Elephant text-messaging program

This program is a great idea - a two-birds-with-one-stone approach to saving elephants AND protecting people, their property, income and livelihoods. Elephants are very dangerous and destructive, by nature. They are very adept at simply demolishing their environment, and in fact other elements in their ecosystem depend on them doing that. Well, except the human parts of their ecosystems. Elephants who destroy people's crops are, quite rightly, not welcome, and frequently the community solution is to kill the offending elephant(s).

They're also very dangerous animals, when pissed off. One of the animal handlers I spoke with at the Mt. Kenya Animal Orphanage was literally skewered on the tusk of a pissed off bull and tossed through the air, landing behind a log. When he landed, he could see his stomach - on the outside of his body. He said it was a miracle that the elephant didn't come to finish him off. He spent six months in the hospital, and now, understandably, he prefers to work with pygmy hippos instead.

It's one more example of how technology pioneered elsewhere, for other reasons, has great spill-over effects elsewhere in the world. Kenya has better coverage and access for mobile phone than for landline phones (and electricity and plumbing). I have yet to figure out how they charge their phones though.

A rough year for Laikipia rhinos

I visited Ol Pejeta Conservancy twice during my last visit to Kenya, but only briefly each time. One time, my friend wanted to check out their chimpanze sanctuary. Poo-flinging primates don't really intrigue me, so I hung out at the gate and chatted with the guards for about 45 minutes, after checking out the waterbuck, zebras and impala nearby.


The other time was far, far cooler. We went and visited Morani the (tame) black rhino. It was one of the highlights of my 10-day trip around Laikipia. I just learned that Morani recently died, evidently of old age. Here's me with Morani taking a nap. He was supremely unconcerned with people, unless you made loud, high-pitched noises (like my friend accidentally did). He had armed body-guards 24-hours a day, and had learned his name. From the sounds of it, you'd have to be a rock not to learn your name, after hearing it pretty much every half hour for 20 years. The rangers said it that often, even when no one was around, just to let Morani know they were there. Rhinos evidently have very poor memories, as well as poor eye-sight, and you don't want a rhino forgetting you're there, and then thinking you've snuck up on him.

Sounds like it's been a tough year for owned rhinos in the Laikipia area. Big Mama, a white rhino at the Mt. Kenya Animal Orphanage that I also got to see briefly, got shot in a poaching attempt, but is expected to make a full recovery. Good thing skilled and committed staff were on hand, after midnight, to chase off and track down the would-be poachers. Poachers are usually very dangerous people.