Day 5

6/10/2012

Ah, Saturday. The day to relax and breathe and just be. Oh, and the day to visit the Elephant Orphanage, Giraffe Center, and the Traditional Culture Center. Ok, so, maybe I was a bit too busy to relax and breathe but I had the time of my life.The first stop we made was at the elephant orphanage. These little elephants were rescued after their mothers had been murdered by poachers. They are then taken to this nursery where they are encouraged to learn to survive on their own until they can, ultimately, be released back into the wild. It was fascinating. We got to pet the elephants and when I bent down to take a photo next to it, it was so interested in my shiny watch that it wrapped its trunk around my wrist and started tugging on my arm. Then, we got to go to the giraffe center! This was my favorite part of the day. I actually got to feed a real giraffe! We each got branches and went up to the second story balcony and the giraffe, one by one, are the food we held out for it. Let me just say that giraffes have strange tongues. They are blueish-black and almost sticky. If you held the branch back just far enough, the giraffe will stick its tongue out and wrap it around your hand and pull the branch into its mouth. I almost died from excitement. It was time to move on and after my goup peeled me away from the fence, we went to the traditional culture center. The first stop on our tour was to see the Bomas. These are the huts that the tribes lived in. All I could think of while I was crouched over inside the much walls was, “Oh hello Okonkwo. Have things fallen apart yet?” It was really interesting but it also seemed almost normal that this is how people lived. After exploring seven different styles of Bomas, we went into the auditorium to watch the traditional dances of the tribes. I only have one word for that show--Sex. It’s all about flirting between the male and female and yet it’s done in such a graceful manner. It makes “grinding’” look like something you wold find on Animal Planet. After such a long day, I’m exhausted and cannot wait to get to the Internet. Someone from my family better be online; I’m dying to hear from them. I haven’t even received a single text from them since I landed in Nairobi...and that’s strange.