Danger in the Dust (3 page)

If I decide to be a vet, I’ll have to cope with things like that all the time
, he thought.

Deciding he would prefer to follow in his father’s footsteps, he fell asleep.

Chapter 5

Joe was overjoyed when, the next morning, Binti announced that they were going to visit an elephant orphanage.

‘There’s only a one-hour viewing slot, so we mustn’t be late,’ she said.

‘Will there be any calves? And will we be able to get close to them?’ Joe wanted to know as they set off from the hotel.

‘There might be one or two very young calves, but most will be older, I believe,’ Binti replied. ‘I’m sure I can arrange for us to see them close up.’

‘That’s the advantage of having an international vet for a mother,’ said Peter. ‘She can open many doors that would otherwise be out of bounds.’

Joe held his camera case tightly as they waited for their taxi to arrive to take them to the orphanage, which was located on the outskirts of Nairobi.

It was a beautiful morning, though it had rained heavily during the night, and Joe was surprised at how green everything was. He had assumed that the landscape would be parched and dusty, and was surprised, too, at all the high-rise buildings that broke up the skyline.

‘Nairobi is like a lot of cities, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yeah, it’s very noisy,’ said Aesha.

‘I didn’t expect it to be so sort of . . . modern,’ he added.

‘It’s a big melting pot,’ said Peter. ‘It’s a real mix of skyscrapers, restaurants, cafés, shops and offices, parks and gardens, a number of very affluent housing complexes, and there are also the most appalling slums, where about half the city’s population lives. But Nairobi really stands out from other cities in that it has a national park right on its doorstep. Nairobi National Park is home to four of the Big Five, as well as numerous other animals and birds.’

‘Cool!’ exclaimed Joe. ‘Can we go there?’

‘The orphanage is just on the border of the park,’ said Binti. ‘You might see some animals while we’re there, but we’re saving most of our game viewing till we go on safari.’

Joe pulled a face. He would have been quite happy to see wild animals every hour and minute of their trip.

He didn’t have to wait long. As the taxi took them towards their destination, the driver told them to look to their right. To Joe’s amazement, there was a giraffe striding across a wide open space towards a clump of low-growing trees, with the cityscape in the background.

‘Wow!’ cried Aesha. ‘You just wouldn’t expect to see a giraffe so close to houses! Imagine looking out of your bedroom window and being able to see a wild animal like that!’

I’d love to live here
, Joe thought.
I can’t imagine anything more exciting than having wild animals roaming right outside your window.

He kept his eyes peeled for the rest of the journey, hoping to see more animals, but soon the taxi driver pulled up outside some gates and told them that they had arrived. They piled out of the car and joined the queue to get into the orphanage. Joe looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. He didn’t want to miss one second of his time with the elephants and willed the gates to open.

An official came to the entrance and ushered them through. They were shepherded to an expanse of scrubby ground dotted with small trees, which stretched away into the distant horizon.

A large area close by was cordoned off with rope along one side and an official asked the group of spectators to stand behind it.

‘What do you think is going to happen?’ whispered Joe to his mother. ‘Where are the elephants?’

‘Wait and see.’ Binti smiled at him.

‘You’d better get your camera out, Joe,’ Peter said, adjusting the lens on his video camera. ‘You won’t want to miss this.’

Joe took his camera from its case and held it at the ready. Several keepers in green overalls spilled out from the orphanage building, one of them kicking a football, another pulling a cart loaded with feeding bottles. Joe expected the elephants to appear from somewhere behind them, but suddenly a keeper pointed in the direction of the park.

‘They are coming,’ the keeper announced.

All Joe could see at first was another man in green overalls. Then he spotted a small browny-grey shape trundling along after him.

‘Oh, look!’ cried Aesha. ‘It’s a baby, and there’s a bigger one following it!’

‘I can see three now!’ cried Joe. ‘Four!’

Altogether, there were nine elephants in the procession. As they came closer, a spokesperson informed the crowd that the youngest was only three months old and that his mother had been shot by poachers. The same fate had met the mothers of five of the other calves, while two calves had been rescued from wells and the final one had been orphaned when his mother died from illness.

As the elephants reached the roped-off area, the keepers each took a bottle of milk and chose an elephant to feed. Joe could hardly contain his excitement – he was almost able to touch them and one was being given its bottle right in front of him.

‘We feed them every three hours, day and night, just like their mothers would,’ said the spokesperson. ‘And we sleep with them too, one keeper to each elephant, though we swap around so that they don’t become too attached to a particular individual.’

The bottles were finished in no time and several of the elephants headed for a large pool of muddy water, running into it and splashing around, much to the delight of the crowd. Two of the keepers started to kick the football to each other, encouraging the elephants to join in. Joe couldn’t help laughing when one of the smaller elephants stopped the ball with one foot then kicked it away with another, before hurtling after it and trying to swipe it with its trunk.

‘That’s a big advantage, having four feet and a trunk to use,’ said Peter.

It wasn’t such an advantage for one calf, which got the ball caught between its back legs and sat down on it. Meanwhile, the elephants in the pool were lumbering backwards and forwards and squirting each other with water from their trunks. The youngest tried to clamber out, found the sides too high and slid back in on its tummy, bumping into another that was standing behind it and knocking it off its feet.

‘They’re hilarious!’ Aesha was entranced.

Joe thought it was one of the best hours he had ever spent and took one photograph after another. All too quickly, though, the fun and games were over, as the elephants were led back into the park for the afternoon and the crowd was asked to leave. Joe turned to follow everyone else, but just then the spokesperson called his and Aesha’s names and signalled for them to go with him. Joe looked questioningly at his father, who shrugged his shoulders and told him to blame his mother.

They soon found themselves standing in front of an enclosure containing two goats and the orphanage’s most recent arrival – a two-month-old rhino calf, whose mother had been shot by poachers.

‘It’s so cute! I told you baby rhinos are cute,’ he said to Aesha. ‘What’s its name?’ he asked the keeper.

‘His name is Rombo,’ the keeper replied.

To Joe and Aesha’s delight, they were invited to take it in turns feeding Rombo from a large bottle with a teat on the end.

‘He hasn’t quite got the idea that there’s something good for him in the bottle, so squirt the milk at his mouth until he tastes it and works out where it’s coming from,’ the keeper suggested.

Joe did as he was told, spraying the milk until Rombo turned towards him and, with a bit of help from the keeper, latched on to the teat.

‘If this little chap’s mother hadn’t been killed, he would have stayed with her for the first two to three years of his life. She would have taught him everything he needed to know to survive.’

‘Poor Rombo,’ said Aesha.

Joe studied the thick grey hide of the calf and the bump on his nose that would become his horn.

‘His ears look like trumpets,’ he said.

‘Those ears are perfect for hearing,’ said the keeper, ‘which is just as well, because those little eyes are very short-sighted.’

Rombo finished his milk in no time and trundled away to harass the goats.

‘He is very happy that you have decided to adopt him.’ Rombo’s keeper grinned at Aesha and Joe, and winked at Binti.

‘From now on, we’ll be paying for his upkeep and the orphanage will send us news about his progress every month,’ said Binti.

Joe was thrilled. ‘That’s so cool!’

Chapter 6

The rest of the day, after the Brook family had left the orphanage and collected their suitcases from the hotel, was spent travelling from Nairobi to the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The journey took several hours in a four-wheel drive, along roads pitted with deep holes and slippery with mud from the pouring rain. Joe slept much of the time, waking only to wonder if the rain would ever stop and to marvel that they were able to keep going on a road that presented so many challenges.

By the time they reached the Maasai Mara, darkness had fallen. Peter told them that they were going to stay on a campsite just inside the border of the reserve, rather than in a hotel. Aesha groaned loudly, but Joe couldn’t imagine anything better.

‘Are we really going to be sleeping in a tent? Will there be wild animals close by?’ he asked.

‘It’s very likely we’ll hear animals in the night, but they don’t normally come into the camps,’ Binti assured him, presuming he had asked because he was worried.

‘I think it would be amazing to have wild animals prowling around,’ said Joe.

Aesha snorted. ‘You wouldn’t think it was amazing if one came into the tent.’

‘There’s not much chance of that,’ said Peter. ‘The camps are patrolled by rangers.’

The tents were much bigger than Joe had expected and he was pleased to hear he would be sharing one with his father.

‘You’d better not snore!’ he warned him.

‘For someone who likes the idea of wild animals prowling around, I don’t think my snoring will cause much disturbance,’ Peter responded.

After they’d eaten a hearty meal with another group of travellers and shared stories round a campfire, they returned to their tents for the night. Joe tried to make himself comfortable on his hard bed with its thin pillow and listened to the noises that drifted in from outside, trying to identify the sounds of animals beyond the human voices and movements.

Joe must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he was aware of was the low rumble of his father’s snoring and, apart from that, nothing but silence. He was bursting to go to the loo! The toilets were a short walk away and Binti had told him it was perfectly safe to go in the night, but Joe lay there for some time, reluctant to venture out.

‘You won’t catch me leaving my tent in the night, patrol or no patrol!’ Aesha had said.

Joe wondered about waking his father and asking him to go with him. He leant over and half-heartedly touched his shoulder. His father snorted loudly, turned over and stopped snoring. The new silence was worse than the snoring – it made Joe feel completely alone.

Don’t be such a wimp!
he scolded himself.

With that he clambered out of bed and tried to find the torch his father had left on the floor between them. He couldn’t find it anywhere. He fumbled his way towards the tent opening and pushed his way out. It was pitch black everywhere. The lights that had lit the pathways earlier had been turned off. He thought he knew which way to go, but in the darkness doubts crept in. He contemplated peeing on the ground behind the tent, but worried about tripping over the guy ropes or being caught out by a ranger.

Joe couldn’t wait any longer – he was desperate! He turned left, away from the tent, and walked slowly along what he hoped was the path, putting one foot carefully in front of the other. A thin shaft of moonlight illuminated what looked to him like the toilet block, but it quickly disappeared at the same time as drops of rain began to fall.

Oh no! I’ll get soaked!

He walked faster, the torrential rain that was thudding to the ground disorientating him. He was no longer sure he was heading in the right direction and, as he considered giving up and going back, he heard a series of ghostly wails from somewhere close by. He panicked and started to run, the rain filling his eyes and soaking his T-shirt.

‘Mum, Dad, where are you?’ he shouted.

His flight came to an end when he hit something soft and solid – and screamed.

‘Shhh. It’s all right, boy. You’ll wake everyone up.’

A man’s voice – calm, taking control. Joe stared through the darkness, but all he could see were the whites of the man’s eyes.

‘Where were you going, boy?’

Joe gulped in air to try and steady his nerves. ‘To the toilet,’ he said weakly. ‘I heard something howling.’

‘Those were jackals you heard. Don’t worry – they’re outside the camp. The toilets are this way.’

Joe hesitated for a second, before following the man, who told him his name was Kwame and that he was a night patrolman. Joe was so relieved when Kwame led him to the toilet block, switched on the light and waited for him.