Lots happened here since my last update. Had a great day trip to the Ngare Ndare forest which is about an hour's drive from Wilderness. Very fun journey there in the back of a pick up transporting lunch, etc for our guests and great to get out and see some more of the area. The forest is beautiful, very cool and green with amazing waterfalls and pools to jump in - most refreshing!
Had an interesting run in with some elephants one evening. Kate (Wilderness lodge manager) and I decided to go over to Sirikoi which is another lodge on Lewa for drinks at sunset. Driving back in the dark we came upon a huge herd of elephants blocking the track. So we waited patiently for them to move which they showed absolutely no sign of doing. There was another vehicle in front of us and as they decided to go off road to bypass them, we thought we would follow. Unfortunately, the elephants started to get really angry and two of them threatened to charge us. It is very scary when you can see an elephant in your rear view mirror coming at you and then another from the side! Fortunately for us, they didn't make contact with the vehicle and we emerged unscathed but I shall be very wary of elephants from now on!
Other news is that we now have two donkeys at Wilderness. I have always wanted donkeys so I was very excited at the prospect of their arrival. They are going to work as pack donkeys transporting lunch down to the river when we hold picnic lunches for guests. They are rather battle scarred little donkeys, although I'm assured by the locals that their scars are due to them fighting with other donkeys rather than ill treatment. They also have really tatty ears as the ears are cut as a means of marking them so villagers know who owns which donkey. I rather think these donkeys have landed on their feet coming to live at Wilderness and being pampered by me. They are going to be the best kept donkeys in Africa! I've successfully treated the pus filled wound on one donkey's neck. Unfortunately, the other donkey is not as friendly and took great exception to me trying to clean up its runny eyes. I guess the poor donkey has never been handled by a mzungu (white person), and they've definitely not had hard feed before as they just stood and stared at the food bowls. The syces all think I am completely mad for being so nice to the donkeys, and I've given up on feeding them. They just have hay at night in the stable and roam free during the day. The difficulty with having the donkeys is that the horses all went crazy when they saw them, although they are slowly getting used to each other now.
Finally, an update on my foal, Santa. The traumas continue but he is still with us! I decided that he wasn't really developing and was a bit slow mentally as well. I spoke to the vet who suggested putting him back on antibiotics and vitamin injections to try and boost him. I also learnt that there is a condition called 'dummy foal' where the foal suffers from a lack of oxygen during birth and thus mentally is somewhat slow although they can gradually recover. As I mentioned in my last blog post, he was constantly injuring himself as well which was something of a mystery. Very fortuitously for us, a vet was coming for lunch (he is actually a Professor at the Royal Vet College in the UK but was holidaying in the area). So to earn his lunch, he was persuaded to come and look at Santa. Just as well that he did. Turns out that the circulation to his lower limbs was affected (the vet said he must have been very close to death from septecemia at one point which he was in his early days) and the skin was all dead and just falling off - hence why he kept injuring himself because he actually has very little feeling in that area. Luckily for me, the vet stripped off all the dead skin and scrubbed his legs until they bled / got back to live tissue, showed me how to bandage them, etc. So I am now three days in to the daily saga of scrubbing his legs and rebandaging them and more antibiotics. Not sure at this point how well the legs will recover but Santa is definitely getting stronger each day and really fights against his treatments. The poor foal is going to be traumatised for life by the sheer number of injections he has had. The fact that he fights so hard gives me some hope that he is not as dumb as we first thought!
On a more positive foal note, my two month old foal has finally succumbed to wearing a head collar after what seems like many hours of trying. She was very cross when we duped her into getting it on and she realised that she couldn't get it off. Foal number three is yet to put in an appearance - technically due yesterday but I think it could me a few more days yet..
Played squash yesterday for the first time ever which was really good fun. Can't believe that I've never played before. There is a squash court in Nanyuki and as our guests all left yesterday, Kate and I ventured out for an evening of squash and dinner at a restaurant. Quite a long way to go for squash and dinner but such is life when you live in such a remote place. A guest free day today which is nice..
Anyway, I think that is my main news so I will sign off now.
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