The Elephant Orphanage

I saw this piece on 60 Minutes earlier this year, and I was touched. These guys are so dedicated to their work, and they make sure that their charges receive the best care possible. Those who work at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust are good people, no bones about it.

This is an excerpt from the 60 Minutes piece:

Just about the best people you’ve ever met are the gentle men who work here.

They are called keepers, and they have extraordinary jobs. There is one keeper per elephant; he spends 24 hours a day with his charge, seven days a week. A keeper feeds his elephant every three hours, day and night, just like mom would.

He keeps his elephant warm, not like mom would, but with a blanket. When it's sleep time, the keeper beds down right next to his elephant. If he leaves, if ever so briefly, the baby wakes up and broadcasts his displeasure. The keepers are rotated now and then so that no elephant gets too terribly attached to any one of them.

At dawn, the elephants are taken from their dorms out to the bush. They hang out for a while and even play some games — soccer is a favorite. The elephants decide when it's halftime by trotting off the field for a break.

The days are pretty much the same here. But on Fridays, the orphanage becomes a spa, when the keepers give the elephants a coconut oil massage.

"We can't do exactly what the mother can do, but we do something close to that," explains Edwin Lusichi, the head of the keepers.

Is that beautiful or what?