Our day started off with (what else) a little confusion. As I've mentioned previously, it has been fairly confusing communicating with so many different people from abroad over the past few weeks. It also doesn't help when you give a tour guide the wrong date that you want to take a tour of the city! OOPS! Regardless, the person I had been speaking with, Francis, was able to set up a last minute tour guide, Tony, to drive us around the city for the day.
Tony arrived around 8:30 am and promptly took us to breakfast. Which was good since we were famished after basically only eating airplane and airport food for a solid 24 hours previously. Breakfast was...well... pretty amazing. We stopped at a little cafe which looked a little on the pricy side ($8.50 for omelets)...but that's because we had no idea of the food that would be arriving for us...
I mean. Seriously. About $20 for everything you see here. Needless to say we were no longer hungry!
Our next stop was the grocery store for a few quick items before heading to.... the elephant orphanage!! We arrived at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage around 10:30 am for an 11 am opening. They only open the center for 1 hour a day so that the elephants don't get too used to having people around. The orphanage can house up to 27 baby elephants at a time, who are rescued from the wild when they are found injured or abandoned. Many of the elephants had clear cuts on their legs from snares, holes from spears, and injuries they had sustained from falling into wells. The orphanage takes them in, cares for them for a period of 5-10 years, depending on when they are ready, and then they are rereleased into the wild. Pretty wonderful :)
I honestly didn't know what to expect upon arrival. They basically had a ring of rope set up and let the baby elephants roam free inside of it. We got to watch them feed from bottles provided by their caretakers, roll around in a big pool of mud, and play with one another. And IT. WAS. ADORABLE.
After a little while, the caretakers brought the elephants around the ring and we got to pet them!! It was pretty much a life goal/highlight for me (for those of you who don't know, elefantes are my FAVORITE animals :).)
Next up was the Giraffe Center, where we got to learn about giraffes and then feed them. Some of us also may have put the pellet in our lips and been kissed by a giraffe! Three guesses on who that was ;-)
I know this is going to be a fairly obvious statement, but MAN giraffes are tall! We saw Rothchild giraffes (which are endangered) at the center, which can grow up to 5 meters, although there are 3 different species of giraffe in Kenya (distinguishable by their markings), one of which, the Masai Giraffe, can grow up to 6 meters tall!
Some fun giraffe facts:
- Giraffes hearts are located between their front two legs and can be about a square foot in diameter.
- Giraffes tibias don't have marrow in them, they are solid bone! We got to hold one and I can tell you they are HEAVY.
- Because of their heavy tibias, their kicks are lethal - which is why most other animals, especially those that hunt alone, tend to stay away.
- Giraffes get most of their water from the leaves they eat. This is because they are most susceptible to attack while drinking water since they need to bend their front legs and extend their neck.
- Giraffes only sleep for 5-30 minutes A DAY, and in 5 minute increments, WHILE STANDING WITH THEIR EYES OPEN. WHAAATTTT. They do this because their brains are still alert and they can tell if predators are coming.
After the Giraffe Center, Jon and I headed to Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya (and I believe all of East Africa). Kenya has a population of about 40 million people, over 1 million of whom live in Kibera on less than $1 a day. When we arrived in Kibera, we were greeted by Victor and Martin, who kindly gave us a tour around the slum, helping us to better understand what we were seeing. Victor explained (in his, and many other locals opinions) that Kibera is a very intersting piece of Kenya in that political candidates use it as a pawn in their election promises in order to get the masses to bring them to power. He took us around the area, pointing out facts about how people live. For example, since no one has running water in their homes, you can pay 10 ksh (which equates in USD to 1/10 of a penny) to use the restroom and 20 ksh to take a shower. Some people will also take buckets of charcoal and, to make it more affordable, mix it with other materials and charge a much lower fee for usage.
Victor and I also talked about the current infrastructure of Kibera and what is needed to make it a better place for its citizens. I asked him what the number 1 thing he would change about Kibera is and he answered without hesitation: housing. If citizens can have reliable housing with running water, it will eliminate a lot of the issues the city currently faces, including rampant littering, which is currently polluting the waterways in the area and leading to high rates of cholera. While we were there, a water pipe to the city had burst and there was water flowing into the street. Children had taken to gathering buckets of the water because it was free. But the water was actually running into the city for the restrooms and was not actually potable. However, because it was free, the children were gathering it to drink. Victor's response also suggested that suitable houses would provide city dwellers with a sense of pride in their homes, and help them to recognize the importance of cleaning up/recycling goods, which would in turn lead to cleaner overall conditions and less disease. He also mentioned that several NGOs have come in to the area, but have been less than successful, mostly because they do not actually work WITH the community to uncover their needs, but rather provide what they think people need. He said that several have started to be more successful recently, providing job training in order to bolster the economic infrastructure and helping residents learn skills, which they can turn into jobs and eventually into small businesses. Overall, it was a really eye opening experience and we're quite grateful to Victor and Martin for showing us a different part of the city.
After walking around Kibera, Victor took us to Paradise Children's Home, an orphanage located in the heart of Kibera. The home houses 45 children between 4 months and 17 years and 9 full grown adults, in THREE ROOMS, which combined couldn't have been bigger than 500 square feet (or, for those of you who are size-challenged like myself, about the size of Mark's apartment at our house on Mickey Court). In addition, for all 54 of those people, there was a grand total of 10 beds.
10 beds. For 54 people. Pretty unreal.
After visiting the home, we headed back into the city to the National Museum of Kenya. The museum houses some interesting artifacts, including one of the oldest collections of human remains...which was pretty fascinating to see. It is also comprised of a snake house, which showed us all the super scary snakes we'll be sure to avoid on safari for the next 3 weeks ;).
After the museum (and basically falling asleep from exhaustion), we went to dinner at Pampa Plaza, a Brazilian restaurant. You're given a card, one side red, one side green, and you flip over the card to green whenever you want more cooked meats brought to you, and red when you have had enough. Everything was pretty good, although I had been told there was crocodile meat, which I was very curious to try, although alas! There was none. Hopefully we get another opportunity to try it somewhere along our journey!
Honestly, yesterday was so much more than we could have asked for for the first day of our travels. Looking forward to 90-something more amazing days!!!
Jess' and Jon's highlights of the day: petting baby elephants!
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