I’m not sure why it’s taken me six weeks to write about Africa and African elephants – my excuse is that since then I’ve been in Abu Dhabi and the Caribbean, with just a few weeks at home, and it’s taken me some time to get my thoughts because we saw and experienced so much during the fortnight in Tanzania and Kenya it still feels a bit unreal.
But I miss those enormous skies and the unpolluted air so much; and seeing (and hearing) the wildlife – listening to baboons and hyenas and lions at night, and seeing all the spectacular wildlife on our game drives – particularly African elephants. I’ve called this post looking for African elephants but in fact they are a bit like buses – you tend to see none, and then lots of them in one go.
From this little guy…
To this herd of African elephants that we saw crossing the road at dusk in Amboseli…
…and this mother and baby who were just gorgeous.
African elephants are a bit like buses: you wait ages to see one and then you’re rewarded with a herd. We saw a lot of elephants during our trip to Ngorongoro, the Serengeti, Amboseli and the Masai Mara. I loved watching them, how they interact with each other, walk, eat and use their tusks (they can really rip a tree apart). It felt like an enormous privilege to see so many of them in the wild, and of course it is, because the reality is that the elephant population throughout Africa is in decline. Ivory is still a commodity valued (most of all) by Asia but also the UAE and as long as that then poachers will continue to kill them. It is utterly heartbreaking; and the thought of them being in zoos or circuses is just horrendous.
That’s why it’s so important to show that elephants (and indeed all African wildlife) are most valuable to the people of Tanzania and Kenya when they are alive and roaming freely in the wild; education is absolutely vital. It’s a race against time to save these wonderful creatures, our last living dinosaurs, from extinction. Please do have a look at the Born Free and Tusk websites for more information on how you can help.