In late 2003,
Odile, a young female hippo, left the family of hippos near our home.
After being away for over three weeks I was beginning to worry that she
was yet another hippo to leave this area. I had known Odile since her birth
in May 1996, so, like all of the younger hippos, she is very much part
of my behaviour study of the Turgwe Hippos from birth to maturity.
Since the 2000
cyclone that hit Mozambique, causing tremendous flooding in this Turgwe
River system, 16 hippos have left my study groups. 7 left during those
floods and the rest have moved away since 2001. It has always been difficult
to locate any of the missing hippos, as there are two other rivers within
this wildlife conservancy. The Sabi River is about sixty kilometers of
river within the area and the Mkwasine River, which runs through for about
22 kilometers. There are hippos living in both rivers and I have never
had the time to be able to spend a few months checking on both rivers and
locating all of the hippo groups.
The knowledge
I have gained over the last ten years about the Turgwe hippos has come
from being with the hippos on a daily basis. The Turgwe flows within the
conservancy for about 35 kilometers. In the beginning, I spent as much
as six hours with the hippos each day. As of late, due to the security
situation and the need to patrol with Jean-Roger to search for and
remove the wire snares put by the poachers, my time is even more reduced.
If I am lucky I can spend about two hours a day with them.
So when Odile
did not come back here, I was afraid that, like two other females-Libra
and Kubi- who left back in March 2003, she too had gone on walk about.
Then on January 20th, in the morning, I was on my way to the Owl Tree area
of the river where the family have been all living for a while, when what
do I see?
Much to my joy,
a tiny (about three week old) hippo calf was there and Odile was accompanying
it. She had had her first calf and, like all new mothers, had gone off
to give birth, stayed with the calf alone for the valuable imprinting period,
and then had just returned to the family. In Odile’s case, there is quite
an extended family: her mother Abe, and Abe’s other daughters, Surprise,
who is a mature mother of three calves, Kubi, Climber, and Sabi. Then there
is Tacha, Abe’s youngest daughter, who was born on January 1st 2000, our
millennium hippo.
Odile quickly
took her firstborn under overhanging bushes adjacent to the pool. Here
the hippos can tuck up; they are still in the river but out of sight and
concealed from anybody.
For a few seconds
I had seen that the calf was quite dark and that Odile looked fine. The
relief of finding her home and with her calf was immense. I decided to
name the little one Bobin.
Bobin is the
first calf born since my lovely Bob was killed back in February 2003. Also
I believe that the calf’s father is Robin, as Odile has only once joined
Tembia, the other younger bull, and has spent the rest of the time with
Robin. Odile is the daughter of Happy, so she is not related to any of
Bob’s offspring. Both Robin and Tembia are his sons. At least I know that
Tembia is for certain, as he was conceived when I fed the hippos and his
mother back in the horrendous drought of 1992. Robin joined the group when
I was feeding and spent most of his time feeding with Bob and the females
in Bob’s group. I do not think he would have been allowed contact with
these hippos if he had not been related to Bob. Both he and
Bob attacked Happy on every occasion they could find during the 1992 drought.
Since the 20th
January I have only managed to see Bobin a couple more times. The calf
is still concealed most of the daylight hours, in the recess under the
bushes. Within the next few weeks the calf will be allowed by its mother
to have contact with some of the younger calves and then I hope to get
its first photograph.To know if it is a male or a female
I will need
to see it on land. This will be pretty difficult to achieve until
they are regularly leaving the river to lie upon the sandbank adjacent
to the pool. Depending on the temperature, they normally start to utilize
the sandbank by about April, once the river waters are a little bit cool
in the mornings, as our winter begins.
New hippo births,
or for that matter any wild animals' offspring, are always a joy to watch.
But in our present troubled times in Zimbabwe, it is even nicer to have
a new little hippo calf to study and hope to watch for many years to come.
2003 was not a particularly good year, in that I lost Bob, the dominant
bull hippo. Even though he was killed naturally, there was still a huge
part of my life with these hippos that came to an end. Arthur, a very special
wild warthog has never returned to my home and I fear that these poachers
may have killed him. I have to believe he is somewhere safe but it has
been an awful long time now that he has not come home. His son Naf Naf
is alive and still comes to our back door for a titbit every night. He
is lucky to be alive as a poacher nearly got him back in June of 2003.
Jean-Roger and
I have never had a firearm since moving to this area in 1990. My personal
policy is that if I am in the bush, in wild animals territory, then it
is up to me to be alert and aware of their habits and their ways. If I
am put in a position where an animal could hurt me, it will probably be
due to my own lack of attention to the situation. So I prefer not to carry
a weapon as a means of defense against an animal. Rather I use my own mental
and physical abilities. I know hunters who have been charged by buffalo
or elephants and, in self-defense, some of them have shot and either killed
or maimed that animal. I know other people who have not had a weapon and
have managed to get away from a difficult situation by taking a more defensive
position: either by removing yourself up a tree, (like on the numerous
occasions that Blackface hippo has charged me), or, in the case of an elephant,
not putting yourself in too close a proximity to the elephant’s space.
It is often the case with most wild animals, even lions: do not enter a
certain radius of space around that animal and it will not harm you. Lions
are meat eaters but nine times out of ten they have never tasted a human.
If they have, then they normally become a man-eater and usually end up
killed for that habit.
In all of my
years in Africa, I have not carried a weapon. Jean-Roger followed my example.
Then in 2001 these people invaded this wildlife conservancy and since then
so much has changed. They, we believe, are mainly in this area for one
purpose only and that is to poach. The land has never been suitable for
resettlement and has no permanent water for agricultural purposes. We are
sure that most came here to kill the wildlife, which they have sadly succeeded
in doing over the last couple of years, to such an extent
that thousands
of animals have died.
These people
are armed with bows and arrows, which can bring down a fully-grown buffalo,
and the occasional one has been seen either with a rifle or a shotgun.
In addition, they have packs of hunting dogs, which they use to hunt down
the antelope and other animals. The dogs exhaust the animal, have it at
bay, and then the men who run behind the dogs kill the animal once it is
too tired to put up a fight.
Hence, in this
wildlife conservancy, the policy of all the owners of the various properties
is to tell their game scouts to shoot any dogs they see which are chasing
wildlife, and of course to catch poachers if they can. Also, the dogs often
get rabies, since their owners do not bother to vaccinate them against
it. In 2001, a dog came into our home area and actually tried to bite me.
My husband had to dispatch the dog and when examined it was found to be
rabid. Then, in 2002, we were threatened twice by poachers we met on our
patrols in the bush. Both occasions I have written about in previous newsletters.
The police were called in and took statements but the men in question were
not caught. One man was later caught by the game scout for carrying a rifle
and did get a jail sentence. We believe he may have been one of the men
who pointed his rifle at us.
So, in 2002
we got a rifle. This Jean-Roger carried when we went on our daily patrols.
As he had done his military service in France he knows how to use it, as
I do, since in my safari days it was necessary to know how to shoot for
my guiding license. Sadly, in 2002, Jean shot some dogs. On every occasion
they had hunted a kudu antelope or an impala,
and once a
bushbuck and a baboon, right next to our home, bringing the poor exhausted
animal eventually to a standstill. The animals always seemed to take refuge
near our home. I think that a wild animal realizes when it is pursued by
another animal, that sometimes it is safer to go near human habitation.
This has happened to many people that I know who are living in Africa.
To save the
life of the wild animals, Jean shot the dog or dogs that were hunting them
close to our home. We also took and still take a weapon with us every day
now that we patrol the bush for snares. This proved beneficial in 2003
when we were patrolling one area behind some rock kopjes, (a small little
rocky hill).
I was walking
on one game path and Jean was deeper in the bush on another path, both
of us searching for snares, which the poachers attach to trees on game
paths. Suddenly, I notice ahead of me 6 men who, as I see them, see me.
Much to my horror they start to run full pelt at me! To say it was a little
frightening is an understatement. Jean told me to freeze, and not to move,
as the men had not seen Jean. As they got nearer, when my knees were
just starting to shake, Jean stepped out from his part
of the path
into their view.
He held the
rifle turned away from the men but he made sure that they could see it!
The change in their behaviour was absolutely incredible to behold. They
literally all braked to a halt from their run at me and kind of returned
to a much more sedate stroll. They put grins on their faces and all as
they approached us said “Hello How are You”, as if just walking along the
route we were on, in a most normal manner.
We knew and
they knew we were aware that this was all an act, but felt it was better
to go along with the façade as if nothing extraordinary had occurred.
After a few words of greetings, they moved off in the direction they were
heading, telling us they had just been to visit the so-called war vet who
stole the house near our home and moved there in 2001.
Once they were
well away I allowed myself to relax but I must admit that having six men
run at me like that brought the adrenaline up into my throat and it was
not at all a pleasant feeling. I think that the only reason they did not
attack me or us for that matter, was because Jean-Roger was armed.
Then in June
everything went wrong.
One Sunday morning
I hear dogs barking, obviously chasing after an animal. I called
Jean because the sound was extremely close to the back of our camp. Jean
shot off, taking the rifle with him. I heard shots and then Jean returned,
but his face was ashen. At the bottom of our camp, we had built a cemented
pan for the hippos back in 1992, during that horrendous drought. Just behind
that pan, there is a warthog hole in an anthill. Naf Naf (Arthur’s son)
often uses that hole as one of his homes that he lives in at night.
Jean had found
the dogs were barking at the hole. As he got closer, he sees a man kneeling
down at the hole and around him are the dogs and the man appears to be
digging at the hole, obviously to get the warthog out. Jean shouts at him
and as expected the guy leaps up and runs off to his right. These poachers
nearly always run away when they meet the game scouts or us.
Out of the hole
comes a warthog. It is Naf Naf, and some of the dogs chase it.
Jean then takes
aim at a dog to his left and as he goes to pull the trigger he finds the
man is in his sight. Unbeknownst to him, the man had a bow and arrows,
and they were directly on the path where the dog was standing. He obviously
came back for them. Jean couldn't not shoot as he was pulling the
trigger so he pushed the rifle upwards but also unbeknownst to him hit
the guy in his shoulder. The rifle was not a high powered one, but even
so the man was shot. He fell down, and Jean thought it was because of the
rifle noise. We had done exactly that in the past when poachers had pointed
a rifle at us, so Jean thought the guy was just afraid. In
the meantime, the warthog ran back and got in the hole and Jean killed
two of the other dogs.
He then told
the man to get up but then the guy pointed at his shoulder and Jean, much
to his horror, saw a tiny spot of blood. To cut a long story short, Jean
took the guy and our one employee to look after him at our neighbors. The
lady there is a nurse. She had a quick look and then suggested Jean go
straight off to the police- a one and a half hour drive from us. So he
went, picking up the conservator of this conservancy on the way. The poacher
made a statement, saying he was hunting on our property and explained what
had happened. The police then charged Jean with attempted murder! Jean
drove the guy another forty-minute drive to the Chiredzi hospital where
he was booked in.
The end result
of all this has not yet occurred. Since then the guy spent two weeks in
hospital and then was discharged as healthy. The hospital believe he will
make a full recovery but they left the bullet in him as it’s lodged in
his chest. He is young so they believe it is best to just let him
live with the bullet. It turns out that he is the chief, so-called war
veteran, Robert Mamungaere’s nephew and lives with him in the house
Robert stole, just one and a half kilometers down from our home, beside
the Turgwe River. Apparently his
parents died
from AIDS so, as is customary, he lives with his uncle. Obviously his uncle
knew all about the poaching.
Robert came
the following day and, in front of the police who came for an official
statement, threatened myself and my husband. His threats have so far not
come to bear as the lawyer Jean hired has warned Robert against this kind
of behavior.
Jean has been
to court now on four occasions and each time he is remanded. We have been
told that this could continue for quite a while. So we have to just get
on with our lives until whatever is going to occur case-wise happens. The
guy is fine, we have seen him once in the bush near to where the hippos
sometimes go: he was walking, supposedly looking after his uncle’s cattle.
We all avoid each other these days.
Since this event,
a black rhino mother and her calf have just recently been poached and killed
for the horn. The people caught to date have all implicated others and
it has opened a can of worms. What is happening in this wildlife conservancy
never occurred before these people invaded the land. They live now right
bang smack in the middle of this wildlife area.
On our side,
this added worry has obviously increased the stress level we are under,
but we remain hopeful. Thank God the guy is okay and that Jean had proof:
i.e. the man’s bow and arrows and the dead dogs. It is now up to the law
of this land to decide what will happen.
We continue
our daily patrols and, from June on, it was relatively quiet, but now the
poachers are active again. In early January, we heard dogs again. Jean
shot out and saw the dogs chasing a young warthog. I joined him and we
went off together following the sound of the dogs barking.
We then came
upon Robert’s cattle (he owns over 100 cattle and is obviously quite a
rich man). So I pushed the cattle back towards the land the people have
stolen. We have found in the past that they use the cattle in order to
either sneak up on wild animals by walking with the cattle, and then hunt
the wildlife with their bows and arrows, or they just put down snares while
they walk with the cattle. We then took another route as my instinct told
me there was something happening. We had heard voices of people calling
to each other when they realized I was moving the cattle back towards the
invaded land.
As we walked
along a dry riverbed, Jean on one side, myself on the other, I suddenly
see in front of us a man bending down. I signal to Jean (we do not talk
in the bush, just use hand signals). He goes forward and suddenly two men
erupt from the bush. One is, for a few seconds, literally running on his
knees in his haste to get away. Jean has to shoot two dogs that come at
him and then calls me. That is the first time I have been present when
dogs are shot and it was not at all nice but, unfortunately, there was
the evidence for me to see the necessity. Where the men had been kneeling
was the result of the dogs handiwork: 2 dead warthogs. One was a young
juvenile female and the other a tiny, about eight-week-old male. The baby
had been ravaged and obviously killed by the dogs; the juvenile by the
men. It was right next to a hole. Obviously, the barking we had heard was
the
dogs chasing
the warthogs.
Eventually the
warthogs, as they were chased, had found the hole to run into, but the
men had just blocked off all other exit holes and then dug into the ant
hill from the top and managed to kill the juvenile, while the dogs killed
the baby. In their haste to get away, one man lost his one shoe, and the
other dropped his bow and arrows and a bunch of barbed wire snares. There
is a photo of this on this site. The only good thing was that, literally
about fifty meters away as we left, we bumped into the mother warthog with
her remaining two babies. She had obviously veered off to another hole
and her elder daughter and one son had been killed but she survived.
If we had not come along, I think the poachers would have got all five
warthogs.
I will give
you an idea of the amount of dogs that have been brought into this area
since the invasions. Since 2000, game scouts on all of the properties have
killed over 500 dogs per year. There are still hundreds more being used
by these people to hunt and kill the animals. The dogs are totally malnourished
and hunt out of hunger as much as training. Apparently, these people go
across to Mozambique where they buy dogs to bring back to use for hunting.
I am an animal
lover. I have had dogs in the past as had Jean. When you see the damage
that a pack of these dogs can do to a fully-grown kudu antelope and the
stress that the animal endures before it is killed, then one can understand
the need to remove the cause of this suffering. I could not personally
kill a dog: I am a vegetarian and opposed to killing. Yet I live
here and I know that if the dogs are allowed to live and nobody destroys
them when they are caught hunting, that it will just make it so much easier
for these people to kill all of the remaining wildlife in this once beautiful
wildlife land. Without their dogs, the poachers find it far more difficult
to locate the wild animals.
So there are
a lot of bad things that have happened and sometimes one wonders where
it is all leading. I know that there will be people who read this and perhaps
be shocked and feel we are wrong in doing what we do. Yet all I can say
is: live with these wild animals, watch them go about their natural lives
and then see what man and his tools of destruction can do in such a very,
very short time. Perhaps you too would wish to defend the wild animal
against such deeds.
One wild animal
has just recently perhaps taken it’s own form of justice.
In late January,
a bunch of these people who have put their houses on the one property had
a bull elephant wandering by their so-called lands. None of them had any
crops in the land that the elephant would want to eat. We had had hardly
any rain throughout November and December and any crops these people grew
had died. There was a bit of cotton, but even that was suffering and not
ready to pick anyway. Yet, Silas, the guy that works for us, told me that
the one man said to the others he knew how to get rid of an elephant.
He gathered
about twenty other men and, armed with rocks, they started to harass the
bull. The man and the others were shouting and trying to herd the elephant.You
cannot herd an elephant!
The man who
said he knew all about elephants got in too close and the elephant grabbed
him and then proceeded to kill him. That man died due to stupidity; the
elephant was not doing anything wrong. This Wildlife Conservancy has over
1000 elephants in it. These people have put their huts and planted crops
inside the conservancy. If you chase an animal and harass it, and if it
has the ability to defend itself, it will. The man learnt this at his own
cost. His family and four children are the ones that will suffer due to
his behavior.
Between the
poachers and the man dying from harassing the elephant, things here are
not very good. We keep hoping that the government will decide the future
and allow the fence to be put back up and protected from being removed
by these people; that the people inside this wildlife land will be removed
by the government. But, these days, one never knows what to expect.
The hippos are
still unsettled, but a lot of this has to do with the two new bulls. Wish
has never returned to the family. Her son Pavodok now lives close to the
family, but most of the time he is on his own. Every now and then he joins
Kuchek, another little male, and then stays with the group, but mostly
he is about three hundred feet downstream from them in his own tiny little
pool. He seems quite fine and in good condition but he is obviously a little
afraid to join the group without the presence of his mother Wish.
In 2003, there
was one project that brought a little bit of light to us both and perhaps
amused the hippos!
The Trust desperately
needs a new or a good condition second-hand four-by-four vehicle.
Our Land Rover, which was kindly donated to the Trust by the Summerlee
Foundation from Texas, USA, is old and on its last legs. It was initially
a rebuilt old Land Rover. With this in mind, I approached for the first
time an International Corporate business: a company by the name of Hippo
Golf Europe, in the UK. I asked if they could help the hippos financially
and that, in return, I would take photographs of any of their products
with the Turgwe Hippos. Little did I know how difficult that could prove
to be.
Hippo Golf responded
by sending us a golf bag with a full set of clubs. In addition, they included
a banner with their product advertised, plus t-shirts and caps to wear
for the photo shoot. Three months later, after periods of a few hours here,
a few hours there, I had produced over 80 photographs of the Turgwe Hippos
by Hippo Golf’s merchandise. These were duly sent off to the UK and they
have responded in a most positive way. Hippo Golf have given the Trust
a nice donation towards the eventual purchase of a four- by-four as well
as pledging that they will continue to raise awareness of the Turgwe Hippos'
needs.
I must admit,
trying to tell 16 hippos that that they were to oblige for the Hippo Golf
photos was not easy. One cannot make a wild animal do what one wants it
to do. They had to get used to the idea! You will see from the photos that
they did, in the end, respond. Surprise, Climber, Cheeky and Storm, as
well as little Hope hippo, were actually the stars of the group, showing
that they can cooperate when they believe the cause is okay! The Turgwe
Hippo Trust would like to thank Hippo Golf,
not only for their donation to these
wonderful animals,
but also for bringing some light amusement to the whole stressful scenario
that is- at this moment- life in Zimbabwe. We would also like to say a
special thank you to John Walsh and Laura Salter of WSPA
(World Society for the Protection of Animals) USA,
and Robert Brandford of WSPA UK for
their valuable advice and assistance.
The Turgwe Hippo
Trust would also like to thank Carol White of DHL
courier service in Harare, Zimbabwe, for their sponsoring of the Turgwe
Hippos from December of last year.
DHL have kindly
offered to sponsor a set amount of hippo foster parcels each month, therefore
allowing the Trust to send these parcels courtesy of DHL. This is greatly
appreciated and we thank DHL for being the second corporate business to
support the Turgwe Hippos.
Strachans
Photo Pharmacy in Harare, Zimbabwe, through Mr. David Dell,
have also helped the Trust with discounts on their developing of foster
photos and we thank them for their assistance and their professional developing
standards of the hippos photos' over many years.
We are now into
2004 and wonder what this year will bring. There are very good kind people
out there who have helped these hippos, not only last year, but over many
years. Our fostering project is dependent on people supporting these hippos;
they are the ones who help us keep operating and doing projects for these
wonderful animals. We also thank everybody who purchased one of our Turgwe
Hippo Trust 2004 calendars and have purchased our video For
the Love of Hippos.
I would also
like to personally thank Alice Egoyan for her ongoing support of these
hippos with the website www.savethehippos.com and to Venise Grossman of
www.garethpatterson.com for the assistance she has given us in the past.
I also thank the members of the Friends of the hippo group for their donation
of a digital video camera. This will be invaluable in recording the behaviour
of these Turgwe Hippos.
Our future and
the future of the hippos is one big question mark but at least one cannot
say that life is dull!
With the birth
of Bobin, yet another new Turgwe Hippo is moving around in the Turgwe River,
living its life as a wild and free animal. We thank everybody who has helped
us to help the Turgwe Hippos, and for that matter, all the other animals
that benefit from the Turgwe Hippo Trust’s creation.
Karen Paolillo,
Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe. 15th February 2004.
