I’ve recently become heavily involved in a cause that seems to have chosen me rather than the other way around. Two Vietnamese celebrities visited my school back in 2014 to speak with our students about the use of Rhino horn in Vietnam and the tragic consequences it is having on the Rhino population in South Africa. They were promoting a competition that, as Head of English, I ended up running as it involved writing an essay explaining how young people can make a change in cultural attitudes towards Rhino horn. So many entered from the school that I was invited to join two of our winners on a trip to South Africa (amazing in itself) but since then we have all been involved in workshops, meeting with celebrities and promoting saying ‘No to Rhino Horn’ within Vietnam. I suddenly feel passionate about something I was previously quite ignorant about and I really do hope those that still believe Rhino horn has medicinal properties and/or use it as a status symbol finally sit up and take note. The following is an article I have written for a magazine in Vietnam – I have only just sent it off and my track record with getting these things published is pretty poor but I really do hope this one makes it through.

(It did! and you can view it here: http://wordvietnam.com/people-culture/the-stories/forever-wild or here: africa)

‘Leave your bad energy behind. We are leaving civilisation as we know it to visit our neighbours, the animals.’  With these words, spoken by Zondi, a ranger for the Wilderness Leadership School in South Africa (a sister organisation of the Wilderness Foundation Africa), myself and a group of students from Vietnam embarked on an African safari unlike any other.

Back in late 2014, a number of international schools in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi were visited by Vietnamese celebrities, Thanh Bui and Thu Minh who are currently spearheading the campaign to educate young people in Vietnam that the Rhino is dangerously close to extinction again in Africa due to consumers in Vietnam and China continuing to believe that their horns hold medicinal properties. The matter is a complex one and involves not just changing beliefs within newly wealthy Far Eastern communities but the welfare state in Africa that almost encourages the poor to poach. However, Thanh Bui and the South African Wilderness Foundation are at pains to promote the idea that the Vietnamese can turn the situation around and, as their slogan states on behalf of the rhino and South African communities that “Vietnam can help save the rhino”.

During Thanh Bui’s school visits, students were shown a presentation highlighting the critical situation in Africa before being encouraged to write essays explaining how they would encourage their families and friends to say no to Rhino horn. Thousands of entries flooded in and from these 22 students were chosen from schools in Ho Chi Minh City to visit South Africa on a 5 day wilderness trail and workshop designed to help them understand the beauty of the Rhino and the importance of keeping them alive. Due to the high number of entries from my school’s English department, I was invited to accompany two of my winning students on the trip and see for myself what life is like for the wild animals of the Hluhluwe Umfolozi game reserve situated outside of Durban on the east coast of South Africa.

The game reserve is a two and half hour drive away from Durban city centre and is famous for being the location of the genetic origin for every single White Rhino in existence in South Africa today. Unlike a normal safari involving the observation of the Big 5 from the safety of a jeep, the students and myself arrived to be told we would be walking through the park carrying everything we needed to survive in the wild for 5 days and nothing more – mobile phones, tablets, laptops, books, iPods and all other 21st century conveniences had to be left behind at ‘base camp, ’ the Stainbank Nature Reserve in Durban city center.

It was with some trepidation therefore, that we left Durban and headed out past shanty towns and into the Savannah. The group was quiet and subdued as we started out near the main gate of the reserve walking in single file in silence to avoid frightening away wildlife, our backs burdened by the enormous packs that held camping equipment and food for the trip. Initially the experience seemed just like a pleasant walk until the two rangers who were accompanying us, Zondi and Janet, stopped suddenly and asked us to put down our packs and follow them to a bank and look down. In the barren and dry riverbed below a group of lionesses were tearing a wildebeest to shreds. It was a strangely beautiful sight in its viciousness but then one of them spotted us and began prowling towards where we were standing. It was only when she opened her mouth and roared a heavy and guttural sound  to warn us off, that I think I realised this was for real and not just a walk in an amusement park looking at semi-tame animals. We were intruding in their territory and they would attack us without a moment’s hesitation. Zondi told us to not move and keep our eyes down until she disappeared; wild cats like domestic ones enjoy chasing moving objects. My heart was pounding and the seconds seemed like hours until Zondi told us it was safe to move back, pick up our packs and continue walking in single file. From that moment on, I realised what we were doing was special; we truly were visiting another world, one which co-exists next to ours but one which we barely take notice of; the world of the animals.

It was in this vein we camped not unlike our ancestors who were arguably more in tune with the natural world as we slept outside without tents. After walking for another hour, observing buffalo, vultures and, much to our delight, a rhino cow and her calf, we began to set up camp for the first time. The Wilderness Leadership School practices no trace camping and we were divided up; some of us had to collect water for disinfecting, others were tasked with creating a fire and yet others to start making dinner. I was in the group collecting water and as the sun began to set we tentatively followed Janet to the riverbed again in search of it. There was a pool not too far from our camp but as we filled plastic bags we became aware that we were being watched. Two pairs of eyes had surfaced not far from where we were standing. Hippos. Janet urged us to be quick to avoid angering them. Hippos, for all their bulging ungainly physiques are incredibly aggressive and territorial and are able to run at speeds of up to 19mph on land and a female hippos bite force has been measured at a frightening 1821 pounds per square inch. Thoroughly unnerved and not looking forward to sleeping out in the open we returned, ate a hushed dinner and were then introduced to the ‘night watch’.

To keep each other safe during the hours of darkness we were to number ourselves 1-8 and take turns, for an hour and half each to sit by the fire and every 5 minutes cast the light of the torch around the camp to ensure no predators were trying to intrude. It was terrifying; I have never felt isolation like it. I was number 3 and therefore was woken up roughly around midnight to sit alone by the fire and keep watch. To sit away from your sleeping companions with only the light of a small fire and the milky way is both inspirational and hard. To help pass the time, Zondi and Janet had left  a journal by the fire so that people could record their thoughts and feelings. One of the students summed up the experience by noting that  ‘in the city so much noise means so little but in the Savannah, so little noise can mean so much.’

Very few of us had time to write that first night as the animals were extremely curious. I had to wake Zondi twice due to the presence of three buffalo that were trying to move in on us and another member of our group, Lucky, was on watch when a rhino began to descend into the camp from the vegetation behind our sleeping forms. Both Zondi and Janet were armed with rifles but didn’t use them, relying instead on noises and the throwing of stones to ward off the wildlife successfully. For all my education and knowledge, I realised very quickly how disconnected I am from the natural world; I really had no idea how to fend for myself in that environment. The sun rose eventually on a group of tired trailists; even Zondi and Janet said they had never experienced so much intrusion from the animals before and yet all other nights were quiet. It was as though the animals had needed to check us out before deciding we meant no harm before leaving us alone for the remaining 4 days.

‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach’ (Thoreou) 

During the following 4 days, we were all struck, not just by the beauty of nature but its power and how insignificant we really are in some ways. We would regularly hold ‘Indaba’ (Zulu for ‘business’) whereby we would sit in a circle and take turns to share what we were thinking. I was constantly struck by the profundity and maturity of the students who were with me. We quickly realised that the animals were able to just ‘be’ and yet there we were encumbered by bags, food, clothes just to try and make it through 5 days. Not only that but the delicate structure of the Savannah was brought strongly into focus and reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘The sound of Thunder’. In Africa, there is a species of butterfly that can only live off the moisture found in elephant dung. Poach all the elephants and the butterfly will die too. I thought about Cecil the Lion who was killed in a similar reserve in Africa. Not only did he die but his death meant that the other male in the pride, Jericho, would inevitably kill Cecil’s cubs to create his own bloodline in order to take on the role of alpha male. It stands to reason therefore, that if the Rhino becomes extinct something else will have to suffer alongside and the tragic demise of many species becomes widespread.

I was lucky enough to be in the group that Thanh Bui joined later in the week. For all his celebrity status in Vietnam, out there, on trail, he was like one of us, scouring his skin red raw with riverbed sand in order to stay clean, washing dishes and sitting around the fire singing songs with the students to pass the time once night fell. Trail makes you realise that you can get by with less; when everything is gone, all you really need is somewhere safe to sleep and food to eat. Status and wealth become meaningless. There is really no need to deface a Rhino in order to keep ‘face’ in the manmade structure that is society. As Carl Sagan says so well in his speech ‘The Pale Blue Dot’: ‘Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.’ Ultimately, who are we to take it upon ourselves to kill off a species of animal for our own imagined gain?

All too soon, we had to leave the wilderness and head back to Durban but that was the point whereby the South Africans expected us to take what we had learned and turn it into action. Inspired by what we had experienced, the group reconvened the following day at the Stainbank Nature Reserve and set to work.

‘Consider the weight and responsibility on your shoulders’ we were told by the group of South Africans leading the workshop the following day. This included Cheryl Reynolds (Wilderness Foundation); Matthew Norval (Wilderness Foundation); Dr. Ian McCallum (psychologist), Lawrence Munro (Ranger) and Dr. Will Fowlds (Vet).  For as much as we had enjoyed the trail and come back thoughtful and moved by the beauty of the Savannah, this was no ordinary holiday and we were being pushed to demonstrate how we would spread the message that people need to say ‘no’ to rhino horn when we returned to Vietnam.

For many of the students, the workshop served to highlight that rhino poaching is not just a matter of killing a rhino, it serves as a human tragedy as well. For every adult poacher involved in a cartel whose bail is paid for  once caught, there is usually a poor 15 year old from the shanty towns left to rot in jail. For every poacher that has been caught, there is potentially a ranger who has been shot or killed. The message was clear, whether we like it or not, we are all entrenched within a biological web of life and as Matthew Norval pointed out, there ‘needs to be a recognition that we must protect animals as individuals not as objects or indifferent commodities’ and unite together.

The students were invited to read out their winning essays and I was again reminded of their mature intelligence. Cathy Dao, from the CIS School in HCMC, finished hers by saying: ‘all life is invaluable and magnificent and it is our duty to protect these wonderful rhinos so our children will be able to see rhinos thriving in the wild with their own eyes, not through faded pictures nor works of fiction.’

We left South Africa proud to be representing a change within Vietnamese culture. The students continue to meet and plan how they will spread the message that Vietnam and its people can change this situation for the better. Thanh Bui continues to meet with his group and recently Matthew Norval and Cheryl Reynolds visited the Soul Music Academy in D1, HCMC, to find out how the group has been getting on since arriving back in the country. This is an exciting time to be in Vietnam and there is a real sense of the cause gaining momentum; change is truly afoot and that can only be for the good.

‘The wilderness is not a place but a season and we are in its final hour’. Vietnam – will you be their hero?