Carol’s Column

Penguins

The World Soccer Cup bid we so shockingly lost last week did one excellent thing. It united South Africa.

If nothing else, that's one hell of a victory.

Again, in Cape Town, South Africans are being united. This time by an environmental disaster. The massive oil spill from the holed and sunken tanker, Treasure. Yet another result of man’s greed and abuse.

In a Salt River warehouse, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob), is desperately working around the clock to save the endangered African from possible extinction.

I have signed up, with hundreds of other voluntary locals, to help in this crisis.

Before starting my shift, I wander around.

Presently, there are 19 000 penguins housed here, rescued from Robben and Dassen islands.

Picture the scene, hundreds of small enclosures, each one holding approximately 100 penguins. It is an astonishing sight.

Several thousand penguins have already been washed, and they cluster together, their distinct white and black markings beginning to emerge.

But it's the hundreds of thousands of as yet unwashed oil-covered birds which break your heart. Totally coated in the evil stuff, their movement is inhibited. Their feathers, small webbed feet, beaks and even their eyes are covered.

One shouldn't give birds anthropomorphic qualities, but these wild creatures stand quietly, seemingly with resigned dignity.

Tonight there are about 100 volunteers, a mix ranging from learners to grandparents.

Issued with thick oilskins, boots and gloves, the Cape conservation officials take us through the steps of emergency penguin care.

Washing, pen sluicing, fish sorting . . . my particular job is feeding these desperate penguins. Who have been covered in oil, taken from their breeding grounds, and their chicks because this is the breeding season. They have been brought to a strange place where they are vigorously washed (for oil does not come off easily).

Or they are still oil covered and helpless. Traumatised, they do not take food easily.

Sitting on crates, we grip the penguin firmly between our legs, try to pinion its frantically beating wings, stroke its jerking head, then grip the beak and slide in a fish. It sounds easier than it is.

The penguins are slippery and scared. The fish, defrosted, are equally slippery.

And then I get one down a throat and almost cry with relief. Four more follow in quick succession.

In my enclosure we are three helpers, perhaps 100 penguins.

Sometimes they are placid, at other times, they peck in fear.

The satisfaction when one gulps down a fish is immense.

My back is breaking, my arm muscles strained. Taking a break, I walk through the hangar-like warehouse.

Enclosure after enclosure is filled with these dinner-jacketed, appealing looking sea birds, virtually all showing traces of oil.

Here you see the magnitude of the disaster, the horror of the result. And these are the lucky penguins. Thousands have already perished. There are hundreds of thousands still to be rescued.

So what, you might think? Who cares? The fact is that these penguins are our heritage. Part of what makes us, as human beings, whole. As much as they need us, we need them.

Back to my enclosure where one pesky penguin keeps rejecting my fish. Over and over I stretch his neck, prise open his beak. He spits out the fish, bites my fingers.

Dammit, eat you little shit, I mutter to myself.

And then he does, this perfect, wild and glorious creature.

I put him down and pick up another equally wild bird.

We're winning, I think to myself.

These penguins will live to swim another day.

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