An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival Read online

  From then on, Mnumzane regularly sought out Lawrence for father–son bush chats. I don’t know who loved those get-togethers more. Lawrence, the proud foster father, watching his boy grow up, or Mnumzane, the rejected teenager, flourishing under Lawrence’s love and acceptance.

  So it was devastating for Lawrence when this gentle giant suddenly turned violent. Unbeknown to anyone, mind-blowing pain from an abscess was literally driving Mnumzane crazy, and when he killed a rhino then utterly wrecked a broken-down 4 x 4, Lawrence knew it was time. Putting him down was one of the most traumatic decisions he ever faced. He withdrew with grief and I didn’t know how to console him. He even stopped joining guests at the bar, something he loved to do. Often he disappeared for hours on end and I knew he was visiting the site where his boy had fallen. We went for long drives in the bush. We sat on the edge of Mkhulu Dam and reminisced about all the things Mnumzane had done in his short time with us.

  ‘A bloody abscess. A jab of antibiotics would have fixed it. I should have known.’

  ‘You couldn’t have. Not even you, Lolo,’ I said countless times.

  They were kindred spirits, those two – brave, unpredictable, funny and tender. I knew with all my heart that reuniting them in death was exactly what Lawrence would have wanted.

  * * *

  Only snatches of memory remain of the day we scattered his ashes. I remember the convoy of cars that seemed as long as the road itself. I remember the clouds of dust from the dirt track when we headed north to where the dam was. I remember we stood in a half-moon at the water’s edge. I remember anecdotes and stories. I remember tears and laughter. I remember dark ripples in the water.

  By then, I had been in South Africa for twenty-five years and I loved and embraced its melting pot of traditions and cultures, but for a few moments that day I yearned for the busy familiarity of Montparnasse where I had lived in Paris. It was the one and only time I longed for France because my life was in South Africa, and like Nana, my family were now the animals and people at Thula Thula.

  Living in the bush teaches you that life is a magnificent cycle of birth and death, and nothing showed me that more powerfully than when Nana gave birth to a beautiful baby boy around the time of Lawrence’s passing.

  Of course, I named him Lolo.

  2

  Falling in love with Thabo

  I stood in front of the kitchen fan, twisted my hair out of my neck and tried to focus on what my chef Winnie was saying. It was the third sweltering day of 40-degree temperatures and I was dead on my feet. We all were. But the lodge was full and we were doing our damnedest to soldier on.

  ‘I think mango and avocado salad would be a good starter in this heat,’ she suggested in her gentle way.

  I nodded vaguely. Lawrence had loved mangoes. I looked up towards the noise coming from the office. Someone was broadcasting the same message over and over on the two-way radio.

  ‘Elephant Safari Lodge, do you copy?’

  Silence.

  ‘Vusi? Mabona? Do you copy? Nikuphi nina?!’

  The radio is a crucial bush survival tool and everyone knows how to use it. I couldn’t make out who the ranger was but he sounded panicked. I was about to answer when my mobile rang.

  ‘Is that you on the radio, Promise?’ I asked.

  ‘Françoise, poachers. Thabo took a bullet.’

  I gripped the phone. Thabo, our rhino calf. ‘And Ntombi?’

  ‘She’s fine but won’t let us near him. We can’t tell how badly he’s hurt. We need Mike here urgently.’

  I heard him but it didn’t sink in. The two weeks since Lawrence’s death had been a blind scramble of decisions and new situations but nothing had been as scary as this. I sat down, fighting off a wave of nausea.

  ‘You still there, Françoise?’

  ‘Just trying to figure out how to get hold of Mike,’ I said softly.

  Lawrence had always used Dr Mike Toft for animal emergencies. He was three hours away by car, or thirty minutes and 30,000 rands by helicopter. I hoped to God that he wasn’t tied up in another crisis.

  ‘Does Alyson know what’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s on her way.’

  ‘Good. If anyone can get close to Thabo, it’s her. Stay with them and call me if anything changes. Leave Mike to me.’

  Alyson was our rhino calves’ stand-in mum and primary carer and they trusted her completely, but that didn’t mean they would let her check his wounds. Injured wild animals are unpredictable and dangerous and I hoped she wouldn’t take any risks. She was a lioness when it came to her charges.

  ‘If poachers ever hurt my little babies, I’ll hunt them down and feed them to hyenas,’ she threatened every time we heard about another poaching.

  Little babies isn’t how everyone would describe our one-ton rhino calves, but I knew exactly how she felt. I had fallen in love with Thabo at the wonderful Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre in Hoedspruit when he was just a couple of months old. He was now a strapping three-year-old, but in my heart he was still the same lovable little calf.

  Rhino calves have no horns and their soft faces look so vulnerable. They are vulnerable. A young rhino can’t survive alone in the bush. Thabo had been found as a terrified newborn with his umbilical cord still dragging below him in the dust. How he survived even a day on his own was a miracle and no one ever knew what had happened to his family. Fortunately, when they’re that tiny they haven’t yet learned to be scared of humans, and that makes it easier to help them because they’ll trust anyone who feeds and comforts them.

  They need round-the-clock attention from caregivers who share a room with them at night, monitor their moods and body condition, feed them every few hours, and give them all the cuddles and love they’re missing out on from their real mothers.

  When I first met Thabo, he was already a confident little thing with perky ears and inquisitive eyes. I was invited into his boma to see him play by his first stand-in mum, Elaine.

  ‘Thabo, come and say hello,’ Elaine called.

  Baby rhinos don’t run, they half bounce, half fly. He hurtled towards her, nuzzled her, then looked up and studied me.

  ‘Bonjour, little one,’ I smiled.

  He nestled his snout against my leg in reply. My heart melted. He was so trusting and gentle. I realized then that, although I lived on a game reserve, I had little contact with our animals. The business side of Thula Thula, managing the lodge and dealing with guests, was my domain, along with any admin to do with our animals.

  When we rescued Nana and her herd, for example, I made the phone calls, ploughed through mountains of paperwork and struggled with the maddening logistics to get them to us, but it was Lawrence who was out at the boma night after night, desperately convincing Nana that she was safe with us.

  The minute Thabo nuzzled me with so much trust, I longed to protect him and to do more for other orphans like him. I tickled his face and stared into his innocent eyes and it dawned on me that Thula Thula was the ideal place to do exactly that. I returned home, bursting with ideas.

  ‘I think we should build an animal orphanage,’ I announced to Lawrence.

  ‘Fantastic. Let’s do it.’

  But rescuing young animals is entirely different to rescuing older ones. We had experience of saving elephants but none in rescuing orphaned or abandoned baby animals. Our herd had needed Lawrence’s presence and reassurance to settle them down, but little orphans need far more than just reassurance. They need hands-on love and intensive nursing, and we weren’t set up for that yet. But the seed was sown and it always stayed at the back of my mind that, as soon as we had time and money, we should build our own orphanage.

  A few months later, I received a phone call that set the ball rolling much sooner than we’d planned.

  ‘We’re looking for a home for Thabo,’ said Moholoholo’s general manager. ‘Ideally a reserve that can care for him until he’s old enough to be released into the bush.’

  ‘We’re perfect f
or him,’ I said.

  We weren’t. Far from it. But life’s like that. Sometimes it takes a push to make dreams come true. Lawrence didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him.

  ‘We only had a few weeks to prepare for seven elephants; getting ready for one rhino calf will be a piece of cake,’ he said. ‘The timing couldn’t be better. I’ve been thinking about getting more rhinos after what happened to Heidi.’

  Poachers had broken into our reserve during a storm – knowing that the noise and rain would muffle their gunshots and wash away their tracks – and killed our last rhino. Full-moon nights are usually when we’re on red-alert because the moonlight makes it easy for poachers to move about without flashlights, so the attack on Heidi in the middle of a storm had caught us totally off guard. They shot her without killing her but that didn’t stop them from hacking off her horn while she was alive. The horror of seeing what they did to her gentle expressive face will live with me forever. It also made us all the more determined to do everything we could to save her species.

  I gave Lawrence a printout of what had to be in place before Thabo would be allowed to relocate to Thula Thula. He scanned the page and nodded.

  ‘Easy,’ he grinned.

  Not that easy. Moving endangered wildlife in South Africa is strictly controlled and requires a special permit and a healthy bank account. We had neither. But the impossible had never put us off before.

  ‘I’ll handle the permit. You do what you can to raise money,’ Lawrence said.

  Within a week, we received the permit and raised R100,000 to pay for Thabo’s transportation. Most of the money came from friends and clients who knew us and who wanted to be part of helping Thabo get to his new home.

  The next hurdle was a visit from the wildlife inspectors. An hour before they were due to arrive I was a bundle of nerves.

  ‘Have we done everything they asked?’ I said to Lawrence.

  ‘Relax, Frankie. They gave us the okay for our elephants; they’re not going to turn us down now.’

  He was absolutely right. The inspectors approved Thabo’s new accommodation and outdoor area, and sanctioned the transport crate that we had specially made in Durban to their strict specifications. His adoption papers came through the same day. I was over the moon. After all the bureaucracy and waiting, little Thabo was coming at last.

  Until then, the only home he had known was Moholoholo and we were worried what effect the long drive would have on him.

  ‘Elaine would be the best person to look after him on the trip,’ said the rehab centre’s manager. ‘She was his carer when he was a baby and he trusts her.’

  ‘That’s perfect,’ I said. ‘We’ll pay all her costs.’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that. Her internship ended a few months ago and she’s gone back to England.’

  I fell silent. There wasn’t enough money for an international flight.

  ‘I’ll email her anyway,’ I said quietly.

  Elaine replied within the hour, on board to help, but she had used up her savings to join the programme in the first place and couldn’t pay for the air ticket.

  ‘I’ll try and find someone else to accompany Thabo, but it’s not ideal,’ said the manager. ‘It’s a long journey for him to take without a carer he knows and trusts.’

  With every day that passed, I became more terrified that Moholoholo would decide Thabo was too young to undertake such a stressful journey with a stranger. A week went by without news. I prepared myself for the worst.

  ‘They must have found another reserve for him by now,’ I said to Lawrence.

  ‘How much money have we raised?’

  ‘Only half of what we need.’

  At four o’clock the next morning I was up, restless and unable to sleep, so I sat down at my computer with a cup of hot tea to check for news from Moholoholo. Nothing. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. Up popped an email from Elaine. I scanned it, stunned. Her granny had offered to pay for her flight. Our little boy had an angel watching over him. I ran to the bedroom to tell Lawrence, my little poodle Gypsy scampering at my heels.

  ‘She’s coming! She’s coming!’

  He sat up and looked at me with bleary eyes. ‘Who?’

  Gypsy leapt onto the bed and licked his face, sharing my excitement.

  ‘Elaine! She’s coming to help with Thabo,’ I grinned. ‘She can’t be away from home for months on end but she said she’ll stay as long as it takes to settle him in.’

  * * *

  Off I went to Moholoholo with Pieter, our baby-faced ranger who didn’t look old enough for a driver’s licence, let alone the responsibility of bringing back our precious rhino calf, but he was the perfect man for the job, with a gentle soul and a natural flair with animals. The plan was that he would drive the truck up to the Lowveld with me, and then help Elaine and me look after Thabo on the 700-kilometre trip back home.

  We arrived at Moholoholo late on Thursday night, slept for six hours and got up at the crack of dawn to start three days of intensive training in rhino calf nursing.

  I fetched Elaine from Hoedspruit airport that afternoon. She was a tall, dark-haired young woman, and despite the rings of exhaustion under her eyes after twenty-four hours of travelling, she insisted I take her to Thabo straight away.

  ‘I hope he remembers me,’ she murmured.

  She slipped into his boma while I stood at the fence and watched.

  ‘Thabo! Hello, boy,’ she called.

  His head shot up and he bolted towards her, squealing in delight, little legs motoring like pistons. He crashed into her and knocked her off her feet.

  ‘Thabo, Thabo,’ she laughed. ‘You’ve grown, you thuglet. Get off me!’

  They say humans never forget their first love. Neither do little rhinos.

  Two days later, we were up at daybreak to start the long trek home. Elaine prepared Thabo’s favourite milk formula and placed it in a bowl inside his travel crate. He scampered inside without any fuss and off we went. His first human family waved us goodbye, in tears even though they knew this was his best chance of becoming a true bush rhino. The responsibility of helping him become the wild animal he was born to be was now ours.

  A violent storm thundered around us as we crept along in the slow lane, barely able to see the road ahead in the rain. We stopped under cover of a garage to feed him after four hours. Elaine shook her head when she saw that the only way into the crate was through a hatch in the roof.

  ‘I’ll never be able to pull myself out again,’ she protested.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll go,’ offered Pieter.

  ‘But he doesn’t know you. What if he won’t take the bottle from you?’ she fretted.

  ‘You’ll be right there to talk to him through the bars and reassure him,’ I said.

  Pieter lowered himself into the crate and Elaine passed him Thabo’s milk bottle. Food was food for this rhino calf, and he slurped the bottle dry then banged his head against Pieter’s leg for more.

  ‘Just look at him. He’s not the slightest bit bothered,’ Elaine said proudly.

  Just before the second feed, gale-force winds ripped the tarpaulin off Thabo’s crate. We stopped as soon as we found a safe turn-off and ran to the back of the vehicle to see how he was. He looked at us quizzically. What’s all the fuss? He was such a little trooper.

  Every time we stopped for petrol, Thabo drew a crowd. People expect deep grunts from an animal his size, not toy-like sounds, and they were astounded when they saw the noises weren’t coming from a puppy or a piglet but from a rather large rhino calf.

  The rain was so bad that it became dangerous to negotiate the potholes and roadworks, so we reset the GPS to take us a different way. Bad mistake. Two hundred kilometres later, we realized it was routing us via Swaziland. No problem for us but a big problem for Thabo, who didn’t have a wildlife passport that authorized an endangered species to leave the country.

  ‘But we only want to drive through,’ I pleaded with
the border police.

  ‘No permit, no entry.’

  Bureaucracy is bureaucracy and we had no choice but to backtrack. Sixteen exhausting hours later, we arrived at Thula Thula to a welcome committee of rangers, curious guests and a very worried Lawrence. I collapsed into his arms.

  ‘We made it.’

  He held me tight. ‘Well done. I knew you’d do it.’

  Next challenge was getting Thabo out of the crate. His bum faced the door and he had no intention of doing a U-turn or walking out backwards. Food to the rescue. Elaine rustled up another bottle and used it to coax him down the ramp.

  ‘Dinner time,’ she cajoled. ‘Come and see your new home.’

  He followed his bottle out of the crate and stared dozily at the crowd of smiling but unfamiliar faces around him. Elaine knelt next to him and plopped the teat in his mouth. He closed his eyes and drank.

  Tears of fatigue and relief rolled down my cheeks. Our first rescue calf was home.

  Thabo chose that moment to shrug off his wooziness and run off, heading straight for the dangerously high bank of the Nseleni River. Elaine dashed after him.

  ‘Thabo, no!’ she yelled.

  ‘Stop him!’ I screamed.

  Pieter and a second ranger sprinted after them. The great thing about South African men is that they know how to rugby tackle. They almost caught him but he was also South African, and in the mood for a game with the boys, because he wriggled free, dragging them through the mud behind him. Elaine darted off to fetch his bottle.

  ‘Thabo, look what I’ve got,’ she called, waving it in the air.

  He stopped dead in his tracks, left the rangers sprawled in the mud, and trotted back to her, happily following his bottle into his new sleeping quarters, a room attached to the lodge’s conference centre.

  A young calf needs night-time feeds and comfort from his caregiver, so I had made arrangements for them to share a room. There were soft blankets on the floor for him and a comfy bed with the same white cotton sheets our guests used for Elaine. Not very practical of me. I had a lot to learn about looking after baby rhinos.