Our plan today was to attend Winnies church and then visit both the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Giraffe Orphange. However, as luck would have it, church would have prevented us from seeing the elephants and so we had to make a difficult choice.

With our schedule being as tight as it is, we decided to visit the two orphanages and attend church next Sunday.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is currently the most successful orphan-elephant rehabilitation and rescue program in the world. Once a day, at 10:45am, the elephants parade down across the land and into a small ring where workers bottle feed the animals and inform those who are visiting of the plight of the orphaned elephants, why they are there, how they are rehabilitated as well as how you can help.

The Giraffe Centre, open daily, was founded in 1979 by the late Jock Leslie-Melville, a Kenyan Citizen of British descent and his American wife, Betty.  The giraffe are a subspecies of the giraffe found only in East Africa. They are the only sanctuary in the world that lies within a capital city and allows visitors to come into such close contact with these beautiful creatures. They are home to a herd of Rothschild Giraffe, some Warthogs and over a hundred and fifty species of birds.

We had decided that a day of rehab was in order after some very busy and somewhat emotional visits. A day of rest was needed and received as we spent the remainder of the day by the pool. In the many years that we have been traveling to Kenya, a day by the pool has never been a part of the plan. Today we are rethinking future itineraries as a day to recoup was very much appreciated before beginning again.

Some additional pictures from our first few days:

Just a wee traffic jam!  When the weather is too dry and there is no vegetation to speak of, the Massai bring their cattle to the city in search of food.

Rita handing out some of the dolls to the children at Gathaithi

Staff at the Kawangware Tailoring Shop sporting the Hakim Optical Hats that were generously donated by Hakim Optical of Brockville.

On the streets of Kawangware