dedicated to the animals

A real day in Nairobi also showed us the real beautiful side of Africa. The animals. The show all sorts of love, too, as baby elephants petted their care-takers with their trunks, Daisy the giraffe gave me a kiss and the cheetah didn’t try to jump over the electric fence to eat me.

Jami and I gathered all of our things from one hotel room and transferred it to another one down the street. For 100KSHS more, we have internet ALL day long! Woohoo! Our new friend, ACC brother and tour guide for the day wasn’t able to hook us up with a place near him, but all is well. We’re close to the city center so we can go explore “city” life to the fullest extent tomorrow. Today was dedicated to the animals.

We started at the elephant orphanage. A vet and lover of animals discovered the problem with elephants disappearing, like many of the wild animals in Africa. The white rhino, elephant, giraffe and many others are being poached to extinction, dying from loss of habitat and suffering tremendously under global warming. The care-takers at the orphanage, over a dozen guys, told us stories about the individual elephants. A elephant therapist would be ever busy with this bunch. They spoke of babies getting stuck in the mud and watching their mom walk away without even one attempt in getting them out. Another lost its tail and bits of the ear to bigger animals until the rangers discovered the poor baby. The elephants had to be wrapped in blankets and sleep on cots to mimic the comfort and warmth they would get in the wild from their mom. And boy did they enjoy the milk. Baby things are so funny in general- how they walk, eat, work with their limbs and try to get away with things when they think no one is watching. One elephant stepped on his trunk, at first because I thought he was going through puberty and didn’t know how to deal with his extra long “limbs.” Then I realized he was just picking his nose. Kids will be kids.

A huge rhino came ambling by with the air of seniority and ownership of the place. As we came to find out, male rhinos are very territorial and mark their area with dung so the fact that he grew up in the cell next door to the elephants explains his airs and graces.

The giraffe rescue was next on the list. This refuge cares for endangered giraffes, gives them space to breed and an extended life time with the extra shade trees for them to live 10 years longer than in the wild.

We ventured out on a nature trail, the “natural habitat” for the giraffes at night. They close the road for the giraffe crossing at 5:30pm. Imagine hitting one- it would be like hitting a tree that was just about to fall over. Yikes! Ranger Abdul met us along the way and introduced us to various plants, dry rivers and even a hidden leopard cage. He was pretty proud that he could take us off roading to this rarely seen specimen of the forest. Apparently the leopards have moved from the near by Nairobi National Park to find dinner. A tall order for sure.

Finally it was lunch time. Being in a touristy, commercial area we had no trouble finding a place that served hamburgers and chicken sandwiches. I haven’t seen McDonald’s, truly a thanksgiving, but I felt almost as guilty eating here. Oh well, I can pretend it was international food in Africa. My other option was Mexican next door...um? Charles, Jami and I had a great conversation about aid in Africa, his goals post college, and the future in Kenyan politics.

For our final stop we went on a safari walk. It was a simple tour of the Nairobi National Park, similar to a zoo. There we saw ostriches, wildebeests, albino zebras (it looks like butterscotch syrup on vanilla ice cream), leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles, and lions. I tried out my croc hunter accent but didn’t quite gather a crowd. Probably because the crocs were sleeping and no one else was in the park, at least no one who spoke English/Australian. Overall, it was an awesome outing, a perfect day to enjoy creation at its finest…and silliest.