A touching story

In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from college.

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant in distress. A pool of blood had formed around a leg.

Cautiously Mbembe approached the wary elephant and inspected the elephant’s foot and found a large shard of glass, possibly from a nearby campground embedded in it. As gently as he could, Mbembe worked the glass out with his hunting knife.

The elephant, still uneasy with his presence, stared at Mbembe with a gutteral growl. For several tense moments Mbembe stood frozen, expecting to be trampled. Then the elephant shook its head, trumpeted loudly, turned and limped away.

Mbembe never forgot that day. Twenty years later he was walking through a zoo with his teenage son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the animals turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing.

The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe and lifted its front foot off the ground, then stamped it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly.

Remembering his encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn’t believe the elephant had remembered him. Summoning his courage, he climbed the railing and made his way into the enclosure.

Approaching the elephant, he slowly raised his hand to touch his trunk. The male elephant, defending his territory, suddenly impaled the man with his tusks, and swung him wildly back and forth along the railing, killing him.

Probably wasn’t the same elephant.