Makosa thrived from the first, a very exuberant, playful and healthy rhino baby who became known to Magnum and Magnet early on and regularly met up with them during his daily rounds of the dung-piles and urinals. Makosa grew into a fine specimen of a rhino and integrated successfully into the Nairobi National Park rhino community, where he lived wild for close on four years, coming back to his stockade from time to time, but could only be handled by two men who would sometimes doctor his filarial wounds, and only while in his stockade, both men were his Keepers in infancy.
Friday the 21st October ended as one of the most tragic and traumatic days in the Trusts twenty eight year history. At 6 a.m. that morning, we lost the life of one of our finest Elephant Keepers and the life of Makosa. Early that morning Keeper Patrick Dokata was heading out to join the other Keepers in the Park forest, followed by Shida our youngest and still dependent rhino orphan. Quite obviously, with hindsight, Shida detected the proximity of six year old Makosa, as he stopped in his tracks prompting Patrick to look back at him, calling him to follow with the soft “Ah” imitation of a rhino mother’s call to her baby, yet unwittingly all the while walking ever closer to Makosa who was hidden by bush. Startled, Makosa charged from close range, and because Patrick was almost on top of him, and caught totally unawares, there was no chance of escape. He was killed instantly.
The Kenya Wildlife Service were informed and responded swiftly and efficiently, detailing armed Rangers to guard Patrick’s body until the appropriate authorities within KWS and the Kenya Police were alerted. However, in the meantime, Makosa returned to the scene, distressed and enraged. Immediately, he charged the two Rangers who managed to escape up flimsy trees, but the rhino persistently battered one tree, irrespective of three shots being fired over his head in an effort to turn him. This merely infuriated him further, and when it looked as though the tree would come down, putting the Ranger’s life at risk, there was no alternative left but for him to shoot Makosa at close range before the Ranger suffered the same fate as Patrick.
And so, within just one hour that early morning, two irreplaceable lives, inextricably tangled by fate, were lost. From all at the Trust our hearts and sympathies go out to Patrick’s family and for the many people world-wide who have supported Makosa for the years that it took for him to become a mature wild rhino living amidst the wild community of Nairobi National Park, all we can say, is that we are so very sorry that things had to end this way and both will be sorely missed.
