The Last Train to Zona Verde (23 page)

“I intend Abu to be the premier safari lodge in Africa,” Michael said. “I want it to be like an English house party — a great house party — to eat together, sit around the fire together, five nights ideally, sharing experiences. Luxury without excess.”

Michael said he was drawn to the African elephant for what he called its deep level of emotional intelligence and its ability to elicit a wide range of responses in the people who encounter it — awe, excitement, happiness, fear, wonder, laughter, respect, humility.

“Abu is a complete immersion in a single species,” he said, “which also happens to be one of the most charismatic of all land mammals, the African elephant.” Complete immersion meant sharing five days of your life with a single herd — physically interacting with the elephants, riding them, walking with them, game viewing from atop their backs, even sleeping near them on a raised platform while the elephants browsed and snorted below. These creatures inspired fear in some people, Michael said, but it was his view that they were to be respected, not feared.

“I’ve been slapped by an elephant — by its trunk,” he told me. “It sent me flying! Why? I was probably being inappropriate.”

Michael was an enthusiast — intelligent, well read, congenial, physically strong, and happiest outdoors in the bush. He seemed to have a genuine gift for working with large mammals, and that extended to his ability to get on with people. I was delighted to see him again after so long.

“There’s something I want you to see. Just do exactly what I tell you to do,” he said minutes after my arrival, then checked his watch. “Want a beer? Go over to the platform at the front of the property. Have a beer and wait for me.”

This was the highest level of safari Africa, a day’s drive but a world away from the hard-up Ju/’hoansi, the squalor and drought and drunkards at Tsumkwe, the aid schemes and charities, the squabbling politicians and the shantytowns. Abu Camp was the Africa of the travel magazine article that promotes expensive holidays,
the multicolored brochure brought to life in the form of an elegant lodge, with comfortable chairs, gourmet food, and “Would you care for a cold towel?” as you’re proffered a chilled and folded face cloth held with silver tongs. Abu Camp represented that rare thing in rural Africa, comfort and cleanliness. For most tourists it was the only Africa they knew; for most Africans it was something utterly unknown.

The platform at the edge of the lodge had been built around the tower of a high smooth termite mound, fat and cylindrical and so sculptural it could have been an artwork. The lodge itself was situated in a grove of trees — African ebony, sycamore fig, and jackal-berry. I was greeted by the staff and offered sushi —
sushi!
—from a tray, and I sat down to drink a cold bottle of St. Louis beer.

Past the cushions and the lounge chairs, beyond the rails of the wide platform, the lagoon on this reach of the Okavango was dark and depthless-seeming, in shadow as the sun dipped behind it. But the slanting sun gilded the reeds of the marsh and glittered on the boughs of the acacia trees on what looked like floating islands in the distance. Streaks of pink and purple had begun to appear low in the sky. Usually nightfall in rural Africa is the end of everything — nothing to do, time to sleep, to await the dawn. But I was confident in the comfort of this sumptuous camp, able to enjoy the growing dusk and the expectation of nightfall. Food! Wine! Lamps were lit, torches blazed, and then came an unusual noise from the marsh.

It was the sound of heavy footfalls plopping in water, squishing in mud, and kicking against thicknesses of dense grass. I looked up and saw a herd of elephants parting the reeds in front of them, trunks upraised. They were approaching the camp in the golden light, framed by dark trees and the pinky purple sky, kicking through the swamp water and the brush, some of them trumpeting. Each rounded, advancing creature was ridden by an upright man, sitting just behind its flapping ears, and though the men held a goad, a stick with a hook that Indians call an
ankusha
, none of
them used it. Instead, to direct the elephants they called out commands in English — though not many commands were needed for elephants headed to the security of their enclosure and the expectation of cakes of food.

At sunset, the quietest time of day, the loud and sudden arrival of the elephants in a welter of splashing was an impressive display. The herd filed in front of the platform like disciplined troops past a reviewing stand.

I was witnessing this royal progress for the first time, but the other guests, who had seen it all the previous evening, were beaming with pleasure and expressing their renewed astonishment.

“They told me this would be the experience of a lifetime — and it is,” a woman near me said. She was a photographer, a New Yorker, her first time in Africa. “Africa is just amazing.”

I resisted telling her that this was an experience that only a handful of people knew. I said, truthfully, “I had no idea that anyone in Africa actually trained and rode elephants.”

“I rode one yesterday,” she said. “We’re going out again tomorrow. I can hardly wait.”

Her name was Alexandra, and she was taking pictures for a magazine article. Because she was a first-timer to Africa she was all nerves, hyperalert and intensely watchful.

“I can’t sleep I’m so excited,” she said. “And the noises from the swamp keep me awake.”

“Funny. I have that problem in New York.”

Of the arrival of the herd at dusk, she said, “The sounds are as interesting as the visual experience.” And that day, on the elephant, she had noticed a guide with a rifle just ahead of her. “It was a strange juxtaposition. I’m the elephant and I see the guy with the gun.” And she added, “You have no idea how much these mahouts adore the elephants.”

After drinks in front of a campfire, we gathered on the veranda for dinner, about ten of us around a long refectory table; four courses,
with wine, Michael at the head of the table answering questions and calming the more anxious guests.

“Elephants are emotionally highly complex,” he said. “Never lose your respect and never assume too much, but don’t be afraid.”

“You must have had some amazing experiences,” someone said.

“Want to know one of the best ones?” Michael said. “It was lying on the ground for hours watching the antics of dung beetles as they battled over a pile of elephant dung, with the brood pairs frantically rolling away the nuptial ball.”

The strangeness of being in an open-sided room, around a linen-covered dining table, in the middle of an African swamp kept the conversation somewhat subdued. It was a situation daunting even to the much-traveled millionaires at the table, humbled by the surrounding darkness. The meal was delicious, but past the torches and lanterns at the edge of the platform we could hear the snorts and grumbles of hippos thrashing in the reeds, the squawking of birds, and the crackle of insects frying on the bug zapper.

After dinner, Michael took me aside and introduced me to Star, a young Tswana woman, all smiles, who was the chef, and to his managerial staff, his colleagues, the people who ran the operation in his absence. One, a man of about thirty, had been at dinner, listening intently but saying nothing. Because of his reticence I said hello.

“This is Nathan Jamieson,” Michael said. “He was traveling around Africa and visited us. He discovered he liked what we were doing. He found us, not the other way around.”

His friendly bluster made Nathan smile, but he still seemed rather shy. I introduced myself and we talked awhile. He said he’d been at Abu just a few months, and that his girlfriend, Jen, also worked here.

“Nathan’s one of our trainers,” Michael said, because Nathan had not yet said so.

His shyness showed in his faintly smiling downcast face, the
sideways tilt of his head, his deferential posture, the way he planted his feet. This shy man trained five-ton elephants! But really, it wasn’t so odd. Shyness is not timidity; he was a confident, collected man. The rifle-toting safari guides, so bold and in their element in the bush, stalking lions or leopards, were often unforthcoming indoors, among the booming, well-heeled clients, whose natural element was the dinner table.

I said, “So, Nathan, how do you like it here at Abu?”

“It’s great, yes. It’s brilliant.”

I heard the slightest inflection, the nasal Australian haw and the short smiling vowel in the affirmative
yiss
.

“Where are you from in Australia?”

“Sydney, originally, but I was at a zoo at a place — you wouldn’t know it.”

“Try me.”

“Dubbo?” he said in that rising tone of Australians offering information.

“I’ve been there — half a day’s drive from Sydney.”

“I worked at the Western Plains Zoo.”

“God, I hate zoos.”

“This one isn’t like that. It’s open range. The animals have a lot of freedom.”

“I went to Dubbo because there’s a character in a novel with that name, Alf Dubbo, in
Riders in the Chariot
. I love that novel and I really like Alf Dubbo, the aboriginal painter.”

An airless awkward silence descended on us, the embarrassment of intelligent people when a book is mentioned that no one has read, as though you’ve suddenly lapsed into a foreign language. I never know in such circumstances whether to describe the book with an exhortation to read it or simply shut up.

I did neither. I said, “I never hear a good word about Patrick White from Australians, and he was one of your best writers.”

“I know who you mean,” Nathan said. “We read him at school.”

When the subject turned to elephants, Nathan brightened. He was like Michael, an enthusiast. He had worked with elephants in Thailand and Canada too, and seemed determined to know everything about elephant behavior. I realized that I was talking about them as large shadowy creatures seen at a distance, but for Nathan they were distinct and definable. He had strong opinions about their behavior, how teachable they were, how they responded. He reminded me of a horse owner who speaks of the subtlety of horses’ responses — how they’re smarter than their rider; or of the dog owner who says, “Nugget is always a little nervous around really selfish people.”

One by one, the guests were escorted to their tents by a guide holding a powerful flashlight, looking out for a snake or a scorpion or possibly a hippo — hippos leave the water every evening to climb ashore and feed on vegetation.

The night air crackled with the slapping of bats and the
fit-fit-fit
of insects and the hoots of herons and the thrashing of hippos browsing in the reeds under my sleeping platform.

Dawn is sudden in the water world of the Okavango, without any hills or heights to delay the sunrise, and the shimmering mirrors of the lagoons and channels intensified the light, which is all gold.

After breakfast, Michael showed me around the camp — the staff quarters, the composting field, the solar panels — and at the elephant compound he introduced me to the mahouts. Big Joe, George, Itaki, Collet, Frank, and Nathan — the one non-African — were leading the elephants from their stockade to an open area where each one, with an iron cuff shackling its foot, was chained to a large eyebolt. The clanking of the long heavy chains, the bang of the bolts, and the shouted orders of the mahouts as the elephants shuffled were at odds with the idyllic place — a courtyard with a canopy of high foliage, the sunlight filtered through the dust kicked up by the elephants. The mahouts were nimble in their task of chaining the
huge animals — and it took two of them to drag the heavy chains. I had last seen the elephants the previous evening, splashing through the swamp in the failing light of day. How different they seemed in the glare of morning, bolted to the ground to receive their riders; they looked impatient and vexed.

I mentioned this to Nathan, who was securing his elephant, helped by Big Joe.

“She’s a good girl,” Nathan said, and he rested his head against the thick gray post of her leg. “Aren’t you, Sukiri?”

“How old is she?”

“Eighteen,” he said in the Australian way,
ay-deen
. “She was orphaned from a cull at Kruger with Thandi and Seeni. They were brought to Gaberone. That’s where we got them. Steady, girl!”

Now the seating platform — a howdah-like contraption — was lifted onto their backs and strapped around the elephant’s middle, and when this was done each elephant was verbally hectored until it knelt, its whole body flat to the ground. This was accomplished by a slow folding of the legs beneath it and a sagging collapse of the big gray belly.

Michael approached and said, “Isn’t it incredible?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You’re riding Cathy today. That’s her over there.”

“What’s her story?”

“Captured in Uganda when her family was culled. She was sent to a zoo in Toronto. That’s where we got her from. She’s about fifty years old, the matriarch of the herd.”

Another kneeling elephant snorted dust as a group of men fussed around her, fastening a wooden seating platform to her back.

“This operation is amazing,” I said. “All these workers, all these animals, and just a few guests.”

“That’s why we’re expensive,” Michael said. “But we have wonderful owners and great clients.” He was smoking a cigarette and admiring the activity. “A team created it. You can build whatever
you want. But if you don’t have the human element, you’ve got nothing.”

“How many elephants altogether?”

“The ones we ride — about a dozen. But there are lots more, big and small, that are part of the herd. They’ll go out and follow. It’s a dysfunctional, put-together family of elephants.”

“In what way dysfunctional?”

“They’re from all over. We created the herd, so there’s all sorts of dynamics.” He was still looking across the compound. “Our plan is to release some of them back into the wild.”

A little while later, speaking to the guests before the ride, he said, “The elephants embody so much of Africa …”

This peroration about the glory of African elephants reminded me of the passion of Morel, the idealistic hero of Romain Gary’s
The Roots of Heaven
. In this early (1956) environmental-themed novel (later a John Huston film), Morel mounts a campaign in Africa to save elephants from the big guns of hunters, and fails.