Hello All!
This is my official first blog sent straight from Nairobi, Kenya. After an incredible bout of finals papers I literally ran to the Anthropology office at Columbia, turned in my last paper, and jumped in a cab to the airport. Exhausted, I slept from New York to London, then from London to Nairobi (about 16 hours in total).
Getting to Nairobi I was met by the group who will be participating in the academic program with me. They are a wonderful group of students and Professor who come from different universities in Canada.
We have already started our adventure!
On the first day after arrival, to cure jetlag, we enjoyed our only "touristy" day on the whole trip and as a surprise from our professor, Dr. King, we visited an elephant orphanage! There we saw and got to pet orphaned elephants during their feeding time and learned quite a bit about the conservation efforts to reintroduce the elephants back into the wild.
I was very impressed by the extremely mindful approach the organization had in a multifaceted approach to environmental conservation and education.
Since the elephants were to be reintroduced into the wild, the organization only exposed the babies to one hour a day to public viewing. All and all I want to stress that the operation wasn't at all exploitative and they made the uptmost efforts to preserve in the natural condition while educating society about issues like illegal poaching and environmental devestation that threatens animal populations.
An interesting note: elephants are such emotional creatures that in order for the babies to survive sucessfully they must be accompanied by, even at night sleeping, with a designated caretaker that takes the place of the maternal mothers role (psychologically) of nurturing and companionship. To avoid the aforementioned attachment to humans I mentioned, the caregivers rotate positions between the elephants to not propogate dependence on one individual. And then eventually the elephant is "weened" off of the caretaker and encouraged to develop an affinity with the other elephants in the 'orphanage'.
Most of the babies were orphaned by poaching or indirect consequences from the current drought in Kenya. People dig wells in order to find water and the babies will fall into them, forcing the rest of the herd to leave them behind.

Well, there is so much more to come but I have homework to do!

Love (and please write on my blogsite!),
Chelsea
p.s. "jambo" is hello in Swahili