Saturday and Sunday were both big days from activity perspective.
Saturday, as written we met with the team at 8 am at the breakfast (after 3.5 - 4 h sleep) and started the the sightseeing tour towards the elephant orphanage.
We saw elephants, which have been found abandoned all around Kenya. Mostly the reason is that their mother was killed for her ivory horns. The guide was saying that if people would only stop buying anything, which is made of ivory...the marked for ivory products would disappear. It did make me bit sad that we, people, are the main cause for those cute "kiddo" elephants being orphans.
One of then was only 11 months old and had to wear a blanket, as African-elephants will catch very easily a pneumonia if their body temperature gets too cold. Normally the mother provides for the warmth, but in this case the blanket is put over the little elephant in the hope of keeping it warm enough.
The found baby elephants are kept in the facility till they are 2. They drink about 24 liter of baby milk mixture. One cannot give them e.g. cow milk, as it's too fatty. Elephants' natural body fat is very low and even their skin is very sensitive.
The guide said that it takes the elephants long to get back in the wild to the society. Elephants are very family / group oriented and a newcomer will need to win the others' trust one by one.
After the elephants we continued our exploring in the animal world; we visited the giraffe center. One could feed the giraffes there...and it was funny ;o) The giraffe was pretty much swallowing my whole hand into its slimy mouth ;O))) Giraffes' have an antibacterial saliva. As such that was as good as antibacterial hand wash ;o) but it did not convince any of us not to wash one's hands after that ;O)) Such elegant creatures they are. Seeing them running or hovering around made my stunned...just with few steps they were meters away. The body of giraffe looks like the blueprint was not properly done, when that was drafted...yet they move so smoothly and gracefully. It does also feel funny when feeding the giraffe...as it grabs the hand into its mouth and licks it thoroughly with its super big tongue ;o))
We also went to explore the bird sanctuary and came to the conclusion that if a park has 5 birds, it can be called bird sanctuary ;o) Sugandha spotted all 5 + squirrel with her "norsu-lense" (the lense is nearly as big as elephant). We took few minutes meditation time by the small river running through the park.
After lunch, on the way back we met a group of school children, who were super cute. They had spent the day in the park having fun.
To make sure that the day stayed busy, after the tourist trip we had the welcoming dinner on Saturday evening. The whole group had come together on that very day and there we sat already, like we had known each other for ages. Muriuki, the program director from Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) said that he could not believe that we all just met each other.
On Sunday morning 10k run first, after all I am in the land of the runners. So, need to keep up my weekly running schedule. You never know, my running speed my improve here ;o)
After morning exercise time to get the insights to the country. Muriuki and Alex shared with us history of Kenya, about the 42 tribes and how the tribal areas are nowadays formed as counties. He walked us through also the impact of the neighboring countries to the border areas - mainly Somalia and Ethiopia. Kenya considers Tanzania to be like their sibling-country.
There are tribes in the backwoods, without much knowledge of how the world looks today. They also don't recognize themselves as Kenyans necessarily. That is what Kenya wants to change; make all the tribes to become also proud of being Kenyans.
The whole session was really interesting and gave new insights, new thoughts about Kenya and how things work here.
In the afternoon we went to Bomas village (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomas_of_Kenya). It displays the different villages of the different tribes. We found it amusing how there was own hut for 1st, 2nd and 3rd wife. It is still allowed in Kenya to have more than one wife. Around Nairobi this culture is changing though. We saw also 2 hours of dance and music performances, glimpse of the different tribal dances. Muriuki shared that when dancers shake mainly their shoulders - they are from the North, when they shake their hips - they are from the South. I counted 1+1 and now I know why the population density is higher in the south than in the north ;o))))
Today is a big day for us, we will be presenting our work plans to our clients...we took over the breakfast room yesterday evening and prepared ourselves.
So, keep the thumbs up for our team today ;O)
I will load the photos tonight...there are loads of those.
#ibmcsc kenya 3
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