Well well well, what a day!

Today we set off to visit the Elephant orphanage on the other side of town. It is called the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (http://sheldrickwildlifetrust.org) and at at the moment they have 13 baby orphaned elephants in their care. (just put car by mistake - that would be interesting - fitting 13 small elephants into a car ahahahahah anyway ahem) Being the soft touch that I am seeing these small elephants made me literally go weak at the knees. They raise them until they are two years old and then re-introduce them into Tsavo East national park (as opposed to Tsavo West - the one that tourists usually visit). They have been going for years now, and whilst the elephants have a 50% chance of surviving whilst at the orphanage - once in the wild again they do really really well. It's always disheartening to see animals that will have to spend the rest of their lives in capitivity for human reasons such as keeping baby cheetahs as pets etc meaning they'd never be able to fend for themselves with the same instincts as a normal wild cheetah.

Their oldest elephant is 2 years old and the youngest is ONE MONTH. awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

It was so so tiny (well, it's an elephant I guess it's all relative. you'd be a bit shocked if a human baby was 3 foot tall but still...) they only let visitors in between the hours of 11 and 12 to reduce the amount of human contact they have. Whilst the keepers have a lot of interaction with them - it is all done in the way the elephant's mother would have. They wear blankets to keep them warm as their mother would normally do that (being about 7 times bigger!). They have to keep them warm as pneumonia is the number one killer in baby elephants; of the elephants the orphanage has lost - about 90% die from pneumonia. They also put tarpaulin over them when it rains for the same reason and they sleep in stables with a mattress and blanket! They get fed every 3 hours with milk - in fact the closest to elephant milk that is around is the SMA formula milk given to human babies. It is vegetable based and therefore closer to the milk produced by an elephant than any of the other formulas around. The keepers rotate their time spent with each elephant so that they (the elephants) don't get attached to any one keeper.

Anyway. the elephants were so unbelievably cute - even when they were rolling around in the mud and squirting me...ugh. Still cute though! They made several bids for freedom by trying to crawl through the crowd much to everyone's delight but to no avail they were recaptured and fed more milk (it's a hard life eh?!) And I spent a good quarter of an hour playing with this 1 year old elephant who liked exploring my arms with his trunk (and I thus proceeded to get covered in red mud ... mmmm) and it was so exhilerating stroking and petting a "small" elephant! First the cheetahs, now the elephants...I better not get any ideas like this whilst i'm in the mara or else I might get my head bitten off. Quite literally...

It was 35 degrees C this morning whilst at the elephants and we set off to have lunch up at the club and enjoy a cooling afternoon spent in the ice cold swimming pool. However! It soon clouded over, temperatures had dropped to 14 degrees C (brrrrr freezing) and following the thunder and torrential rain with lightning came the .... HAIL. what the HELL?! Massive humungous balls of hail that were falling out of the sky like some torrid rainfall. The majority of cars pulled off the road to sit it out and the remainder of cars drove at 5kph with their hazard lights on. It was like footage you see of hurricanes in florida where all the trees are leaning scarily horizontally and leaves blowing sideways 6 foot in the air... Global warming anyone...?

The even scarier news is that I am now in my 7th week here and just over half way through my trip. In 6 weeks time I should be safely back home regaling the by-then-boring anecdotes that will dominate my conversation for the next 3 months. Hurrah!