Helping Wild Orphans in Kenya

Many of you have asked about helping at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, beyond the always needed donation and adopting of an orphan. As I mention at my speaking presentations it's very difficult to work directly with the orphaned elephants and rhinos for a number of reasons. The primary concern is time, most visitors have only a few weeks to a couple months to volunteer and that creates separation issues - in becoming orphans the babies have already lost one life connection, to attach to a volunteer and that person leave would be potentially devastating. Something Dr Dame Daphne Sheldrick (photo above) is dedicated to not let happen twice.

If you are going to be in Kenya for a year or longer docents are often considered for meeting with the visiting public and school children each day. For that opportunity you would need to contact the Trust directly and explain your offer. To do so contact them via their contact webpage

"Live Personally"

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment,
while I was hoeing in a village garden,
and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn."
Henry David Thoreau

Sorting through decade old notebooks and scraps of paper scattered in my office, like a post-parade confetti shower - my filing system - I repeatedly stumble over notes reflecting on that narrow footbridge that spans the difference and similarity between elephants and humans. It is a space, a chasm, we have no pedestrian word for - and I wonder if that lack of a word, a common utterance, defines the barrier. Scribbled on more than one page I reread that I mulled the impact of no word. And my conclusion then, as now, implicates our fear of sharedness. Acceptance of sharedness requires responsibility for actions on scales large and small, personal and global.

As I have mention in other places, my experience with the orphaned elephants and their keepers changed my photography, perspective and ultimately my life. The further my orbit from those days, weeks and months in Kenya, and the more I explore returning to further the journey, the more understanding relationships play in my fundamental thinking of what roads that journey must travel.

A relationship with one's own life, the world immediately tangential, is one I have returned to over and over the past several months. In someways it feels most like Frost's road "the one less traveled by".

In a keynote I gave recently I talked about my rethinking and expanding of the concept of "Think Globally, Act Locally". I am convinced we need to take a further step to fully embrace sharedness - that is to "Live Personally". Look no further than my own self-world, impact it solely, and with kindness, and the ringlets will radiate out, locally and globally.

Some attribute the original phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally" to Scots town planner and social activist Patrick Geddes. The exact phrase never appeared in Geddes' 1915 book "Cities in Evolution," but the philosophy was clearly evident. The portion of his thinking that resonates for me is that balanced living occurs, "... in active sympathy with the essential and characteristic life of the place concerned." I don't think governments, or communities can have "active sympathy", that is a personal attribute of a living creature, Me, I must bring active sympathy to the world, and that can only be done by living personally.

Living with elephants and keepers the short time I was afforded opened an amazing window into active sympathy by two creatures living personally - the result was a sharedness that over time began to heal the most tragic of wounds.

Booming in the Baby Business - Unfortunately

CNN World posted a news story today about the expanding life at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust orphanage in Kenya, and things, unfortunately are booming in the baby business. Saga seems to be the same old story - drought, poaching and farmer conflicts. The new twist is the lack of tourist dollars to help support the orphans. In previous years tourism boomed and smaller numbers of little elies meant managing was, well, manageable. Now the situation has become more problematic with more elies and fewer dollars. If you would like to help you can DONATE HERE.

Here's the video and link to the CNN story:

Wild Orphan photos support environmental journalistic freedom

Almost a decade after some of the Wild Orphan images were originally created I am proud to say they continue to resonate and draw the attention of editors and publishers. Most recently four of the photographs created were selected to appear in the latest edition of the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres), or RSF, annual fund-raising publication, Nature: 100 Photographs for Press Freedom. Read more about it in my posting 100 Photographs for Press Freedom.

Wild Orphans 2 - a new journey

Their are multiple reason for starting a separate Wild Orphans blog. Over the years I have receive an incredible number of emails from people who purchased the original Wild Orphans book and were as touched and moved by the photography and words as I was by the babies and people who made the story possible. So this Wild Orphans specific blog is for all of you, my friends, my former staff, kind people who attend my speaking presentations and want to hear more stories, more thoughts - perambulations - about the babies, and more photos and sounds, my snippets of an experience that becomes more amazing as I grow older and realize how lucky, genuinely special and rare it has been. This blog is also the initial step along with the partner Wild Orphans website to update the story a decade later. Please if you have any questions feel free to contact me at my Wild Orphans specific email - gerry@wildorphans.net

This blog and the other digital sharing technologies that are available now also make it possible to share the upcoming journey in a way not possible in 1999 when I began the initial Wild Orphans project. I will being using as many of these as possible to share with all of you who care to join on the ride what its like to return to East Africa, reconnect with the babies and the people, and experience their lives anew.

And finally it, this want to say more, is inspired by a fellow earthling - a creature I share little and everything with - her name is Natumi. She is a African elephant, now going on 10 years old, and living happily in the arid wilds of Kenya's East Tsavo National Park. She was the cover girl of my 2001 book Wild Orphans, the four year story of her and seven other orphaned babies struggle to survive and the amazing effort of the folks at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust outside of Nairobi Kenya to keep these little floppy-eared alive. Over the next few months I'll post a collection of previous writings and new thoughts on Natumi and those days and what I think they mean now - a decade later.

Finally, I want to dedicate this new project to my dearest friend and guardian angel over the past couple decades working and traveling in Africa - Davida "Bunny" Shaw. Bunny died recently and my heart still hurts. I will have few friends as kind, as dear, and straightforward as she. I will miss you never so much as the next time I touch down in Africa - this new work is for you Bunny.