The following day is my first stint in the rhino suit. I’m much too big for it, and my legs stick out absurdly from the bottom, so that I look like a giant prawn tempura. Inside, the heat and the stench of stale sweat and old Dettol are almost overpowering until you get into the swing of things. Todd walks along beside me, determinedly keeping me engaged in conversation. After a while I realise he’s monitoring me to make sure I don’t faint. Todd’s a good man and I like him a lot. He takes good care of people, and takes even better care of his beloved rhino suit.

I stop for a moment to pour some water into and over my face, and catch a glimpse of myself in the window of the Land-Rover. I look unimaginably stupid, and I reflect that there is something very odd about this sponsored walking business. It’s always undertaken for good causes: cancer research, famine relief, wildlife conservation, and so on, but the deal seems to be this: “Okay, you are trying to raise funds for this very worthwhile cause, and I can see that it’s an important and crucial matter and that lives or indeed whole species are at stake and something needs to be done as a matter of urgency, but, well . . . I don’t know . . . Tell you what—do something really pointless and stupid and maybe a bit dangerous, then I’ll give you some money.”

I only spent a week on the walk. I didn’t get to climb Kilimanjaro, though I did get to see it. I was very sorry not to get to go up it, though, having seen it, I have to say that I wasn’t very, very sorry. I did get to see one rhino, briefly, out of the thousands that used to roam in this area, and I wondered if it had any sense at all that all was not right with its world. Human beings have been on this planet for a million years or so, and in that time we have faced all sorts of threats to our survival: famine, plague, warfare, AIDS. Rhinoceroses have been here for 40 million years, and just one threat has brought them to the brink of extinction: human beings. We are not the only species to have caused devastation to the rest of the world, and it must be said in our favour that we are the only one that has become aware of the consequences of its behaviour and tried to do something about it. However, I reflect as I shift the costume back into a comfortable walking posture and squint forward over its bobbing plastic horn, we do go about it in some odd ways.

Esquire, MARCH 1995

For Children Only