Before your mind goes off wandering off on scenes of unplanned parenthood and the adventures of a liberated and sexy mind, I am the proud father to a 8 month old baby elephant. Well, I suppose that made it worse, saying that without context. I am going to continue anyways and assume you are too.
In the midst of the bustling metropolis that is Nairobi, there is the National Park Nairobi and adjoining is the Estate of the Late Mr. David Sheldrick which has been converted into an Orphanage for Baby Elephants. Run by his late wife, the beautiful Dame Daphne Sheldrick, the place was started as a research center on elephants and matured into a haven for the unfortunate victims of Elephant Poaching, the babies that are left behind when the mums and the dads are killed for their ivory.
A quick side note here, although the rest of the ladies in the herd care and provide for the orphaned children but mama elephants reserve their milk only for their own offspring. Now an elephant baby like any mammal, is dependent completely on the mothers' milk for survival. As a result the baby orphans ended up dying. The well meaning efforts of the gentle Swahili speaking folk of Kenya were falling flat as well, as these guys were trying to use cow milk to feed them. Now what we need to understand here is cow milk is much thicker in consistency than the elephant milk and indigestible by the baby elephant calf.
That is where years of work by Dame Daphne and her team came as a ray of hope, they with years of careful experimentation and trial & error have been able to develop an elephant milk substitute. Sort of like a cerelac for baby elephants, yeah Science.
The Orphanage Program
And thus was born the Idea of the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. 25 years and 130 orphans later, Dame Daphne who is 77 now is an authority on the subject and rightly called "Mama Elephant". Which still leaves us with the question, how did I end up fostering one of them babies and what does that even mean.
Before we go into that, let me build a little perspective on the beautiful and amazing creatures that these little buggers are. Elephants are unlike any other mammals in the sense that they have full grown personalities just like us and yes they never forget. So according to the keepers there are funny elephants, naughty elephants, mean elephants and romantic elephants as well. I got a distinct feeling that my baby, Barsilinga, is quite sarcastic. He takes after his dad there.
The Alumni Network
Now the way Daphne and team have structured the program is, that the elephants once strong enough and weaned off the milk and ready to forage and live are slowly re-acclimatized to the wild and they go on to live in the wild with their own herds or even go on to lead new herds. And guess who helps the new batches get used to the real world, the alumni of course. Yes, you read it correctly.
Every year at graduation time, when the human keepers take the fresh graduates to the base camp near the forest for slow re introduction to the wild, the previous batches are sure to make an appearance and infact take the guys out for a stroll in the wild bringing them back by evenings. Another testimony to the fact of an Elephants memory, there have been multiple instances of full grown African Elephants returning back to the orphanage from the wild, covering hundreds of miles just to meet their keepers and show off their wives and babies to their keepers. A lot of them go on to lead their own herds in the wild telling us that this institution seems to be doing a fine job. I mean the alumni are going places aren't they.
Meeting Barsilinga
They say, you must first address the elephant in the room. I have spent quite some time not doing that and that infact was a conscious call, it wouldn't have been fair to the majestic beauties that these babies are. Dare say, safely having been built the background, I can come back to the piece de resistance then, my baby boy, the apple of my eye; Barsilinga. Shy at first, he is starting to grow into me.
Another great thing when you visit the place is the one hour session every morning, when they bring the babies out for their daily bath and breakfast. The keepers tell their stories to huddled kids, tourists and visitors while the babies play around in the mud, drink from their bottles and eat the softer leaves. Considering these guys digest only about 40% of what they eat, they eat a lot. And we are not complaining, cos it is a treat to watch. Especially to see them drink milk from their specially made bottles it's just precious and anyone who says it does not move them is either lying or is John Wayne (In which case, you should make sure to ask them dude I thought you died, where the f*** were you.)
As any other tourist, I wandered in for a few hours for an experience never to realize I would never fully come back from the place leaving behind a piece of me there. As any other touristy group, a bunch of dutch chicks were trying to get the babies to come over using leaves and branches. The smallest of the bunch, Barsilinga dressed in his quilt (he is still a little fragile and gets cold very easily, in the wild the mommy would keep them under their body all the time, here it is a quilt) came over to check it out. Looked at the branch, shot an unimpressed look and turned back with a wink in his eye. That's when I knew, that we were going to be friends. (In my mind, his thought process went like this: seriously lady, you got like 3 leaves left on that branch. Are you kidding me with that. I am gonna get back to my milk now. Thanks for nothing really.)
Fostering a Baby Elephant
After the one hour session, I went to the keepers and enquired about fostering Barsilinga, a few forms and a celebratory hug later (Ok, they don't really allow that on the first meeting, I checked) we were family. Since then I have visited him two times, even got to tuck him in bed once (like I said, they are just like human babies and have insomnia and nightmares). Sometimes the keepers have to sing to them and rub their bellies till they fall asleep (Well, I don't remember, but mum tells me I was exactly like that, infact I do still appreciate a good belly rub, but please do ask permission once before you do so). He is still scared of humans though (having seen his mum murdered in front of him by people like us), and you have to be very careful approaching him because a lovable nudge from my baby will land you in an emergency room.
To say the least, this would be the most memorable experience of my life and I definitely plan to bring his human mommy and future brothers and sisters to say hello as soon as I can. Barsilinga would be 12 feet by then probably and ready to get back to his real world. But I am sure he would remember as they always do and will at-least grant me the courtesy of a sarcastic look (His thought chain then: seriously dad, work out much; look at that belly, here I thought I was the elephant). As for me, I will go on to have many more babies but I would always have a special place in my heart for my first baby born as the one who changed my life forever.
Originally published on Medium
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