The Power of Creative Visualisation

July 15 2024

For the Love of an Elephant - by Cathy Buckle "Letter from Zimbabwe" 8th August 2024

An elephant with a very swollen lower leg was standing in the hot, dry bush. Something was wrong, its foot was big and the skin peeling and Kelly watched for a few minutes, took photographs and then phoned Blake Muil. Blake, heading the Rukuru Conservation Unit, went into action immediately; after 30 years of living in the bush and working in the wildlife business, he knew time was critical.

From the pictures it looked like there were two snares on the elephant’s lower leg. They had probably been set near a waterhole where poachers set lines of as many as 100 snares attached to trees all around the water with thorn branches placed in between leaving animals no way to get to the water without getting caught.

The young elephant bull was on the boundary of Rukuru and another property in the Zambezi Valley and these cable snares had probably been on its leg for about two months, gradually going deeper and deeper into its flesh and eventually cutting off the blood supply to the elephant’s foot. Blake knew that intervention was needed urgently before this young bull would lose its foot.

Blake went immediately to the National Parks offices in Marongora to ask for help. A team of Scouts would be taken to the last known location of the elephant and they would start tracking from there. The young bull probably wouldn’t have gone too far with its limited mobility on a painful and very swollen leg. Checking water sources first, the Scouts soon picked up the elephant’s track in the soft sand; it wasn’t hard identifying the spoor which was scuffed and dragged. A few days after it had first been seen, the elephant was located by the tracking team and by then the National Parks head Vet was also available.

The young elephant was darted and the veterinary team got straight to work. There were two snares on the elephant’s back leg, deeply embedded in the flesh above its foot. Two big incisions were made and the wire cable snares exposed. The twisted wires were carefully cut and extracted and the wounds cleaned and sterilized. Antibiotics were injected, the wounds closed and packed and then it was time to administer the reversal drug.

The vet slipped the needle into one of the pronounced blood vessels in the back of the elephant’s ear and told everyone to start moving away. From a safe distance they watched and waited. For the love of an elephant had they all managed to save this young bull? This now was the critical moment. Would the elephant make it? The adrenalin was palpable. “How many minutes,” the vet called out? Someone answered. The tension was thick in the air, the seconds ticked past and they waited to see if the elephant would come round.

The first sign was a puff of dust as the elephant exhaled, its trunk lying flat on the ground. Then another puff of dust. The elephant’s head came up and flopped back down. Its trunk came up, slowly the elephant rocked itself and managed to sit up.

“Excellent,” the vet whispered. “So our boy is waking up nicely after about three or four minutes,” he said. “Up, up, up my boy,” he said, tenderness and emotion clear in his voice. The elephant struggled up onto its feet and there was an audible sigh of relief, a little nervous laughter, whispered chatter. “Well done guys,” the National Park’s head Vet said, “well done, well done.” Everyone shook hands; fantastic teamwork from everyone involved had saved this young elephant bull.

Wonderful work like this needs all our support. Support for transport and fuel, for food and allowances for the trackers; for the vet and the drugs he needs for darting and treatment and then of course for the follow-up monitoring in the weeks to come by Blake and his team and then for the next animal and the next.

This wonderful story from Zimbabwe highlights the fantastic response from National Parks: professional, dedicated and efficient. Blake Muil and the Rukuru Conservation Unit and their helpers need support to continue this critical work for the future of our Zimbabwe; they are there, out of the spotlight, boots on the ground, day after day, saving the wilderness for us and the generations yet to come. Please click this link to support this amazing work. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2TNMPJHYHN948

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If you would like to read more about Cathy’s work, please visit her website or subscribe to her letters. There is no charge for the emails “Letter From Zimbabwe” but donations are welcome: https://cathybuckle.co.zw/

Elephants on the Wall

The photograph hanging on the bedroom wall showed five bull elephants walking in single file. They must have nearly trodden on the camera, so close they were. It was obviously somewhere in Africa, it looked dry, the land scorched by the heat.

But I was not in a mood to even through them a glance. Every morning I woke up and briefly glanced at the large poster on my bedroom wall.

It had been there for a while, but in my state of lingering depression I took little notice of my surroundings. I was enduring the pain of being rejected, the pain of realising that I was no longer loved. All my visions of a happy future had been shattered, smashed to smithereens. On top of that, my job in a development laboratory gave me no joy. It was demanding with little meaningfulness.

I was miserable, down, broken, just functioning. Over the months this feeling became familiar, this was my life as I knew it. So to change for something different would be a challenge to my physical and mental being. Even science has proven that the cells in the body remember the status quo and to ‘re-programme’ them takes a bit of determination. My favourite (and unconventional) aunt could no longer tolerate my mood – she showed no empathy and told me to ‘pull myself up’.

Although it hurt, I understood that I had to take the first step. This was my life and I was wasting it. I realised that if you don’t put out a hand for help, no one can take it. Life is that simple. And you receive when you ask.

So I made the decision to move on with my life. I turned my attention to a new future and found comfort in having the home to myself. Whilst the four walls no longer threatened to crush me, they opened up and the prospect of seeking ‘new pastures’ became exciting. As joy began to return, new ideas entered my mind. I found myself in a state of alertness, a kind of expectation that the universe would show me the way.

And it did. There, on the wall, were the elephants, beckoning to me every morning!
In fact, I think they had been shouting to me all along! They were telling me to go back to Africa – to the land of the elephants.

How could I have ignored them all this time when they were there – right in front of my eyes!?

I reached a decision. I was going back to “MY ELEPHANTS”.

During my first trip to Zimbabwe I had visited wilderness areas and seen herds of elephants (see my post ‘Do dreams come true?’). However, I had no idea where this photo was taken and I often wondered… how on earth did the photographer get so close to these wild animals to take this stunning photo! He must have been lying flat on the ground looking up at them.
Now you must understand that this was long before the days of smartphones and Go-Pros. It seemed impossible that the photographer could have been so close to these giants as they walked just inches away from him or her (?). And cameras didn’t have remote controls! I was truly puzzled.

Having ‘my elephant’ on my mind was just a way of expressing my desire to return to the land where elephants can walk. I had a childhood wish that seemed like an impossible dream, but it was nagging at me now…
I wanted to work in the wilderness, amongst wild animals, amongst free-roaming elephants.

Now I could write a whole book about what happened from that moment onwards to a moment I am about to describe to you. But I’ll get to the point, I’ll fast-forward my story…

I gave notice to my employer and my landlord, packed all my belongings into storage boxes and stored them in the attic of my mother’s house. I sold my car and left my job in the Swiss countryside.

I travelled through Africa, from Morocco to Mozambique.

I eventually reached Botswana, where I was trained up to be a safari guide and obtained a professional guide’s licence. I worked in the wilderness of Botswana (Okavango, Chobe, Kalahari) amongst wild animals and of course free roaming elephants. Thus fulfilling a deep-rooted childhood dream. I was living my soul’s desire to the core. This was ME!

After several magical years as a safari guide, I happily married a young man from Zimbabwe and we had a beautiful baby boy. It was time to settle down and build a home.

This is where this particular story continues:

We found an old farmhouse in Zambia and settled on the banks of the Zambezi, the mighty river that brings life to this part of the continent. The Zambezi is Africa’s fourth largest river. From its headwaters in northern Zambia, it meanders 2,574 kilometres (1,599 miles) across the south-central African plateau before emptying into the Indian Ocean through a vast delta in Mozambique. It is best known, however, at the point where it plunges into a deep gorge, forming ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’ (the smoke that thunders), the famous Victoria Falls!

The farm was about 20km out of town and bordered a wilderness area to the east, rural settlements to the north, another farm to the west and the big wide river to the south.

The property we rented came with a small cluster of red mud huts with thatched roofs. These were the staff quarters. By renting the farm, we were essentially agreeing to take on the staff. A young lady called Eunice was to come and help me with the housework and the two men were instructed by my husband to water the small orange plantation, maintain the dirt track leading up to the house and keep the grass short.

However, after a couple of nights in the house, we awoke to find that the grass on our ‘would-be lawn’ was definitely shorter. It had been magically cut during the night, and silently at that! Looking closer, we soon spotted some very large round footprints on the dirt track leading down to the river. Aha… good to know, we had a visitor coming from the river to eat the lush grass in front of our house. Obviously a happy hippo! Although these heavy animals are quite cute, they can be very aggressive and dangerous. So walking around the garden at night was not a good idea. And we soon found out that the hippos were not the only nighttime visitors.

One night I was kept awake as a small herd of bachelor elephants devoured all our mulberry bushes in a matter of hours – literally outside our bedroom.

Another night the lawn was dotted with hundreds of little lights… eyes reflecting the beam of our spotlight. A whole herd of buffalo had gathered around the washing, still hanging on the line, as we had forgotten to bring it in. That night we left the washing out, not worrying that a thief might walk by and steal it. Our laundry had animal guards!

Yet life in this paradise was often tough. We had frequent power cuts and the water pump would often clog up with fine silt. When it rained, the dirt road to the house became slippery as soap and required careful driving to avoid getting bogged down in the mud.

Nevertheless… the wilderness around us was magical, we had a safari on our doorstep!

Soon after we moved to the farm, and many years after I had packed my belongings and stowed them away in my mother’s attic, the day came when my household items and personal artefacts were delivered to the farm. They had been neatly packed into a couple of Land Rovers imported from the UK and loaded onto a ship at Southhampton in the south of England. They disembarked at Walvis Bay in Namibia and were driven halfway across the continent to Zambia.

As I curiously unpacked the boxes, I discovered items I had long forgotten… crockery, household utensils, bed linen and towels, a few pictures and… my picture of the 5 bull elephants walking inches from the photographer. As I looked at the picture again, I studied it more closely and could hardly believe what I was seeing! I was completely lost for words… I was awestruck by the realisation that now lay before me.

Now, having been a safari guide in Botswana, I could clearly see WHERE this picture had been taken. In fact, I could see exactly where those 5 elephants were walking!

As Botswana is a flat sandy desert with very few hills, or rather ancient sand dunes, I recognised the small hill in the background… and I knew that these elephants were walking on the well-trodden elephant path leading to the waterhole in Savuti, in the Chobe National Park.
Throughout my years as a safari guide, I would pass through Savuti and take safari guests to this very waterhole to watch these giants pass within inches of our safari vehicle on their way to quench their thirst.

From my home in the Swiss countryside, I had decided many years ago to travel to “MY ELEPHANTS”!

Now I realise… I had been to that EXACT place where those elephants had walked!
I had actually been working in that very place in the midst of the vast wilderness of Botswana – without even knowing how 100% accurate my statement from years ago had been!

It was like finding a star between the twinkles.

I had gone back to where “MY ELEPHANTS” walked.