Visiting old friends continued – by Kate Evans

The next morning I joined the CZS group on a game drive with Joseph and we were spoilt with another amazing sighting of the leopard and her cubs. We also bumped into Ganesh and Martin Luther King (elephants, which I am sure you realised) who were feeding nearby. Finally we got to meet the new spotted hyaena cubs, who were as ever very curious as to how cars work and took to chewing on the brake lines, so we left before they did permanent damage.

Female leopard

When we got back to camp a very excited Tim, who had been trying to radio us and tell us his story, greeted us:

The previous night he had had a dream about Mafunyane, this was unusual as he does not normally remember dreams and he has never met Mafunyane, but he remembers this elephant with a very distinctive notch in his ear as Joseph and I had described. That morning he was busy with admin in the office when he had to answer the call of nature. Whilst he was answering the call he heard an elephant shaking the palm trees for nuts in camp, he would usually ignore this and get back to work but today was different and he wondered who it was. He went to have a look and was astounded to see an elephant of about 20 years with a large notch in his ear, like the one in his dream. He really could not believe his eyes and decided to call his name to see if it was the elephant we had described. The elephant stopped what he was doing, looked at him in a quizzical manner as if to say ‘well how the hell do you know my name? I do not know you ‘ and then carried on feed, picking up the nuts from the ground.

Joseph and I looked at each other in amazement, could Mafunyane really be in in camp? An elephant who had not been seen in the area

My friend Mafunyane

for the past three years. We headed out to where he was last seen and we heard something feeding in the water by tent 5 – so walked up onto the deck and there was an elephant feeding on the sedges but was it Mafunyane? He was showing his left ear not his distinctive right ear. It certainly looked like him. I held my breath willing him to turn around. After about 5 minutes he turned his back to us and a earflap showed us all we needed to know. It really was Mafunyane. I welled up and I am sure I saw tears in Joseph’s eyes.

Here was my old friend, an elephant I had spent so long with trying to make him understand that he was independent and as much he wanted to go back to his herd this was not the right thing for him anymore. I saw him go through independence and slowly begin to socialise with the males in the area and make friends, show Thando and Seba (who were released the following year) the ways of the wild, mourn the loss of loved ones, and here he was showing me he was OK, he was doing well, he was wild once more.

Mafunyane showing us his distinctive right ear and confirming his ID

Still to this day I struggle to find the words to describe how this made me feel. Since we un-collared him I have had no idea how he was, just a deep belief that he was OK, and here he was now 25 years old and ten years on since he was released and he was looking really well. It is uncanny that he chose to come to camp when I was there and whist my scientific head tells me it was pure coincidence, my heart tells me this was no coincidence, he knew I would be there and it was time for him to pay a visit.  Proving to me that we continue to underestimate elephants.