In 1994, conservationist Daphne Sheldrick found herself flat on her back staring into the eyes of an elephant that had just thrown her into the air.

This was the moment when she decided to write the story of her life.

Love, Life and Elephants: An African Love Story, by Daphne Sheldrick, is the story of a family in Kenya and the woman who pioneered the hand-raising and rehabilitation of orphaned baby elephants.

The title of the book implies that it is aimed at Western audiences.

Her colonial era upbringing feels romanticised with its focus on Europeans lives, wildlife and the unspoiled landscapes. Africans are largely reduced to background players.

Love, Life and Elephants: An African Love Story, a memoir by conservationist Daphne Sheldrick. PHOTO| COURTESY DAVID SHEDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST

Daphne touches briefly on the Independence struggle with mentions of the “horrific reality of the Mau Mau” freedom fighters, her first husband Bill Woodley’s work in quelling the uprising, and the anxiety felt by European settlers as Independence drew near.

Overall, the book gives a very one-sided view of colonialism in Kenya.
Although settler life has been covered extensively elsewhere, An African Love Story is a useful chronicle of the early years of Tsavo Park, the poaching crisis, and the founding of the elephant orphanage.

The book is a tender memoir, a passionate love story and a personal account of a homegrown naturalist. It contains humour, tragedy and heartwarming recollections, and clearly shows Daphne’s intuitive understanding of animal behaviour.

Her family moved to South Africa from Scotland in the 1820s. Mounting financial debt and new opportunities for Europeans in East Africa prompted their relocation to Kenya in the early 1900s.

Daphne was born in 1934 in the Rift Valley, and had an idyllic childhood surrounded by domestic animals and the occasional orphaned wildlife. The children went to school far from home, family holidays were spent camping in the bush and game hunting was all the rage.

Conservationist Daphne Sheldrick. PHOTO| COURTESY DAVID SHEDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST

At the age of three, she acquired her first wild animal, a young bush buck. It was the first of hundreds of wild animals that she would nurture.
Bill was a game warden and elephant hunter.

Together with their daughter Jill, the couple moved to Tsavo National Park. It was here that she met her future and second husband, David Sheldrick, who was the first warden of Tsavo. By the time her marriage to Bill was falling apart, Daphne was already attracted to David.

She describes David as her “soul mate”, and writes in depth about their courtship and marriage. The couple were married in 1960, and continued to live in Tsavo, the perfect place for two people zealous about wildlife.

When the national parks were amalgamated into the new Wildlife Department in 1976, and David got a job in Nairobi, the family left Tsavo and moved to the city.

However, David died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 58. It was a devastating loss for Daphne which she never fully overcame.

Both in Tsavo and Nairobi, the couple had fostered wild animals of different species.

After David’s death, Daphne continued getting requests to handle orphaned animals. That is how she founded the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, informally known as the elephant orphanage.
The Trust, based in the Nairobi National Park, is the foremost centre for the rescue and rehabilitation of abandoned wild elephants, who are eventually reintegrated back into the wild. Daphne became a pioneer in elephant husbandry with the invention of a revolutionary milk formula for infant elephants.
Daphne, 83, has received numerous global awards for her work including Moran of the Burning Spear in 2001 from the Kenya government and appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006.