AFRICA - Fri. Nov. 12, 2010 Part 2

After lunch we visited Kazuri. the word means "small and beautiful" in Swahili. It began as a tiny workshop experimenting in making handmade beads. It started with two African women but the founder realized that there were many other single mothers and women in the villages around Nairobi that needed work. So it grew to quite a large workforce. It is mostly a charitable organization that supplies work for these women in the villages.
All the beads are made by hand in this workshop.
Here are two of the women working on making beads. The women were all very happy and seemed to love their work.
This woman was putting the wires of hand made beads in a kiln to be fired.
Off to the side was a smaller workshop that make Potteryware. They make and hand paint dishes and vases and all sorts of pottery. These people were very friendly and welcoming of our visit.Next we went to the David Sheldrake Elephant Orphanage. This place rescues baby elephants that have been orphaned for whatever reason and raises them to return to the wild. They have keepers that stay with the elephants 24/7, that includes sleeping with them. Each day they are fed from a bottle in addition to foraging for food. We got the opportunity to feed them.

They take about a quart bottle of milk and guzzle it down in about 10 seconds. Then they want more. They are so cute, very friendly, but quite large for babies. Most of the ones we fed were about 1 year old. They try to return them to the wild as soon as they are able to take care of themselves.

Here is a picture of the bottles ready to feed the elephants when they come in.
This is one of our group feeding an elephant. They really come after the bottles.
Here I am petting one while it was being fed. They have fairly tough skin with very stiff bristly hair.
After they finish the bottles they begin to forage on the bushes around them.
They also made it possible to adopt baby elephants. When you adopt they send you updates on its progress towards release and also pictures that you can enjoy of your elephant. This helps with the cost of running this organization.

Then we returned to the hotel for the evening and to prepare for leaving on safari the next day. This was to be our last night in a regular hotel until we returned to Nairobi. Here are a couple of pictures of the hotel we stayed at and the grounds. Everything was very lush and beautiful.

This tree had a cactus intertwined with it that Mike was completely fascinated with.