Buch lesen: «The Akimbo Adventures»

This book is for Alan and Barbara Hannah, and for Jeremy and Kathryn

Akimbo’s wish

Imagine living in the heart of Africa. Imagine living in a place where the sun rises each morning over blue mountains and great plains with grass that grows taller than a man. Imagine living in a place where there are still elephants.

Akimbo lived in such a place, on the edge of a large game reserve in Africa. This was a place where wild animals could live in safety. On its plains there were great herds of antelope and zebra. In the forests and in the rocky hills there were leopards and baboons. And, of course, there were the great elephants, who roamed slowly across the grasslands and among the trees.

Akimbo’s father worked here. Sometimes he drove trucks; sometimes he manned the radio or helped to repair the trucks. There was always something to do.

If Akimbo was lucky, his father would occasionally take him with him to work. Akimbo loved to go with the men when they went off deep into the reserve. They might have to mend a game fence or rescue a broken-down truck, or it might just be a routine patrol through the forest to check up on the animals.

Sometimes on these trips, they would see something exciting.

‘Look over there,’ his father would say. ‘Don’t make a noise. Just look over there.’

And Akimbo would follow his father’s gaze and see some wild creature eating, or resting, or crouching in wait for its prey.

One day, when they were walking through the forest together, Akimbo’s father suddenly seized his arm and whispered to him to be still.

‘What is it?’ Akimbo made his voice as soft as he could manage.

‘Walk backwards. Very slowly. Go back the way we came.’

It was only as he began to inch back, that Akimbo realised what had happened. There in a clearing not far away were two leopards. One of them, sensing that something was happening, had risen to its feet and was sniffing at the air. The other was still sleeping.

Luckily, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, or the leopard would have smelled their presence. If that had happened, then they would have been in even greater danger.

‘That was close,’ his father said, once they had got away. ‘I don’t like to think what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed them in time.’

It was not leopards, or even lions, that Akimbo liked to watch. He loved the elephants best of all. You had to keep clear of them, too, but they seemed more gentle than many of the other creatures. Akimbo loved their vast, lumbering shapes. He loved the way they moved their trunks slowly, this way and that, as they plodded across the plains between the stretches of forest. And he loved the sound of an elephant trumpeting – a short, surprised, rather funny sound.

There used to be many elephants in Africa, but over the years they had been mercilessly hunted. Now there were fewer and fewer.

Akimbo could not understand why anybody should want to hunt an elephant and asked his father why.

‘It’s for their tusks. They’re made of ivory, and ivory is very valuable. It’s used for ornaments and jewellery. Some rich people collect it and like to show off elephant tusks carved into fancy shapes.’

‘But it’s so cruel,’ said Akimbo. ‘I’m glad it doesn’t happen any more.’

Akimbo’s father was silent for a moment.

‘I’m afraid it does still happen. There are still people who hunt elephants – even here in the reserve.’

‘Can’t you stop them?’ he asked.

Akimbo’s father shook his head. ‘It’s very difficult. The reserve stretches for almost a hundred miles. We can’t keep an eye on all of it all the time.’

Akimbo was silent. The thought of the elephants being hunted for their tusks made him seethe with anger. He wondered whether there would come a day when all the elephants in Africa were destroyed. Then all that we would have to remember them by would be photographs and, of course, the ivory from their tusks. The reserves would be empty then, and the sight of the elephants crossing the plains would be nothing but a memory.

‘I don’t want that to happen,’ Akimbo said to himself. ‘I want the elephants to stay.’

Father elephant

A few weeks later, Akimbo was to be reminded of what his father had said about the poachers.

‘We have to go out to check up on a water hole,’ his father said. ‘Do you want to come with us?’

‘Yes,’ said Akimbo eagerly.

‘It’ll be a rough ride,’ his father warned him. ‘There isn’t even a track for much of the way.’

‘I don’t mind. I know how to hang on.’

Akimbo’s father was right. It was not an easy journey, and it was very hot as well. At noon the sun burned down unmercifully, and it was unbearably hot in the truck cabin. Akimbo wiped the sweat off his face and drank great gulps of water from the water bottles, but he did not complain once.

They had to travel slowly, as there were rocks and potholes which could easily damage the truck if they came upon them too quickly. Every now and then, a concealed rock would scrape against the bottom of the truck with a painful, jarring sound, and everybody inside would wince. But no damage was done, and they continued their journey.

During the hot hours of midday, few animals will venture out of the shade of the trees and the undergrowth. But Akimbo saw a small herd of zebra cantering off to safety, throwing up a cloud of dust behind them.

Then, quite suddenly, one of the men in the back of the truck hit his fist on the top of the roof and pointed off to the left. Akimbo’s father brought the vehicle to a halt.

‘What is it?’ he called out.

The man leaned over into the cabin.

‘Vultures. Flocks of them.’

The eyes of all the others followed the man’s gaze. Akimbo saw nothing at first, but when he craned his neck he saw the birds circling in the hot, still air. Even from this distance, he could tell that there were lots of them, and so he knew that something big was attracting their attention.

Akimbo’s father turned to one of the other men.

‘Do you think the lions finished a meal?’

The other man looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe. But there are rather a lot of vultures for that. Don’t you think we should go and take a look?’

Akimbo’s father agreed. Then, swinging the truck off to the left, he steered in the direction of the circling birds. After a bumpy ride of fifteen minutes they were there and they saw the sad sight which they had all secretly been dreading.

The elephant lay on its side, where it had fallen. As the truck approached, four or five vultures flapped up into the air, angry at the disturbance of their feeding. Akimbo’s father looked furious as he drew the truck to a halt. Without speaking, he opened his door and strode off to stand beside the fallen elephant.

Akimbo stayed where he was. He could not bear to look at the great creature. He knew that the elephant had been destroyed so that its tusks could be stolen.

Akimbo looked away. There was a group of trees nearby and as Akimbo looked towards it he noticed movement. Then, a little way away, the vegetation moved.

Akimbo strained his eyes to try to see more. He was sure an animal was there, but it was difficult to see through the thick covering of leaves and branches. He hoped it was not a buffalo, which could be dangerous.

There was another movement, and this time Akimbo was looking in the right place. Quickly opening the door of the truck cabin, Akimbo leapt out and ran to where his father and the other men were standing.

‘Look!’ he cried out. ‘Look over there.’

The men spun round. As they did so, the baby elephant broke cover. It took a few steps and then stopped, as if uncertain what to do. It raised its trunk and sniffed at the air. Then it dropped its trunk and stood quite still. Akimbo noticed that it had a torn right ear.

‘It’s her calf,’ said his father. ‘It’s very young.’

They stared at the calf for a few moments. The tiny elephant was obviously confused. It saw its mother lying motionless on the ground, and it wanted to join her. At the same time, its instinct told it to keep away from the intruding men.

‘Can we look after it?’ Akimbo asked.

Akimbo’s father shook his head. ‘No. The herd will pick it up. If we leave it here, another cow elephant will come for it.’

‘But it’s so small. Can’t we take it back to the compound and look after it?’

‘It will be all right,’ said Akimbo’s father. ‘It’s best not to interfere.’

They began to walk back to the truck. At a distance, the little elephant watched them go, withdrawing slightly as they moved. When the engine started, Akimbo saw it run back to the shelter of the trees.

‘Goodbye,’ Akimbo muttered under his breath. ‘Good luck.’

The truck turned away. Akimbo took one last glance back, and saw that the vultures, which had been circling high in the sky, had now dropped lower.

Stolen ivory

Over the next few days, Akimbo found himself thinking more and more about the baby elephant. He wondered whether it had been picked up by another member of the herd, or whether it had been left to die. Had the poachers destroyed two elephants in their cruel and greedy hunt for ivory?

He knew that his father and the other game rangers were doing their best to stop the hunters, but they seemed unable to deal with them.

‘If I were in charge,’ he said to himself, ‘I’d catch them and teach them a lesson. If nobody else will, then I’m going to stop them.’

He thought about this. There was no reason why the poachers should get away with it. Perhaps there was something he could do, after all.

‘Where do the poachers come from?’ he asked his father one evening.

His father shrugged his shoulders. ‘From all over the place. But we know that there’s one gang in the village nearby. We can’t prove it, but we think they’re doing it.’

‘What do they do with the tusks?’ Akimbo asked.

His father sighed. ‘They hide them. Traders come up from the towns and buy them from them. Then they smuggle the tusks back to town and that’s where they’re carved. They make them into necklaces and ornaments.’

‘But don’t you ever catch any of them?’

‘Sometimes. Then we hand them over to the police. But the poachers are cunning, and clever as well.’

Akimbo turned away. ‘I’m clever too,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘And I’m sure I can be as cunning as they are.’

‘What was that?’ his father asked.

‘Nothing,’ Akimbo replied. But he had declared war on the poachers the moment he saw that baby elephant waiting in vain for its mother to get up.

Akimbo knew that it would be impossible for him to do anything about the poachers in the reserve itself. The poaching gangs travelled by night, and were armed. Then they struck quickly and as quietly as possible, before fading away into the bush again. Every so often, the rangers picked up their tracks and pursued them, but usually they were too late.

He thought of different plans, but none of them seemed likely to work. If there was no point in his waiting for the poachers, why not go to the village and find them? That was the way to get the proof he would need to stop them.

At the edge of the rangers’ camp there was a storeroom. Akimbo had been inside only once or twice, as it was always kept locked, and his father rarely went there. In it were the things which the rangers confiscated from poachers when they managed to find them.

It was a grim collection. There were cruel barbed-wire traps, designed to tighten like a noose around an animal’s leg when it stepped into the concealed circle of wire. There were rifles, spears and ammunition belts. But what was saddest of all were the parts of animals which had been caught by the poachers. As well as horns and skins, there were the most sought-after trophies of all, the tusks of elephants.

Many of these things were kept to show to visitors, so that they could see what the poachers did. Some were also kept in the hope they would be needed as evidence once the poachers were caught. But that seemed to happen so rarely that the tusks and the traps just gathered more and more dust.

That night, at a time when the rest of the camp was asleep, Akimbo slipped out of his room and made his way across the compound towards the storeroom. In the moonlight he could make out the shape of the storeroom against the night sky. He paused in the shadows for a few moments, to check that nobody was about, and then he darted along the path to stand in front of the storeroom door.

His father’s bunch of keys was heavy in his pocket. He had slipped it out of the pocket of his father’s working tunic while his parents were busy in the kitchen. He had felt bad about that, but he told himself that he was not stealing anything for himself.

Now he tried each key in the storeroom lock. It was a slow business. In spite of the moonlight, there was still not enough light to see clearly, and it was difficult to keep those keys he had already used from being jumbled up with those which he had yet to try.

At one point he dropped the whole bunch, and it made a loud, jangly noise, but nobody woke up.

At last the lock moved, and with a final twist the bolt slid home. Akimbo pushed open the door and wrinkled his nose as he smelled the familiar, rotten odour of the uncured skins. But it was not skins he had come for. There, in a corner, was a small elephant tusk, which had been roughly sawn in two. Akimbo picked this up, checked that it was not too heavy to carry, and took it out of the storeroom. He took off its label. Then, locking the door again, he crept away, just like a poacher making off with his load of stolen ivory.

The enemy

‘I’d like to go to the village,’ Akimbo told his parents the following morning.

Akimbo’s father seemed surprised.

‘Why? There’s nothing for you to do there.’

‘There’s Mato. I haven’t seen him for a long time. I’d like to see him. Last time I was there his aunt said that I could stay with them for a few days.’

His father shrugged his shoulders, looking at Akimbo’s mother.

‘If you want to go, I suppose you can,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to walk there, though. It’ll take three hours – maybe more. And don’t be any trouble for Mato’s aunt.’

Again Akimbo felt bad. He did not like to lie to his parents, but if he told them of his plan he was sure that they would prevent him from trying it out. And if that happened, then nobody would ever stop the poachers, and the hunting of the elephants would go on and on.

As his father had warned him, the walk was not easy. And, carrying a chunk of ivory in a sack over his shoulder, Akimbo found it even more difficult than he had imagined. Every few minutes he had to stop and rest, sliding the sack off his shoulder and waiting for his tired arm muscles to recover. Then he would heave the sack up again and continue his walk, keeping away from the main path to avoid meeting anybody.

At last the village was in sight. Akimbo did not go straight in, but looked around in the bush for a hiding place. Eventually he found an old termite hole. He stuffed the sack in it and placed a few dead branches over the top. It was the perfect place.

Once in the village, he went straight to Mato’s house. Mato lived with his aunt. She was a nurse and ran the small clinic at the edge of the village. Mato was surprised to see Akimbo, but pleased, and took him in for a cup of water in the kitchen.

‘I need your help,’ said Akimbo to his friend. ‘I want to find somebody who will buy some ivory from me.’

Mato’s eyes opened wide with surprise.

‘But where did you get it?’ he stuttered. ‘Did you steal it?’

Akimbo shook his head. Then, swearing his friend to secrecy, he told him his plan. Mato thought for a while and then he gave him his opinion.

‘It won’t work,’ he said flatly. ‘You’ll just get into trouble. That’s all that will happen.’

Akimbo shook his head.

‘I’m ready to take that risk.’

So Mato, rather reluctantly, told Akimbo about a man in the village whom everyone thought was dishonest.

‘If I had something stolen which I wanted to sell,’ he said, ‘I’d go to him. He’s called Matimba, and I can show you where he lives. But I’m not going into his house. You’ll have to go in on your own.’

Matimba was not there the first time that Akimbo went to the house. When he called an hour later, though, he was told to wait at the back door. After ten minutes or so the door opened and a stout man with a beard looked out.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice curt and suspicious.

‘I would like to speak to you,’ Akimbo said politely.

‘Then speak,’ snapped Matimba.

Akimbo looked over his shoulder.

‘I have something to sell. I thought you might like it.’

Matimba laughed. ‘You sell something to me?’

Akimbo ignored the laughter.

‘Yes. Here it is.’

When he saw the ivory tusk sticking out of the top of Akimbo’s sack, Matimba stopped laughing.

‘Come inside. And bring that with you.’

Inside the house, Akimbo was told to sit on a chair while Matimba examined the tusk. He looked at it under the light, sniffed it, and rubbed at it with his forefinger. Then he laid it down on a table and stared at Akimbo.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

‘I found it,’ said Akimbo. ‘I found a whole lot of tusks. And some rhino horns.’

At the mention of rhino horns, Matimba narrowed his eyes. These horns were much in demand among smugglers, and could fetch very high prices on the coast. If this boy has really got some, Matimba thought, I could get them off him for next to nothing.

‘Where did you find them?’

‘In a hiding place near a river. I think they must have been hidden there by a poacher who got caught and couldn’t come back for them.’

Matimba nodded. This sort of thing did happen, and now this innocent boy had stumbled across a fortune. He looked at the tusk again. He would give him some money on the spot and promise him more if he took him to the rest.

‘You did well to come to me. I can buy these things from you.’

Akimbo drew in his breath. Now was the time for him to make his demand.

‘You can have them. I don’t want money for them.’

Matimba was astonished. He looked again at the boy and wondered whether there was something wrong with him.

‘All I want is to become an elephant hunter. If you let me go off with some poachers – to learn how they do it – I’ll show you where I have hidden the tusks and horns.’

Matimba was silent. He stared at Akimbo for some time, wondering whether to trust him. Then his greed got the better of his caution. He granted Akimbo’s wish. After all, boys thought poaching was exciting. Well, let him learn.

‘You may go with my men,’ he said.

Akimbo felt a great surge of excitement. Matimba had said ‘my men’. He had found the head of a gang of poachers. His plan had worked – so far. The next stage was the really dangerous part.