Elephant Orphanage: A few days in, after we'd recovered from our jet lag, our friend Sammy drove us to the Elephant Orphanage, not far from our campus. Here they care for baby elephants up to two years of age that have either been abandoned or their parents have been killed by poachers. They need milk up through the end of their second year, and they drink a lot of it. Once they reach the age of two, they are brought to the main park outside of Nairobi and released. These elephants pictured are actually gray, and one of them is albino, but you can't tell because they are plastered with the red-ish mud of the area to keep themselves cool. During the time we were there, one of them filled its trunk and sprayed part of the crowd with mud. Exciting!
In addition to the elephants, we saw a baby impala grazing nearby. It was a bit skittish, but it let us take its picture. Not shown are a warthog that crossed the road on our way into the park, and some monkeys that we saw while leaving. We'll definitely come back to visit the main park, which is a reserve for wild animals.
Animals Raised on the Campus: In addition to some of the wildlife outside of the campus, we've gotten to experience some of the home-grown kind. The DOOR campus also has a farm associated with it, with the purpose of helping raise money for the ministry, provide jobs for some local Deaf people, and provide food for the campus. In addition to some traditional crops (including kale, spinach, tomatoes, bananas, and corn), the farm raises rabbits and catfish (both pictured) for meat, as well as dogs trained for being guard dogs. Sammy helps coordinate and oversee this aspect of DOOR, and he's done a great job.
You can also a rooster in the morning. One family on the campus keeps two hens and a rooster in a small cage. Luke always wants to go visit them, and he signs "chicken" whenever he sees or hears them.
Surprise Guests: The campus supports not just rabbits, fish, and dogs, but also other creatures not quite so purposefully brought here. In the mornings you can sometimes hear the ibis or storks walking around on the roof. Pictured here is an ibis. These are fairly good-sized... maybe two feet tall or so. The storks, however, are enormous... perhaps six feet tall. Needless to say they make a lot of noise!
Also pictured is a spider that the boys found on the wall in their room. The spider was the size of my fist, so they were very surprised indeed. They caught it in a jar, but later let it go free (in the backyard, we were told... we'd better not wake up to it in our bed!).
Feeding the Monkeys: On Friday we were able to go to the city park and feed the monkeys. Wow, what an experience! In fact, simply getting there was quite the experience. Sammy navigated the city traffic quite well, no problems, and we got there in one piece. We purchased some peanuts, and walked into the park. The monkeys have seen this quite a few times, and saw we were coming. Sammy taught us all how to lure the monkeys up on your back. The next 15 to 20 minutes were probably the highlight of the boys' time so far. Here are some pictures:
And, of course, we have some video, too!
We all had an incredible time. A huge thanks to Sammy for bringing us there! We have plenty more video as well as pictures, so just ask if you'd like to see more!
Jon is the big animal lover in the family, so he's been so excited to see all of the wildlife here. Several times he's asked to take home this or that on the plane. I can only imagine what the ride home would be like with a monkey jumping around the airplane cabin stealing people's peanuts! :)
We're amazed at God's abundant creation! What an incredible, creative God we serve!
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