An experience with habituated African elephants can have a profound effect on our emotional intelligence of the wilderness.

“You must do the elephants, they’ve been the highlight of our whole trip,” urge the Americans as we step onto the airstrip, a ribbon of highground surrounded by the blue-green carpet of the Okavango Delta.

At dinner we meet Doug Groves, director of Grey Matters, an education-based eco-tourism company. Soft-spoken and diffident, with the demeanor of a true gentle-man, Doug tells us he has been the human element of the elephant partnership for the better part of twenty two years. It becomes apparent that Doug’s benign nature makes him an obvious candidate for a pachyderm calling.

Doug’s relationship with the elephants began when he adopted two orphans, Jabu and Thembi, from a Kruger Park cull in 1988. They were two years old and deeply traumatized. Love and attention were lavished on the pair so that now, as twenty-four year olds, they are well-adjusted and accomplished wildlife ambassadors.

The third elephant, Morula, is a Zimbabwean orphan with a sad history. Already seventeen years old when she met Doug she’s been the recipient of extra ministrations to alleviate her emotional pain.

“It took ages to build up a trusting relationship with Morula,” says Doug. “In the beginning we had to use Jabu and Thembi as intermediaries.”

It is in the role of emissaries that the trio provide a powerful yet humbling experience for humans.

The next day we meet the team and from the moment we see, smell and hear the grey hulks foraging peacefully in the wild, we are overcome by wonder. While we stand by quietly observing these examples of life’s diversity we realise they are not out to harm us.

Gradually, in the most agreeable way, Doug introduces us to the elephants. One by one we are invited to go up and touch their textured bodies and commune through all our senses with them.

“Jabu loves toes,” says Doug as the snouty end of the elephant’s proboscis gently plays around my feet. Looking down I realise this is a greeting. For a brief moment I wish to have a nose in my toes so that I can return his hallo, Eskimo-style.

Standing over three metres tall with probably another metre to grow, Jabu’s presence is overwhelming, to say the least. As you stand beneath his massive head you realise that all it would take is one small flick of his trunk, or one stomp of his dustbin-lid sized foot, or one shake of annoyance from his head … and you’d be hamburger.

It is in this utter commitment to trust that you begin to understand what they, elephants and other wildlife, must feel in their relationship with humanity. For at this moment the shoe is on the other foot.

By entrusting your safety to them, and knowing that in this submission you are asking for their tolerance and consideration, you begin to understand with emotional intelligence the vulnerability of all non-human life at the present time in evolution.

What it feels like to be at the mercy of another species has an important part to play in the transformation of human consciousness. From the experience we are in a better position to transfer that understanding to others. The projection of compassion onto other species, large and small, will save us in the end.  We cannot survive alone as a monospecies on an earth we are busy trampling in so cavalier a manner.

It is in this utter commitment to trust that you begin to understand what they, elephants and other wildlife, must feel in their relationship with humanity.

This appreciation deepens as Doug takes you through aspects of elephant biology and the impact that biodiversity loss is having on all life on the planet.

Interspersed through the morning’s learning are little games, (to keep the elephants’ attention from waning, naturally) as well as a concert performed by the wind section of the OPO (Okavango Philharmonic Orchestra).

Notably, and in contrast to other elephant tourism products, no riding of the animals takes place. The Elephant Experience is not about man’s supremacy over the beasts, it is about respect and understanding between species.

As a new awareness rises that man and nature are not separate, but interconnected in ways we don’t yet fully understand, Jabu, Thembi and Morula provide a lasting emotional bridge across the great species divide.

www.livingwithelephants.org