Elephants Helping Elephants

November 25, 2014 Jen

I watch as her old arthritic fingers fight with the small silver needle and sun burnt thread on its epic journey of stitching up the elephant cushion. She takes a deep breath. My eyes never leave her face as her corn blue eyes, weathered with the passing of time twinkle and her cheeks glow like ripe strawberries as a huge satisifed sigh escapes her. ‘All done.’ She murmurs. It has taken a little time to do these two cushions as at 85, she always informs me that she can no longer run a marathon. My mum is a delightful and amazing old lady and I love and admire that she wants to help me raise funds for Chengeta Wildlife. I took photos of her beautiful cushions and put them on face book last night. What a fantastic response…and I now have to go and tell her that her work is not done. I have closed the cushion shop as she has orders for 10 more and I know what she will say.

‘I better do them as quick as I can because time is what I have…but how much time..I don’t know.’ And she will laugh at the horrified look on my face and we will work together to get these cushions done. So this coming week, I will snatch moments of time, oil the sewing machine and we will get busy on ‘elephant cushions.’ Stacked up next to me on the table, are beautiful calendars and numerous elephant key rings/chains for sale…all proceeds will go towards Chengeta Wildlife and the amazing work that Rory Young is doing in training rangers.

These are precious moments that are set in my memory like snap shots as I watch my family..the oldest being 85 down to the youngest who is comming up 4. My heart swells with pride when I hear them all talking about Chengeta Wildlife, Rangers and the poaching of elephants and rhinos and what we can do to help fight this scourge. We sit around the ancient dining room table making key chains, cushions or deciding what image would be best for the calendars.

Kayleigh (my oldest grandie) has definite ideas too.

I love the erth. It is the most specolest planet ever. Love Kayleigh. I liv in the UK. KBJ loves elees.

This money for the elees. To save the world.

(Took a few repeats from the author and rolling of eyes towards the ceiling when I took too long to decipher her note)

As a family, we work as a team. While I am now the matriarch of my family, I value what my mum has taught me. She plays a huge part in the family circle. Sadly her links with family members are stretched tight as they span over vast distances as we are now scattered all over the world. She shares her precious memories with her great grandchildren which offer breath taking glimpses into her past where the pulse of Africa throbbed beneath her feet and the cerulean sky drifted into infinity. She pines for her children, grand children and great grand children living in distant lands, and enjoys the ones who are close by. Elephants are no different from us.

Elephant families will also split but their reunions are incredible. Making contact through a swirl of dust, these mighty creatures embrace: ears flapping, tusks clicking, leaning into and rubbing each other: all the while urinating and defecating. Spinning in circles, they encompass the world with their joy and a cacophony of trumpeting screams and rumbles shred the air. Happy and joyful is their reunion.

While we are desperately trying to help Rory Young train rangers to fight the scourge of poaching, many thousands of miles away from where we sit around the dining room table, the sunset, in an explosion of gold is bidding the African day goodnight. While wisps of cloud flutter past the African half moon lying serenely on ber back, the magnificent martriarch wearing her robe of wrinkles and two well worn tusks trumpets in rage as bullets thump into the smallest member of her herd and she hears the bone crack. Trees explode as bullets ricochet and chaos reigns as this elephant herd is lost in a world of ugly greed, violence and blackness. With dawns slow promise of a golden day… a mighty stillness settles. Help us to help them.

These magnificent animals ask only for the space to roam free under the cerulean sky without fear, surrounded by their families and doing what elephants always do: living in the moment. As the superior beings, we do have one thing that no other living creature does: we have the ability to change the way things are. We hold the destiny of every living creature in our hands, and yet so few of us hear their silent cries of agony and their helpless pleas. The greed for ‘white gold’ has become the elephants downfall as the horn of the rhino has become their fate and their numbers are decreasing at an alarming rate. Elephants show all the best attributes of mankind with few of them displaying our darker sides.

Rory meeting with the chief and elders of Sidakoro, Parc National de Haut Niger

‘Meeting with the chief and elders of Sidakoro, Parc National de Haut Niger.
A critical part of the training and ops is how and why to approach community leaders and to sensitize and educate them, preferably developing in the process a positive flow of information from the community. With them on sides half the battle is won. Sometimes it is tedious work, lacking the excitement and adrenaline of pursuit and apprehension ops. That does not make it any less important.
In this case, far from complaining that the park and rangers are a nuisance the complaint from the elders and community is that poaching in protected areas has caused dramatic reduction in wildlife in traditional hunting areas. The majority of that poaching is by outside commercial poachers travelling to the park and then transporting the meat and other products to far away cities. In such situations the community can be and are a natural and important ally.’

While Rory Young gives of his time to train rangers throughout Africa, I am asking all of you…look at our chengetawildlife.org page. Help us to train and equip these men on the ground. Change will come….but we cannot afford to drift in the stream of the world….we need to act now. Africa’s wildlife needs us all to take an active role so that we can lead them out of the dark.

Consumers of ivory and rhino horn..hear their screams and let the heavy silence of loss flank you. Behind every piece of ivory and rhino horn is a story…a barbaric and bloody story. Your desire for ivory trinkets and rhino horn is decimating Africa’s elephants and rhinos. Those ivory bracelets, chopsticks and figurines are the cause of elephants being slaughtered. How can you desire something that is so significant of violence and death.

A call for help in desperate times of poaching by Rory Young. Please watch and share this short clip.

Innocent Blood

October 13, 2014October 13, 2014 Jen

There is something infinitely healing in the assurance that the pink wash of dawn always breaks free from the long dark night and the fresh breath of spring seduces the coldness out of the winter days. I am sitting watching an autumn breeze blowing through the trees, stealing the foliage and leaving the branches bare. What strikes me though…is nature knows best. There is not the heavy silence of loss. These bare branches will soon sprout and turn green again. However, when an elephant or rhino is poached, the soft weary tread of feet on the road is ………no more.………just the hush of death and the mournful ballad of the coucal.

Extinction is forever.

Africa’s bush, a grand and wondrous spectacle awash in colours and odours is under constant attack. Godless scenes of destruction and cruelty are encountered on a daily basis by the brave Rangers doing their utmost to keep the wildlife safe. Wheeling vultures circle and a foul miasmic presence leads the rangers in this case to a scene so horrific…it defies description. Consumers of rhino horn..LOOK at what your demand is doing to these magnificent and prehistoric animals.

As you grind your rhino horn mixture..take a deep breath and feel the intense and burning pain of this animal left in a sticky pool of blood. Not only has this poor animal’s horn been brutally chopped and torn from it’s face, her eyes have been hacked out leaving her blind. WHY ? This black rhino was found staggering around, her large head blistering like a sweltering inferno as it hangs heavy and low to the ground. Brushstrokes of blood pool deep in the shadows and deeper currents of greed blow on the breeze. This is a barbaric act that needs to be seen and told to the deluded consumers of rhino horn.

A week ago animal lovers (myself included), the world over marched for elephants and rhinos across 136 cities and across six continents. The howling of a frustrated wind as we all stood together as one voice refusing to allow these animals to fall through the ever widening cracks into chaos. As time disappears in dusky sunlight and smoke, rhinos and elephants lives fade like passing shadows and a week on from the marches..the slaughter continues. However, we must not give up hope. During these dark and turbulent times, we need to regroup and weave a future for these animals from the tangled past.

PLEASE DO NOT LOOK THE OTHER WAY : WE ALL NEED TO PLAY A PART…NO MATTER HOW SMALL

Lisa Groenweg had decided that she could not turn a blind eye to the destruction and started Chengeta Wildlife. She shook up fellow Quora members by raising a huge amount of money in 24 hours….showing that where there is a will to participate and make a difference..it happens.

For anti-poaching activist and forestry expert Rory Young, his passion for saving the African elephant from deadly poachers involves a detailed field manual and arming local teams with firearms to combat what he calls, “well-armed, ruthless and experienced gangs of poachers.

I have been asked and have accepted with great honour and delight a position on Chengeta Wildlife’s Board of Directors.

‘Rangers and scouts are brave men who risk their lives to protect wildlife. They may face heavily armed poachers, sometimes ex-guerrilla fighters hired by ivory smuggling syndicates. These rangers need to have the best training and anti-poaching strategy possible and that is what Chengeta Wildlife provide.’

‘The programme is already proving successful as anti-poaching operations undertaken as part of the training uncovered several poaching syndicates operating in the area, some with links to neighboring Mozambique and as far away as China, highlighting the global scale of the poaching problem. Arrests were made and the culprits handed over to the appropriate authorities.‘

I will do what I can to raise awareness and funds for Chengeta Wildlife and ensure that Rory Young can continue to offer first class training to Rangers throughout Africa.

Under an African sky that is as limitless as it is wide, a world of corruption, violence and greed mars the beauty of this sun baked land and when there is a demand..money talks.

CHINA CLOSE DOWN YOUR CARVING FACTORIES (Please sign this petition)

Inside these factories, Chinese carvers with masks covering their noses and mouths sit hunched over their desks. Under bright artificial strip lights, the ivory tusk lies lifeless. Please do not look at the ivory as a commodity. Run your hand down the length of the tusk and imagine the bubbling mass of exuberance that is an elephant.. a breathing and iconic animal that has emotions on a par with man.

The large wrinkled noble head and muscular trunk is lifted, tasting the sweetness on the breeze. She is a dab hand at assisting in birth and she senses that the new calf will soon join her herd. The warm and heavy evening exhales slowly, appearing to hold its breath as the excited cows , temporal glands flowing sing in multi-layered cadences encouraging the pregnant cow as she bears down. As the mornings slow lazy light caresses the hills, a new miracle is taking its first shaky steps as long wrinkled and powerful trunks offer a gentle welcome. The excitement is shattered by the cruel barking of automatic fire as the new miracle of life and all the excited cows slump heavily onto the ground.

These are the tusks that are stolen from elephants and any legal carving or trade is a conduit and and cover for China’s vast illegal market. While Zhao Shucong as China’s State Forrestry Administrator continues to license China’s 37 Carving factories and 140 ivory retail outlets, elephant families like the one above will continue to be callously slaughtered and their mutilated bodies left to swell and rot under the burning African sun.

Run your eyes over that magnificent tusk intricately carved with a herd of elephants..ivory bodies gleaming under the light. This large tusk belonged to a middle aged matriarch, her head full of knowledge yet to be passed on to her daughter.

CHINA..CLOSE DOWN THE CARVING FACTORIES (Please sign this petition)

True Essence of humanity

March 24, 2014 Jen

How do you even begin to try and find words that describe an icon like Lawrence Anthony. To me he was ‘the true essence of humanity’. From a mystical point of view, I can only describe him as having achieved a perfect blending of a physical being with a pure non-physical soul.

From reading about his incredible journey with the wild herd of elephants (The Elephant Whisperer) on his game reserve Thula Thula in Zululand, South Africa, you get a strong sense of his integrity. He abhorred destruction and hatred. He was connected with greater things and greater understandings. Lawrence Anthony was able to see the wonder and miracle of life on this planet. He was able to see the sheer magnificence of this world that we as humans appear to be so incompetent at sharing. He knew that the earth and all her inhabitants were to be treasured.

As we look around the world today, we can’t help but observe that not only are humans destroying millions of their own kind in the name of politics, power and religion, they are also hell bent on annihilating animal life and the environment. Both violence towards people and animals for many of the two legged beings has become a socially acceptable form of human behaviour: sadly, a way of life.

Lawrence Anthony, in my mind was guided by a pureness of spirit, non-violence and compassion towards all living things. He was passionate about people, animals and the environment.

In his book Babylons Ark, the incredible rescue of the Baghdad Zoo, this amazing man wrote:

The prophets of doom are already saying it is too late, that the crude and uniformed impact of man on the planet’s life systems is just too great and that we don’t have enough time to turn it all around. I don’t happen to agree, but I do know that we are entering the endgame. Unless there is a swift and marked change in our attitudes and actions, we could well be on our way to becoming an endangered species.’

Powerful words from a special man who sadly left this earth too early.

Lawrence Anthony was an icon in the environmentalist movement. One of his legacies ‘Earth Organisation’: a non profit, non partisan organisation aimed at reversing the dwindling spiral of life on earth and creating a healthy and habitable planet on which all life has the right to thrive and prosper.

Lawrence Anthony was 61 years old when he died of a heart attack. He was taken before his planned conservation gala dinner in Durban aimed at raising international awareness of the Rhino poaching pandemic and to launch his new book, ‘The last Rhinos’.

In April, 2012, he was posthumously awarded honorary Doctor of Science degree by College of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal.^[5]

On his passing, the two wild elephant herds trekked through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of this compassionate man who had saved their lives. This man, who was known as ‘The Elephant Whisperer’, a legend to more than those whose paths he had crossed, was being shown the ultimate love and respect from these sentient animals who had looked into his very being and found the pureness in this man.

The world and it’s inhabitants has lost a great spirit, and one of natures true warriors, who restored more than just a herd of elephant’s faith in mankind.

BOOKS BY LAWRENCE ANTHONY (Information below from Wikipedia)

‘Anthony is a bestselling author and his books have been translated into several languages. His brother-in-law, Graham Spence co-authored his three books.^[5]

Anthony’s first book Babylon’s Ark, published by Thomas Dunne Books, is the true story of the wartime rescue of the Baghdad Zoo. Babylon’s Ark has won literary awards including the Booklist Editors Choice in the category adult books for young adults, and the French 28th Prix Littéraire 30 Millions d’Amis literary award, popularly known as the Goncourt for animals.

Anthony’s second book, The Elephant Whisperer, published by Pan Macmillan, tells the story of his adventures and relationship with a rescued herd of African elephants.

Anthony’s third book, The Last Rhinos, published by Sidgwick & Jackson, is the true story of Anthony’s involvement to rescue the remaining Northern White Rhinos in the DR Congo.’

Awards and recognitions[edit]

The Global Nature Fund, Living Lakes Best Conservation Practice Award, for “A remarkable contribution to nature conservation and environmental protection.”

The Earth Day medal presented at the United Nations by the Earth Society for his rescue of the Baghdad Zoo.

The Earth Trustee Award.

The US Army 3rd Infantry, Regimental medal for bravery in Iraq during the Coalition invasion of Baghdad.

The Rotary International Paul Harris Fellowship for outstanding contribution to the ideals of Rotary.

The IAS Freedom Medal.

The Umhlatuzi Mayoral Award for Outstanding Community Service.

Member of the governing council of the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science.^[4]

International membership, the Explorers Club of New York.

At a presentation in Washington, DC in March 2009, respected international journalist Tom Clynes named South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony amongst his six most impressive and influential people in a lifetime of reporting. Other names on the list include such luminaries as Sir Edmund Hillary

WHY DO PEOPLE BUY IVORY?

March 17, 2014 Jen

The African bush with all it’s russet trimmings and natural treasures sneaks in and steals your heart. It leaves you drifting in tranquil moments and golden sunsets. Deep wells of memories and desires weave a bridge between the future and the past. When you leave the bush behind, you yearn for those vast blue skies and horizons that drift into heaven. For those of you who have been fortunate enough to meet with these magnificent giants in the African bush and have been privileged enough to catch a glimpse of the elephants unwavering honesty, compassion and intelligence will never forget that moment, or them. Elephants, for me are the essence of Africa and a great subject for debate.

What is it about elephants that makes humans want to own a piece of them? I’ve left my home country with a heart full of precious memories and many photographs. Others leave with an arm tinkling with carved ivory bracelets or other trinkets taken from these ‘enigmatic animals.’ Is it that they want to hold onto a deep feeling of belonging or are they just trying to capture a piece of the magic that surrounds the elephant. I don’t know why. We all know what poachers and traffickers make out of these filthy deals, but what makes the demand so unquenchable? What is it that makes these elongated cone like shapes of dentine so highly sought after?

Ivory, when it is dead has an uneasy splendour about it. Nothing can come close to the beauty of ivory on an elephant. It has a warmth and lustre that pulses with life and personality. Ivory belongs to elephants and has no use to man. For whatever different reasons humans want to own a piece of ivory for: we all know that it comes at a great cost to the unfortunate elephant herds who supply the demand. Hundreds and thousands of these sentient creatures are slaughtered and mutilated to feed the demand. Elephants and other wildlife are irreplaceable riches and have no where to run and nowhere to hide. (My poem)

We all need to turn east and face the dawn before our beloved African bush is denuded of it’s walking riches. The African bush could be facing a future minus the very essence that adds to it’s magic. Stand tall and act with compliance. Say no to ivory. Help to save our elephants.

CALL OF THE ELEPHANTS

March 10, 2014 Jen

What attracts humans to elephants? Their enormous size? For me personally, I am sucked into the magic that surrounds them. When in the presence of an elephant, the air appears to be purer and you can feel a pulse throbbing beneath your feet. A vibration of vitality engulfs my very being and I turn into an awestruck and lovesick fan of theirs. There is a peacefulness and goodness so overwhelming, that when they turn and amble off, they steal another chunk of my pounding heart. These sentient beings are creatures of the bush: they capture the very essence of nature.

I feel sad and angry at what humans are doing to these animals and I always nod vigorously when asked if I think that elephants are aware of what is happening to their species. Now, I am certainly no expert on elephants and do not pretend to be. However I am passionate about them and deep within my core, I know that they are aware of the continual attack that is threatening their very existence. Sadly, they have no where to run and are being crushed under the heels of supposed civilization. Now is the time to listen: and the time to act.

When left alone elephants are the picture of serenity. They are as old as time and have allowed humans a breathtaking glimpse into their world and sharing with us their compassion and intelligence. As the days fade like passing shadows, more and more elephants are being poached in such alarming numbers that the frightening word ‘EXTINCTION’ rears it’s ugly head. Their rhythm of life is rudely and savagely broken and their tusks are torn from their faces to be carved and fashioned into trinkets for us humans.

These animals when left alone, are long lived and large-brained. Researcher Joyce Poole has spent many years in the field trying to crack the ‘elephant code.’ Through her research, she has found that elephants use more than 70 kinds of vocal sounds and 160 different tactile and visual signals, gestures and expressions while communicating in their day to day lives. What we as humans can’t hear, has always been there, and we are now more aware of the elephants rather sophisticated way of connecting with each other. AND, they are the only beings in the world who do not need a telephone to make a ‘TRUNK CALL’. To read and learn more about these different vocal and non vocal communications, immerse yourself into their world for a few minutes.

Some of the latest research is now showing that elephants have a separate alarm call to warn the herd about the presence of ‘US’. Humans, sadly are their only enemy and poachers have proved to be a ruthless adversary.

Let us please, not continue to drift through the days like trees without roots. Let us hear their calls, listen to their cries and take heed. We, as humans have the ability to stop this violence against our elephants, rhinos and other wildlife. Let us take heed of ‘the elephant calls.’ (My poem.. Hear our calls)