Kissing giraffes and other dirty things.

After a long trip we arrived in Nairobi at dawn this morning. Coyle walked off the plane and started asking everyone where the trees were. Apparently all of Africa is full of trees. I guess mommy had better work on his geography skills. There were animal statues all around the airport so Coyle thought  we should just live in the airport but I convinced him there was even more to see if we left. This is Coyle’s 4th continent and I will never get over watching his face as he tries to understand a place so different from home.

This morning we had the opportunity to see two amazing animal sanctuaries that are doing really good work. First we visited the giraffe center which is working on breeding the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe as well as conservation education. Coyle has been dying to see giraffes so he was so excited. Somehow I brought up months ago about a story I saw of someone kissing a giraffe. So anyway this became a thing until Coyle really thought I wanted a kiss from a giraffe. Well I was up for it till I learned it was not just putting your head next to a giraffe and snapping a picture. Oh no. It is way more involved than that. You have to put a pellet of their food between your lips and let them take it out 🤢But this morning I started to think - well when in Kenya... So yup. You guessed it. I kissed a giraffe and there is photographic evidence.

 I’m pretty sure neither one of us was impressed by that experience!  After all that Coyle was also unimpressed and he just keeps saying “mommy that was giraffe food - you’re not a giraffe, why’d you put it in your mouth?”

The second place we visited was the Sheldrick elephant and rhino orphanage. They rescue orphaned elephants and rhinos throughout Kenya. They currently have 15 young elephants that they are working to rehabilitate and return to the wild. For one hour a day the orphanage is open to the public to watch a feeding and learn a little bit about the projects they have around the country. We saw 13 elephants-many of who were still under 2 years old and were being bottle fed. Apparently after decades of research they found the best food for baby elephants is human baby formula but these big guys are fed every 3 hours around the clock and drink about 24 liters of formula a day - and I thought Coyle was an expensive baby!

What was incredibly sad was that most of these elephants were orphaned due to human interactions - poaching, mining (several were rescued from mine shafts or wells) and drought caused by over farming. The trust does a lot of work with education and political advocacy in the hopes of saving these elephants. The reintegration process takes years and years as they have to move the elephants out of the nursery to a game range outside the city and work with them until they are accepted into a new elephant family. Interestingly they have decided not to microchip them or track the
 In any way once they are released into the wild because they don’t want to interfere with their natural life. However they said that it’s true that an elephant never forgets and every year they have formerly orphaned female elephants bringing their babies to the game range (which borders on the national park area where they are released) to show them off to the staff who took care of them when they were young.
During the lecture Coyle was right in there taking pictures like the tourist he is!  We also learned that a baby elephants two favorite things to do are eat and play in the dirt. Apparently Coyle is secretly a baby elephant. He is loving the red Kenyan soil and would have played in it all afternoon if I let him!