Elephants and Whales and Satellite Camps!

Hey everyone! Internet is hard to come by and slooooow so this blog will have to be a bit briefer. Sadly, I probably won't be able to put up pix for another week or so...but you'll just have to use your imaginations!

Last weekend we volunteered with our partner, Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) and participated in a beach clean up with schoolchildren from 5 different towns in the neighboring community. It was a few hours of hot trash gathering, but the kids worked really hard and we gathered loads and loads of garbage that had been washed ashore and helped protect the environment. I was impressed by how passionate the students were to protect their natural resources. Lots of teachers and students and volunteers and chatting and fun. And KWS gave us all sodas afterwards, which never hurts :) Last Sunday we went to Mwaluganje Elephant Reserve and learned about this amazing conservationist community based organization. Check out the GVI blog (link below on this page) for the blog I wrote about it. Basically, in order to protect a longstanding migratory path the elephants use, the community members made their area (which had included farmland) a reserve for the animals. One of the biggest challenges there is human-wildlife conflict - ie when elephants trample farmers crops. One solution they found - and taught us about - was using elephant poo to make recycled paper. I know, it sounds grody, but elephant poo is pretty impressively clean - lots of fibers. They boil it and dry it for 2 days, mix it with scrap paper, water and paste and make this awesome recylced paper to sell to tourists. Way to go sustainability!! Our goal is to take this skill to the satellite camps near Tsavo West National Park and share this transferable skill with them. We head out for a week of dusty, exciting inland Africa tomorrow!
But one of the coolest occurrences this week was HUMPBACK WHALES!!! The other group saw them the week before and I'd been practicing yelling out "whale" for when the moment came. Turns out, speaking Whale, like Dori does in Nemo, is the best way to get them to come. On Monday we spent an hour with a mother and calf (followed them all the way to Tanzania!) The calf was pretty siked to see us and kept jumping jumping jumping in the water for us - they were swimming about 30 feet away from us!! At one point, just before we parted ways, the calf snuck up on us and splashed behind the boat within 5 meters! It was unlike anything I've ever experience before. We've got loads of videos and you can hear the whole boat cheering with joy! Then Tuesday we saw ANOTHER mother and newborn - this one was nursing. We thought we were spotting tail dive, but they tail just stayed and stayed out of the water - she was upside down, head underwater, nursing for over 10 minutes at a go. It was 9am and I was hanging half out of the boat holding the underwater camera towards them trying to photograph these whales 20 feet away from me - how crazy!!
This next week will keep me completely away from any internet, but please still feel free to email and tell me how you all are. Miss you tons!