elephant language, which is far more complex than one might imagine. Elephants can communicate with one another over several miles – the low frequency sounds they make travel well – and have words with which they can communicate both emotions and intentions. Their word for humans, we are told, is the same as their word for danger. For which, if true, we should be ashamed.
The proliferation of our species and the environmental destruction we wreak are matters that the shocks of this past year are making us think about – to an extent. In those places where man and elephant are competing for space, the outcome is always the same.
These strange, intelligent creatures, are capable of thoughts and emotions that should give them the moral status we give ourselves. We will miss them when they are gone; we shall look at pictures, at their improbable bulk, their gentle brown eyes, and marvel that they were ever with us, that they ever existed.