Saturday – Kwaheri (Goodbye)

Our room was very comfortable we were tired after a long day, we were well fed, but no one slept well Friday night. Maybe it was the anticipation of African withdrawal. We repacked all of our treasures amongst far too much dirty laundry and set off with John to see the sights on our last day in Africa. We had saved a few soccer balls that we had brought with us for the children of Kibare. Kibare is a slum of more than a million people used as the site of filming in “The Constant Gardener”. We toured the city on the way to the Sheldrick project for orphan elephants. We were there during the one visiting hour of the week – Saturday from 11am-12pm. They bottle feed each of these elephants one or two 4 liter bottles of SMA (human baby formula). Cow’s milk isn’t well matched, and it is very hazardous to try to milk mother elephants. After breakfast they played and rolled in the mud, before venturing back to the Nairobi Game Park.

Next was the Giraffe Park. There were about a dozen giraffe that gathered by a simple fence to be fed by visitors to the park. Attendants passed out handfuls of feed and the giraffe would take one pellet at a time from your hand (or lips) using his 10 inch slender blue tongue. They could form a tight curl with their tongue to lift a pellet from an open palm. A few giraffe would deliver a “head butt” if they felt your attention was elsewhere. Each patron was to feed only 2 handfuls of pellets as the giraffe were on a diet. Somehow giraffe diets seems as easy to keep as the ones that I have tried. It was great fun.