And as a result, all sorts of elephant-related things have come my way--wonderful artwork, clothing, jewelry, books, magazine articles, and many many forwards to my email account. They are all very welcome, because of course my friends are right. I wasn't aware of having a thing for elephants before I went to Cambodia (well, nothing more than a mild twinge of admiration), but it's for sure that I have one since being in Cambodia.
One of the magazines that came my way was the National Geographic article about an orphan sanctuary for baby elephants in Kenya--The Sheldrick Foundation. I was so very moved to read about these young elephants whose mothers have mostly fallen victim to poaching for ivory [interesting fact to stash away: female Asian elephants don't have tusks, but female African elephants do, unfortunately for them].
How moved was I? Well, so moved that last year for Christmas I adopted on behalf of The Inalienables (my "group" of friends who have been mutually supportive, on a monthly basis, for nearly 20 years) a--you guessed it--a baby orphaned elephant from the Sheldrick Foundation. Her name is Mutara, and she is a charming, talented, warm-hearted young lady. Incidentally, each of us Inalienables has a little baby book with Mutara's baby pictures, certificate of adoption, etc. in it. OK, OK, I am well aware that it's more than a little weird.
But, how I longed to actually meet Mutara, and I found that WAS possible. The Sheldrick Foundation is located not too far from Nairobi and they do allow visitors daily and special visits daily for adoptive parents. You can be sure I checked, but they do not have the facilities to house volunteers--or that's for sure where I would be headed now.
So . . . I started to look into flights from Johannesburg to Nairobi and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were readily available, not all that expensive, and that, well, a visit was clearly do-able. I planned to do that right after my two week stint at Moholoholo and counted myself very lucky.
What I didn't know, though, was that on March 4, 2013, there will be a general election in Kenya, and I learned that election time is a bad time to visit almost any country, and "election time" includes at least a month both before and after the election.
Mutara is just going to have to do the rest of her growing up without my supervision.
