The things we learned today!

We went to bed last night with the best intentions: to wake up, do some stretching and exercise, come have some coffee and breakfast at our now favorite coffee shop (where we have done all of our corresponding) and come back in due time to shower and leave for our trip to see the baby elephant orphans and feed the wild giraffes. The day was to begin at 7:30. To our surprise, we awoke at 4:15 to some distracting noises and struggled to fall back asleep until about 6:00. Well, we were then woken up by our guide, Horence, wondering where we were and warning us that we will miss the baby elephants if we don't hurry. It was 9:46. So, in a rush, we get our clothes together and head out the door.

First, Linus, our driver, takes us to the The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust: A Haven for Elephants and Rhinos. We pull into the long, gravel drive to be greeted by a family of friendly monkeys hanging out in the trees. Once we pull into the parking lot we find small tribes of mzungu each escorted by their appointed Kenya leader. The feeding of the baby orphans started at 11:00. We were just in time to file in with the rest of the small groups and find a place along a roped off viewing area. In came six baby elephants. None taller than Katie and I. The were fed by their keepers, 24-48 pints of imported human baby formula from Great Britain. The elephant keepers than recited their information about elephant orphans, life in the wild, and unique features of elephant care. 


Elephants can become orphaned for many reasons, but the causes boil down to three main issues. Elephant poaching is still a problem and becoming an increasing issue as ivory and game mean has become more and more valuable. Therefore, as poachers kill off the adults for their tusks and meat, typically snaring them with trip wire, the children elephants become orphaned. Secondly, elephants have become endangered (as Simon Hoffer could likely tell you) because of the drought that Kenya has seen over the last years. In particular, a few of the orphaned elephants we saw were found at the bottom of dried up wells! Quite sad. Lastly, elephants have become orphaned due to trouble interaction with humans, fighting over land and resources. The Sheldrick Trust is then established to take these orphaned animals in and reintroduce the to wild. 


However, this reintroduction can be very hard and takes a couple years due to the wild life of elephants and their unique features. Clare Henry, this part is for you! Elephants are hard to reintroduce into the wild because they are very emotional and highly social animals. Firstly, becoming an orphan can be traumatic, and many orphans have been known to die in the first few days of coming to the orphanage due to the stress they have undergone in becoming orphaned. One elephant we saw was much more grey than the rest and had a blanket tied around it. We learned that this elephant was one of the newest and was very sad to be an orphan. He needed extra warmth to encourage him to stay well; the other elephants were also aware of his sadness and often huddled around him to bring him friendship. 


We also learned the these elephants have a hard time being reintroduced because of the strong, maternal connection that they have lost in becoming orphans. They develop much like humans. The females mature in their early teens and then begin to have babies. However, much like we do, elephants look to their family to find out how to act and how to raise their young. They have a very strong familial connection. Unlike humans, it is the females who establish leadership in the herd because the men leave the herd to establish dominance among the other males to determine who is the best to mate. Talk about natural selection! To find out who is the strongest, the males will play games that look aggressive, but the weaker elephant is quickly revealed and backs down. We also learned that, in keeping with the emotional nature of elephants, they are among a hand full of mammals who burry their dead and can often be found tracking back to those burial sites. 


Because of these emotional and familial features of elephants, the Center is careful to phase the elephants from human and individualized care to allow them build relations with other orphaned and wild elephants until they choose to become wild. This process takes from two to five years. However, they center has seen some great success! 


After this wonderful elephant interaction, we were excited to head to the giraffe refuge where we were excited to get to feed giraffes and see them interact in the wild. The refuge is set up as a learning facility to both care for endangered giraffes and teach native students and teachers about taking care of the environments. Feeing them was quite fun. Their tongues can be 18 inches long and feel like slimy sand paper. We fed them small pellets and got to hug and pet them as we did. At their feet, small wart hogs, like Pumba from The Lion King, were frolicking and play fighting with one another. 


We then sat and listened to a short seminar about giraffes, where we learned that there are three types of giraffes found in Kenya. The Reticulated Giraffes have whiter backgrounds and reddish spots are found in Northern Kenya. The Massi Giraffes are the most common in Kenya. They have an orange coat with dusty red spots that go all the way down to heir hooves. These are the giraffes that we will see on our safari tomorrow. Lastly, the refuge housed Rothschild Giraffes who also have red and orange coloring. However, the Rothschild Giraffes have spots only to their knees and whiter markings on their chests. The females have 3 horns and males have 5. They are found in western Kenya and Uganda. 


We also learned a slew of facts about giraffes:: 

• Their lifespan in the wild is 10-15 years. 
• They are able to have kids at age 5. 
• Baby giraffes stay in their mom's tummy for 15 months. 
• Males, called bulls, can grow to be 16-18 feet tall. 
• Females, called cows, grow to be 14-16 feet tall. 
• Babies are born 5 ft tall. 
• At full grown, a giraffes heart weighs 25 lbs and pumps 20 gallons of blood every minute. 
• They sleep between 5 and 30 minutes every 24 hours. 
• Giraffes live with between 2 and 50 other animals. 
• Their most common predators are Lions, Hyenas, and leopards. 
• Their best defense is their kick. Because their legs are so long and strong, a single kick and kill an adult lion with one strike!

WOW!!!

It was quite fascinating! 

After all our learning, and again fawning over the beautiful school children that were visiting, too, We loaded up with Linus to head back to the hostel. But with some disappointment we checked out math only to find that the guide had overestimated our entry fee price by about 200% and we found that we had in fact quite overpaid our driver. Well, with great frustration we voiced our disappointment with both the driver and our guide saying that we felt quite taken advantage of! A frustrating way to end such a fun and learning morning! 

At this point, we did what any proper American would do, we sat down for a good lunch! Guess what, it did the trick!!! With full stomachs we met our hostel neighbor, a wise Swedish woman who had come five years ago and lived for a year at our hostel. With her, we walked to a guarded park and heard about Inger's life, advice, experiences and reactions to her time in Kenya. It was wonderful to hear about her cautions to us, her family values, and her hope for our future work in the Kibera slum! I greatly value the time she spent with us and wisdom she shared! 

All in all, another wonderful day in this friendly and slow-paced city! 

We are leaving tomorrow for our Safari and would love to hear questions and comments! We have learned to much over the past year working at the Logan School and hope to pass it forward by way of our time here! Please let us know of anything you may wonder or want us to find out as we head into our Safari! 

Hope all is well in Denver!