The Last Train to Zona Verde Read online

  The results of the sprawling torrent of water are channels, flood zones, lagoons, islands of palms, and water so clean from percolating through the papyrus beds that it is drinkable. Also seasonal swamps, wide trenches called fossil rivers that once carried water, ephemeral rivers, and permanent rivers — it is a water world. This fertile habitat for animals, birds, and flowers, one of the glories of Africa, is without traditional villages; the Tswana people live almost entirely on the perimeter, entering the delta only to fish or hunt.

  In Africa, animals large and small are found at waterholes. The Okavango Delta, teeming with wildlife and still pristine, might be considered one of the great waterholes of the continent.

  Abu Camp (“Meet your inner elephant”) advertised itself as a “unique opportunity to bond with elephants firsthand,” and went on, “Situated in a vast private reserve of 400,000 acres, guests interact with the resident elephant herd, whether riding or walking with them through the bush. The ultimate elephant education safari!”

  The camp had originally been conceived in the late 1980s as a refuge for “rescue elephants” — elephants that had survived a cull, or had been orphaned in the wild as a result of the mother being killed, or had suffered the torments and teasing of a circus, or had been confined in a zoo or wildlife park. The elephant refuge was the idea of Randall Moore, an American who had begun his working life shoveling great crumbly muffins of elephant dung at an animal training school in Oregon. By an odd set of circumstances he had come to possess three elephants.

  It happened this way. A pair of animal trainers, a man and woman who were his mentors at the school, were killed separately, but in quick succession, a consequence of the bull elephants being in musth, a condition of high-testosterone aggression. The woman was gored and transfixed by the tusks of an enraged elephant — this occurred during a circus act, before a large crowd of horrified Québécois in a small Canadian town. Later, in Oregon, the man was stomped to death by his favorite elephant.

  Since he was on the payroll and knew the ropes, Randall Moore inherited his trainers’ elephants, which — stigmatized and vilified as “killer elephants” — he resolved to save by relocating them to Africa, as he describes in his book, Back to Africa (1989). Failing to find a home for them in Kenya (red tape, obstinate officialdom, bush confusion), he was welcomed in Botswana, where as a wildlife entrepreneur he started a training program for rescue elephants and pioneered his unusual safaris. The idea for elephant-back safaris was initially that of the photographer, socialite, and Africa hand Peter Beard, who suggested to Moore in the 1980s that riding elephants through the bush was unprecedented and would be an incomparable safari.

  Abu (“Father” in Arabic), for whom the camp was named, was one of the first rescued elephants, brought from a wildlife park in Texas. As the star of the camp and a natural performer, Abu had appeared in several feature films. Other elephants — enough to create a substantial herd — were added over the years, from distant parts of Africa and as far afield as Canada and Sri Lanka. They had names and pedigrees, they had distinct profiles and personalities; some were quite old, others were babies, either born at the camp within the motley herd or recently orphaned. They were attended to and trained by a large team of mahouts — they used this Hindi term for an elephant whisperer — mainly African, each one bonded to a particular elephant.

  The appeal of Abu Camp was its remoteness in the delta, the uniqueness of an elephant-back safari, and the luxury of its accommodations. One of the boasts of the camp was that the purring refrigeration of its extensive wine cellar was inaudible outside the kitchen compound. The camp was also eco-friendly, depending on solar panels for electricity and reducing all its kitchen waste into compost to fertilize its extensive vegetable gardens. The staff quarters amounted to a rather prim village with its own dining hall and recreation room — nearly all the workers had permanent homes in Maun, the Okavango’s main town and only substantial airport, at the southeastern edge of the delta. Most guests were flown from Maun to bush airstrips in small planes over startled herds of zebra and wildebeest.

  The camp had only six tents, but “tents” gives a mistaken impression. They were more like canvas bungalows on high platforms, with showers and tubs and double beds with mosquito nets like wedding veils. From your tent at the edge of the lagoon you could prop yourself up on one elbow in a big soft bed and watch the resident herd of hippos gasping and spewing in the water below.

  Michael Lorentz, who ran Abu, was my friend. He called himself a safari guide — and he was an inspired one — but he was also the moving force behind a reconceived and upgraded Abu, and was a great lover of the wild, with a particular affection for elephants. I had met him ten years before in Johannesburg, at the end of my Dark Star Safari trip, and we had kept in touch. His fortunes had risen in that decade: he had become an entrepreneur with his own high-end safari company. He was now married, his wife was an academic, and they had two small boys. He was clearly prospering in a competitive business — he still conducted safaris of his own all over the wilds of South Africa and Botswana, as well as in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

  A stout, imposing figure in bush hat and khakis, Michael was a perfectionist with a strong work ethic who had grown up in a large family — his father a surgeon, his mother a landscape gardener. Abandoning a career in law to be a trainee guide in Kruger Park, in South Africa, he rose through the ranks, started his own company, and had worked among the elephants at Abu for twenty years. And he was not much older than forty.

  “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 cyli
ndrical 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 b
rowsing 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?”