16/11: Karen

We started out the day with breakfast as usual, but today I had muesli and it was wonderful! Then we talked to Jessi, the owner, about our plan – she was really helpful. The taxi driver was half an hour late, but when he came, he came honking and driving really fast. Jessi said something like: “he is acting like we are the ones who are late” and, with a little smile, “he has gotten me out of jail a couple of times.” In the car we drove to the Giraffe center. There we could feed the giraffes, though there was only one three year old. I think her name is Stacy or something. She is still there because they want to breed her. I can tell you she had a very long tongue, we had to put the food on her tongue. Then we went to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust for their one hour opening they have each day. They have around 34 elephants and two rhinos. Thirty of the elephants came to be fed and play a little bit. The small elephants has to be fed every three hours. Many of them have been victims of poaching, which basically means that most of their mothers have been killed when they were very small. The guy in charge could tell us all their names and the reason that they are there. I couldn’t even really tell them apart, but I don’t have years of practice. One of them’s mother was killed when it was two weeks old, I don’t get how poachers can do that. Though of course the obvious answer is money, but is it really worth it? The mother carries the babies for two years and two weeks after it is born she is killed? Then how many is killed while carrying the baby? It is a very endearing sight to see them get fed by their keepers and run around playing. Afterwards both Freja and Camille adopted an albino baby elephant that had farted on them called Faraja. After that we went to the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden to have lunch, it was pretty expensive, but a nice quiet place and I had a salad with salmon which weights up for everything. Then we went to the Karen Blixen museum. It is her old house here where everything happened. We had a guided tour and it was very nice to hear all about her life here. Afterwards we had a soda in her garden. I had a soda in Karen Blixen’s garden, isn’t that kind of cool? After that we went to Carnivore for dinner. We were carnivores for sure that night: chicken, beef, lamb, crocodile, ostrich, and pork… a real meat feast. Maybe a bit too much meat after so long without all that much. But it was a really nice end to a really good day.