….. Hi everyone, this post is inspired by one made by a fellow SPS sufferer [a neurological condition that singer Celine Dion is also enduring], that came with beautiful photographs of that particular sufferer’s love of equestrian, past and present, which said in part “May those fond memories now rest in peace”…..
I derived great pleasure, and comfort, from those words – which have had a truly cathartic effect on me. It’s often been a harrowing time over the years trying to put some very fond (and also not so fond) memories to rest.
The most passionate of these relate to my 13 years of full-time, voluntary, and primarily self-funded, conservation work with wild elephants in Hwange, Zimbabwe. I eventually fled there in 2014 and almost immediately fell ill – for the first time in my life. It’s been a long, gruelling, ongoing struggle since then, culminating in numerous different (and some extremely rare and progressive) autoimmune diagnoses over these past 10 years, including a variation of the one known as Stiff Person Syndrome.
The photograph here is just two of the hundreds of wild, free-roaming elephants (not tame, not hand-raised, not confined in fenced areas) who I managed to get to know intimately by name, gained an understanding of their family hierarchy and became skilled in reading their moods, body language and behaviours, during the extended, dedicated time I spent with them practically every single day for more than a decade. Eventually, I was honoured to essentially be accepted as part of their close-knit family units…. I can never again spend 8 hours a day out in my 4×4 with them, helping to protect them from poachers, unethical sport-hunters, corrupt officials, land grabbers… recording and understanding their lives… helping to ensure sufficient water was available for them to drink and bathe in … scouting and assisting to remove deadly wire snares from their bodies and subsequently monitoring their recoveries … nor helping to put together and manage a dedicated anti-poaching team – and more. I miss them more than I can even try to express…. But awareness for our endangered elephants is essential, and I can still write and talk about them today (via articles, books, presentations, interviews etc), continuing to spread much-needed understanding and appreciation of them. I might not be able to do near as much as I was once able to for our endangered and incredibly stately beings, but can still assist, remotely – just as we all can – as my health allows…. It took me a long time to even be able to look back at photos such as this one of our intelligent, sentient and majestic animals; the very essence of the African bush.
It was only a few months after finding myself critically ill in hospital with just 7% kidney function and sepsis (too much Zim stress!), with a ‘do not resuscitate’ instruction, that I received an unexpected message via my website from an 80-year-old gentleman in the UK. He spoke of time spent with me and the elephants in the Hwange bush many years ago, saying “I have since read a number of your books and loved them”… ”you are an integral part of my memory bank and one of the few people who have made a real impression on me”…. It was one of those very special messages.
Around the same time, I received an email from an ex-Cabinet Minister of the Mugabe government, who acknowledged that they had “let me down”. It was something that I needed to hear…
…. On World Elephant Day (12 August) 2024, as we celebrate and continue our efforts to raise awareness and protect our world’s largest land mammals, may these memories now rest in peace.
Post published in: Featured
The award-winning All the President’s Elephants documentary about Sharon Pincott’s life and decade of voluntary conservation work with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe in Hwange is now available to watch freely online, in all Regions around the world on this link – https://stirr.com/movies/5831/all-the-president-s-elephants