Where the wild things are

Ask anyone what they know about Kenya and it will either be skinny blokes winning the long distance gold medals at the Olympics or the wildlife.

You can probably guess which option I chose to familiarise myself with on my first weekend off.

So after a rapid 10km in the foothills of Nairobi with the local elite marathon squad (yeah right) I thought I could squeeze in some safari time too. I headed in the general direction of Nairobi National Park which is about 15km outside the city (or an hour and a half away in the traffic to be accurate).

I saw a sign for the David Sheldrick Trust which is an elephant orphanage and turned in. The National Park is totally fenced off and patrolled by armed guards to prevent poachers, the primary reason most of the elephants become orphans. Once you are through the gate you really are in what you imagine Africa to be like. Away from the hustle and bustle of the city, no noise except exotic bird calls and grunting warthogs which seem to be everywhere.

As I was driving along the track to the orphanage I turned a corner and came across a herd of antelope so I stopped and wound down my window, fumbling with my phone to try and work out how to take a picture. After failing miserably I just sat there leaning out of my window watching the antelope when there was a rustling in the bushes about six feet away. Suddenly two blokes in full camouflage carrying machine guns creep out of the bushes with grim looks on their faces.

‘You might want to put up your window and drive on sir.’

‘Sorry, am I not supposed to stop here?’

‘No you are fine to stop sir, but there are some hungry lions following these antelope and we don’t want any accidents.’

The elephant orphanage was great, they all troop into the yard in the early evening, just like Jungle Book, and then wander into their own corals where they bed down for the night with their keeper who sleeps with them and wakes up every three hours during the night to feed them. They keep the elephants there until they are three years old and then release them back into the wild.

I asked one of the keepers what it was like to sleep with an elephant every night and his mate chirped up that it didn't matter if he was at work or at home with his wife, he would sleep with an elephant at night either way - nice to know that a bloke's sense of humour is pretty much the same wherever you are in the world!