Helen Cowcher DESERT ELEPHANTS - STORY BEHIND THE STORY, & PICTURE MAKING The information below is in addition to the author’s notes at the back of the book What’s special about these elephants? These elephants are descendants of those whose ancestors lived in the Sahara region thousands of years ago before the land became a desert. They are smaller and stockier than elephants further south and have smaller tusks. These last herds are compelled by their harsh surroundings to travel huge distances to find food & water. The elders passing down knowledge to their young, of the ancient routes to follow and where the waterholes are to be found as they have to live through the annual cycle of rain and drought. African elephants are the largest living land mammals. They form deep family attachments and the females of a family group will all work together to protect a young calf which is born after a 22 month pregnancy. Elephants have great intelligence and display signs of grief, anger, joy and play. They can communicate using sub-sonic rumbles that travel over the ground faster than sounding through the air. With their long trunks ( noses ) they can smell, breathe, trumpet, drink and seize things, especially useful for feeding...grabbing a branch of leaves for example. It is thought that with the sensitive trunk tip they can receive messages from other elephants communicating over large distances. They also use the pads of their feet in this way, as message receivers. Their famed long memory is especially important in the Sahel because they are living in such an extreme environment and the matriarchs must remember the pathways to find water, on what is the longest migration route of any elephant in the world. Why did you go to see them? Elephants are astoundingly beautiful and very intelligent. I had always wanted to do a book about elephants but never had the chance to see them in the wild before. I visited Africa for the first time In 2007 when I was invited to do an author tour of International Schools in West African countries including Mali. This is where these desert elephants are. So after my work with the children in the cities had finished, I was able to travel further afield in Mali in order to try to see the elephants.
Transcript
Helen Cowcher DESERT ELEPHANTS - STORY BEHIND THE STORY, & PICTURE MAKING The information below is in addition to the author’s notes at the back of the book
What’s special about these elephants?
These elephants are descendants of those whose ancestors lived in the Sahara region thousands of years ago before the land became a desert. They are smaller and stockier than elephants further south and have smaller tusks. These last herds are compelled by their harsh surroundings to travel huge distances to find food & water. The elders passing down knowledge to their young, of the ancient routes to follow and where the waterholes are to be found as they have to live through the annual cycle of rain and drought. African elephants are the largest living land mammals. They form deep family attachments and the females of a family group will all work together to protect a young calf which is born after a 22 month pregnancy. Elephants have great intelligence and display signs of grief, anger, joy and play. They can communicate using sub-sonic rumbles that travel over the ground faster than sounding through the air. With their long trunks ( noses ) they can smell, breathe, trumpet, drink and seize things, especially useful for feeding...grabbing a branch of leaves for example. It is thought that with the sensitive trunk tip they can receive messages from other elephants communicating over large distances. They also use the pads of their feet in this way, as message receivers. Their famed long memory is especially important in the Sahel because they are living in such an extreme environment and the matriarchs must remember the pathways to find water, on what is the longest migration route of any elephant in the world. Why did you go to see them? Elephants are astoundingly beautiful and very intelligent. I had always wanted to do a book about elephants but never had the chance to see them in the wild before. I visited Africa for the first time In 2007 when I was invited to do an author tour of International Schools in West African countries including Mali. This is where these desert elephants are. So after my work with the children in the cities had finished, I was able to travel further afield in Mali in order to try to see the elephants.
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Did you want to do a book about the desert?
I have wanted to write a story set in the desert for a long time. Here I have tried to show the beauty of the desert, the heat, the starry night skies, and also to show the difficulties of life there.
Why are there so many people in a book about elephants?
The area in the book is mainly within a part of the Gourma Nature Reserve, Yet many different peoples live in (or pass through) the same area as the elephants. Most of them follow ancient family traditions with different beliefs and ways of living. But there is pressure for change now forcing them to rethink their customary ways. I wanted to show how all these different groups have to co-exist. The struggle to coexist in an overcrowded world relates to all our lives wherever we are. But in the desert everything is more extreme, so for people and elephants there, finding enough water to survive on, becomes a matter of life and death . The goal of the story is to illustrate a sustainable future for all. In this story I am able to highlight the theme of people existing side by side with nature which is something else that affects us, wherever we live in the world. There is a gathering human pressure on wild places and natural resources and the scarcity of fresh water is something we are all thinking about more now...
What is the desert like to travel in? A desert is a huge & difficult place to travel in, so such a trip cannot be undertaken lightly. You have to carry everything with you. Water, fuel and food and camping gear. You have to have a good sense of direction, a map and be careful at all times. We had no phone signal nor a satellite mapping system, and no way of charging our phones anyway, so it was essential to travel with an experienced and trusted local guide.
! Dogon guide, Moussa Timbine is on the right. I also needed another guide so that I could talk to people.That was Moussa the main guide who spoke 4 languages and he needed to use all 4 on our trip! Finally a driver, Lamine, so
that we could drive right across Mali from its capital city Bamako north east to the Gourma, near Burkina Faso.So we had 5 languages between us and only one of us had ever seen an elephant in the wild before! Who helped you find the elephants? I knew that I would be very lucky indeed to see these elephants as many people had looked for them in the desert in north east Mali and they had not come across one of the family groups. So I had to find a good local tuareg guide who knew the area and knew about elephants.
! Moussa and El Mehdi Doumbia When we got near to the area of elephant migration, the tuareg El Mehdi, who was the elephant expert, told me not to use anything scented like soap, perfume or makeup as the elephants can smell it. And it would make them nervous if we got near. To find the elephants we headed in the general direction which El Mehdi, who knew the area, thought was the correct way to go.
We followed the elephant trail: occasional heaps of elephant dung dropped on the sand
We stopped now and again to check the view through binoculars, or to chat to herdsmen Tell us about your desert camp? We set up camp in a ‘safe’ place on a flat plateau perched on top of a bank that was more or less free of the very prickly grass which is common at the desert’s edge. It was well before nightfall as everything had to be unpacked from our vehicle while we could still see. The cooking was a simple but plentiful dish of pasta and sauce heated in a single large pan over a gas burner. We had very little water to use for cooking and bathing. We needed it to last several days so I had to wash very sparingly. Most of the water had to be kept for drinking. We always finished the meal with lovely hot sweet mint tea then went straight to our tents to sleep. We moved on early every day, so always had to pack everything up, and we never had any lunch as it was too time wasting to unpack things. We needed to devote the time to our search for the elephants.
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Here are some notes from my 2007 diary written during the time that we camped. “January 26th. 5 am The elephants have passed over the ridge where we have our camp. While we were sleeping they came and went in the night without us seeing or hearing them. Their footprints in the sand are huge with baby ones too, yet they were all silent in their passing over the dunes.
! January 26th. 10 am a dogon man living in a tiny desert encampent agrees to leads us to where two elephants are feeding at a lakeside. After an hour long walk, we see a male & female elephant hidden in the trees browsing on leaves. So amazing! It’s early and the air is already sizzling hot! We are on foot and must not go too close, we move very slowly and silently up wind and behind tree trunks and branches, and we do not stay long....
January 27th. 7am In the distance elephants are passing slowly along the forest edge, beneath the ridge where we set up camp last night.
! The driver has not slept all night. He has never seen an elephant before and he could hear them ‘talking to each other’ all night. He already is in love with them and proud that they live in his country, Mali. He is looking forward to telling his children, in Bamako about them. But he also is very fearful thinking that they will come closer and flatten his vehicle which is why he chose to stay awake all through the night, acting as a guard.” How did you decide what pictures to paint for your book? There are all sorts of things that I thought of when I chose what to include. I like dramatic imagery in my books. So when I have a story I will think how best to make the visuals dramatic. So to be able to start with elephants, is a good start, as they are sensational anyway. Their unique shape is very dramatic with their long trunks and huge ears and their huge size. Elephants are central to the book’s imagery, but this is a book which places the elephants in their surroundings both ancient and modern. There are the domestic animals: a dog, a donkey, goats, cattle and camel. There are many different groups of people with their possessions, like tea making utensils and carpets. There are examples of transport, old and new: carts drawn by donkeys , a mule, a 4 x 4 overland vehicle, a motor scooter. There are pieces of old and new technology: an artesian well, a radio station, transistor radios and solar panels.
There are places which offer shelter and security: the forest, the buildings and a nomad’s tent When adding these ingredients to the mix, I will think of the sort of angles I want to draw, and vary them a lot during the course of the book. I will add different light and times of day so that adds to feeling that you are deep ’in the place within the book’. I will change the pace so that some pictures are very tranquil to look at, and some are full of activity. A lot of these things are similar to choices a film maker would make. I try to make the pictures beautiful. And color is very important to me: I like to use a lot of it! You have textiles as an important part of the picture making in this book. Why? I have written a very short overview of these ‘Dutch wax prints’ in the end notes within the DESERT ELEPHANTS book. But here are much more detailed answers to the question of my specific choices of printed textiles. The textiles allow me to use intense color in a realistic way which is faithful to the representation of an actual place. In a dry desert landscape not only do the colors shimmer in bright sunlight, but often there are messages hidden within the designs. It adds yet another layer of meaning to the communication theme of my book, which is so important. When I saw a girl wearing turquoise fabric printed with a pattern of clasped hands , I knew that I must include that in a painting. The image was very eye catching and also used a symbolic design of co-existence, something I was happy to include. I also chose another striking fabric on the page with the radio broadcaster. The fingers of the hand ( bright red on a bright yellow background ) are separate digits unattached to the palm. To local people this fabric is like a poster which means the following: It is only when the separate digits are joined with the palm and make the picture of a complete hand that the hand is really useful. This symbolizes the strength gained by unity and co-operation, in other words, when we work together we can achieve much more. We can look at this picture of the fabric curtain hanging beside the girl as she is radio broadcasting and we may not see any meaning in the design of hands and fingers. The symbols need an explanation because it is not part of our culture. It is a dramatic and interesting set of images for us to see nevertheless and I have inserted a saying in the story text as a verbal translation of the image.
! Fanta Morba and Helen Cowcher The radio announcer, Fanta Morba, at ‘Radio Daande Douentza’ wore this outfit on one of the days when I visited her. I liked it a lot and chose it for the painting of the girl broadcasting on local radio in DESERT ELEPHANTS. This decorative fabric design mixes regal & nautical motifs: hearts, crowns and ship’s anchors. Where does this inspiration for pattern come from? These symbols are something we would be used to in the West. This is a fashion item with more in common with a Hermes scarf than African storytelling traditions. I like to hint at things in my books which sometimes appear unclear and that can be interpreted in different ways. They may be missed completely and seen just as decoration. But they make us think! What part do communication and technology play? On the title page, at the start of the book, I put a visual hint of the elephant rumble sounds which are to come later on in the story. At the top of the page you can see a sonic pattern of waves of sound. This is a symbolic image of a range of sound that we can only hear part of, but the elephants hear it all. I liked the idea of the elephants communicating over distance often in a frequency outside our hearing. And I like the contrast with the radio which enables humans, using technology, to communicate over long ranges. I have emphasized this visually. I have drawn radio signals emitting from a radio station mast. Both sound patterns appear on the title page . I included radio as it is a very important way of communicating in Africa and I wanted to use radio imagery in the book. I visited two radio stations to see how they worked. I was inspired to include some of the technology which I saw being used there.
! Radio is a ‘community medium’ shared in a village, unlike the mobile phone in that region which is used by individuals and which many people cannot afford. The solar panels on the book’s title page are an important part of Africa’s future and ours too. They are practical but interesting to look at along with the radio antennae. Technology is very important for elephant survival. You can learn more about this through www.wild.org. who work in the Gourma on the elephant conservation project. I describe more about elephant communication at the end of DESERT ELEPHANTS. And you can find out a lot more through the elephant listening project at Cornell University. www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant What do you hope that readers will gain from DESERT ELEPHANTS ? I hope that they enjoy exploring the book and the world within that book and think a lot about what it must be like to live in such a place. Also that they learn to love and respect our natural world and feel empathy both with the elephants and also the local people who live alongside the elephants. They will hopefully be encouraged to find out more about elephants and wildlife however big or small. I want to awaken their curiosity and encourage them to think about how they might work together to care for nature and also to explore areas of natural diversity in their locality. I hope that the pictures inspire them to draw and paint and to create their own stories about nature and places they know well, even perhaps about their own backyard. Children now are very visually literate and come from a rich mix of cultural backgrounds. Their attention is caught by the dramatic pictures in my books and they are often inspired, excited and enthralled. In fact I believe that the art in my books reaches children in an emotional way which helps them to persevere with some of the more difficult content within the text. They seem to relish the challenge at whatever age. I also like to see my books as launch pads for their enthusiasm for nature conservation.
Questions for kids to think about after reading the book and looking at the pictures in DESERT ELEPHANTS.
! ELEPHANTS Imagine you are a young elephant with your family group:
What would you eat?
Where would you find water?
How would you know that rain was falling a long way off ?
Who would remember the most about the migration routes in your elephant family?
Why would you have to travel a long way every year?
What might you see, smell and hear? You would need all your senses about you if you were a wild animal.
What hazards would you encounter along the way?
Who would protect you from danger?
What other animals might you see and why wouldn’t they bother you?
What special things can elephants know that humans cannot?
Are elephants good at being very quiet?
When do they make a lot of noise?
PEOPLE
How many different groups of people are there?
What do the people think of the elephants?
What do they believe is best for their land?
Is it difficult for them to share the same area with the elephants?
Do the people have difficult lives and why?
AND YOU!
How would you feel with sand all around you, with the hot desert sun beating down, and very little shade?
How would you manage with very little water as you would be living without rain falling for many months?
What sounds would you hear? You wouldn’t hear as much as the elephants can hear.
