Elephant Orphans

This weekend I went to the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. They are only open to the public between 11am and 12pm for the baby elephant’s playtime. It was one of the most precious things I have ever seen. The elephants ran out to their play area and stole my heart. They began wrestling and climbing on top of each other. They looked like a bunch of really big, wrinkly, puppies playing in the mud. One little female elephant was my favorite. She was noticeably smaller than the rest of the elephant and just wanted to be included. She kept running up to the elephant like she was a little kid saying “play with me, play with me.” Unfortunately, if I tried to play with her she’d probably crush me.

The Beginning of Our Walk 

After watching the baby elephants play we decided to go to the animal orphanage. We thought it was only about a half hour walk so we decided to start walking down the street rather than wait for a matatu to come. We grossly misjudged the distance. It took us an hour and a half of walking in the sun, a stop for water, and another stop for directions until a white couple took pity on us and let us ride in their private matatu for the last leg of our journey. When we finally made it to our destination, we devoured lunch and then got our tickets for the animal orphanage.   

Monkeys!

    The park gave us a tour guide which I assumed was normal procedure until I realized that only white people had tour guides (the story of Kenya). I'm glad we had him though. He took us around to see cheetahs, lions, lion cubs, leopards, an ostrich and a lot of monkeys. He knew a little bit about each animal. He asked us if we wanted to pet the cheetahs. Of course I said yes. When else will I get the chance to pet cheetahs. He started making calls from his cell phone. We heard him ask a few people if we'd be allowed to. After all of his calls, he told us we could pet them if we paid the park ranger 500 Kenyan schillings (about $6) and paid each of the handlers a few hundred. At first I thought we had to pay them for the extra work they'd have to do but then I realized we'd be paying them to keep quite. Essentially, we'd have to bribe a handful of people. Although I would have loved a picture of me making friends with cheetahs, the thought of a CNN headline reading "AU Students Mauled to Death After Bribing Park Ranger to Enter Cheetah Cage" deterred me.   

         Despite our minor walking setback and being asked to bribe people, it was a truly wonderful day!