EXTRACT | ‘The Elephants of Thula Thula’ by Françoise Malby-Anthony

ABOUT THE BOOK

‘Somehow, the elephants got into my soul, and it became my life’s work to see them safe and happy. There was no giving up on that vision, no matter how hard the road was at times.’

Françoise Malby-Anthony is the owner of a game reserve in SA with a remarkable family of elephants whose adventures have touched hearts around the world. The herd’s feisty matriarch Frankie knows who’s in charge at Thula Thula, and it’s not Malby-Anthony. But when Frankie becomes ill, and the authorities threaten to remove or cull some of the herd if the reserve doesn’t expand, Malby-Anthony is in a race against time to save her beloved elephants...

The joys and challenges of a life dedicated to conservation are vividly described in The Elephants of Thula Thula. The search is on to find a girlfriend for orphaned rhino Thabo — and then, as his behaviour becomes increasingly boisterous, a big brother to teach him manners. Malby-Anthony realises a dream with the arrival of Savannah, the cheetah — an endangered species not seen in the area since the 1940s — and finds herself rescuing meerkats kept as pets. But will Thula Thula survive the pandemic, an invasion from poachers, and the threat from a mining company wanting access to its land?

As she faces her toughest years yet, Malby-Anthony realises once again that with their wisdom, resilience and communal bonds, the elephants have much to teach us.

EXTRACT

Chapter 16
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Week by week, month by month, the pandemic continued, and Thula Thula remained closed to guests. We had cut expenses to the bone, but on a reserve, there are many essential expenses you cannot cut. Our responsibility to protect and conserve this wildlife doesn’t disappear because of a pandemic. Even if we have not one guest, we have to maintain our fences and pay for security. The poachers don’t obey the government’s ‘remain in place’ orders; if anything they are more desperate, more dangerous.

We have faced floods, bush fires, poaching, attacks on our animals and our staff, the death of our founder, my husband, not to mention the everyday challenges of living in the bush. In twenty years of running the oldest private game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, we had never had it so tough. We had received a little money from the government’s Temporary Employment Relief Scheme to supplement salaries. In September of 2020, that had stopped. We were on our own.

The responsibility of keeping the reserve going, paying the staff and keeping the animals safe weighed heavily on me. I maintained a happy face and a positive attitude in public, and spent my moments of discouragement and despair alone, with my dogs. They are the ones I turn to in difficult times, the ones with whom I can share my deepest fears and worries. Animals feel your sorrows and they are the best companions in times of distress. Gypsy will climb onto my lap to comfort me, and the others gather round. I felt loved and supported, and encouraged to go on, to keep up the fight — for their sakes, as well as my own. It cheered me up just watching these little survivors living their lives without a care in the world, except perhaps wondering what their evening meal was going to be, and when would be the best time for their pre-nap nap. I took heart from that. We were going to survive this crisis too! I just needed to find a way.

It was absolutely imperative to find ways to generate money. We have wonderful supportive guests and friends around the world. But I also knew that everyone was under pressure and donor fatigue was setting in. To just say ‘Please give money’ is very crass and boring. I think fundraising for conservation should always be for something specific, and I always want to give donors something of value in return. But what?

We were already running a successful virtual adoption programme. Our elephants, every one of them from biggest to smallest, were up for adoption. And the rhinos, Thabo, Nthombi, Mona and baby Sissi. Who can resist the adorable Sissi? We promoted our adoptions, and took gorgeous photos of the animals, posted them on our social media accounts, and shared them in our newsletter. Our adoption programme had been a success. So, why stop with the wildlife? I thought. We put our beautiful dogs up for virtual adoption, too. Our lovely rescue doggies looked too beautiful in their photos, and our friends and supporters responded eagerly.

I do believe that challenge and adversity force us to come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. We had challenge and adversity, that’s for sure. Now we needed the ideas! And I had one.

I called everyone together and told them.

‘These are desperate times. We need to do whatever we can to raise money and survive until this situation improves.’

Everyone nodded in agreement.

‘So what do we have? We’ve got these good-looking rangers; they are very popular. Khaya, Siya, Victor, Muzi, Andrew. All of them, we will put them on the market.’

There was not so much nodding at that. The rangers looked at me warily. Oh dear, they thought, the stress has got to Françoise, she’s gone a little bit crazy!

 ‘Seriously, it’s a great idea!’ I said with conviction. ‘You know how the guests love our rangers. They are with them for hours a day on game drives, they get to know them,  they learn so much from them. I’m sure they’d love to support them. Why don’t we put them up for adoption, just like our special wildlife?’

It was decided. We would offer the rangers for virtual ‘adoption’ at fifty dollars a month for as long or short a time as donors want. The money would go to our Conservation Fund, and every cent of it used for the upkeep and security of the reserve and the animals. Kim took beautiful, glamorous pictures of the rangers and told a little story sharing info about each one — Muzi’s wonderful singing voice, Victor’s photographic talent, Khaya’s great sense of humour, Siya’s amazing knowledge about wildlife. She even got a smile out of Andrew, who is not what you might call an eager photographic subject.

What made it so successful is that everyone who has been to Thula or read my book knows and loves our rangers. And here’s the clever part of the offer — if you adopt one of our rangers, you get more stories and photos! Our rangers really are very special. Unlike other game reserves, where game rangers stay a year or two and then move, most of ours have been here for ten or fifteen years. Regular guests get to know them, and often ask for their favourite to take them on a game drive. The rangers know the guests too — as Muzi says, you have to learn to read the people, not just the animals! Most are from Zululand, and were ‘brought up’ here at Thula Thula, which is to say they became professional rangers here. Siya, Victor, Muzi and Khaya all started in security, and came to love the bush and the animals.

While we compiled the rangers’ stories for our adoption programme, they chatted about their early days in the bush. Khaya recalled how he was so taken by the experience of being in the bush that on his free days, instead of going home, he would often stay on the reserve and go out on game drives with the rangers, listening and learning from them. He knew then that he wanted to join their ranks.

The first step towards becoming a ranger is to be a tracker — that’s the guy who sits on the seat on the front of the car, looking for footprints and dung and other signs in the sand, to show where the animals are. It’s a scary job to start with. ‘The animals come so close to you. And if an elephant or rhino pushes or chases the car and the ranger reverses, you are right there in front of it, with it coming at you! I was terrified,’ said Khaya with a laugh. ‘But I soon started to relax. Before long, I wasn’t even scared of the elephants.’

‘What’s to be scared of? It’s not as if they are dangerous — like, for example, frogs!’ said Muzi, who is warm and full of fun, always quick with a joke. His comment raised a laugh because everyone knows that Khaya is scared of frogs. As a result, he has on more than one occasion put his hand in his pocket to find that a frog has been deposited there.

‘I can’t help it, that’s how I was brought up!’ said Khaya with a smile and a shrug. ‘The adults said if you play with a frog or a chameleon, it will bring lightning down on you.’ He gave a shiver at the thought.

‘But the worst is crabs. When we were kids, our parents would say “don’t play with crabs, if one pinches you, if you are a boy you will become a girl, if you are girl you will become a boy”. Of course, no-one wanted that to happen.’

‘Does that sound likely?’

‘Of course not. And I didn’t know anyone who died of frogs and lightning either. Now, I think of it as a conservation message, a way to make sure we kids didn’t mess with the small animals and hurt them.’

Today it was Khaya’s turn to be teased, but everyone gets a turn to be the butt of the jokes. The rangers love to play tricks on each other, and especially on the new recruits. They swap war stories of their own.

‘Siya told me that you can tell whether an elephant poo comes from male or female,’ Muzi recalled. ‘You just stick your finger in the fresh pile of dung and put it in your mouth. If it’s sweet, it’s from a female and if not, male.’

‘You did that?’ Victor laughed.

‘He did it first, so I thought, well that’s what everyone does, so I must do it. The trick is, after he stuck his finger in the dung, he swapped fingers. He sucked a clean finger. I didn’t, so I got a taste of elephant poo!’

Now they were on a roll.

Extract provided by Pan Macmillan