African
WildLife
For those of us who are rooted in Africa by birth or other close association,….the Mother Continent embalms on its natives an appreciation of deep affinity to the land, a fierce sense of belonging that burns deeply into the soul.
Peter and Beverly Pickford, dedicated and inspirational Africans, capture at once so powerfully the very essence of what makes Africa enthralling.’
President Ian Khama
about
Wildlife
The elephant hesitates, one forefoot in the air swinging slowly back and forth. It has our scent; its trunk held upward to the wind. We sit still. I talk to it softly so that there is no pretence that we are inanimate. I imitate the low rumbling which elephants use to reassure each other in time of distress. It is a poor mimicry, but the elephant listens, its ears forward. Its forefoot comes down. It shakes its head, I rumble again. Once more it listens but this time it relaxes and turning, walks to the water with a heavy nodding of its head. And like the breach of a dyke the elephants flow out of the bush from behind us. At first in a single file trickle, that grows slowly wider until finally the dust hangs thick from the rush of hundreds of huge round feet clamouring to quench their thirst.
I am endlessly fascinated by the hierarchy of elephant: who drinks first, who waits, who declares the coast clear, who turns and stands defiant in defence. The bulls may dominate with their size, but elephants are a matriarchal society, and it is the experienced cows that lead. It was a cow that declared us safe and advanced past us to the water. She is across the channel, wet with mud. She has drunk her fill and is now luxuriating in a mud bath. The mud is black, but in the afternoon light her skin is fragmented into a myriad reflections of gold and blue. The bulge of her belly is like the mosaiced dome of a mosque.
There are more than a hundred elephants now. Some drink. Others spray mud along their flanks. A few sink their tusks into the soft soil, their haunches high in the air. The young roll and jostle in the wet clay. Two tall trees frame the savannah behind, its corn yellow grass running to a hazy horizon. In the pause I become aware of the breath in my chest. It is something more than air, than the taste of dust. It is not liquid, but it satisfies something in me like cool water to a thirst.
The wild creatures I had come to Africa to see are exhilarating in their multitude and colours, and I imagined for a time that this glimpse of the earth’s morning might account for the anticipation that I felt, the sense of origins, of innocence and mystery, like a marvellous childhood faculty restored.