Born Wild by Tony Fitzjohn: review
Graham Boynton marvels at the empathy between man and beast in Born Wild: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Passion for Lions and for Africa by Tony Fitzjohn
Telegraph.co.uk
By Graham Boynton
20 Sep 2010
Born Wild by Tony Fitzjohn While contemporary Africa is to all intents and purposes chaotic, corrupt, medieval and constantly engaged in civil wars, it is also a wild and thrilling theatre for those who wish to engage with life a little more vividly than we do in the more ordered and “civilised” West. It is this combination of danger and adventure that draws disgruntled, dissatisfied Westerners to it like moths to a flame.
Tony Fitzjohn, Fitz as he is known to his friends, fits the bill almost to the point of caricature. He grew up in suburban north London, a tetchy, rebellious foster child disappointed with the greyness of post-war Britain. Then, through a combination of wanderlust and a series of accidental meetings, he found his place on the planet in a raw and remote patch of African bushveld called Kora in Kenya, raising lions with George Adamson of Born Free fame. He worked as Adamson’s assistant from 1970 until 1989, living on a diet of bully beef, fresh vegetables, beer and gin in circumstances that we in the West would regard as somewhat marginal. For Fitzjohn this was nirvana.
The book opens with Fitzjohn’s description of how he was attacked and almost killed by a rogue lion named Shyman.
I have been in the bush with Fitzjohn and a wild lion, and the mutual empathy that was so evident between this man and a grown female by the name of Jipe really was something to behold. His years in the bush have given him a rare and intimate understanding of lion behaviour, so the almost lethal attack by Shyman, which ripped Fitzjohn’s throat open “to create a hole which was large enough to put my fist through”, sets this autobiography up, for it serves as a salutary reminder that the African bushveld is the wild animals’ domain and that we are no more than privileged visitors. This is, to some degree, the author’s subtext through the book.
However, the many significant characters passing through these pages are human – the author himself, the beloved Adamson, who is referred to throughout as the Old Man, his brother Terence, and a parade of people good and bad who are, in fact, determining the future of the wild animals.
There are constant spats with local authorities, corrupt politicians, jealous territorial tribespeople and heavily armed gangs of Somali bandits, most of whom were seeking to chase the mzungus (white men) off the land. By contrast, the passages dealing with the various lions the three men were raising and rehabilitating into the wild are odes to harmony, serenity and understanding.
By the time the Old Man was cut down in a blaze of gunfire by Somali bandits in August 1989, Fitzjohn was already eyeing his next challenge in neighbouring Tanzania and it is here in Mkomazi Game Reserve that he has found his most significant role in African wildlife conservation. Using the experience and the skills he had learned under Adamson at Kora, Fitzjohn has over the past 25 years transformed this once degraded and desolate hunting ground for rich Middle Eastern potentates into a model of modern wildlife management. Mkomazi has now been declared a national park and as such is officially protected from the various human predators who have sought to bring it down.
Fitzjohn remains a tetchy individual – it is probably that character trait that has most helped him survive in the African theatre – but today he is a teetotal father of four with an OBE after his name and a conservation legacy to be proud of. The book ends with him returning to Kora, invited back by the Kenyans to the happy landscape of his wild youth. They want him to restore the area to the state it was in before Adamson was murdered and Fitzjohn himself was run off the land – and it is a challenge he relishes. Which makes this a truly African story and the author, despite his place of birth, a true African.
Born Wild: the Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Passion for Lions and for Africa
Article at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8006702/Born-Wild-by-Tony-Fitzjohn-review.html
