Annemarie:
Yes, we did reach the highest point in Ethiopia but it was a bit of a low point on our journey. I was sick and we were both a bit weary so we headed for Kenya and the very kind offer of a bed for a night or so with Deborah Kirby, sister of a my good friend Lindsay. She lives in Limuru, just north of Nairobi and as we hurtled south, being in Kenya again felt a bit like coming home as we retraced some of our steps. I had wanted to take pictures as we travelled, the people of the Samburu with their wonderful beaded neckwear, the stark rocky landscapes of northern Kenya softening into rich farmland with the backdrop of Mount Kenya. Most of it passed me by, I still felt too sick after my Moyale supper mistake to focus on anything let alone use my ‘camera fishing’ technique so my pics are pretty bad.
Everything changed once we got to Limuru though. Deborah and her gorgeous daughter Raquel and wonderful mum, Anne were brilliant at putting us back together again. We ate well, washed everything we owned, gave Hector a health check in a Nairobi garage and I even had a couple of glorious swims in local pools. Martin was tipped off about the ivory burning ceremony so managed a good journalistic day out and I met up with Maggie, an inspiring young woman who has set up AM Café in Nairobi (see my baking blogs for details).
In the end we stayed a week and the ‘grand finale’ was visit to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust centre for orphaned elephants. The young elephants arrive from all over Kenya and have various reasons for being orphaned, sometimes as simple as getting trapped in a well and separated from their mother, but tragically also through the adult elephants being killed by poachers. Poaching is still a problem despite the risk of heavy fines and the public condemnation by the Kenyan president himself. The shocking statistic quoted on the Sheldrick’s website states that:
“…at the current rate elephant poaching, with an estimated one elephant killed every 15 minutes for its ivory, a lack of action could see the loss of wild elephants in Africa by 2025.” I
It’s a wider issue I know, with some herds in Africa becoming so huge that culling is seen as a legitimate control mechanism but in other areas these incredible creatures are endangered. I’m not soppy about animals but when you realise it takes two years for a young elephant to even get its full set of teeth and that they don’t mature until around the age of 20 you can see they don’t have much chance to survive on their own. The Sheldrick Trust seems to do a great job, assigning an individual keeper to each orphan, letting them roam in the daytime in the bush, coming home each evening to sleep in the safety of a stable block. The youngest need food every three hours and after their day out, literally run in to get their evening milk, after which, within half an hour they fall asleep. Eventually they will be rehabilitated into the wild but this takes a number of years and in the meantime many people sponsor the orphans to provide their upkeep costs. We went home with three – yes I know the joke, two in the back and one on the roof!