NAD, DO YOU want to take this box? It’s full of wires and switches.”
“No, we might still need it here. Remember, we aren’t leaving camp for good. We’ll move back and forth between here and Okaukuejo. It’s just, now that the elephant project is finished, I need to spend more time at the Institute.”
I looked around camp. Though the cupboards were half empty and our stash of firewood wouldn’t last a week, it still felt like home. At least the tents were still standing, always a good sign.
“Kimber, come here, darlin’. What toys do you want to take with you?”
Sitting on his black “motorcycle,” Kimber pushed himself over to where I was squatting in front of his toy chest.
“Umm”—he reached inside, scattering toys—“I’ll just take a few of these blocks, and maybe this ball, and I’ll leave the rest for Rian.”
My son was born with a generous spirit, and we’d done our best to hone it, following many wonderful examples set by family and friends. But at that moment I thought of Kristy and her dear daughter Emma, who was just seven months older than Kimber. Kristy knew firsthand of the great need even in her affluent Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, community and worked against the prevailing sense of “more is more.” Over the past five years she’d spent a lot of time at the Children’s Hospital with her daughter as the doctors deciphered the degree and depth of Emma’s illness. In the waiting room, Kristy had seen many parents struggle to carry growing children who were unable to walk into the clinic. Not satisfied to sit back and watch, Kristy went door-to-door collecting strollers for these families. Even at forty-three, I was still learning from my friends.
“That’s nice, my boy.” I ruffled Kimber’s hair, pulled him close, and whispered in his ear, “I am so proud of you.”
He pulled back and looked at me very seriously. “When are we going? I want to play with Rocky before bedtime.”
Rocky was Kimber’s new best friend at Okaukuejo, so at least Kimber was excited to return to our house. “Don’t worry, we’ll leave soon.”
My feelings about returning to Okaukuejo were more mixed than my son’s. At camp, even a trip to the long-drop toilet could turn into an adventure, with a black rhino grazing against the fence or a snake slithering past your feet. I relished that wonderful mixture of comfort and suspense, elephants and lions, cold showers and hot fires, a place charged with peace and anticipation; it imparted the essence of the bush, the same dichotomy that had drawn me to Africa more than a decade before. I couldn’t believe that I’d been in Namibia thirteen years, but picking through the detritus of camp—a copy of Nad’s thesis on the baboons, a duiker skin with colorful beads woven in circles that was a treasured gift from Old Old/Gui, one of the Bushmen healers, and my most recent filming notes documenting Knob Nose’s life through our lenses—I felt exceptionally blessed. It was also a good reminder that if I hadn’t embraced change back then, these moments would have remained dreams, and in time those dreams, unfulfilled, could have become tainted, bitter what-ifs and if-onlys. Now I couldn’t imagine my life without them.
Sometimes it takes startling events to make us realize that we only get one shot at creating the life we want. Since September 11, I’d thought of the many women and men who never got the chance to embrace another day. A year had passed since those tragic events, a year of reflection for many. For Sara there had been an abrupt end to her maternity leave and a sudden return to working full-time. Since then she’d been juggling deadlines and diapers, steeped in adrenaline and guilt. Now she longed to cut back, to work part-time.
Yet as hard as it might have been for Sara to see other correspondents taking on stories she longed to tell, filling seats behind news desks where she once felt at home, home was where she needed to be. Not all of the time, but, hopefully, if she could work it out with the brass at NBC, part-time. To have cut Sara completely off from work would be akin to removing a vital organ, it was so much a part of her life. But Sophie was nearly a year old. In the past twelve months she’d learned to sit, crawl, spit, chew, coo, scribble, walk, talk, and learned to love those around her with boundless affection. I felt like I’d closed my eyes and Kimber was one year old. When I’d opened them again, he was nearly four. While you’re agonizing over choices, time can disappear, and you don’t get it back. Sara’s desire to spend more time with Sophie was the right choice for her, though sometimes the right choice is the most difficult choice of all.
By comparison, the change I was facing was easy. Okaukuejo was 120 miles away from camp, still in Etosha, still spectacular, and it still provided me with the opportunity to do the work I loved. I looked at Kimber, happily throwing his toys in the car, ready to go. Clearly change was all in the attitude.
THE VIEW FROM our home in Okaukuejo wasn’t bad at all. I placed my computer on a desk in front of a large window where I could watch zebra move in single file down to the water hole, spy brilliantly colored birds swooping in for a quick drink, and listen to the sound of Rocky’s and Kimber’s sweet young voices as they played in the backyard.
From this vantage point, I heard them charging into the house. The door slammed and Kimber called out, “Mommy, Mommy! Rocky and I found a little baby bird in the yard.” He threw his arms around my neck and then added tenderly, “But, Mommy, it is so sad. The bird is dead.”
“I’m so sorry, darlin’. Do you know what happened to it?”
“I think I saw some little tiny genet tracks around or maybe the owl got it, but can we bury it?”
“Of course.”
“God won’t be mad?”
“No, my darlin’. God will be very glad.”
The serious look on his face evaporated. He smiled and called to Rocky as he ran back outside.
The two boys huddled together, and then they both pointed to the far end of the yard, grabbed shovels, and ran to a spot under their treehouse and started digging.
Pushing shovels into the ground and tossing dirt over their heads, an activity that was usually accompanied by laughter, today took on a somber quality. I peered through the window as they gently lowered the baby bird down into the hole they’d dug. Scooping up handfuls of dirt, they let it sift through their fingers down into the hole. Scoop after scoop until the hole was full. Then they patted the ground down so that it was hard, and I heard Kimber say, “This is so the jackals can’t dig it up.”
Rocky shook his head solemnly. “Come, Kimber, let’s get the flowers.”
Barefoot, the boys ran to collect yellow and red blossoms from the succulent flowers growing near our house. I saw them under the window, their heads touching, their hands moving together, and a gentle song coming from Rocky’s lips. “Amen, amen,” he sang over and over. Rocky, a child of Africa, a child who knew the rituals of death, and my son’s best friend.
Moments like this made the move back to Okaukuejo worth it. First thing in the morning, Kimber would stumble down the hall in his pajamas, eyes half closed, and crawl into my lap. His first slurred words were always “When can I go get Rocky?” Quickly changing into his “daytimes”—shorts and a T-shirt—Kimber would jump onto his bike for the short ride to Rocky’s house. The two boys would come racing back to our house for breakfast, and then they’d be off to the water hole. From the water hole, I’d see them coming down the road, having swapped bikes, returning with “the morning report”—their detailed, out-of-breath description of how many animals they’d seen that morning. It reminded me of my first African news bulletins, from Jen and Des Bartlett at the Skeleton Coast, when I’d learned how to read the news printed in the sand. Kimber and Rocky’s version was far less serious. Usually their report ran, “at least a thousand springbok, twenty-two zebra and one having a huge pooh right in front of us, then five wildebeest, and one big elephant having a fart at the water hole,” followed by a fit of giggles.
Whether they began the day riding their bikes, playing in the mud, stripping off all their clothes, and running around the yard screaming “naked rain dance, naked rain dance,” Rocky and Kimber usually ended the day crashed on the sofa, watching a video, arms and legs intertwined. Their friendship had a natural, physical closeness true of many friendships. In women you still see these outward expressions of intimacy even when we are adults. Like Sara and me, women walk arm in arm, wipe tears from each other’s faces, hug unashamedly, touch each other for reassurance and warmth. Men tend to slap each other on the bottom or punch each other on the arm, gestures of affection but also of distance. I wondered how my son would remember these precious moments with Rocky, how they would shape the man he would become.
When we’d left Okaukuejo for camp, Kimber had been a needy baby. Now that we were back, he was a growing boy, busy exploring and making far fewer demands on my time. Though Selinda was no longer with us, Absalom Kalakoma, our gardener, adored Kimber and the feeling was mutual. With Absalom outside and Rocky a steady playmate, the time was liberating for both Kimber and me. I worked on project proposals, filmed ostriches for the BBC. I was also helping friends at AfriCat, a cheetah welfare and research organization at Okonjima, a stunning lodge south of Etosha, develop an idea for a television series based upon their fantastic work. Over the past ten years AfriCat’s small, dedicated team had helped to rescue and rehabilitate more than six hundred of Namibia’s big cats. It was time for their annual cheetah medical check weekend. Kissing Nad and Kimber good-bye, I packed my cameras and left for Okonjima. Turned out I wouldn’t be there long.
It was Friday evening, quiet after an intense day of immobilizing, vaccinating, weighing, dipping, and releasing twenty cheetahs. Relaxing in the office while the cats slept off the anesthesia outside, I picked up the phone and called home.
“Nad, hi.” I stretched out my legs and sighed. “It’s been a great but tiring day. How are things there? How’s Kimber?”
“He’s got a bit of a fever, but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“Give him my love, tell him I miss him and I’ll see him on Monday.”
“Fine. Have a good time.”
That night at dinner I joined a Japanese television crew who were making a documentary on AfriCat hosted by a former Formula One race car driver. The next day at 7 A.M., I was called to the phone.
“Gin, get home now,” Nad said firmly. “Kimber is really sick.”
I threw my cameras in the Land Rover, said a hasty good-bye, and starting driving. Nad had told me nothing more, no details, just get home now, before he hung up the phone. I had two hundred miles in front of me to imagine all kinds of horrors. Sick. What kind of sick? Had he been bitten by a snake, a scorpion, a rabid jackal? Were diseases suddenly jumping from animals to humans? Every sort of mad thought took on dreadful proportions as the miles ticked by. But then I thought about Nad, a skilled veterinarian, a well-trained medic, and a father who loved his son intensely. I thought about Kimber, my tough, resilient boy, so thin and so strong. I even smiled when I pictured him patting a wild cheetah on the head, one that had jumped into our Land Rover when we’d been filming years before. I’m convinced that if Kimber had panicked, the cat would have torn him in two. Instead he had laughed. Six months old and laughing in a cheetah’s face. Whatever was wrong, Kimber would be all right, I thought, a mantra repeated over and over again.
Two hours later I pulled up at our house. Before I could cut the engine, Nad ran outside onto the lawn. He had Kimber in his arms.
“Let’s go.”
I climbed into the backseat and Nad laid Kimber’s head on my lap. “Here, use this.” He handed me a cool wet cloth and ran back inside for a suitcase he’d already packed.
Kimber was hot, cold, shaking, sweating. His eyes rolled in the back of his head, he couldn’t focus on anything, and he had no idea I was there.
“Kimber, it’s Mommy. I’m home, honey, and everything will be all right.” Words I’d used all too often over the years, with baboons, a baby rhino, our young elephant, and now my own little boy. Words meant to reassure him as much as me.
Our nearest doctor was based in Outjo, a small town one hundred miles away. Late on a Saturday morning, Dr. Kesslau was waiting in his office when we got there.
“Come in, come in.” He gestured. “Lay him down on the table.”
I stood beside Kimber, stroking his arm, while Nad observed the doctor.
Dr. Kesslau checked Kimber’s temperature, his eyes, and his skin. “I can do a blood test,” he told us, “but I see hundreds of these cases a year, and I can tell you without waiting for the results that your son has malaria.”
It took a moment to sink in. One doctor in one small town sees hundreds of cases of malaria a year. Multiply that by all the doctors, nurses, and clinics in all the small towns in Africa, then add those suffering who never make it to a doctor, and you get chilling figures. Malaria, a parasitic blood disease transmitted by the bite of a tiny female mosquito, kills over a million people a year in Africa; that’s about three thousand people dying each day, and children under the age of five are among the most vulnerable. Kimber was four years old.
Dr. Kesslau shook the thermometer. “His temperature is 105. When did he start with this fever?”
“Yesterday afternoon.” Nad looked up from Kimber and added in a strangled voice, “It wasn’t too bad, but it got worse in the night.”
“You caught it early. That’s good. The sooner we start him on chloroquine the better. So do we test him first or do you want to start the treatment?”
“We treat him. Now,” Nad and I said in unison.
For the next week, twice a day, we had to give Kimber one chloroquine tablet. At first he was so sick he didn’t resist, but by the third day he cried when we gave him the bitter pill and immediately vomited. For the next few days we tried grinding the tablet and disguising its sour taste in mashed banana, chocolate, or yogurt. Nothing worked. He spat it out. We tried dissolving it in water and shooting it through a syringe down his throat, then his throat constricted and it oozed down the sides of his mouth. If we were lucky, we got a total of one tablet in him a day, half the recommended dose. To complete the course and effectively kill the malaria parasite, Kimber still needed to take the drug for two more days. Two days when I’d be on my own with him.
“Gin, I’m supposed to leave tomorrow for Angola,” Nad reminded me. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with Kimber? I’ll change my plans if you’re worried.”
“No, there are lots of people counting on you flying that park survey, you go ahead. We’ll be fine.”
The next morning I managed to get Kimber to take half a chloroquine tablet. That evening was a different story.
Kimber sat on the edge of the kitchen counter, tears running down his face. “Mommy, please, I don’t want it. It’s awful.”
“Kimber, do not spit this out! This is the third time I’ve tried to get you to take this and I am sick and tired of it!”
I turned to the refrigerator to see if there was anything else I could use to possibly disguise the flavor, and when I turned around he was gone.
“Kimber? Kimber, get back in here! Now!”
Nothing, not a sound.
I ran into the bedroom and flung open the closets. Nothing. I ran through the living room into his playroom and called again. Nothing.
I ran outside into the dusk. “Kimber, darlin’, where are you?” My voice was urgent but gentler now. It was met with silence.
I looked across the street and saw lights on in our neighbor’s house. I’d thought that they were away, and then thought maybe Kimber had gone there. I threw open their front door and was met by stares. “Hi, come in,” laughed Jan.
“Jan, Kimber’s gone. I was trying to get him to take his medicine and he disappeared.”
“Sion, Tristian,” she called her sons, “get on your bikes and see if you can find Kimber.”
The sun had set. It was dark; I heard jackals calling. I felt a chill run down my spine, and across my mind flashed images I had filmed of jackals ripping apart a springbok lamb. God, where was Kimber? I dashed back across the street, and when I stepped into our quiet living room, relief flooded over me. My tiny boy was huddled under a table in the corner, knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped protectively around his legs, whimpering. He looked up at me with his big hazel eyes and pleaded, “Mommy, please, I don’t want it.”
I crawled under the table with him and held him tight. “Don’t worry, darlin’. You don’t have to have it. I’ll put you on a drip before I go through this again.”
BORN WILD. IT was an apt title for our next filming project that would feature Kimber. In a series of phone calls between Kathy Pasternak, a supervising producer who’d become a friend after we’d worked on our elephant and anthrax films together, and me, we learned that National Geographic planned to make a film that would explore the survival strategies animals employ for raising babies in the wild. They wanted us to be their “human example.”
As anyone who has ever worked freelance would understand, when a project comes to you unsolicited, it’s a milestone. For once a film is made without the agony of mailing proposals that are thrown into the trash, of placing endless phone calls which are never returned, and, worse, when you finally do get someone on the line, of hearing “Sorry, but no.” On this rare occasion a contract would be signed and paychecks would arrive without drama. Amazing.
Being asked to be involved in this project was a sign of recognition and acceptance for Nad and me. But Born Wild was that and more. In the past Nad and I had largely operated alone and were seen as individuals, even when we were working together. He was the veterinarian, the scientist, or the pilot. I was the filmmaker. Now, with Kimber, we were a complete team, a family who together had a history and that history, though brief, could help to tell a story.
Saying yes to the project gave us a chance to work with our old friend Paul van Schalkwyk, a filmmaker with an unerring eye for a beautiful shot. We’d worked together on the Bushmen film, sat together in warm silence as the embers of many campfires turned to ash, and shared that tragic day in front of the television when the world changed on September 11. Now we’d get a chance to share this much happier experience.
Filming at our favorite haunts gave us an opportunity to relive many special moments we’d had in the bush. I compared my labor pains with those of a springbok (twenty hours versus twenty minutes), the length of my pregnancy with an elephant’s (nine months versus twenty-two months), and reminisced about the kidnappings in our baboon troop, tragic behavior that had taken on a painfully different dimension for me since I’d had a child.
When we saw the first cut of the film, there was one special, unexpected gift that Pam Caragol, the producer, and Geoff Luck, the editor, had tucked into the film for us. Across the screen rolled images of Kimber—at four months old in his stroller holding a roll of film, toddling up to the camera in another shot, his long blond locks glowing in backlight; climbing onto my lap, running to meet his father at camp, sharing a swing with Rocky and a battle of bashing sticks with his father. Our son, growing up in front of the camera. Four, almost five years in the bush captured in twenty brief, delicious seconds. I played this scene over and over, and each time it gave me great joy but also a strange sensation of finality, that a chapter was coming to a close.
Back when I became pregnant with Kimber, we knew our time in Etosha was finite. Our son would experience the wonder of having elephants in the backyard, of flying with his father across the plains, of being oblivious to the fact that his best friend was a different color, a different race from him. Etosha had everything for Kimber except a school. When Kimber turned six, if we stayed in the park, our only option was to send him to boarding school. For us, that wasn’t an option. I couldn’t imagine sending Kimber away from home at such a young age. I wouldn’t do it, even though it meant that after fifteen years of living in wild, wonderful places, to stay together we’d have to leave the bush.
But I wasn’t ready for that, not yet. First Kimber and I were going home, back to Virginia.