I don’t know if elephant droppings are atheism’s ultimate proof but you have to admit, if God created the Garden of Eden he hadn’t thought elephants through properly.
This particular Eden was the shore of Lake Nzelakela in the Selous, Tanzania. In early November the short rains had jump-started the trees and splashed the hippo-grey earth with nibbled tufts of green. Our emergence from the nearby forest was heralded by the exultant calls of a pair of fish eagles and we breathed the warm breeze that skimmed the lake. To our right a startled group of impala leapt to show that they could outrun us; by the water’s edge common sandpipers trotted unperturbed round a young croc, as they would a boulder in the River Tees back home and seemingly all around us a troop of baboons watched nervously, hands darting to the earth to glean their living. This was the land where mankind was born; this was the scene our first ancestors looked on and these were the eagles that taught them to worship. And, scattered around this vision of paradise, spoiling the photo wherever I looked, were piles and piles of elephant droppings.
This was my first trip to Africa and together with my teenage son, Michael, I’d arrived a couple of days earlier at one of the game camps that fringe the sprawling Rufiji River. Up to this point our safari experience had been in the back of a jeep on game drives. This reminded me a bit of a fairground ride with us bumping and rattling around a series of well-worn paths where, every so often, a large mammal would pop out of the bush for us to take its photo.
Today was different! We were on foot and reprising our species’ role as medium-sized prey animals. All that separated us from being little more than intensively reared australopithecines was Meltus the ranger, a little man with a big gun and Cashu the Masai guide, armed only with a spear and the confidence of generations of facing down big, scary animals. Our guide Kieran had steadied our expectations and nerves by informing us that we were definitely aiming to avoid anything big; “Birds and Turds” was how he had badged the walk. This was fine by me; I just wanted my feet on African soil.
Near the lake and just inside the forest the camp staff had imported a bit of civilisation in the form of a picnic table. It seemed so out of time and place, a tardis with a tablecloth, but we sat round it grateful for some breakfast. A few minutes past and Kieran asked, “Did you hear that?” Couldn’t say we did but seconds later he asked again. I still didn’t hear it; instead I felt it in my left foot and then a third time, much louder, like a car with the world’s largest exhaust. “The elephants are watching us”, Kieran announced and, as if to prove it, a quick trumpet burst sounded. To be precise, the elephants were watching us from behind the bushes twenty metres to our right; unknown tons of elephant completely hidden by sparse green fronds. Now for as long as I can remember, every month or so I have a recurring nightmare about being chased by an elephant. It’s a bit like the scene in Jurassic Park with the velociraptors, in that no matter what I do I can never shake it off. If I climb a tree, the elephant knocks it down; if I jump in a river the elephant jumps in after me; if I lock myself in a nuclear bunker, the elephant squeezes through the keyhole. Now my demons were lining up behind a bush and revving their engines, only this wasn’t a dream.
Kieran explained the rules, “If we let the elephants decide how close they want to come then there wont be a problem; problems only arise when we decide how close we are going to get to them”. I looked at the guides for a lead; the little man with the big gun smiled and poured himself another cup of coffee; I tried to nonchalantly peel a boiled egg.
At one point a young bull, high on testosterone, charged a few steps towards us and kicked up the dust. “He’s about due for independence”, Kieran said, “He’s just strutting his stuff”. I looked at Michael knowingly.
The stand off continued for another ten minutes; it was almost like role reversal with the wildlife behind a hide watching us. Eventually, their migrant-human spotting over, twenty-five elephants filed past, almost politely, so as not to disturb us. So there were rules and the elephants abided by them. Perhaps it wasn’t the elephants that God hadn’t thought through in the Garden of Eden then.
Raven on the Wing 