Delta Adventure II: Elephants all the way down

In which Ilana has fun and introspection with elephants.

To continue the adventure, we reluctantly winged (wung?) our way from the blue-green swirls of Xigera to the still watery, flood-covered mopane-land of Khwai, on the other side of the Delta. I say mopane-land because while there is also riverine vegetation, other trees and even barren salt patches, mopane rules here, from desiccated bushes to tall glitter-bright, green-leafed trees waving in the wind, casting dappled shadows in their wake. And where the flood has reached – that’s Botswana’s flood not Noah’s; it hasn’t reached this far in over 30 years – the trees stand knee-deep, sunlight glinting off the silent water as it creeps further into dry land.

Of course lots of mopane means lots of ellies and indeed it was pachyderms all the way from one camp to another – as well as the requisite impala, giraffe, enormous herd of buffalo and zebra, one skulking hyaena and a grey hornbill trying to kill a chameleon for breakfast. 

Dana (our photographer, remember) needed a few shots of us – the models – watching game. But as his last morning dawned and we bumbled around trying to find said game, it wasn’t looking good. Clearly everyone was visiting their friends on the other side of the Khwai River (no bridge jokes, please). The fact that the eastern side of the concession only stopped being a hunting concession a year ago when Wilderness took it over doesn’t help much; a lot of animals took fright as soon as our vehicle passed by, poor blighters. Hopefully as time goes on they will forget that cars mean bloody death and will learn to relax to the sound of cameras whirring away instead. As we were literally on the way to the airstrip to drop him off, Dana’s legendary luck caught and a young male lion came into view. He was all scruffy, looked like he’d shaved his head in an attempt to be cool and it had bombed out pretty badly. He was lyin’ (sorry) in the long grass but obligingly sat up, looked at the models madly stripping off layers and layers of clothing (so that we didn’t look like ‘blobs’ as Dana called us; it was freezing that day). We obligingly oohed and aahed as the lion heaved his bulk up and walked ponderously past the camera with us in the background – and ... it's a wrap!

Scruffy lion; photo by Dana Allen

We stayed one night at Banoka Bush Camp, famed for being 100% solar, and then one night at the delightful Khwai Discoverer Camp, hidden in the thick undergrowth and trees overlooking a reed- and frog-filled lagoon. Besides being all hidden and nestled, what I loved most was the wonderful bright cold crisp smell, a sharp-ice smell that seemed to rise from the grasses all around.

We left Khwai after a couple of days and went back west across to the bottom left of the Delta, to Abu, land of elephants and a very zhoosh camp. From the sublime (for me) to the luxurious – I thought Carol was going to burst into tears when she saw the hair-dryer in the room, whereas I was missing that long drop... okay, not so much. The ‘tent’ (more like a house) looks out on a lovely lagoon, with a hippo neighbour who woke me up at 5am with a “squeal-grunt-grunt-yeeep” and then proceeded to do what sounded like breast-stroke, splashing with verve and vigour outside the tent. After a while the splashing grew so loud I thought he’d jumped into our outdoor copper bathtub for a quick wash (did I mention it was luxurious?).

Cathy the matriarch; my photo this time

Some background on Abu: it was begun by a chap who rescued a few elephant from various places – a circus, a Kruger cull etc – and they became a ‘trained’ herd. I use the word ‘trained’ not ‘tame’ because anyone who thinks you can tame an elephant is smoking their socks. Wilderness has taken this place over and we’re trying to see what we can do here to either release the ellies or at the very least use this unique place as the centre for elephant research; since Botswana has more elephant than almost anywhere else in Africa, this is a Good Thing. 

So what happens here is that you join the ellies on some of their activities instead of them visiting you on yours. They sleep in a boma at night and in the morning are greeted by their monitors – a group of men who seem to have a wonderful relationship with their pachyderm charges. The monitors take them out for the day, where they roam over the concession, feeding and just hanging out as a herd would. Guests join them, to be introduced to them and to walk or ride them back to camp.

Yes, riding. Hmm. Mary-Anne and I were – and still are – against riding animals of such intelligence, but eventually were talked into it, for the rather twisted reasoning that if we did, we could tell if we should have or not! The result as I sat atop Cathy, the matriarch of the herd, was a tangled web of emotions: horror that I was doing this, awe at seeing things from an elephant-eye view (the tops of termite mounds, trees, tops of walking people’s heads, tops of everything really), and overall, wishing we could have asked Cathy’s permission first. I sat up there, holding myself stiffly, trying to weigh less as I could feel her massive hip bones moving under us as she walked. Wondering if I’m hurting her or just an encumbrance – after all she weighs in at close to 5 tons – or if, as Collet the head monitor maintains, it makes her feel part of the herd; after all, this is what this herd ‘does.’ See? A jumble of emotions that probably need a bit of therapy.

Walking with them, ah now, that was amazing. To walk right next to the leg of an elephant and look up and then more up (upper?) to where the sky should be and seeing instead a grey criss-cross of wrinkles with thick sparse hairs under Cathy’s jaw, her trunk coiling and roiling, seeming to have a life of its own unrelated to the rest of the great swaying body – well, quite simply it’s a privilege.

But when you walk you have to be careful not to be run over by a bus – in the form of Paseka, the youngest of the group, who is a typical child. She walks with the herd, then stops to smell something or to look at something, when suddenly she notices that she’s been left behind... Panic! Ears flapping madly and trunk wobbling, she comes thundering along (people jumping aside pretty smartly) until she gets to ‘grandma’ Cathy where she immediately feels better; regaining her confidence she jostles the large animal aside and sallies forth with renewed confidence to grab at the nearest bush with her trunk.

Only here did I understand the concept of a matriarch in Cathy, who really does radiate leadership in her calm, awe-inspiring (in the exact sense) presence. It is more than just her size and her incredibly long crossed-over tusks. There is something about her – or possibly I’m guilty of anthropomorphising, it wouldn’t be the first time – either way, she’s hard to get over. (She’s obviously impossible to get over literally of course, har har.)

I saw an example of her leadership on Shabbat, when I visited the boma to watch the monitors and the elephant researchers in action. Once a week, before the herd moves out, the elephant researchers come to measure and weigh (yes, really) each ellie, look at dung and all the other fun stuff that researchers get excited about. And the best, most thrilling part was the Morning Rumble.

As you know, one of the ways that elephants communicate is through low rumbles, some of which are inaudible to the human ear, but we do hear the ‘top’ of their range. It seems that every morning, Cathy starts the morning rumble (sounds like a name for a radio programme), and is answered almost immediately by her second in command, Shirheni, and then the others. Their temporal glands start to flow immediately as some sort of communication takes place. I found myself wanting to ask Cathy: "what did you say?" Was it just “Good morning, ladies”? Was it a snide remark about us silly humans and everyone else was cracking up? I felt that the humans, supposedly in charge, were standing around uncomprehending and briefly discomforted. We are the outsiders here, forever foreigners; without means of translating we’re looking in on an intimate conversation we’ll never understand.

In which case, how kind of these particular members of Loxidonta africana to put up with us and our clumsy attempts at connecting with them. And on behalf of the whole human race I’d like to apologise to them for the inconvenience, not to say trauma, of having to share the continent with us – and more, to thank them for the privilege of being able to do so.

Photos can be seen on my facebook page - here.