My Lion's Heart: A Life for the Lions of Africa

By Gareth Patterson

Environmentalist, independent researcher and author, Gareth Patterson has spent his entire adult life working tirelessly for the greater protection of African wildlife and, more particularly, for that of the lion. Born in England in 1963, Gareth grew up in Nigeria and Malawi. From an early age he knew where his life's path would take him - it would be in Africa, and his life's work would be for the cause of the African wilderness and its wild inhabitants. His is an all-encompassing African story. From his childhood in West and East Africa to his study of a threatened lion population in a private reserve in Botswana to his work with George Adamson, celebrated as the 'Lion Man' of Africa, we witness Gareth's growing commitment to his life's mission. This is nowhere more evident than in his account of his life as a human member of a lion pride, experiencing life and death through its eyes, as he successfully rehabilitated three famous orphaned lion cubs back into a life in the wilds. At considerable risk to his own personal safety, he exposed the sordid canned lion 'industry' in South Africa, bringing this shameful practice to international attention. After moving to the Western Cape he took up the fight for the African elephant, notably the unique endangered Knysna population, and published his astonishing findings in his 2009 book The Secret Elephants. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the stressful nature of his work, Gareth suffered a massive physical and mental breakdown in his forties, which he discusses here for the first time with an openness that underlines his courage. Lesser men might have been broken, but his 'lion's heart' fought back and he ultimately overcame his illness. Gareth Patterson's long-awaited autobiography is a moving account of one man's single-minded dedication to the preservation of Africa's wildlife. It is also a stark reminder that if the human race does not want to lose Africa's priceless wild heritage, there is no time to waste. 'The lion is my totem animal, and this is the story of my life in Africa, for the lion.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780620601344

Book preview

Author’s Note

Have I become an endangered species? A good friend who has known me all my adult life said recently that I was probably the last in a long line of wildlife warriors in Africa. I was surprised by her comment. Surely not? But later I thought about her words and realised there might be some truth in them, and this made me uneasy.

My loose definition of ‘wildlife warrior’ in Africa would be those people who have made the continent their home, who would give their life (and some did) for the animals, and by their determined actions and lifelong studies in the field and the books they have written (as well as films about their work), have created worldwide public awareness about the animals that became the epicentre of their life’s work.

Of the older generation of wildlife warriors there was, of course, my friend George Adamson of Born Free fame who was gunned down by ivory poachers at the age of eighty-three. There was his wife Joy, who met an equally tragic death. There was the magnificent and feisty Dian Fossey, killed by an unknown assailant in the mist-shrouded world of her gorillas. Among the older generation of wildlife warriors still living are Daphne Sheldrick, the marvellous elephant mother who has published her acclaimed autobiography, An African Love Story, and Jane Goodall who tirelessly continues to speak out for our closest cousins, the great apes. This year, 2014, both ladies celebrate their eightieth year.

The generation of wildlife warriors following the veterans include the ‘elephant women’, Joyce Poole, Cynthia Moss, Soila Sayialel and Andrea Turkalo, who are still very active in championing their cause. There is Iain Douglas-Hamilton and his wife Oria who have also fought for the African elephant for decades. And there are others – Dr Richard Leakey, Mark and Delia Owens, and the world-renowned wildlife film-makers and fighters for Africa’s big cats, Dereck and Beverly Joubert.

At fifty years old, I am the youngest of this generation. But where is the next? I do not see it emerging, and I find this disturbing. Yes, there is a new generation of scientists, wildlife photographers, film-makers and documentary presenters, and that is good, but where are the warriors – the fighters for the cause of Africa’s wildlife? This is part of the reason why I decided to write My Lion’s Heart, to tell the story of my life in Africa, and my passion for the wildlife and people of this great, yet often sad, continent. I hoped to inspire warriors for the future – as the veterans’ inspired my generation, as well as millions of people worldwide.

I have written other books dealing with different times in my life, particularly my fight for the African lion which, in the past two decades, has suffered a continental decline of some 90 per cent of its population, with only an estimated 20 000 remaining today to grace the last wild lands of Africa. But in this book I wanted to write an all-encompassing African story that included my early childhood in West and East Africa, my life as a human member of a pride of lions, seeing life and death through their eyes, my fight for the African elephant, how I exposed Africa’s sordid trophy hunting industry (and almost became hunted myself), to today, where I now live at the tip of the continent and where I rediscovered the most endangered (and most southerly) elephants in the world – the Knysna elephants.

Also, never disclosed before, I write about the massive physical and mental breakdown I experienced several years ago as a result of the compounded stresses and trauma of fighting for wildlife for decades. I was told that I had six months to live. My vital organs were failing, and my mind was deteriorating into dark patches of insanity. I ended up in an unconventional ‘institution’ where for months I endured mental and at times physical abuse. Ultimately, my lion’s heart triumphed, and I overcame both the illness and the abuse.

I tell of my journey of recovery – which included writing a well-received book about my long years studying the Knysna elephants, The Secret Elephants – before resuming my wildlife work, both in the field and in terms of advocacy, and how this part of my journey led to the writing of My Lion’s Heart.

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Prologue

The paw prints lay in front of me like a line of broken flowers. The tracks were beguiling and hopeless, leading me nowhere – because he was dead.

The wind, caressing and eroding, would erase the last of his paw prints, but his memory is etched indelibly in my heart.

He was my lion son, you see, and his name was Batian.

Exactly a year earlier, at the start of a new day, I was standing beside Batian in the midst of the African wilds. My right hand was resting lightly on his golden flank.

Then he began to call. Roaring at the dawn. It was his coming of age.

He and his sisters, Rafiki and Furaha, were living as free, wild lions now. They were the last lion orphans of my friend George Adamson, the grand old lion man of Born Free fame. Ivory poachers had murdered George eighteen months ago in the Kora National Park in Kenya. His great wish was for the three orphans to be free. And now they were. After George’s death I rescued the orphans, relocated them to the Tuli bushlands in Botswana, and guided them back into the wilds.

Batian’s calls reverberated through the valley reaching the highest hills, and seeming to shake the very ground on which we stood. It was a golden defining moment in his life, and mine. The land vibrated with his mighty song and through his calls I felt a

part of everything around me. Those were moments of wonder. His calls were saying:

I am the land, the land is me,

I belong, I belong,

I am free.

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introduction

I am a member of a fragmented and scattered tribe of Africa of which nothing, to my knowledge, has been written before. As a tribe, we do not even have a name.

We are mostly the offspring of expatriate parents who moved to newly independent African countries in the early 1960s. Most parents, with contracts fulfilled, eventually moved back to the countries of their origin (though some remained, infected by Africa). Those who returned to their homelands had perhaps never left ‘home’ in the first place. Africa for them had been a career opportunity at best, or an adventure at worst.

And then there was us, the tiny tribe without a name. We stayed in Africa, the only home we knew, and we are passionate about our adopted continent – its people, its environment and its wildlife. I myself have lived in Africa for more than forty years.

We are unusual in that we are not the product of generations of the colonial white Africans who today, in many parts of the continent, still live in their colonial cliques. One has only to go to Kenya to see this system at work, or into the heart of traditional white Zimbabwean society. At weddings, for example, the only black people attending will be the waiters.

My tribe has empathy for the African way rather than for the colonial way. We did not even really know colonialism. From nursery school onwards, our young lives were fully imbued with an ‘African-ness’.

Our tiny tribe is possessive of its motherland, which has for centuries been plundered by outsiders – for slaves, ivory, hardwoods, minerals, land, freedom. The list is long. And it continues. Elephant poaching is currently at an all-time high. We are losing between twenty and thirty thousand elephants each year across Africa, a loss born of materialism in the fast growing economies of the East. In 2010 South Africa lost over three hundred rhinos because of foreign demand for their horn. In 2011, this number was exceeded when four hundred and forty-eight were poached and in 2012, South Africa was losing almost two rhinos every single day. It was even worse in 2013 when more than a thousand rhinos were killed.

We have lost 90 per cent of Africa’s lion population in the past twenty-five years. During those same twenty-five years, I devoted my life to the African lion. I should be the most depressed person in the world but, strangely, I am not. Or rather, I simply cannot allow myself to be. Life would not be worth living.

In Africa, every tribe has its totem animal, an animal that is seen as sacred and must be protected from all harm.

The lion is my totem animal, and this is the story of my life in Africa, for the lion.

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PART 1

1 * A Diabolical Flight

Books. I devoured them as a child, and still do today. Their importance to me is almost at the same level as my dedication to the wildlife of Africa. Over the past twenty years, I have written eight books about my life with the African lion, and one book about my rediscovery of the world’s most southerly elephants, the elusive and highly endangered Knysna elephants of the southern Cape in South Africa. Books are of such importance to me because they are effective tools in creating awareness. Awareness will often lead to empathy, and empathy leads to sympathy. And therein I believe there is hope, not only for the animals I try to champion, but also for ourselves. So books, whether reading them or writing them, are key factors in my life.

The first book I wrote, Cry for the Lions, was published in 1988 when I was twenty-five years old. I had begun writing it four years earlier. It was the story of a lion population I was studying in Botswana, the Tuli lions. I desperately wanted to have the book published for the story was not only about the plight of the Tuli lions, ravaged by poaching and illegal trophy hunting, but it also reflected what was impacting on Africa’s lion population in general. Over many months, I posted the initial drafts of the book to publishers in South Africa, Britain and the USA. Some replies were encouraging and helpful, others curt, and some were the nemesis of all prospective authors, the standard rejection slip.

Then came the day when it seemed probable that the book would never be published. On that day I thought I was going to die and that the book would die with me in flames and mangled metal. I was on a flight over the Kalahari Desert in a light aircraft. We were lost, running out of fuel and the aircraft had mechanical problems.

It was 1987 and I was managing a small island lodge in the panhandle of the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. I ran the lodge with my girlfriend at the time, Jane Hunter. I had received a letter from a South African publisher expressing interest in Cry for the Lions, and since we had leave due to us, Jane and I decided to go to Johannesburg and arrange a meeting with the publisher. Living on a remote island in the Okavango meant being dependent on light aircraft to get in and out. I have a fear of flying and our near-death saga began on the day we left the island.

Lodge guests were due to arrive at our island’s bush airstrip that morning and the pilots would be flying back to Johannesburg that same day. It was arranged that we would fly with them. What Jane and I did not know at the time was that the plane that had left Johannesburg that morning, after recently being serviced, had experienced braking problems when it landed in Maun, Botswana’s safari capital. Unlike the runway at Maun airport, island airstrips are notoriously short, and because of the braking issues, the pilots (there were two, which in itself was unusual as mostly with bush flying there is only one) had decided to transfer our guests to another aircraft in Maun before proceeding to our island. All this took time, and they arrived much later in the day than expected.

With the guests settled in (the owner of the island lodge would be taking care of them in our absence), Jane and I finally climbed into the tiny four-seater plane and were soon heading south east over the Delta to Maun. The manuscript of Cry for the Lions was lying on my lap.

Flying over the Okavango Delta, even for one with a fear of flying, is a wonderful experience. The Okavango is the world’s largest delta, a 15 000 square kilometre wildlife wonderland that is inhabited seasonally by an estimated two hundred thousand large mammals. The Okavango River, swollen by the Angolan summer rains to the north during January and February, replenishes the Delta each year. Below us were the myriad of inky blue canals, lakes, swamps and islands. Although we had flown over the Delta several times before, we were always transfixed by its beauty and, yet again, on that particular day the sights below were breathtaking.

It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Maun. After completing passport formalities, we transferred to the original plane that had been flown from Johannesburg. I sat beside Jane with the manuscript again on my lap. This was going to be an unusually late flight for a light aircraft from Maun to Johannesburg, as the 800-kilometre flight is normally undertaken during daylight hours.

The troubles began almost immediately. As we were about to taxi forward for take-off, I looked out of the cabin window and noticed that the luggage hold below me was still open. I quickly alerted the pilots, while Jane and I exchanged surprised looks. The pilots themselves exchanged irritated looks, as though each was silently blaming the other for the error. The hold was duly closed, and soon afterwards we were airborne, heading south east with the Kalahari Desert below us. However, we had been in the air for only a few minutes when another problem arose. Despite the repeated pressing of a button, the undercarriage did not retract. Finally there was an ominous loud clunk. The wheels were up, but I felt very uneasy, already wondering if the landing gear would lower when we got to Johannesburg.

As day turned quickly to night, it was found that the aircraft had a compass problem. There we were, high above the vast Kalahari Desert, at night, with a faulty compass and suspect landing gear. The name ‘Kalahari’ derives from the Tswana word Kgalalagadi, meaning ‘the great thirst’. We were somewhere between the immense Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the desolate Makgadikgadi Pans, a

huge and virtually uninhabited part of Botswana. Years later Jane told me that by this stage of the flight I was clutching my manu-

script to my chest.

Time passed and both pilots began scanning left and right and below. I asked them what they were looking for. They replied that they were looking for any sign of the country’s main road, the A1, and the railway track that ran parallel to it. Under normal circumstances and at this approximate time in the flight, they would be able to see the lights of Dibete, a railway station and settlement near the A1. I looked out and saw nothing but darkness. I knew then that we were badly off course. A faulty compass and suspect landing gear, and now we were lost and in serious trouble. Fuel was also getting low.

Some time later I saw lights – many of them – below us to the west, and I recognised where we were. I told the pilots that it was Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. We were about a hundred kilometres off course. The pilots thought it could not possibly be Gaborone but rather that it was Krugersdorp, a town close to Johannesburg, which was actually some two hundred kilometres away to the south east.

By that time I had had enough.

‘Listen,’ I said emphatically, ‘that is Gaborone. I know because I used to live there. You must head east now!’

Eventually, and strangely bearing in mind the circumstances, they almost reluctantly agreed that I was correct and after making more calculations, changed our course.

A little later I could see the pilots visibly regain confidence when they saw below us the lights of Sun City, South Africa’s popular entertainment complex, which told them that we were on course for Lanseria Airport, our destination outside Johannesburg. Unfortunately, though, this renewed confidence did not last long and I overheard mutterings about ‘hitting pylons close to the airport’. Another cause for concern was that there was no one on duty at air traffic control at Lanseria – indeed the airport was closed for the night and the landing lights had been switched off. In those days, Lanseria was not the sophisticated airport it is today. The pilots contacted air traffic control at Jan Smuts International Airport (today called O R Tambo International Airport) to get an official position and to ensure that personnel at Lanseria were alerted to our approach and that the runway lights were switched on. All this took time while we circled and burnt up precious fuel.

Finally we began to descend. The landing gear did not release. One of the pilots, who by this time had lost all composure, grabbed the manual landing gear handle and we landed safely.

While writing this, I pondered what might have happened if I had not recognised Gaborone from the air and we had not changed course. I got out some maps and made some calculations. At worst, if we had remained on our original course we would have run out of fuel and, in all probability, crashed fatally in a dark remote part of South Africa’s North West province.

And my first book would not have been published.

Jane and I were not meant to die that night. There were many years of wildlife work ahead, many adventures and misadventures, and many books to be written. In Africa, we have a pragmatic saying about death: ‘When it is your day, it is your day’. It was, thankfully, not our day.

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2 * Africa Sky Blue

It was obviously not my day either when I had my first near-death encounter as a child. This happened in Nigeria, which is where my story really begins. I was nine years old and was on a fishing trip with my mother Joyce and stepfather Allan at a dam in the bush outside the town of Kaduna in northern Nigeria.

After our picnic lunch on the banks of the dam, I wandered away to explore the bush around us. I headed in the direction of the dam wall. It was a peaceful Sunday, and there were no other people around. I was revelling in the sounds and sights of the wilds.

When I reached the dam wall, I decided to cross it to explore the opposite bank. The wall was quite narrow and the water was lapping against it on the right hand side, and this gave me false confidence. On the other side of the wall was a drop of perhaps sixty metres. I stepped on to the top of the wall and began walking. Then, after covering about a quarter of the distance across, my shoe caught on a small metal spike protruding from the concrete. I stumbled and fell down on the wall with the left side of my body hanging over the terrifying drop below. I held on to the wall with all my strength and eventually managed to raise my dangling left leg and get myself back upright on the wall. My heart was hammering and I could feel the blood racing in my head. I slowly turned around and walked cautiously back the way I had come. When I reached the safety of the bank, I flopped to the ground. I was in shock, my mind and body shaking with the realisation that I had almost fallen to my death. I waited until I felt calmer, then walked back to Joyce and Allan. Joyce, who was sitting in a camp chair watching Allan fishing, asked me where I had been. I told her that I had just gone for a walk. I did not want to worry her. I picked up my fishing rod and resumed fishing on the bank.

I never told them what had almost happened on the dam wall. It was not the first time I had not told my mother about my childhood misadventures, and nor would it be the last. Joyce was a tiny, very attractive woman with a mane of blonde hair. She was an enormous worrier and at times had a furious temper. My habit of not telling her about accidents or troubles continued into my adulthood. Each time one of my books was published and she read about my life in the wilds, she would scold me when she learnt about a potentially dangerous encounter or situation, saying, ‘You never told me about this!’

I always replied with a smile, telling her that I had not wanted to worry her at the time.

I was eighteen months old when Joyce and my father Roger arrived in newly independent Nigeria from their homeland, England. My elder brother Stewart was three and a half. It was 1965. We lived first in Lagos, then in the mangrove swamplands of Warri and Sapele in the Niger Delta area of southern Nigeria. Roger worked for the Standard Bank, whose logo in Nigeria I remember was an elephant. It was the beginning of the oil boom in the Delta region. It was also the beginning of the loss of the land of the Ogoni people and its environmental degradation by the international petroleum industry. Thirty years later, this culminated in the death of the highly respected author, playwright and environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa had been President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and spearheaded a non-violent campaign against the destruction of the environment by the oil industry, especially Shell, and against the government for not enforcing environmental regulations. Saro-Wiwa was arrested on what was overwhelmingly thought to be false charges and was hanged with eight other activists in 1995. This courageous man’s death sparked international outrage; Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth for three years, and various sanctions were imposed by the United States, Britain and other countries but, ironically – or perhaps tellingly – the sanctions did not apply to oil! Saro-Wiwa’s life, and death, marked the first steps towards democracy in Nigeria.

But this was all in the future. It was while we were living in the Delta that the Nigerian-Biafran War broke out in 1967. I was four years old. More than one million people were to die in this civil war before it finally ended in 1970. All expatriate women and children were ordered to evacuate the area but I have scant memories of being shipped down the Niger River to the sea with my mother and brother.

Just before leaving for the boat, I remember coming across a monkey in the grounds of our residence. It was tethered to a tree by a leash around its hindquarters and lay slumped in a human-like sitting position, its back against the base of the tree. The monkey’s eyes were half closed and on closer inspection, I realised that it was not sleeping, but was dead. It was the first dead animal I had ever seen and I was shocked and overwhelmed by great sadness for the poor creature. It was such a pitiful sight, tied up and dead. Tears ran down my cheeks. Then I heard Joyce calling me and I ran to her and asked her why the monkey was dead. She looked at me questioningly, and leaned down to give me a hug. ‘I really don’t know, Gareth’, and then, ‘Come along, darling, otherwise we’re going to miss the boat.’

I never discovered whose monkey it was or why it had died, but its image has always remained imprinted on my mind and I think that experience, at such a young age, contributed to the compassion I have felt for animals ever since. I knew intuitively that everything I had seen that day was wrong.

It was in Nigeria that I saw lions for the first time. This was two years after the end of the Nigerian-Biafran War, and five years after my emotional experience with the tethered dead monkey. By this time, I had spent a traumatising year, at the age of seven, in a boarding school in England. My parents had divorced and my mother was about to get married again, to Allan. My brother was living with my father. It had been a tumultuous time for a young boy. The boarding school experience was alienating and at times almost terrifying. I was the youngest child in the school and very homesick for Africa. I frequently wet my bed.

On the very first day at that school, after saying a tearful goodbye to my mother and while sitting in the dining room eating supper with the other boys, a housemaster suddenly and savagely grabbed me by the scalp and reprimanded me for stretching over the boy next to me for a jar of jam. The housemaster kept pulling at my hair until I apologised. I had been at the school for barely an hour.

Recently, I asked my father why they had sent me to boarding school at such a young age. He matter of factly replied that the bank paid the school fees and the airfares, so they had thought it a good idea. I could not wait for that year to end.

Back in Africa, I resumed schooling in Kaduna. Allan took a week’s leave, and we set off on holiday, driving south east to the Jos plateau, then further east to the Yankari game reserve