How do you hide a dozen elephants?
Simple, put them in a densely vegitated river bottom at 2 am, poof! No more elephants! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
After a few days of being informed that the elephants were out and about over the previous night, I informed Benson that, regardless of the time I wanted to know about it the next time it happened! I didn't really realize that what I had been said would be taken quite so literally until just a few nights ago.
At about 1am on Saturday I was awakened by the neighbor's dog barking, insert ear plugs and continue sleeping. The next thing I know there are muffled voices coming from outside my house, right next to the window. Groggily, remove ear plugs;
"Mary! Are you hearing the drums? They are beating them to scare the elephants!"
"Uh...maybe...hang on..."
I look at my watch, 2:30!?!? I only recognize one 2:30 per day and this is not it. There had better be elephants singing and dancing somewhere. I get dressed, which really only consisted of grabbing pants and getting my camera, and head outside. Benson is there and true to his word, he came to get me for the elephants, so off we go.
Luckily there is a full moon so we can see pretty well and finally get to the paved road (the M18) and start walking towards the river that drains into Lake Chikukutu not too far away. Once we get a little closer we realize the elephants are back further and reverse directions looking for a way to cut into the bush on various little paths winding in and out of fields of corn, cassava, rice, bananas, and just plain grass.
Fast forward to about 4am. The group of elephants has split up, half are going back to the reserve with half still milling around in the river bottom and we have yet to see them. We hear them quite well. Out here the only time you hear a tree crashing down is if people are behind it, so knowing that some really massive animals are out there just knocking them over, and at night they look completely black, is more than a cure for any attention defficits one may posess at the moment due to lack of sleep. You are wide awake!
We are now standing on the edge of a rice field in the river bottom, we have lost all height from the surrounding hills and are at the same level as the elephants. They are about 200 yards, by my guessing, in the bush and we can hear them happily muching on anything they please. Every now and then you hear an almost rubbery, squeaky sound, kinda like the sound two pickels make when you rub them together, that is the sound banana trees make when their stalks are ripped in two. But the elephants move further back.
We double back up the hill and cut down on to the sandy part of the river bank where we can cross over to the side the elephants are on. Both us and the elephants are now moving East paralell to the river. It is 5:30 and the sky is just barely starting to lighten, we come up the sandy bank and into a large open area. There they are! Just vaguly you can make out the shapes as your eyes try to focus. There are about a dozen of them, a small group, 30-40 is more normal.
Photo op! Kinda. The first picture didn't turn out, no flash and it was too dark. Okay, I think, one flash photo won't scare them, right? Well...... The camera goes off, and one of the largest of the dark masses turns and faces us, you can make out the big ears fully extended trying to asses us from a distance of maybe 75-100 yards.
Benson: "Oh we should be turning back. He doesn't like it."
Me: "What, he's coming this way???"
Benson: "We are turning back now!"
So we back off and the elephants melt into the forest. It was amazing, you have been folowing elephants all night! Walking in their footprints, listening to them execute their complete and total mastery of their environment, as they cut a swath through the forest. Then to glimpse them for so brief a moment almost isn't fair.
After this, the sun is up and of course we don't see the elephants any more so we turn to go home. When we do, I realize what a highway we were in. There are tracks and dung everywhere, some tracks from a very young baby. Also, you realize why exactly they are all over the place.
Down in the river bottem there are no houses due to seasonal flooding, only crops, lots of corn and rice which the elephants have decimated in the course of one night. As we are walking out of the fields towards the settelments, we pass a farmer on his way to what used to be a corn field. This field was planted later and well watered and would have acted as a cushion during the hungry season for his family. It is gone. As we pass he is speaking to me and Benson translates, "he wants you to, please, kill an elephant."
And what else is there to do. All the people can do is bang drums to try and scare them off but we all know a full grown African elephant pretty much does what he wants. So we come to the amazing reality we are faced with. We are failed wildlife managers, we have failed here. Everywhere else, every other species of game here is managed, albeit certain tecniques aren't that great, but they have plans. Hippo, crocodile, leopard, lion, all dangerous animals, have different policies. But elephants, the true King of the Jungle, possibly the most unpredictable animal you can run into out in the bush, is untouched.
There is no mamagment technique, nothing. And not having a plan, or any sort of direction, equals failure in my book.
And there is nothing villagers can do but sit back, bang some drums and watch their livelihood disappear overnight. It is easy to have an opinion on something, very easy, to throw out advice, condem those who's ideas clash with out own, we hold the noble stance, the high ground, "these people don't realize how important and wonderful the elephants are. How sad."
Believe me, they realize it, at 2:30 am we passed other women who were outside hoping to see the elephants, people were asking me if we really saw them. I was taken out in the African bush by someone who wanted to share these amazing animals with someone who had never seen them in their natural habitat before. They fully understand them and what they are capable of, never think they don't get it, they see it and they are frustrated by it.
What they are lacking in is solutions, real solutions, to the largest attractive, nusiance of an animal on this planet. And let me just say that someone had better come up with one fast. Growing populations of elephants and people will result in only more conflict, and a peaceful resolution is, as far as I can see, nothing but a dream.
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