Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Jet lag kicked us both out of bed pretty early, so we took our time getting ready and went for a coffee just up the road while we waited for Maxwell, a driver we hired for the day!

We had a jam packed list of stuff to check out all over the city, so it felt like the right day to have someone take us to and fro and give us all the context we might otherwise miss. I was practically skipping on the way out the door because we were starting with the Sheldrick Foundation which is a BABY ELEPHANT SANCTUARY. Best. Day. Ever?

The foundation hosts short viewings of the babies once a day and gives a talk on the founders and the way they raise funds. I have to tell you though… I’m going to need to look all that info up later because I could not concentrate at all while 14 baby elephants stampeded down the hill towards us. Tooting their horns and rushing in for the bottles of baby formula the handlers had at the ready, they ranged from 4 months to 3.5 years old. I did catch that no elephant stays at the sanctuary for longer than 3 years, or past age 4 if they are healthy and ready to be reintroduced to the wild. They told us each individual elephants rescue story, most of which were due to animal-human conflict rather than natural causes. The babies all ate food, played in the bright red dirt, sloshed in a little watering hole and interacted with each other just feet from us!

They also host rhinos and currently only have one, but we weren’t allowed to see him because he is blind and they said that crowds of unknown people stress him out. Same buddy, same.

It was over all too soon, but the day was still fresh! Both Pauline and I were excited about seeing the women owned, run and operated handmade bead factory, Kobe Tough. A woman guided just the two of us through the whole operation, from mixing the clay, shaping the beads, glazing, firing, painting and creating their beautiful jewelry. Bead work is not usually my style but I just loved some of the designs so much I couldn’t help myself.

Starving, we had Max drop us for lunch at a very boujee restaurant called Cultiva. It was like half indoor half outdoor seasonal ingredients only, farm to table type fare. The menu was organized into sections like farmer, fisher, hunter, and gatherer. I am not 100% certain what I ate, other than there were carrots involved, but it was delicious.

We stayed for a while and chatted about what we had seen so far in the morning, and caught up on life as we hadn’t really had a chance to do that yet. Earlier in the day Max drove by the largest slum in the city, Kibera, and I wanted to talk to Pauline about it… but wasn’t sure what to even ask or how to ask it. It didn’t feel right to take any photos as we drove by, and I don’t want to do a tour… but I have questions and am curious. What I do know is that it is the biggest urban slum in Africa and has somewhere between 750,000 – 1M people living there without access to clean water, electricity or medical care. Apparently it’s extremely difficult for the city to get a solid estimate of how many people actually live there. The corrugated tin roofs stretched over 2.5 square kilometres, further than I could see, and I just struggle to comprehend that this is reality for so many people. We’ve agreed that one evening we should ferret out a documentary to learn more about it.

It was jarring to hop back into the excitement of the day but there is much to see! In a battle with the elephants for my favourite stop of the day, we went to a Giraffe sanctuary and I think I may have found what heaven is like… turns out it includes head-butting giraffes. They gave us a little cup of food when we entered and I immediately freaked out. I didn’t know we got to feed them!!! Their purple sandpaper tongues licked little pellets out of our grasp and I think I might have blacked out. I was not at all scared… but panic and extreme joy is the best way I can describe what I was feeling being that close to them. One older giraffe, Daisy, would head-butt you if you go too close without feeding her, and she didn’t particularly like children! There was a beleaguered employee putting in a lot of effort to keep dumb tourists from getting knocked over by Daisy, who was getting those food pellets one way or another.

We were both starting to peter out from the jet lag, so around 5 PM we had Max drop us back at home for a little R&R. Pauline was barely through the doorway before she was falling into bed, and I immediately sat down in my cozy balcony spot to get some writing time in and attempt not to fall asleep. We mustered up the energy to go to dinner at Beit é Selam, an Ethiopian restaurant that is, apparently, incredibly easy to over eat at. We sat for hours chatting under the string lights and before we knew it, it was 10:30! That’s an appropriate time for sleep, thank goodness.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

Sav