Witnessing Conservation Efforts: My Time at Nairobi’s Elephant Orphanage

Just when the clock hit 12 in the noon, elephants started arriving from the bush. Their ears flapping, trunks moving, and walking with baby steps, there were 20 baby elephants!

I was at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, a place that rescues orphaned elephants. It is an hour of watching the babies play in the mud, drink milk from big bottles, and take a shower.

Photographed by the author

We waited in the parking area. There was a queue of hundreds of visitors from all parts of the world. Gates open right before the elephants' bathing time, at 12. Walking to the viewing area, everyone moved quickly and stood around a rope barrier, eager to see the elephants. The caretakers stood ready with three-liter bottles of milk. The youngest elephants, just a few months old, grabbed the bottles with their tiny trunks and gulped down the milk. The older ones carried sticks around. Some splashed water from the mud, spraying many visitors (who seemed to enjoy this). This was a sheer reminder of how playful elephants like to be!

There was a man with a mic, demonstrating how each of the elephants was rescued. They all had unique names, unique characters, and very unique stories. Some had been found alone in dried-up riverbeds, while others had lost their mothers to poaching, starvation, or wilder beast attacks. This sanctuary rescued them to a place where they could heal, grow, and hopefully return to the wild one day.

As the feeding time ended, the elephants started heading back into the forest. Walking back to our car, we felt happy but also a little sad. Their stories were moving, yet their survival makes me happy—a lucky, full-of-life survival.