The forest of the elephants
Every wanted to see an elephant’maternity ward’?Read this…
It’s night time in mara forest.The roar of the falls fills the air.It’s biting cold but refreshing,standing on the balcony of my room at the sarova lodge overlooking the hills where the treking path to the rhino huts cut through to the gorge where the waters falls.The force of the falls catapulting 200 feets for thousands of years has created a dramatic gorge for the river to flow on and meet the ewaso nyiro and finaly disapear into the little visited Lorian swamp.
At breakfast i heard that the forest of Rimuruti and Marmanet are elephants maternity wards where females come to deliver and nurse their young.So excited am i that i forgo a hot-stone message for Rimuruti forest despite rain clouds in the sky.
Rangers of Rimuruti forest Association leads through the forest of red cedar trees.we get to one of the few swamps within,where a pair of grey crowned cranes strut.One of my coleague announces that it’s a mating pair with a nest in the swamp.A bird with scarlet underwing flies into the forest.It’s Hartlaub’s turaco.Sun bleached white bones of an elephant rest on the earth.Leo,our driver,spots the enormous skull of an elephant in the thickets camouflaged in the thickets.It’s an interesting mix of site there.
The forest associations rangers lead us to a ,’maternity ward'”This is one of the places they give birth,”Leo explain.”There are so many medicinal plants here.So the female chews them and feeds them to the calf.It’s like inoculating babies”.Impressive.”If it’s a female,the mother will nurse her three months.If it’s a male calf,she will nurse him for one month”.
Murphy laws.Returning to our lodge,we hear that an elephant herd was browsing by the fence in the morning.But the elephants themselves are nowhere to be seen.
Either way,it’s lunch with hot kebabs and moushkaki,fresh soups and desserts and vegeterian fare from one kitchen that is exclusively dedicated to veg.After lunch,we shall climb down 200 feet to the bottom of Thompson’s Falls.
At the bottom of the gorge,spray mist rises off where the falls crash.When explorer Joseph Thomson saw the falls in October 1883 he named the falls Thomson’s falls-after himself.At the time,the area was a no-man’s land between two warring maasai clans,and they called the place’ naiurru-ur’for waterfalls.Thomson heard it as ‘ururu’from which Nyahururu gets its name.
Finaly,it’s diva day.After two days of trampling through forests an the falls,a hot-stone message is spot on,followed by a pedicure so deserved.Meanwhile outside,the skies have opened and thunder bolts through the skies.
Originally posted by-Sanvinsky Joshua.
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