Holiday Part I

I have just arrived back in Tanzania after a great holiday and adventure. This post as well as my next one will likely seem more like a travel journal rather than a volunteer blog post. Moving forward in my placement, I will be staying in Dar es Salaam and will not be returning to the village, but will write more on that later.

My holiday started in Kigali, Rwanda. I piled into a bus with several other VSO volunteers bound for the Kigali Peace Marathon. I was quite impressed with the city and as always, shenanigans with the other volunteers proved to be great fun. The Rwandan tourist board will tell you that Rwanda is “the land of a thousand hills and a million smiles” and my visit there did not disappoint. The landscape is beautiful and the people that we encountered were all friendly and helpful. Shenanigans aside, I also took an afternoon to visit the genocide memorial which was, as expected, a sombre and reflective experience.

And his tongue is not even stuck out all the way....

After my weekend in Rwanda I was off to Nairobi for a few days. Although I did not have a lot of time there either, I had an excellent time and visited a few attractions. First on the list was the giraffe sanctuary where guests are able to feed the animals and ladies can get kisses from the giraffes. Sounds fun huh? In reality, although it sounds sweet, it’s actually fairly disgusting. Giraffes are sloppy kissers and as you can see in the photo, they have really long tongues. I suppose I can now say that I was kissed by a giraffe.... but really: is that something that anyone needs to be able to say? I must admit though, sloppy kisses aside, they are beautiful animals.

Feeding time

Next I visited the elephant orphanage, which turned out to be a rather special place. The Elephant orphanage was founded by David Sheldrick in 1977 and they take in, as the name would suggest, elephants (as well as other animals) who have been orphaned for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is poaching. It may surprise some people to learn that poaching is not only still very much a problem, but it is actually on the rise. The main market driving poaching activities these days is China. I think that the work done at the elephant orphanage is quite noble and they have excellent, committed individuals on staff to care for the elephants who are eventually re-introduced into the wild.

Can you spot something in this photo that isn't baby-sized?

Caring for an elephant is not an easy task. They rely on milk as a source of nutrition for the first 4 years of life and as such the staff must be with the elephants around the clock to deliver feedings every 3 hours – caretakers even sleep with the elephants. I would imagine that this is a special job... although it is probably a bit stinky of a job too. Most people know that elephants are quite bright, they are in fact one of the five smartest non-primate animals (can you guess what the other 4 are? If you would like to know, I will list them at the end of this post). In addition to being bright, they are also very social animals. Caretakers spend the night with the elephants not only to accommodate feedings, but also to fulfill their social needs. Elephants, like people, can actually die from loneliness. If that didn’t make you say “awwww” then I would venture to say that you might be a sociopath (and you can find a brief assessment here, if you are curious: http://kevin-goodman.com/?p=1245).


My final stop on my sight-seeing day in Nairobi was the zoo. Now I would not have expected to want to visit a zoo in Kenya.... because all of the animals that you can see there you can also see at the parks in the actual wild! There was one key attraction at the zoo though – they care for orphaned animals and I was told that I would have the opportunity to snuggle a baby cheetah.... and who wouldn’t want that???? So I went to the zoo and was guided about and it was, as expected, not exciting. I was getting impatient about the cheetahs! Unfortunately everyone had lied to me and snuggling up with a cheetah just wasn’t in the cards for me. Apparently they had an “incident” a few years back and they no longer allow guests to interact with the animals. They wouldn’t tell me exactly what the “incident” entailed, but I’m sure we can all use our imaginations (remember what happened to Roy of Seigfried and Roy?). Although I was disappointed in regards to the cheetahs, there were a couple amusing things to be seen in the zoo:

Walking around like he owns the place

Makes the same sound as a donkey

The first picture is of a baboon. The zoo has several of baboons exactly like this one that they keep in cages. The baboon in the photo is not one of them. He is a wild baboon who, like me, decided to spend the afternoon wandering through the zoo. He probably likes to visit now and again in order to taunt the other baboons and feel good about himself. Or maybe he is visiting his baboon wife who was captured and who he misses dearly. The silly looking animal in the second picture is a Zdonk.... yup you read it right. It is, similarly to a mule, the product of inter-species breeding – in this case a cross between a donkey and a zebra.

Following my fun times in Kenya, I was off to Zanzibar for some fun and sun before continuing my journey onward to Cape Town.... which I will write about in my next post!

Miss you all,

V

* The five smartest non-primate animals are: elephants, crows, dolphins, octopuses and pigs. I find the octopus to be a particularly interesting creature if you’re curious to give them a google and learn more about them.