Last summer we enjoyed a thrilling three-week trip to Kenya and Tanzania, which you will be reading about in this space in the next few issues of Stroll. One of our first stops was a very unusual one in Nairobi, Kenya: the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is a haven and “re-wilding” center for orphaned elephants and rhinos. 

The place is currently home to two rhinos and 22 elephants. Petting a baby rhino was definitely a first for us. You will not be surprised to learn that their skin feels like thick stiff leather.

The way Sheldrick operates is that they rush to the scene when they get a report of an orphaned or trapped animal, e.g., a baby whose mother was caught in a trap and died, the baby remaining at her side. The center staff has to move quickly since the juvenile may only survive for hours. At the haven, each animal is assigned two handlers who feed it, arrange medical treatment, and gradually start reintroducing the animal back into the wild by taking it on day trips, then eventually nighttime trips, then eventually half-day “solo missions”, until the animal eventually itself decides that it is comfortable out in the wild — and found protection in a new herd — and simply doesn’t come home one day. The process can take up to five years. 

The elephants were sort of nudged along around the enclosure by the handlers but mostly moved along the edge on their own, affording us multiple opportunities to pet them as they ambled by (or occasionally kind of pushed the envelope and nudged into the crowd). Elephant skin is rough and coarsely textured, though the area directly behind their ears is soft. 

A day or so later we visited the Giraffe Centre, which analogously to Shadrick raises and rehomes giraffes. There are three species of giraffe in Kenya: “Rothschild” in the north, “Reticulated” in the central latitudes around the equator, and “Maasai” in the south. The Centre works solely with Rothschild giraffes, which are by far the rarest. (You have in all likelihood only ever seen the reticulated variety in zoos outside of Kenya.) The Centre raises them until they are mature enough to go out into the wild; the population dynamics are such that a family consists of one male and six females.

We were given little cups of giraffe snacks — compressed pellets variously of grass or grains — and simply waited by raised platforms for the giraffes to show up for the treats, which they did in quite some numbers. (The treats are not a significant part of their diet, which is leaves and grasses.)  

Once you’ve used up your supply of treats, you are strongly advised to step back: if the giraffe gets angry by the cessation of your generosity, he or she will head-butt you. And when you’ve got a head that big on a neck that long, that can pack a wallop, as our groupmate Kim found out the hard way. But in fairness, we were warned: there are signs warning of giraffe headbutts scattered about!