A Zambian wildlife guide who stood in front of an aggressive elephant and commanded it to "get back" has been widely praised by the British school pupils he protected. The elephant had been trailing a group of female elephants.
Footage of Manny Mvula taking on the elephant who was
threatening to charge the group he was leading has recently been uploaded on to
YouTube.
"My instinct was to run away but Manny's calming and
authoritative presence reassured me - we figured he knew what he was
doing," a pupil from a secondary school in England told the BBC.
"But for Manny's heroism we could have had a memorable
encounter with this gigantic beast in more ways than one."
However, Mr Mvula says that his defence of the students was
all in the line of duty.
"I realised I had to do something to stop it because
they were in imminent danger," he told the BBC.
The unusual standoff happened at the Kasanka National Park
After viewing the elephants for some time, Mr Mvula, 46, and
his party set up camp at a designated spot once the elephants had moved on.
But they did not know that a bull elephant was trailing in
the wake of the female elephants until it appeared a few minutes later.
It weighed an estimated five tonnes (787 stone) and was in the prime of its life at about 40 years old.
At first it seemed that it too was moving on, but suddenly
it turned and stared at Mr Mvula and his party.
The trained guide knew immediately that it posed a danger
because he could see fluids coming out of its temporal glands which were
running down its cheeks - a sure sign that the bull elephant was in a state of
heightened sexual activity called musth.
"When they are in this condition, they are liable to
charge anything that gets in their way," Mr Mvula said, "especially
if it something or somebody that they are not certain about."
"I know that standing in front of it and telling it to
go away is not an officially recognised procedure for dealing with this kind of
a situation," he said.
"But I knew instinctively that it was worth a try even
if there was no guarantee that it would work.
"I have seen such a technique successfully used by two
other guides and have done in myself twice previously in such emergency
situations."
The guide's remonstrating tone led to the elephant stopping
in its tracks. After a moment's pause, it opted to make a strategic retreat.
"Obviously it was a huge relief," he said,
"such an incident is highly unusual in this part of Zambia ."
Mr Mvula - who with his wife runs a responsible tourism
company from their home in the English county
of Kent - has for many years led
safaris in his home country of Zambia .
He said that he had learnt as a professional safari guide
always to have a second plan if the first does not work.
"But in this case I didn't have many other options -
the only thing I could have done if it didn't back off would have been to order
the boys slowly to walk back to the truck - parked about 10m (32 ft) away -
while I would run towards it while swerving in between the trees and swinging
my arms wildly to distract its attention solely towards me."
The guide said that in the worst case scenario the elephant
could have charged the teenagers, even though he remained confident that he
could handle the situation successfully.
"That is the importance of always using fully trained
safari guides, who understand animal behaviour," he said.
"Looking back on what I did, I guess you can say it was
a bit of a stupid thing to do," Mr Mvula said.
"It took me three weeks to pluck up the courage and
tell my wife what happened."
No comments:
Post a Comment