Joy Adamson's book, and later the film made from it, charmed
millions of people and made EIsa an international heroine. Now
George Adamson tells an even more remarkable story of the two
great loves of his life: his wife, Joy, and the dozens of big
cats whom he has helped set free in the more than sixty years he
has devoted to rehabilitating wild animals.
George Adamson first visited Kenya in 1924, fell under its
spell and settled down to dedicate his life to the wild animals
of that state. When he married Joy, whom he met while she was
traveling in Africa, she joined him in his crusade. Later, the
great fame and considerable fortune earned by Born Free and
its sequels went to helping the endangered wildlife. Since Joy's
brutal murder in 1980, George Adamson has carried on their work
alone.
Around George and Joy and their story is an exciting and
endearing cast of supporting players. There are, of course, EIsa
and her sisters, but we also meet Boy, a mascot who eventually
became a man-eater and whom George had to kill; and Christian, a
fourth-generation zoo lion, bought in the pet department at
Harrods by two young men who raised him in their antique shop,
only to realize when he was a year old that they couldn't keep
him. Then we have Pippa, Joy's glamorous cheetah; Growlie, the
precocious nymphomaniac; and Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna,
who played the Adamsons in the film. Finally there is Africa
itself.
"George Adamson tells the story of his two tempestuous
marriages-one to Joy of Elsa fame, the other to the lions he has
saved from imprisonment, loved and returned to the wild-with
frankness and a wry humour. I found it exciting, touching, and
deeply absorbing from first to last."
Every day as I put on my shorts, walk over to breakfast,
or go about more private business, an American satellite
sails overhead and photographs this remote tract of Kenya
beside the Tana River. They say the pictures are so clear
that experts can decide whether an egg or a golf ball has
been set on the table.
The African wilderness is shrinking fast. When I first
came to Kenya its grey thorn-bush country, scorched by a
blazing sun in a clear blue sky, offered few promises. But
those promises, of solitude, of wild animals in a profusion
to delight the heart of Noah, and of the spice of danger,
were always honoured. Today, of these three, you are only
likely to encounter the danger.
It is not just vultures and spacecraft that invade our
privacy. Fifteen years ago, to reach Kora Hill, the mounds of
pink rock below which we set up our camp, we hacked our way
through the resinous thorn bushes for days on end; it was
weeks before we could clear a track here from the nearest
road, and another to a rough little airstrip, twenty miles
off. Nowadays, although the temperature is over 100° at noon
and after lunch I feel sleepy, I dare not take a siesta as it
is so frequently interrupted by unexpected visitors.
Subdued and disappointed because they have not been
harassed by elephants or charged by infuriated rhinos on the
way, they watch with delighted wonder the pride of lions that
gathers round the camp at dusk. Just why the elephants and
rhinos have ignored them is part of this story.
To find out which lions have come to camp I go out to
greet them and toss them some meat. If I am away my
companion, Tony Fitzjohn, will give them a welcome instead.
In his thirties, tall, bronzed by the sun, and recently
invited by a film company - admittedly Japanese - to play
Tarzan, he is treated by the lions as one of their pride.
Half my age, he has taken over the more demanding tasks of
their care, wild as they are.
My younger brother Terence, now in his late seventies,
shares our flimsy cage. An expert self-taught engineer, he
built and keeps up our huts, our fence, our airstrip and our
roads. A gifted amateur botanist, he knows every tree, shrub
and plant within a hundred miles, by its English, Latin and
Swahili names. But although he is on the side of the animals,
he has one unaccountable failing - he prefers elephants to
lions.
The other long-term human resident is Hamisi, a grizzled
Sudanese, who provides us with three good meals a day from
almost any ingredients or almost none. Like Terence he seems
to regard my weakness for lions with melancholy indulgence.
The four of us do, however, have one distinction in
common. Each of us has been mauled by a lion or a crocodile
and bears the marks on our skin. Terence 's scars, I suspect,
go deeper. Some of the other habitués are two-legged but
feathered; the majority have four, six or eight legs; the
least desirable have a hundred, a thousand - or none. Wire
link is effective for keeping out lions but it presents no
obstacle to a guinea fowl bent on getting our millet or the
hornbills who demand and steal our nuts. Acacia rats use the
trees as a bridge into camp. Mongooses and civets climb
easily over the fence, while feverish ground squirrels drive
tunnels underneath it. Mosquitoes, hornets and ants, large
black scorpions, carnivorous centipedes and venomous snakes -
boomslangs, puff-adders and spitting cobras - slip through
its mesh with the greatest of ease. As they all seem to find
our company irresistible, we make friends with the pleasant
and come to terms with the rest. But our lives revolve round
the lions.
Ever since I shot a charging lioness in 1956, and took her
three tiny cubs back to my wife Joy, I have lived in the
company of lions. We kept one of the cubs, whom Joy called
Elsa, and when she grew up we prepared her to go back to the
wild. She became world famous when Joy told her story in a
book called Born Free. After Elsa, each lion, and
later each pride, has led to another. Over the years I have
released twenty-three young lions in the wild, all of them
otherwise destined to live behind bars.
Only two of the lions were born in a zoo; some were
trapped for the sins of their fathers and mothers; others
went astray on their own. Mating together or with lions from
the bush, they have produced fifty cubs that I have seen and
perhaps as many more that I have not. In the manner of lions
when a pride gets too big it breaks into groups and
disperses. At one time we had sixteen lions round Kora.
Living for animals means that we have to live like
animals, or at least like our earliest ancestors. Our clock
is the sun, our shelter is primitive, our food is simple and
our water is drawn from the Tana, three miles away. Our eyes
and ears have to pick up sights and sounds that most others
would miss. I have not taken a morning paper for forty years:
the news I need is printed on the ground.
Lions are nocturnal and most of their significant
activities take place while I sleep. If I want to know what
has happened, I have to go out at dawn and study the clues in
the dust and the grass, on the sand, the rock or the bushes.
If I get there too late the sun, wind, or rain will have
destroyed them. At first as a hunter, and then for
twenty-five years in the Game Department, my livelihood, if
not my life, depended on interpreting foot prints and getting
it right.
While Elsa was growing used to her freedom I had to be
able to read her spoor as easily as handwriting. By learning
to do this I could help her over her difficulties and could
follow her courtship and mating.
At Kora Tony and I have to memorise many sets of prints at
any one time. It is essential, both to follow the lions and
to keep abreast of the rest of the news in the bush. Two
years ago Tony came back and told me of a typical and violent
story that could be read in this way. A family of Somalis had
stopped him and asked for his help, as their daughter had
been mauled by a lion. They had kept her at night in their
camp, wrapped in a dirty old sheet, as they were not allowed
in the reserve and were at first all too frightened to ask
for help.
The drought had been harsh and each evening they watered
their herd at a spring a few miles from our camp. Tony was
afraid that one of our lions might have gone for the girl but
then he remembered seeing an unfamiliar and sickly old lion
near the lugga - the sandy bed of a dried-up water course. He
felt it was much the most likely culprit.
When Tony and some friends got to the waterhole he checked
the spoor of the lion, to make sure it was not one of ours,
and it was possible to read the whole story. As all the signs
were still visible the attack must have taken place within
the previous twenty-four hours. But since there had been no
stampede and only a few hoof marks, leaving the lugga,
crossed the tracks of the lion, it must have struck just as
the last cows were slaking their thirst.
A flurry of dust and some blood showed where the girl had
been seized by the lion. Tony's friends traced its progress,
dragging the child between its legs, across the sand to the
edge of the lugga. Finally, where the undergrowth started
there was a larger patch of dried blood, surrounded by
stones, and a confusion of footmarks that told their own
tale. Casting around in a circle and into the bush they saw
where the lion, deprived of its victim; had run into cover.
Tony and his friends cleaned up the girl's wounds and
handed her over to an Anti-Poaching Unit of the Game
Department and persuaded them to take her to hospital. Her
family then described how they suddenly heard her screaming
for help. When they saw her in the jaws of the lion they
surrounded it and bombarded it with stones till it fled.
Their courage and presence of mind saved her life, as she
quickly recovered.
I cannot explain why I have devoted so much of my life to
lions without trying to convey the depth and range of their
personalities. They are as distinctively different from each
other as people. Like people, they can look impressive,
beautiful, curious, ugly or plain. As with humans you get the
large and the small, the strong and the weak.
They are creatures of character and mood, who are not only
sociable but may be affectionate or shy, gentle or fierce,
friendly or hostile, generous or possessive, mischievous or
grim, impulsive or restrained, promiscuous, wanton, steady or
frigid. If some are aloof, nervous, introvert and mean,
others are playful, confident, extravert and fun. Most are
intelligent and inquisitive. The best are adventurous, loyal
and brave. All of them have been designed and perfected by
nature to kill.
I know that in using these terms I risk falling foul of
some scientists, but I can find no others that are adequate.
I do not know exactly where the border lies between
"instinct" and "conditioned reflex" on
the one hand, and "experience" and
"intelligent decision" on the other. But I do know
that in some circumstances lions cross the border into
territory normally reserved by philosophers for man.
From my earliest days in Kenya I was fascinated by the
behaviour of lions and elephants because of this extra
dimension in their lives. But I did not sense how powerful
their spell could become until we set Elsa free, and I
realised that she not only reciprocated our love but could
keep up our friendship without disturbing the bonds with her
mate and her cubs.
After he had been out to Kenya, and had watched Elsa and
her cubs at our camp, Sir Julian Huxley, one of the most
distinguished biologists of his generation, was so impressed
by her ability to bridge these two worlds that he recommended
scientists to study the implications of her behaviour for the
future understanding of animals. Sir Frank Fraser Darling,
another outstanding naturalist, believed that in some
respects we can only decipher an animal's world if we resort
to a human vocabulary. What Elsa did, and the way in which it
could best be explained, were both of interest to science.
"Innocent Killers" was the phrase coined by Jane
Goodall, famous for her scientific studies of chimpanzees,
and her husband Hugo van Lawick, the brilliant wildlife
photographer. They applied it, as a title for a book, to the
hyenas, jackals and wild dogs of the Serengeti. I have seen a
herd of sixteen goats wantonly killed by a family of cubs so
I am not sure that killing by lions always deserves the
verdict of "innocent"; but it is never as guilty as
man's, whose destruction in Kenya and interference with the
balances of nature is relentless and irreparable.
With his own increasing numbers, and his ever growing
hordes of cattle and goats, the herdsman is denuding the
bush. With the lure of rich pickings the poacher works
through the country to bring out his haul - the last rhino
horns as handles for daggers; ivory, bloodily culled from the
diminishing elephants; the silken coats of gazelles; and the
lovelier skins of the cats. Destroying the wilderness, and
robbing its prospects of peace and of game, man leaves only
the promise of danger. He has killed ten of my lions and
murdered my wife.
Few couples can have had a more rewarding life together in
the bush than Joy and I. After we married, in 1944, we lived
at Isiolo, on the frontier of Kenya's northern provinces. For
the next twenty years we spent most of the time on safari,
out on the plains, into the deserts and forest, up to the
lakes and the mountains, and down to the coral reefs of the
coast. Often we travelled together and sometimes apart. Mine
was the life of a warden, keeping a check on man-eating
lions, crop-raiding elephants, poachers. Joy's was the life
of an artist, painting the pictures of the flowers and the
tribes which now hang in the National Museum and the
President's State House, in Nairobi.
Towards the end of these years Elsa came into our lives
and not long after that I retired, just in time to help train
the lions for the film of Born Free. When the filming
was over Joy and I, with Virginia McKenna and her husband
Bill Travers who played our roles in the film, were
determined to save at least some of the lions from
consignment to game parks in Europe, or zoos.
Joy and I therefore spent the next five years in Meru
Park, where I released a small pride from the film led by a
magnificent lion called Boy. A few miles away Joy
successfully prepared a tame cheetah called Pippa for a life
of freedom in the bush.
When this phase was over Bill Travers and I brought a lion
from London, called Christian, to Kora. Once more our
intention was to give a lion freedom. I hoped Joy would join
me and take on some leopards but she found the climate too
hot and the camp too remote for the rest of her work, writing
books, and raising money for wild animals all over the world.
When she did adopt a leopard she took it to Shaba, near our
original home in the north - and there she was killed.
Over the years Joy paid us a number of visits at Kora. My
daily routine aimed to put into practice what I had learnt
from our experiences with Elsa and the pride I had released
in Meru.
Day starts when the fan-tailed ravens, regular as
clockwork, call us with their raucous croaking at dawn. For
the next twenty minutes the rumpus rises to a crescendo as
they flap around Hamisi, trying to steal his eggs. He usually
fobs them off with a biscuit.
As my campbed is next to the two lion enclosures, at the
end of the camp, I sometimes wake up to find a pair of cubs
lying only a few inches away from my nose, on the other side
of the wire. By sleeping next to me they learn that human
beings do not necessarily represent a threat. I had to keep
two young lions, Suleiman and Sheba, who had been sent to us
by a ranching friend called Ken Clarke, penned up for several
weeks before they calmed down; Suleiman had been grazed by
the bullet which killed his mother. They were over a year
old, and their mother had been shot for persistent
cattle-raiding; I took them as I could not bear the thought
of them going to a zoo. Once the young lions are settled, I
wander in as soon as I am up, with a bucket of water or
tit-bit of meat. If they rub their heads against my knee the
first battle to win their trust has been won.
After a quick cup of tea I get ready to walk the lions
down to the river. Hamisi breaks off washing the pans and
gives my tracker a cold thermos and packet of biscuits. Tony
arranges for our driver to hitch the trailer to the Landrover
and fetch water. Terence briefs his road gang for the day.
There is a fearful cackle as the guinea fowl and hornbills
clear off with the last of the millet or Terence's Weetabix.
Most of the lions spend the night outside camp and it is
intriguing to see how newcomers react to their first taste of
freedom. Usually they have got the measure of the pride after
watching them carefully through the wire: once outside they
approach their elders with diffident greetings, like dogs.
So far none of them has bolted. Nevertheless this initial
introduction to the rest of the pride is an acid test of
their nerve. The younger the cubs the sooner they are likely
to be accepted. Normally they approach the dominant male and
work their way down through the hierarchy. The warmer the
feelings between two lions, the more affectionately they rub
cheeks and run them sinuously down each other's flanks. This
tactile sense is obviously of great importance. Suleiman and
Sheba were treated much more suspiciously than most other
newcomers, partly because they were at least a year old and
partly because the pride was already over a dozen strong and
beginning to break up. Nevertheless they were tolerated on
occasional walks.
As soon as the pride moves off all its senses are alert to
the engrossing world of the bush. Lions have superb vision
for spotting movement and instinctively shift to the highest
ground for the best look-out: that is why mine have always
lorded it from the tops of my Landrovers. Being nocturnal
their night vision is excellent too.
When I came to Kora I grew even more aware of how
important scent is to lions. In this dense bush, where
visibility is often down to fifty yards or less, I have seen
them set off after a giraffe which has been browsing five or
six hundred yards away. They also have a different and no
doubt instinctive understanding of scent. When they come
across a big ball of elephant dung, or one of those middens
made by the families of little dik dik antelopes, they love
to roll in it. I suppose it is to disguise their scent, which
to the human nose is rather like honeyed tobacco, for they
never roll in the droppings of lions, hyenas or jackals.
Lions have very keen ears. I have known them pick up a
sound eight miles away, which was well beyond the power of
human hearing. Their voice plays an important part in their
social life and they seem to appreciate that a rock or a
cliff can boost their full-scale territorial roaring. They
have a whole repertoire of lesser noises - puffs and whuffs,
miaows and purrs, moans, yowls, grunts and growls.
Although their basic diet depends on the local game they
certainly have a discriminating palate. They relish zebra
meat as much as they scorn baboon, unless they are starving.
Like dogs they occasionally feel the urge to eat grass. Once
I put out poisoned meat to get rid of some hyenas, but found
to my dismay it had been taken by lions. I followed their
tracks and came to a place where a lion had been sick. In the
vomit were some chewed berries of Cordia gharaf. They
have a bitter taste and I am sure they were eaten as an
emetic.
While roaring is the most obvious method of proclaiming
territory the pride is constantly employing another on our
walks - marking. Young lions piddle, females squat, and adult
males deliver backward, well-aimed squirts, scented from an
anal gland. By this means the native lions and mine are
constantly exchanging challenge, information and insult.
The principal aim of our walks is to provide fun and game,
but sometimes we run into trouble. If they try to take on the
rare buffalo we meet, the younger lions are in for a shock,
but it is essential for them to be completely at home in the
bush and to get the measure of the different game. I cannot
teach them to hunt, any more than their mothers or their
elders can. Lions are born with the instinctive ability to
stalk and to kill - I have seen it proved over and over again
- but only experience will perfect these skills and
experience is what I can offer.
While we are walking I talk to the lions. They must know
my voice so well that they automatically pick up its
intonations of encouragement, approval, reassurance, caution,
command and rebuke. It would be lunacy, I not to say
disastrous, to try to dominate them as some people train
dogs.
They know very well when you are angry, will often respond
to a shouted ''No!'', and will respect you if you stand your
ground and move towards them - whereas retreating is
dangerous. What matters is that they recognise a voice and
authority. Even so you can never rely on them entirely. When
it rains, and the temperature drops, they can become
uncomfortably boisterous. I do not carry a rifle or revolver
whenever I leave camp just for protection against irascible
rhinos.
By the time we get down to the river I am ready for a cool
glass of gin from the thermos and, as the sun will be getting
warm, the lions are quite happy to flop down on the sand or
mess about in the shallows. Lions are among the laziest
animals on earth and like to spend most of the day dozing,
although if very hungry they will spring up at the chance of
a kill whatever the heat.
It is extremely beautiful down by the Tana. The stretch we
make for is more than a hundred yards wide if you take in the
stream, the pools, the shallows, the rocks and the sand.
There is shade from the palms and acacias, which are much
taller here than those in the bush round the camp. Terence
has identified all the plants and the shrubs - the deadly
datura or moonflower with its lovely white trumpets, the
sweet scented henna and the red-berried salvadora, so
attractive to birds.
The game fades away at the approach of the lions but the
baboons chatter and bark on the opposite bank, while the
hippos wallow and snort out in the silted red water. Close in
it is hard to tell if a dark ridged shape, gliding along with
the current, is a log or a crocodile. The birds seem to have
no fear of the lions and if I sit quietly a succession of
waders will drop down to the river - silent white egrets and
honking purple-black hadada ibis, mottled Egyptian geese and
the formidable carnivorous sentries, goliath herons, tall
yellow-billed storks and the large marabous, with their
wicked beaks pressed against the scrotum-pink sacs on their
chests.
Peaceful as it is, warmed by the sun and cooled by the
contents of my thermos, I am always a little uneasy when I am
here with the lions. After it has rained they make a
frightful fuss when they have to walk through a puddle, but
if something excites their interest on the other side of the
river they plunge straight into the stream and swim directly
across, despite the strength of the current. My worry is that
crocodiles have drowned at least one of my lions and may
easily account for others.
I usually walk the younger lions back to camp for lunch;
in the first few weeks they are inclined to come to a call,
like a dog. I leave the older ones by the river, or on Kora
Rock, which we pass on the way. They are probably still there
when I go down in the evening - or will come to me quickly if
I call them with a megaphone.
I have had some tricky moments up on the rocks. Early one
morning, in 1977, I let Suleiman and Sheba out of their
enclosure to spend the day in the bush, while I drove to the
hill to look for a lioness with cubs. I climbed to the foot
of some cliffs where I thought her lair might be, but could
see no sign of them.
As I started down Suleiman and Sheba appeared. They were
in a playful mood and while I fended off Sheba, who butted me
from the front, Suleiman jumped on my back, grabbing me by
the neck and bringing me down on the steep hillside. I tried
to beat him off, whacking him over my shoulder with a stick.
This made him angry and he started to growl, sinking his
teeth in the back of my neck. It was no longer play.
Luckily I was wearing my revolver because my search for
the lioness and cubs might well have brought me face to face
with a cobra or leopard while I was poking about in the
rocks. I drew the gun now with the notion of firing a shot
over Suleiman's head to scare him off. When I pulled the
trigger there was just a dull click. It happened a second
time and with a fearful chill I realised I had probably
forgotten to load it. My hand was no longer steady as I broke
the gun open to work out my chances. At least there was a
round in each of the chambers and as Suleiman still had his
teeth in my neck - I could feel the blood trickling down my
shoulders and the sweat coming out on my forehead - I decided
to try again. This time I managed to get two shots off into
the air. They had not the slightest effect.
Suleiman bit harder. In sheer desperation I pointed the
revolver backwards over my shoulder, and fired straight at
him. Immediately he let go and, looking startled, went and
sat twenty feet off with Sheba, who had leapt back at the
sound of the first two shots. I could see blood on his muzzle
and more on his neck.
I was bleeding profusely myself and wondered what the hell
to do next. Tony Fitzjohn was away in Nairobi. Terence was
off on safari and our radio was out of action. I therefore
concentrated on getting down to the car and back into camp,
where at least I had disinfectant and dressings. By the time
I got the Landrover into camp I was feeling exceedingly
groggy.
To my surprise it was Terence who opened the gates at the
sound of my engine. He had got in only a few minutes before
me. He helped me clean up the bites, and then he set off on
an eighty-mile journey to the nearest medical post, which was
in permanent touch with Nairobi. I did not get much sleep
during the night and felt very worried about Suleiman, as I
had no idea how badly I had wounded him. I rather feared the
worst as Sheba had appeared in the evening without him. Next
morning, much to my relief, Suleiman turned up. The pistol
bullet had run across the top of his shoulders and lodged
under the skin. He looked little the worse for it and was as
friendly as ever. My own damage might have been worse too.
The Flying Doctor took me to hospital in Nairobi and as the
wounds did not go septic I was out in a week.
Few of our morning walks end as eventfully as this one and
the camp we return to at midday has calmed down after the
bustle at breakfast. By now the temperature is 100 degrees.
The lions lie flat out under the trees. All the other animals
too, the reptiles, the birds and even the insects are silent
and still, each in its own patch of shade. Our lunch is like
a movie in slow motion with the sound turned down. It is an
effort to eat, to drink, to puff my pipe. Terence and I nod
in our chairs. Dry leaves crack under the scorching heat of
the sun like tiny pistol shots.
I know that if I surrender to sleep, just as I get on to
my bed, I shall hear the persistent and approaching drone of
a small plane heading for camp. I recently counted from my
visitors book that two hundred and ninety-seven people made
their way to Kora last year. As always, while friends bring
their news and their views, strangers ask questions. I do my
best to give answers.
"Yes, after their first week or two the lions are
entirely free to come and go as they please - unless they are
damaged or ill, in which case I bring them into camp to look
after them."
"I'm sorry, I can only take people out on foot if I
know that the lions are well away from camp."
"Sadly it is true. One of the lions did kill a man
here; but that's a long time ago now."
"Well, the danger is really more to Tony and me than
anyone else, as we spend so much of the day with the
lions."
"No. In a funny way the danger is part of the
attraction - as it presumably is for racing drivers or people
who sail round the world single-handed."
"As a matter of fact nobody pays us. We have to raise
money to keep ourselves going as best we can."
"Why do I do it?" That is the most difficult
question of all. "Well, I suppose it is to give the
lions the chance of a decent life. A lion is not a lion if it
is only free to eat, to sleep and to copulate. It deserves to
be free to hunt and to choose its own prey; to look for and
find its own mate; to fight for and hold its own territory;
and to die where it was born - in the wild. It should have
the same rights as we have."
They are serious questions and I cannot stay on at Kora
unless people go on being interested in my work. The Tana
River Council only created the Reserve here, and the
Government only support it, because it is constantly drawing
attention to the country's unique and beautiful wildlife. The
longer I am kept from siestas, the better for all of us here.
In the afternoons we either drive visitors down to the
river, to look at the lions, or Tony and I go off on our own.
The late afternoon is the best time to search for a lion with
cubs, as it is hot work climbing about on the rocks, and I am
grateful for the cool of the day. Another job I kept for the
afternoons, when I had recovered from Suleiman's attentions,
was to call on him and Sheba his sister. When they came to
us, two of the three adult lionesses - each with several cubs
of her own - took against them and never let them become full
members of the pride. I therefore moved them to a dry sand
lugga about five or six miles away and drove out every few
days to see how they were getting on.
One morning, as I was reaching their favourite haunt on
the river, Sheba burst from the bushes. She was scratched,
trembling and kept up a low moan of distress. She peered
intently into the undergrowth that grew along the top of the
bank, and as she edged persistently towards it I followed her
for a few hundred yards till we came to a gap.
At first all I could see was a chaos of footprints in the
mud and sand of the river bed. But they drew my eye to a
tawny shape slumped in the scrub under a giant acacia.
Suleiman lay dead, from bloody and terrible wounds round his
rib cage.
Gradually, from the evidence of the tracks and the
flattened saplings, I pieced the tragedy together. Suleiman
and Sheba had surprised a great bull hippo coming back from a
night's grazing in the bush. They had attacked it,
suicidally, as a hippo weighs more than a ton and is at its
most dangerous when cut off from water. In the struggle which
followed the lions must have got a hold on the hippo with
their teeth and claws, until it had backed Suleiman against a
clump of bushes. There it had killed him with one slicing
crunch of its massive jaws.
Suleiman "died like a lion" and I reckoned that
for two nights, with even greater courage, Sheba had guarded
his body. I could see from the prints of their feet and the
scrape of their tails where crocodiles, smelling Suleiman 's
blood, had waddled out of the river to claim his corpse. But
Sheba would not let them have it. She had circled round,
darting backwards and forwards, finally driving them into the
water.
I buried Suleiman close to where I found him, just above
flood level, with Sheba sitting by. She refused to leave his
grave even when the light began to fail. Suleiman had been
given his chance of freedom and its span was brief. But Joy
and I always felt, rightly or wrongly, that life in a
dangerous world was better than bars or a bullet for lions,
as we reckoned it was for ourselves.
Three months later I was driving down this stretch of the
river, thinking of Suleiman, when I noticed a scarred and
limping bull hippo making off into the shallows. The next day
I saw it on the bank, looking rather sickly under a shady
tree, and I got out for closer look at it through my field
glasses. What happened next took me completely by surprise.
The hippo let out a mighty snort and charged me. I leapt into
the car but before I could start it the hippo rammed into it
and heaved it up until I thought it would roll over. Next, he
bit deep into the mudguard before retiring once more to the
shade. My fingers tingled with shock. The hippo's back was
furrowed by deep claw marks and he must have been the animal
that killed Suleiman.
When we get back to camp in the evenings, Tony and I check
that there is water in the trough outside the wire, and
prepare some meat for the pride's regular evening appearance.
I feed the lions for several reasons: so that the mothers
with cubs do not have to leave them alone for too long; so
that any new lions are not threatened with starvation if they
cannot get a share of the kills in the bush; and to reinforce
the pride's association with the territory round camp. In the
wild lions may only kill and eat every few days and I am very
careful not to blunt the incentive to kill for themselves.
The last thing I want to induce is dependence. On the other
hand the lions are the reason I am here and the more I know
about them and their needs the more use I can be in
emergency.
Strictly speaking there is no need to put out water
either, as the river is within easy reach. During the worst
droughts lions survive on liquids from their prey and I have
sometimes seen them chewing succulent plants broken open by
antelopes. The water trough is therefore a luxury enjoyed by
a number of visitors, including a family of owls who use it
to bathe in.
We are only three miles south of the equator and night
falls fast every evening, at about seven o'clock. Hamisi
brings out a table, our dilapidated camp chairs, bottles,
glasses and ice. The lions materialise like silent and
ghostly figures from the dusk and sink contentedly to the
ground, just outside the wire. It is a magical hour; the
stars grow brighter and brighter; the chirrup of frogs and
the liquid call of the nightjars take over from the daytime
hum of the crickets.
I was scribbling away at my diary one evening-I have kept
one for most of my life - when a squabble broke out between
two cubs. Tony and Terence were trying to see which they
were, when I pricked up my ears.
"Watch out, George!" hissed Tony, with an odd
note in his voice, "look quickly behind you." I
turned and found myself staring straight into the eyes of a
quivering lioness. I feared the worst, for a second, as none
of our lions had broken the rules and managed to get into
camp.
In fact it was a shy and attractive lioness called Juma,
who had suddenly mastered the art of wriggling under the
wire. It was a little time before Terence succeeded in
outwitting her, and until then I had to entice her to one of
the gates with a tit-bit of meat on the occasions when she
decided to join us for a sundowner. I was rather sorry that
she was preoccupied with her first litter of cubs when Joy
came up for a memorable Christmas at Kora, bringing with her
the novelist Hammond Innes and his wife. Innes was out in
Kenya sniffing the air for the scent of a plot. I thought he
might enjoy Juma's company and even put her into his book.
Joy had been brought up in Austria and wherever we were in
the bush she managed to make a sparkling celebration of
Christmas Eve, as she did now. There were presents,
decorations, candles, a cake, champagne, and even a
glittering Christmas tree. Joy loved a party, and this was
the last one we ever gave together.
Supper on an ordinary evening at Kora is a humble affair,
but a good deal livelier than lunch. The birds that pestered
us at breakfast have all gone to roost but the acacia rats
and ground squirrels drop in, almost literally, for some
crumbs and the dregs of our coffee. The air and our soup are
thick with squadrons of insects and bugs homing in on the
lanterns. Sundowners have loosened our tongues.
"Nonsense," said Terence one evening.
"George is not like a lion - hair a bit yellow - that's
all - just needs to wash it."
"But Terence," protested Tony, "everyone
starts to look like their animals. Take ..."
"I grant you Ionides," interrupted Terence,
uncharacteristically. "Caught more snakes in Africa than
any man, animal or bird that ever lived. Had eyes and beak of
an eagle. Claws too, I dare say."
"And what about Thesiger?" I asked. "After
all those journeys in the desert I always think Wilfred looks
just like one of his camels."
"Come on, face it, Terence," chipped in Tony.
"Even you - you're just as sticky and prickly as one of
your bloody old thorn bushes."
Terence lowered his head in disdain, and the scars on his
cheek, where Juma's grandson had raked him, showed pink in
the lamplight. Perhaps Tony had gone too far.
My thoughts had drifted away to the memory of what Desmond
Morris, an expert on animals, and professional manwatcher,
had thought about Joy: with her pale golden hair, her
prowling gait and her eager eyes - to him she resembled a
lioness.
For some reason we never seem able to organise supper so
that it doesn't coincide with the evening radio routine. Tony
usually handles the calls. I hate the infernal machine, with
everyone else on the network listening in, but Tony has no
inhibitions. He uses an extremely effective code of doubles
entendres for dating his girlfriends.
We get an odd miscellany of calls in any one week. The
Director of Wildlife is seriously worried about threats from
the local Shifta - Somali bandits from across the river - and
is coming up to discuss our security. A television company is
bringing Ali McGraw out to Kenya, please could she interview
me - up in a balloon - about the great migration of
wildebeest. Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna are arriving to
help choose photographs for my book; they know about our
desperate need for White Horse whisky, but what about butter
and mangoes?
If Tony has friends in camp I usually hear the murmur of
voices as I slip off to sleep. It is very dry here - the
average rainfall is ten inches a year, less than a third of
the temperate zones of Europe and America, and almost
instantly evaporated by the equatorial sun. In a drought we
get one inch - and most of the time I sling my mosquito net
from a fence post and sleep under the sky. Beside me are a
loaded rifle and a slit trench.
The country on the other side of the Tana is grazed by the
herds of Somalis, a tough tribe, who spread from Somaliland
up on the coast down through the heartland of Kenya. They are
allowed on the other bank of the river but in a drought
cannot resist the temptation of driving their stock into
Kora. The Shifta come with them.
The Director of Wildlife has some cause to be worried
about our safety. We have just learnt that Ken Clarke, who
gave us Suleiman and Sheba, heard shooting on his ranch and
went out to find Somali poachers hacking the horns out of
three rhino carcases. When he chased them they ambushed him.
A bullet which hit his belt buckle was deflected up into his
heart. He died instantly.
As a result I have been ordered to evacuate Kora. I think
this is too drastic and refuse to leave unless they take me
in handcuffs. Instead I hand out a scratch arsenal of pistols
and shotguns each night to my recently recruited Home Guard
and put my faith in the funk holes we dig.
As I close my eyes the sounds of the bush drive out all
thoughts of Somalis. A tremendous roar goes up from the rocks
on the hill: it may be from Juma's young lions, or Christian,
asserting their rights. I think of Boy and of Elsa, and
remember my earliest safaris in Kenya, and the first shot I
fired as a child, in India.
