I clearly remember the first time I saw an elephant. I was 8 years old and our family had recently moved to Kenya for three years, a posting my father had secured with the Danish International Development Agency, an agency affiliated with the charitable end of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was there building roads and bridges and silos and what not. I was there falling hopelessly in love with a magical country.
We had been there some six months when we headed out on our first safari. It was Christmas, and we and a couple of other families were headed to The Amboseli National Park to go camping. Amboseli is famous for its elephant population, in particular Echo, a matriarch that elephant researcher Cynthia Moss studied for decades untill Echo's passing a few years ago. You can find the wonderful Echo in books and on DVD - she is one famous and celebrated ellie.
It was our first day in camp, an area ringed by the meager protection of a thicket of palms and shrubbery and trees, but we kids were out on the plain, an ancient dried up lake bed, playing soccer while our parents set up camp. We were shouting and laughing and running around kicking up as much dust as anything else, and I was feeling incredibly small upon this vast and arid plain that stretched for miles into a horizon hazy with the dust of an early dry season. Behind me rose the majestic and mystical Mount Kilimanjaro, a black barnacle rising out of the flat savannah, capped with snow and only adding to my sense of diminutiveness.
Photo Courtesy Offbeat Safaris
As I stood mesmerized by the endless plain I saw something grow out of the dust shimmering in the warm air. Something enormous and dark as slate, something that seemed to sway and wiggle and slowly condense into one massive, ponderous shape with long white tusks gleaming in the sun. I could barely form the word, my hand raised up and my finger pointed, but my mouth worked silently. Finally the word came out "Elephant!" But it was no more than a whisper. Now the other kids spotted her, too, and the cry went up. Everyone shouted elephant at once and took off running for the grownups.
Except me. I stood still, feeling rooted to the ground, unwilling to move, willing the elephant to come closer, yet terrified that she would. I wanted to commune with her. I wanted to tell her she overwhelmed and terrified me and yet, beneath that, I felt nothing but love and awe. The grown ups came running and I was called away to watch from a safe distance as one by one, elephants of all sizes and ages materialized out of the opaque curtain.
Some things have not changed. I am all grown up, but I still feel moved to the very marrow of my bones when in the company of elephants. And when I think of that little girl, and that very soon, no more little girls will be afforded the wonder of such a moment, it breaks my heart.
Because unless we change our ways, it is no longer just a possibility that elephants in the wild will be extinct in ten years.
It is a probability.
Viewer warning: The first few minutes of this are hard to watch. But it's a comprehensive and informative look at the ivory trade today. You might be surprised at what you learn.
All photos generously donated by Billy Dodson unless stated otherwise.
No comments:
Post a Comment