The Laikipia Elephant Project held a very successful course at Mpala Research Centre entitled – Getting to know Elephants.
The participants were drawn from various sectors in Laikipia namely - Laikipia Elephant Project, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya Wildlife Service – Nanyuki and Nyahuru, Laikipia Nature conservancy and Laikipia Wildlife Forum.
To say its fun to study elephants is an understatement. Studying the largest land mammal at its own terms is exhilarating. We arrived at Mpala thinking we know something about elephants but it was indeed a very little ‘something’. The frank admission by KWS attendees that even though they are trained in control, they couldn’t tell a male or female elephants apart set the boll rolling.
With exception of Tobias Ochieng of LEP and Richard Lesowapir of Ol Pajeta the rest of us were as green as the grass in the camp. With world class team of Dr. Max Graham of University of Cambridge, Norah Njiraini of Amboseli Elephant Research Project and Onesmus Kahindi of Save the Elephants, we had the best possible reservoir of elephant knowledge in the country.
Saturday 21st July 2007 – Introduction
Like all starter days, this day was slow as we left Nanyuki for Mpala at 11.30. Even though some people had met others the feeling of camaraderie had not started building. I guess everyone was still ‘sniffing’ others. We got to Mpala and after lunch we went for a drive to familiarize ourselves with the subject matter –elephants.
Sure enough they didn’t disappoint and 2-3 kilometers out of the camp we encountered our first elephants. In the course of my work, I have seen elephants but this was the first time I was seeing an elephant this close. We are all eager to comment on how huge it is but Norah having studied elephants for 20 plus years bursts out bubble – the bull we are so fascinated with is only 11 years. In our Land rover, we all keep quiet and drink from her fountain.Evening comes and with it the spirit of team grows. People are thawing and fireside stories are becoming more and more interesting. Martin Kahindi unleashes one funny story after the other. Martin, if you are reading this-if conservation ever becomes boring to you stand up comedy will be another front. Dan form KWS regales us with episodes from his work and its amazing what these guys do. We continue doing countless number of coffee and tea.
Bedtime comes and I forget to do what you should always do before you go to bed in a bush camp –empty your bladder. I sleep quite quickly and bang! 4.30 a.m. time for download. I open up the tent zipper window and look out. There is this thing that looks like an elephant trunk outside Norah tent. My mind is playing games with me and I can’t tell whether it’s a real elephant or not. I go back to bed and can’t wait for the first light.
Tsuma practises Elephant Picasso on top of landrover.
Sunday 22nd July 2007 – Sexing and aging ElephantsWe start the day well, breakfast is really good and we set off to look for elephants. The topic today –sexing and aging elephants. Let me digress one bit. Before we departed for Mpala we were talking to colleagues and they got asking- what are you guys doing at mpala? And we replied –we are going to try aging and sexing elephants and Rose couldn’t believe we said such a thing. Rose, I know you will read this. It’s telling male and female elephant apart.
We are not in luck as every where we go the elephants seem to be moving away from us. We watch a few and decide to go back to camp and behold! One kilometer from the camp we meet this group of elephants totally oblivious of us and they are so close to the Land Rover. Simon Waweru is fearful they might attack but Norah is fascinated. She talks of them like her babies – “see how lovely he is”, “see the vein on her ears”. We watch and we are fascinated too. We managed to sex the whole group. We are not so good yet at aging but Norah assures us we are getting somewhere.
We drive to the camp really high and kumbe the other group arrived earlier. They didn’t see as many also. Mzee Wanjau gives the reason why we couldn’t see the elephants. “unajua hata ndovu anaenda kanisa (even elephants go to church). We eat and relax ready for the after noon session.
Tsuma Safari and Dan Mureithi share their stories on poachers and KWS and Mzee Wanjau has also joined Martin Kahindi on the afternoon sit down comedy session. Its real fun to study with this guys. Max joins in with a story about going to jail and how that threat stopped working with his mum. Everybody is relaxed and they are sharing experiences.
We go back in the afternoon and we have the most successful learning (at least in our car). We meet groups of elephants and we are able to sex them and age them without difficulties. Norah deliberately misleads us but we quickly disagree and point out why. She is impressed and invites us for further training at Amboseli. Will talk to Max about that. We meet the two groups at a family group and there is this female who is strutting her stuff like she is doing a catwalk. She turns left, right, gives a side profile, looks straight on and we are all happily clicking away and sketching her ear patterns.
We later go back to the camp and count our blessings for the day. Apparently our group wasn’t so lucky because Max’s group saw Lions and we didn’t. Supper is superb and Mzee Wanjau and Dan ignite a very interesting debate on the supernatural stuff. Sidney Safari gives us details of coastal witches and wizards and it sounds like its straight out of Stephen King’s horror novel.
Monday July 23, 2007 – setting up Elephant ID files
The team spirit has really caught up and after breakfast guys even remember to carry fruits for their team members. We go out and we are happily sketching the ID details of as many elephants as we can. At one point we ran in to each other and the elephants run away and we blame each group for their flight. I still stand by my accusation – Max’s group chased them so we won’t do a better job than them.
Norah has been mourning that we keep on getting family groups but near evening all the groups run into this proud bull that stands still like it knows what we are doing and its giving us a chance to learn. Norah is fascinated and she declares the Laikipia Elephants are as good as Amboseli’s even better. That’s a certainly a plus.
We go back to the camp to spend our last day at the camp. Richard and Gitonga are in low moods. Reason? No cigarettes. Guys, experience the smoking ban right in the bush, only this time its self imposed. In Nairobi you will survive too.
War stories again and the night rushes so fast.
Tuesday July 24, 2007 – Elephant mortality
We wake up to Onesmus Kahindi and his talk on dead elephants. If there is one guy who can talk about dead things and leave you truly fascinated its Onesmus. For three days we had talked about live elephants and Onesmus quickly steals the thunder from Max and Norah. We learn the age of death, why we need to have monitoring of elephant death and we are off to look for dead elephants.
We locate the first one and we learn practically what Onesmus had lectured in the morning, we visit three more sites and learn a lot about dead elephants. There is a popular saying that dead men tell no tales but we discover dead elephants tell a lot of tales.
All in all, the course was fascinating and being a first for Laikipia, we hope to have more coming.
One other thing we discussed about setting up a network of people that we trained with. This blog is one step. Please do your part and ensure others benefit from that training. It was fun meeting you all and learning so much from you.
