Polokwane, Limpopo - It’s not often that you meet someone who profoundly changes your perspective. It happened to me recently while guiding a game drive in Mapungubwe National Park.
My safari guests were a mixture of European and South African folk who had been on drives of this sort before. Riding shotgun, though, was someone who represented a new tourist demographic for me, a Senegalese man named Jean Charles Tall.
The drive started as so many do – idyllic blue sky, abundant birdlife and the landscape a stark wonderland preparing, it seemed, to divulge all its mysteries to us.
The bush was green, the sap almost audibly flowing and all manner of plant life around us bedecked in a myriad colours that have yet to be named. We ventured forth expectant and excited.
Tall had checked in the day before with return guest and friend Peter Rich, acclaimed architect of the magnificent Interpretive Centre building in Mapungubwe.
Tall, an architect himself, was in the area to look at Rich’s building as part of an adjudication process for yet another international accolade.
I took to him instantly. He had a regal bearing, was quick to smile and spoke in that beguiling French-accented English that always leaves my ears wanting to hear more.
He was so complimentary about the lodge and the surroundings and I just presumed he was being polite – he was, after all, from the real Africa and South Africa and even Limpopo must have seemed a bit tame to him by comparison.
I made a mental note to engage as much as possible with Tall in an effort to learn about the wilderness paradise that must be Senegal.
The next afternoon we were on a drive looking for wildlife. Tall sat next to me and took pictures of the various landscape views and some of the wildlife we encountered.
He seemed animated and excited and I felt sure that, again, this interesting man from West Africa was being politely as he compared our dusty little national park to the great swathes of tropical paradise that adorn his country.
I recalled paging through a book called Elephants of Africa by Anthony Hall Martin and Paul Bosman in which Bosman had painted scenes from the major national parks of Africa, including Niakolo-Koba in Senegal and how beautiful and evocative it all looked to this budding game ranger from South Africa.
I realised that I harboured a longing to explore and experience these wilder parts of our grand continent.
It was then that we encountered our first elephant. Two bulls, impossibly wrinkled behemoths, drifted off to our left like enormous galleons afloat on a sea of Salvadora scrub. I began a diatribe on elephant conservation, prompted by a question from one of the South Africans relating to an elephant’s destructive nature.
I spoke, almost callously, about elephant culling and southern Africa’s struggle with issues of land availability and a burgeoning elephant population before summarising with concepts of sustainable use and the various models I had argued, ad nauseum, throughout my career.
It was then that my world crumbled. Tall had been quietly watching the grey giants with his face turned away. He looked at me, tears coursing down that kind African visage. He grabbed my shoulders and said, “I bless you my brother for today you have shown me my first elephant.”
I was blown away. It was a decisive moment, one that lives with me still. While I had been going on about elephant management, about killing these creatures, I had unwittingly provided the soundtrack to this man’s first elephant experience.
I was ashamed. I rallied and said to him, “Surely not? You come from Senegal. There are plenty of elephants there.”
He shook his head sagely in denial and turned back to once more drink in the magnificence of two mature elephants in a landscape largely unchanged by the ecological obscenity that is mankind.
I learned later that Senegal’s elephants were all but wiped out – that the quintessential African mammal had disappeared there and that Senegal was the poorer for it.
I had shown this man his first real wildlife and had failed him with my lack of sensitivity. I had dealt with subject matter dear to my heart in a calculated and clinical fashion and I was sickened by the thought.
Africa’s wildlife is a precious jewel. It has filled my life with abject wonder and unsurpassed joy, for it is truly a diverse and splendid multiplicity of natural selection and abundance. We have to look after it, weighing each decision carefully before acting.
I have not changed my stance on consumptive use and sustainability – merely balanced my views with what truly matters, my abiding love for this place and its denizens.
I mourned then for Jean Charles Tall and the people of Senegal, for this great and terrible loss they have experienced.
I mourn with them still.
l Rae is the chief ranger at Mopane Bush Lodge near Mapungubwe in Limpopo; www.mopanebushlodge.co.za or e-mail [email protected] for special offers. - Saturday Star