Born Wild (20 page)

By the end of 1981, the leopards were becoming well adjusted to life in Kora and would come for long walks in the bush. Squeaks was much more relaxed than Attila but both greeted me and came to my call. Walking with lions had been very different. Unless they are hunting, when they skulk almost as well as a leopard, lions walk down the middle of the road, heads held high, afraid of nothing. Leopards are always on their guard, slinking from cover to cover, quick to climb a tree at the slightest hint of trouble and quite impossible to see unless they want to be found. We were able to introduce a few of our close friends to the easier lions under very controlled circumstances but with the leopards I had to be very careful. They do not like and are wholly suspicious of people. In Squeaks's case, it was even worse. She adored
me and was jealous of any women that came into camp. I had to keep my girlfriends well away from her or she would go for them with teeth and claws bared.

Dave Allen, an ace bush pilot, wildlife guide and former hunter, often used to fly in with his clients and we would always try to show them the lions; we could seldom let them interact with the leopards. These flying visits were always a treat as Dave never came empty-handed and his clients would often leave us a cheque to pay for some camel meat or fill up a car with fuel. On one of his visits Dave delivered a letter from the director of Wildlife. George passed it to me without a word. I feared the worst when I saw the National Parks rhino crest on the writing paper but I need not have worried. Jack Barrah had worked his magic and asking for forgiveness had worked: we could keep the leopards.

George and I were now living eight miles apart and the only way we could talk to each other was by driving to and fro. It was a crazy and potentially dangerous situation as security deteriorated. Howard Wood – a friend and communications expert – met me at Wilson airport one day where he had devised a VHF system for us that he later helped me install at Kora. It transformed our lives almost as much as the radio collars had done in the seventies. George and I could now talk from camp to camp and in between cars. We could communicate much better with the outside world through the Laikipia security network and even with Maalim Shora in Asako. He kept us abreast of
shifta
movements. Even better, on the long nights I spent at Kampi ya Chui I could imitate Tony Hancock and get in touch with people all over the world on a new HF set. I joined the Radio Society of Kenya and even started to learn Morse code. Little did I know that my growing interest in communications would provide a stick with which the authorities could beat me.

While I was down in Nairobi I witnessed a tragic moment when my great friend Bill Woodley's flying career came to an
abrupt end in the harsh glare of Kenya's flying community. Bill was one of the best pilots I have ever flown with; he had a sureness yet delicacy of touch in the air that was admired by all. He had spent tens of thousands of hours on small planes, flying mountain-rescue and anti-poaching missions for the National Parks, and had helped me to learn how to fly. That day, we had lunch at Wilson airport's Aero Club with Cheryl Tiegs, the American model who was dating the photographer Peter Beard, both of us showing off in front of the world-famous vision of beauty. I watched as Bill and Cheryl walked across the apron to fly to Tsavo after lunch. Cheryl had the best legs I have ever seen. Only a fool would have left them unwatched. As they taxied out for take-off the plane veered to the left and started going round and round in circles. I ran out to help and dragged Cheryl from the plane as aircraft mechanic Alan Herd reached in and turned off the power. Bill had suffered an epileptic fit and lost consciousness. He never flew again.

There were good things about lack of communications: people would just appear from nowhere and whisk us off in their planes for the day. Whether it was Dave Allen flying us off for a quick swim at the lodge in Meru National Park or Alan Root offering lunch in Naivasha, I had a fixed policy of always saying yes to an adventure. In late July, Franz Lang flew me down to Malindi to join Khalid deep-sea fishing. I love surfing and swimming but deep-sea fishing is a rich man's sport I had never played. Khalid was richer than Croesus so we did it in style. We set off in a brand new game-fishing boat before dawn and, despite feeling a bit green about the gills, were starting to enjoy the beers as Khalid played his guitar and we waited for a marlin to strike. We had just arrived at the fishing grounds when a squawking voice came over the radio.

‘Return to Malindi,' it advised us. ‘There has been a coup in Kenya and the air force has taken over.'

Khalid was shattered. Adnan Khashoggi had given all his children their inheritances early and Khalid had spent a lot of his on Ol Pejeta, a 90,000-acre ranch. Fortunes were blown there on both useful and utterly pointless infrastructure. Mike Harries – the RevCop: so-called because he was chaplain general to the police for many years – had built a bridge there that was designed with the sole purpose of allowing Adnan to drive his low-clearance Mercedes from one side of the river to the other. It still bears a notice asking elephants to show due care and attention by only crossing one at a time. Khalid was terrified that his investment – which borders Kenya's main air-force base – was about to go up in smoke.

‘Don't worry,' I said, with the nonchalance of one with nothing to lose. ‘In three days it will all be over. In three months, people will be asking, ‘What coup?' and in three years everything will be back to normal.'

I was right. Even by the time we got back to Malindi everything had calmed down. It was a bit quieter than usual but the police told us we were all welcome and everything was under control. It was the only time I have ever seen Khalid really rattled. Khalid was one of the richest people in the world in the eighties but now lives in a tiny apartment in New Jersey, completely adjusted to the change in his fortunes and as loyal a friend as ever. It must run in the blood. His mother, Soraya, was once famous for her riches yet now sells flowers to the people who used to laugh at her extravagance and lives in a small London flat with her son Hussein, who now goes by the name of Sean. How the great fall – the Khashoggis with more style than others, it seems.

When we eventually flew back to Kora a few days later we were full of the news. ‘George, there's been a coup,' I said.

‘Yes. I heard about that. I can't find Koretta.'

I felt much better after the break in Malindi. I had been working very hard, stretching my time between Kampi ya Chui and
George's camp and I was going to need all my energy for the next stage of the leopards' reintegration. At the beginning of September, after fourteen months of hard work, I fitted collars on to Attila and Squeaks, then released them. So far they had done very well but I was scared they might get themselves into trouble, which was why I had held back their release for so long. Only a few days earlier we had suffered a terrifying experience with a troop of baboons that had highlighted the dangers of life in the bush but also showed me how well the two young leopards could cope.

The three of us were walking on the rocks above camp when we were surrounded by about sixty baboons. Baboons are immensely strong, well capable of ripping off a grown man's arm, and have huge teeth that rival those of a lion. Furthermore, a full-grown baboon weighs more than a young leopard, particularly Squeaks who was very small indeed. The baboons screamed and bared their teeth at us, making quick lunges towards us and goading each other to attack. I was terrified – and so was Attila, who shot off into the nearest cave. Squeaks, however, looked disdainfully down her nose and carried on walking towards the baboons as if nothing was happening. I followed her lead, pulse pumping, sweat pouring off me as the big males barked and shook their fists. But they were not as brave as Squeaks and melted away when they realized they weren't going to get a rise out of her. I was so proud I thought my heart would burst.

Attila immediately started marking territory and disappearing on long safaris; Squeaks made the area around camp into her territory and was always dropping in to say hello. The radio collars that we had to modify for use on the small-headed leopards worked well when they were out in the open. The problem was that leopards are rarely out in the open. They favour thick bush or caves, which muffle radio signals. Unlike the lions, they were almost impossible to track from a vehicle and it became
ever more apparent that we needed an aeroplane if the project was to continue successfully. Whenever friends flew in, I asked them to take me up with the radio-tracking equipment, allowing me to cover a huge area in a much shorter time. George continued to hate aircraft but I loved them and was always trying to get people to teach me the rudiments of flight.

Dave Allen – like Bill Woodley and Richard Bonham – was one of the many people who helped me learn to fly when he came to camp or, as often happened, whisked me off for a party. In 1983 Dave and I flew up to see our trustee-lawyer Anthony Gross marry Rowena Murray. It was a great wedding but, as so often happened, there was near disaster while I was away. Squeaks was badly mauled by a warthog that left a puncture wound in her thigh. She was waiting at camp when I got back and, despite the pain, allowed me to clean deep inside the wound with iodine and antibiotic powder. It was astonishing what she allowed me to do for her: it must have been stunningly painful and she could have bitten my hand off in a second. There was great news from Kampi ya Simba, though: George had managed to track down both Growe and Glowe, who had been missing for months. And Glowe had a new set of cubs.

The
shifta
and poaching wars were getting ever more intense as the days went by and the wildlife community was already losing faith in the newly formed WCMD. Ian Hughes had resigned from the old Game Department and given up his antipoaching patrols a few years back. He felt that the government didn't give him the support it should – in fact, quite the opposite – and that he was being asked to risk the lives of his men for window dressing. This opinion was becoming ever more widely held as it grew increasingly apparent that some of Kenya's elite were more than involved in poaching: they were managing it.

Great men remained at the forefront of the anti-poaching effort but they received no support whatsoever. Ted Goss had recently
flown into camp and taken me to see the powers that now prevailed in Garissa. We met the new police chief, then my friend Mohammed Aden at Anti-poaching and some of the provincial authorities. Most were brave men, fighting the growing insecurity with almost no assistance. Ted told me that the entire country was receiving only $6,000 a month for anti-poaching and I'd learnt a few weeks earlier that now game wardens had to fuel their own vehicles or give up patrolling. And poaching was only part of the problem: poachers were branching out into ambush and extortion. At the end of April they ambushed a WCMD truck full of armed rangers in the middle of Kora. They very nearly killed a good man called Sergeant Longoji and would have succeeded if I had been unable to get hold of the Flying Doctors. As usual, the Flying Doctors braved the insecurity and bad weather and saved another life. We were reminded again that George, Terence and I would have died years earlier without their courage and commitment.

Catastrophic as most of the news from the WCMD was, there were occasional rays of sunshine, like when the authorities told us they had plenty of leopards at the orphanage and we could have as many as we liked. There was a problem, though: they were all female, old and unsuitable for reintroduction. Squeaks really needed a partner. Without one she couldn't move on to the next stage of her reintegration: mating. We had always said with the lions that they needed to be able to hunt, carve out a territory and mate with wild animals before we had succeeded at reintegrating them. Attila had gone a long way from Kampi ya Chui, and although we had reports of him occasionally or picked up the signal from his collar, we didn't know whether he had found a mate. With Squeaks, I knew. There were no mates around. She kept coming into season and throwing herself at me in the absence of a better option. This was scary stuff as she would work herself up into a frenzy, throw herself around, jump all over me and
scratch me with her teeth and claws out. Flattering though it was, I had to be careful – leopard claws are notorious for passing on infections. Squeaks was also intensely jealous of anyone who came to camp so we had to spend a lot of time reinforcing the cages and building tunnels to protect our visitors.

My two main helpers were Mohammed Maro and Ali Tukuna, known as Ali Oil Can. Both from Asako village, they knew the area well and were hard workers without whom I would have had great difficulty juggling everything. Two other people helped me too – Patrick ‘Bunter' Corbally-Stourton, a tubby little Catholic on his year off who took everything I threw at him, and Pete Silvester. Pete is one of the world's best guides and used to stay with me between safaris, helping to rebuild the cars, erect huts and do all the work that Terence did at Kampi ya Simba when he was in better health. A brilliant businessman, far-sighted conservationist and top-end safari operator, Pete is now one of our trustees and remains a great friend. Patrick, like so many others in this story, died in a plane crash a few years ago.

Observers seldom appreciate the amount of work required to look after animals. The boring behind-the-scenes work far outweighs the exciting stuff you see on the National Geographic TV channel. Throughout this period, I usually spent five days a week maintaining the vehicles at both camps, fixing the huts and building new holding cages. The other two days would be spent on administration, writing letters to donors or doing supply runs. Only at night and in the early mornings would I get down to the exciting work with leopards and lions, work that always amazed my friends.

It was sad that when my father, Leslie, came out to visit Squeaks was on one of her rare walkabouts but it was great to see him in Africa, which he hadn't visited since he'd fought across it in the Second World War. I was proud to be able to show him what I had achieved. As ever, we didn't talk much but it was great to
spend some time with him after so many years. My mother couldn't come and died soon after Dad returned home, but I hope that he was able to convey some of the wonder of my life in Kora to her. I know he understood what we had never been able to put into words to each other: I had found a home in this harsh corner of Africa with two taciturn old men and an ever-growing group of wild animals and in doing so I had come to appreciate what Leslie and Hilda had done for me. They had provided me with a loving home I could abandon, and got me into a good school, but that was only part of a much wider background that had formed me and allowed me to achieve what I have today. At Mum's funeral in Cockfosters later that year, I sat in church with Dad, Margaret and the Hat Brigade, wondering at how my life had changed. I wish I had been able to show Kora to them both but at least I showed it to Dad and I know he ‘got it' because, years later, my sister told me so. The choir was as bad as ever.