Season 5: Episode 11

Am I Not Lucky?

Modern humans emerged into a world filled with and shaped by elephants. But for elephants, living with humans isn’t always easy. Elephants have survived by adapting to all the changes we’re making to their world. But there’s only so much they can do. In this episode, we look at how we can learn to live with—and listen to—elephants.

Guests

Stella Lenangoisa

Naomi Lechongoro

Naomi Lechongoro is a Samburu woman from Kenya and the first female elephant keeper in Africa. She works at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, where she cares for orphaned and abandoned elephant calves.

Mary Lengees

Mary Lengees is also a Samburu woman from Kenya and one of the first female elephant keepers in Africa. She works alongside Naomi at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary.

James Leparkeri

Dorothy Lowaktuk

Dorothy Lowaktuk is also a Samburu woman from Kenya and one of the first female elephant keepers in Africa. She works alongside Naomi and Mary at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary.

Katie Rowe

Katie Rowe is the founder and manager of the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Northern Kenya, the first community-owned and run elephant sanctuary.

Credits

Transcript

[00:00] INTRODUCTION

AMY: Hello! (distant)

ELEPHANT: Rumble

AMY: I'm in northern Kenya, watching a group of baby elephants rush toward me into a corral, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

AMY: OK, so there's elephants running in. Oh, they're so excited!

AMY: They're anywhere from a few months to a couple of years old, and they come galloping in like a group of preschoolers gathering for a snack after play time. But these toddlers are already pretty big—they stand somewhere between waist and shoulder height compared to the team of elephant keepers waiting for them, holding big bottles full of milk.

ELEPHANT: roars and squeals

AMY: These noises are coming from small elephants.

AMY: This is the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, a home for elephants who've become orphaned here in Samburu County, a vast, dry landscape just north of the equator in Kenya.

AMY: They just come running over and each of them takes a bottle from a different keeper.

ELEPHANT: rumble

AMY: The keepers start to sing together as the animals come charging in.

KEEPERS SINGING

AMY: The young elephants drain their bottles in a few seconds, shake the milk off their chins, and then go to visit a big mud hole before trotting back out to graze in the bush. Many of them lower themselves into the gloppy water and roll around, clearly delighting in the feel of the cool, wet mud.

SPLASHY MUDDY RUMBLY FUN

AMY: I can't stop smiling as I watch them, but I'm wiping away some tears at the same time. It's just incredibly moving to watch dozens of elephants, so full of life, knowing that none of them would be here if it weren't for this sanctuary, which is owned and run by Samburu people.

NAOMI: Elephants...I have stayed long time with elephants.

AMY: Naomi Lechongoro is one of three elephant keepers we’ll meet in this episode.

NAOMI: And they depend on how you treat them, and how you care them. Anytime you care them with good heart, actually they do the same.

MUSIC

AMY: Welcome to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and these are African savannah elephants, the biggest land animals on the planet. Their ancestors, the early Proboscideans, evolved here around 60 million years ago, not long after the asteroid killed off all the dinosaurs—except the birds—and long before anything remotely human was walking the Earth. They spread out around the planet, and diversified into more than 170 species, filling the ecological niche of bigness that the dinosaurs had vacated. Several species were even bigger than the elephants alive today. Proboscideans transformed the world as they explored it, spreading seeds, opening up forests, and digging watering holes with their tusks and trunks. That’s why elephants are called “ecosystem engineers.” They actually create habitat—for themselves and all sorts of other plants and animals, too. Including us.

MUSIC + AMBI

Modern humans emerged here, in this very landscape, into a world filled and shaped by elephants. By the time we came along, elephants had been practicing the arts of survival as big-brained, relational, communicative mammals for tens of millions years. So our distant ancestors must have watched and listened to them, and likely learned from them too.

MUSIC + AMBI

AMY: Today there are just three species of Proboscideans left: one type of elephant in Asia, and two in Africa, the forest and savannah elephants. They’re different from each other in important ways, but they have a lot in common, too: they're all highly intelligent, social animals that rely on acoustic communication to cooperate and connect. And they’re all endangered—survivors of centuries of brutality from humans. Mass killings, dramatic loss of habitat, and now, the quickly-changing climate. All three species face enormous threats, and forest elephants in central Africa are at real risk of going extinct on our watch.

AMY: Elephants continue to try to live with us, and adapt to all the changes we’re making to their world. But there's only so much they can do. If we want these animals to persist into the future, we also have to learn how to live with—and listen—to them. The people here at Reteti are discovering that when we do that, the elephants give back more than they ever could have imagined.

THEME MUSIC

[05:50] SEGMENT A

AMY: We’re going to spend two episodes of this season listening to elephants. Next time, we’ll focus in on the details of their acoustic communication—what scientists are learning about the meanings of their rumbles, trumpets, and other vocalizations. But first, we’re going to know them up close and personal through some of the Samburu people who live with them here in northern Kenya.

NAOMI: My name is Naomi Lechongoro. I am a Samburu lady, I am pure Samburu, my father and my mother all are Samburu. So I am a Samburu lady.

AMY: Naomi was one of the first people hired to care for the elephants here at Reteti when the sanctuary opened in 2017. There were just six keepers then. Now there are over a hundred. When I visited, Naomi had recently been promoted to the role of assistant head keeper.

NAOMI: I supervise every work here that is being done. Elephants and the staff and everything. I make sure that everything for the day is OK, yeah.

AMY: With the noon feeding done, Naomi and I settle into a shady spot at the edge of the corral to talk. I want to get to know these elephants through her eyes….and ears.

NAOMI: They can make a rumble. Rrrrrrr. Like, holding around your neck, giving you some kisses and hugs around your cheeks.

AMY: The elephants at Reteti are grouped by age, and we're with the youngest of the three cohorts. Like all young mammals, they like to play. They pick up sticks, or throw clumps of grass and dirt around. And they're full of curiosity about everything they encounter, including a new person, holding a big fluffy microphone.

AMY: (laughter) I just got smelled by an elephant!

AMY: The elephants are walking past us now in a slow procession, and I am spellbound. Their eyelashes are longer than my fingers, and their ears are like huge leathery wings. They flap them calmly to keep themselves cool, and spread them out wide when something catches their attention—or when they want someone else to pay attention to them.

NAOMI: loving up the elephants

AMY: They have wiry black hairs sticking up on their backs and trunks, and their skin is dry and etched deep with criss-crossing lines. Although their base color is grey, they coat themselves so thoroughly with mud that sometimes they almost like moving elephant sculptures made of reddish-brown clay. Rolling in the mud isn't just for fun: they need it to protect their skin from the relentless sun and from insects.

NAOMI: talking to the elephant, it rumbles back

AMY: The bond Naomi shares with these orphaned elephants is amazing to witness. As we talk, they approach and extend their trunks to greet her, and she holds still so they can sniff her face, her neck, or briefly give her a hug. In turn, she gently puts her hand on their backs or presses her open palm against their bellies. The young elephants seem to have an endless appetite for this contact.

NAOMI: Yeah, they like company because sometimes they can be scared of something. So they really need your company. Yeah. They need a mama.

AMY: The Samburu are semi-nomadic, pastoralist people. They graze herds of goats, cows, and camels, moving their families and their small, round homes, called manyattas to wherever their livestock can find food. James Leparkeri is a Samburu elder, and he remembers coming to this valley as a child, with his family and their herds.

JAMES, with TILAS translating: This place was full of wild animals.

I’m talking with James near the sanctuary, with the help of translator Tilas Lekango

JAMES, with TILAS translating: Elephants, rhinos, a lot of elands. All the animals there was just full. Like a lot of wild animals were here.

AMY: Traditionally, Samburu people haven’t marked the year of their births, so many don’t precisely know their age, especially in the older generations. But from other things he said, I’m guessing James was born in the late 1940s, or early 1950s, which would have made him a teenager when he first saw people coming into this area to hunt for ivory.

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: We believe they are either from Somalia and the Somali tribe and the Borana. So they came with guns.

AMY: He does remember that year exactly — it was 1964. Kenya was emerging from colonial rule by Great Britain, and different groups were struggling for land and power after decades of racist abuse. Elephants were caught up in the chaos.

MUSIC

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: They were just killing and killing and killing the wild animals. And they almost finished them all.

AMY: Although specific numbers are hard to pin down, there were likely millions of elephants in Africa at the turn of the 20th century, and maybe millions more before that. Now, we count them in the hundreds of thousands. This is thanks in large part to the lucrative ivory trade, but also habitat loss. Elephants are getting crowded out as people look for places to build homes, plant crops, and develop industry. And, they’re still getting gunned down by trophy hunters.

AMY: The most recent major census, in 2016, showed that there are only around 500,000 elephants left in Africa. Some subpopulations are increasing, but that's still a tiny fraction of the vast herds that once roamed the continent. The wildlife massacre that James witnessed has been repeated in place after place, radically disrupting life for everyone.

AMY: What did his family and community think about that?

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: These people are bandits, they are terrorists, they are not good people, so the Samburu people had to run away, to move.

AMY: They were scared.

TILAS: They were scared, yes.

AMY: Did they ever kill people?

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: They kill people and even they take their cows.

AMY: James says Samburu people left this valley, terrified, and didn’t start returning until the 1980s. The poachers had left by then, but not before they wiped out all of the rhinos, and most of the elephants. The Samburu eventually partnered with outside conservationists to form a community conservancy, with the goal of protecting their land and culture, and bringing back the wildlife, simultaneously. And James says it’s working. Several thousand wild elephants roam this land now, along with lions, giraffes, buffalo, antelope. And he says the community is benefitting from this in all sorts of ways. As just one example, he talks about water.

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: So people used to walk all the way— you see he’s pointing towards Sarara River—so they go to the Sarara River which is almost 12 kilometers one side, 12 kilometers coming back. Women carrying water back to the village, and some go all the way to the mountain to go and fetch water.

AMY: But when Reteti was being built, a water pipe was installed, which now brings clean water from the mountains down to the sanctuary and to an area that Samburu people frequent nearby.

JAMES, as translated by TILAS: So the village get water and the sanctuary got water.

AMY: It’s one thing to fall in love with elephants from afar, or as a temporary visitor. It’s quite another to live everyday with these massive animals. They need a lot of space, and they eat a lot of vegetation. In many places, that puts them in direct conflict with people. They can and do wreak havoc; sometimes destroying homes and damaging crops. And that can be devastating for families living on the edge of poverty. In response, a zero-sum narrative often emerges: what do we care about more, elephants or people?

AMY: But in this valley, people are resisting this us-versus-them story, and instead are looking for ways for everyone to thrive together. Through the community conservancy, they own three lodges here, where tourists from around the world pay for high-end vacations and wildlife view opportunities. A portion of those funds are then funnelled back into community projects: a school for Samburu children, a mobile health clinic, and the Reteti elephant sanctuary. And James says that means a whole generation of kids are growing up here, rooted in Samburu culture, but also getting more of the tools they’ll need to continue managing the elephant sanctuary and all the projects underway here into the future.

JAMES as translated by TILAS: He’s saying my hope is we will develop and have the best conservation, the best future for both our culture and our wildlife here. Because as long as we have some of our boys and girls in conservation and protecting the wildlife, in the future yeah we'll have a lot of wildlife here.

AMY: So all along it's like, as the elephants are being benefited, the people are being benefitted. That's what it sounds like. Is that right?

JAMES: It's a big benefit. Big benefit. Big.

NAOMI (to elephant): kaboi kaboi….kaboi kaboi kaboi

AMY: Elephants end up here at Reteti for a variety of reasons. Sometimes their families are killed by people, other times, they're found stuck in the small watering holes that dot this dry landscape. Whenever a baby is found alone in the bush, the keepers are called in to wait and watch, hoping it will rejoin its family. But if it doesn’t, they take it back to Reteti, to meet its new family of other orphaned babies, and the Samburu people who will care for it for the next several years. Naomi tells me that she lost her own mother when she was a girl. So she knows something about what these young elephants are going through.

NAOMI: I think they want to be cared, that's why they try to love you, so that you can love them more and more.

AMY: mmm

NAOMI: Yeah, because they don't see their real mothers here. They only see you. So they have to make you their mothers and their parents.

AMY: The ultimate goal here is release. After being sheltered for a number of years, and going through a long re-acclimation process, the majority of these orphaned elephants will leave the sanctuary and live wild lives out on the land. But first these babies need to be protected. Fed and watered. Loved, and listened to.

NAOMI: singing/calling to the elephant, it rumbles back

AMY: As Naomi sings and talks to them, the elephants rumble back, all the while investigating everything with their trunks. She says smell is very important to them.

NAOMI: So the elephant will like put on you the trunk. And sometimes they put it under your armpit looking for your smell. So they are very funny.

AMY: Elephant trunks are strong enough to rip trees out of the ground, and dexterous enough to delicately sort between blades of grass. So they’re kind of like a combination of a hand, a nose, and a very strong arm. And the trunk is also an additional ear. Naomi points to one of the young elephants who has extended its trunk and is holding it still on the ground, with a little J-shaped curve at the end.

NAOMI: You know, they're just doing a conversation with the other guys. The rumbling. See, they're putting their trunk on the ground.

AMY: The elephant is listening for low-pitched sound waves moving through the soil—vocalizations from other elephants maybe, or footsteps.

NAOMI: Sometime when they go away from the others and they lose their way. That's how they can communicate and they can get back to their family. But just rumbling, and also trumpeting, and also vibrating, rrrrrrr.

AMY: Elephants can also detect these vibrations through their enormous feet.

NAOMI: Some sound you can't actually hear. You can hear like something is very far, but it's not far, it's just deep sound.

AMY: Uh-huh.

NAOMI: But elephant can hear this sound. And that's how they can find their other team. Yeah.

AMY: Even though elephants can hear much lower pitches than we can, our audible ranges overlap in the middle, and they can hear our voices. In fact, one of the main tools Naomi uses to connect with and soothe the orphaned elephants is her voice. We walk out to where the babies sleep when they first arrive—a round, wooden structure with pens for the elephants on the ground, and a platform above, where the keepers can watch over them day and night.

NAOMI: They have nightmares.

AMY: Do they really?

NAOMI: Yeah, actually they scream at night and then you have to come down, cool them down. So small babies have nightmares, even the elephants.

AMY: Yeah.

NAOMI: Or sometime even they cry a lot. Arrrghh. Yeah actually they cry like that. So then you have to go down and they really feel like oh mommy's here, I'm not alone. I think that I was alone and something is just trying to attack me, so when they just see you and say….rrrrr….so OK mommy, you are here.

AMY: What are you saying to them to comfort them?

NAOMI: Actually, we have to sound their name, like Nyaklai, Lodokejek. Then we have talk in our language, most of the time we talk in our language. Sometime English or sometime Swahili, because we believe that elephants understand, yeah, so we have different ways. Sometimes even you can just pet them and just put the hand on top of them, yeah, at least to make them feel like, yeah, I'm not alone.

AMY: Everything Naomi says just reinforces that elephants are deeply wired for connection. In the early years here, they bonded so tightly with individual keepers that sometimes they wouldn't eat when their main caretaker needed days off. So, the keepers adjusted their system, and now each new arrival has contact with a variety of people. It's all part of a long learning process of how to give these sensitive creatures the love and attention they need to thrive, while also setting them up to be successfully released back into the wild someday.

KATIE: Yeah, these are really important animals to have in this landscape. They're such keystone species.

AMY: It's time for another feeding. Naomi rushes off to get bottles ready, I chat with Katie Rowe, the conservation director of the Sarara Foundation, which supports the wildlife restoration and community development projects here. Katie lives here with her family, and was very involved in the founding of the sanctuary.

ELEPHANTS SPLASHING AROUND

KATIE: This is one of the youngest, Naisamari, who's now seven months. She came in at just a few days old, so she was entirely reliant on milk—here they come.

AMY: The youngest group has been fed, and the middle group is arriving.

KATIE: Get ready for some more trumpeting.

AMY: But one of the smaller elephants is still drinking passionately. He’s a little slower, because he has to hold his bottle with a small stub of a trunk.

KATIE: This is Longuro, so he was found in a well and hyenas came, scared off his family. And I guess as he was trying to get out of the well the hyenas grabbed his trunk.

AMY: Oh, poor thing!

KATIE: So he only has really one third of his trunk. But it's really wonderful now to see him go and play in the mud. When he first arrived, he was not as confident to go and have a mud bath.

AMY Uh-huh. Maybe going down into something had bad memories.

KATIE: Yeah, he did. He definitely had a lot of hold backs.

AMY: But Longuro is not holding back now. He's finished his bottle and is rolling around in the mud with some of his buddies, kicking and splashing.

AMY: So there's like, I don't know, 10 of them, 12 of them playing in the water.

KATIE: He's happy to get muddy.

AMY: Longuro has truly beaten the odds. When he was found, he was so young, and in such terrible shape, that the officials from the Kenyan Wildlife Service recommended that he should be euthanized. Keeper Mary Lengees (LEHN-GEHS) had already been assigned to care for Longuro, and when she heard he was going to be killed, she spoke up.

MARY: Then I feel that pain, I say no. Just give him a second chance. Let us try to give him another chance.

AMY: We'll get to know Mary and hear the story of Longuro after this short break.

Break

[24:57] SEGMENT B

MARY: The elephants have really changed my life.

MUSIC

AMY: Welcome back to Threshold, I’m Amy Martin, and I’m back at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, talking with Mary Lengees, the second of the three keepers we’ll meet in this episode.

MARY: My name is Mary Lengees and I work as a keeper. Now I'm taking care of the small babies, the new arrivals.

AMY: Like many Samburu people, Mary is tri-lingual. She speaks Samburu, Sawhili, and English. I might repeat a few things she says, just to make sure you don't miss a word of her story. She tells me she has become a specialist in tending to the animals when they first arrive, alone, often injured, and traumatized.

MARY: When they just arrive I have to be there and look after them until they are out of stress.

AMY: You are very good at de-stressing the animals.

MARY: Yeah, I can. Yeah.

AMY: Why do you think you're good at that? What makes you good at that?

MARY: Okay, you know it depends on someone's heart. You know when you love just an animal, they will love you back, and they don't have that stress. You don't harm them, then they will accept you, that she's my mother or he's my mother. I love them so much, yeah.

AMY: Growing up, Mary did what most Samburu kids do: she spent long days out on the land tending to her family's goats. She says she would see elephants from far away, but Samburu children are taught to keep their distance from them. These are huge animals after all. So when Mary found out she was going to be working with elephants at Reteti, she was a little bit nervous, but also excited. Elephants aren't the only wild animals that end up here. There are also giraffes, gazelles, zebras, and more. Mary even cared for a baby rhino at the sanctuary—they bonded so deeply she named her second child after it.

AMY: So can you tell me about the story of Languro? When did he come?

MARY: Languro was rescued in 2020. He was attacked by the hyenas when he's inside the well.

AMY: He was attacked by hyenas when he was inside a well.

MARY: His trunk was cut and the wounds were everywhere, even in his mouth.

AMY: His trunk was cut and the wounds were everywhere, even in his mouth.

MARY: He was very sick, he was not OK.

MUSIC

AMY: Reteti often works in partnership with the Kenyan Wildlife Service, or KWS. And they were involved in Languro's rescue.

MARY: So we are told by the KWS that Longuro will be killed.

MARY: By tomorrow, at 8 a.m.

MARY: Then I feel that pain. I say, no. Just give him a second chance. Let us try to give him another chance.

AMY: She asked the wildlife officials, what if we get another baby who has lost part of its trunk? Will we just kill that one too? Why don't we use this as a chance to learn?

MARY: So it is better to get a lesson. They accepted that, let us give him another chance. Then I become his mother.

MARY: I take care of him. I didn't even go for my off for three months, just staying with him, giving him care, even cleaning his wounds.

AMY: I didn't take time off for three months. I just stayed with him, giving him care, cleaning his wounds.

MARY: I just stayed here for three consecutive months, I was just staying with him.

AMY: Mary fed Longuro, slept next to him, and tended to his every need nonstop. Finally she had to go home to her human family. So she asked Naomi to fill in for her. But Mary got back to Longuro as quickly as she could. Now, he’s five years old and doing great. And he has not forgotten Mary.

MARY: Even now, when I call Longuro he knows my voice. And whenever I call him, he just runs where I am. We really build a special bond between us.

AMY: She says she often collects pods from the acacia trees for him.

MARY: They are very nutritious. I have to collect some, and I take to my baby boy.

AMY: laughter

MARY: He is just my baby. When I go home, I just really miss him.

AMY: Mary says it's not clear if or when Longuro will be released back into the wild. She thinks he can handle most things, as long as he's with friends. With his short trunk, he can't pull branches off of trees to get to the leaves, like other elephants can. But when his friends pull down branches pull down, they allow him to eat from them.

MARY: Yeah, I’m so happy that Longuro is now OK, and I’m praying that his future will be the best, yeah.

AMY: But she does worry about his ability to find water during the dry season. That's when having a long trunk that can be extended deep into a watering hole can make the difference between life and death. She wants Longuro to experience true freedom, but she also says she hopes he can get released in a place where there’s a hole with water always available at the surface.

MARY: Yeah it's the only thing that I'm worried of. Just a place that he can take water easily without any problem.

AMY: In addition to caring for all of these animal babies, Mary is also raising three children of her own. She says her job at Reteti allows her to earn the money she needs to send them to school. Every elephant saved here is an investment in the future. For everyone.

YOUNG GIRL: Good morning class!

CLASS: Good morning Sarara!

YOUNG GIRL: Let us welcome our sister!

CLASS: Yes!

AMY: I’m standing in front of a group of 40 children ages two to six. We’re inside a large canvas tent that serves as their school. A bright-eyed girl is leading the class in welcoming me with this song.

YOUNG GIRL: (singing) Welcome, welcome our sister!

CLASS: (singing) Welcome, welcome our sister!....

YOUNG GIRL: (singing) Happy to see you, happy to see you, welcome, welcome our sister!

CLASS: (singing) Happy to see you, happy to see you, welcome, welcome our sister!

AMY: Thank you, ashe oleng!

AMY: Their teacher, Stella Lenangoisa, smiles at them from the side of the tent.

STELLA: So we started this school in 2018 as a mobile school. I’m the first Montessori teacher from Samburu.

AMY: Stella explains that this is a mobile school, designed to be able to move with the families here. When I visited, it was set up near some of the small rounded homes that Samburu women build, deconstruct, and rebuild as they move their livestock around the landscape. The school is totally integrated with Samburu life. The odd goat might come wandering through the area that had been smoothed into a small sandy soccer pitch, and it wouldn’t be unusual at all for these kids to look up and see a family of giraffes walking by. Stella grew up in this landscape too, and in this culture, and she understands everything parents here are juggling as they try to adapt to a changing world without losing their culture.

AMY: What are your hopes for the children?

STELLA: I want them to know their rights. Yeah, the right to survival and to know who they are. Not to be wasted by anybody.

AMY: Like the elephant sanctuary, this school is funded in part by revenue from tourists who come here to see the wild animals. So it's another way this community is pushing back against the binary story that says we have to choose between protecting elephants and supporting people. Here, it’s not either or. It’s both and. This mindset is also reflected in this poem that Stella wrote and that she and the students recited for me.

KIDS and STELLA:

Am I not lucky?

I’m lucky to be born in Sarara, full of peace and harmony.

Am I not lucky?

I’m lucky to go to a Montessori school, to read and write beautiful words.

Am I not lucky?

I’m lucky to be born in a family, full of voices of wild animals

Am I not lucky?

Yes, I’m lucky.

AMY: Poem, repeated for clarity

DOROTHY: I'm very grateful for these animals. I am very grateful to be part of their life and in their journey, yeah

AMY: This is elephant keeper Dorothy Lowaktuk. She’s been working at Reteti since the very beginning, along with Naomi and Mary.

DOROTHY: Yes, we were the first female to be elephant keepers in East Africa, which has really made us to be very strong women, and also very grateful to our self, and to our families, to our children, and to the community at large.

AMY: Dorothy said when she first got the job, some people in her community were resistant to the idea of women working the elephants. They told her it would be too hard for a woman.

DOROTHY: But at least when they say something like that, you just have to encourage them that nothing is impossible. Everything is possible. You just have to try. And at the end you will appreciate the success part of it.

AMY: And now that she’s proven herself here, they do appreciate her success, she says.

DOROTHY: Because, like, at least I'm now able to support my family. I was able to support my baby. I have one baby girl. I'm able to support my parents as well, my siblings, and also cousins, you know, Samburu people, when you are working, at least you have a lot of people who need your support and I'm doing that.

AMY: Dorothy says that’s leading more people in her community to see value in education.

DOROTHY: They're also now supporting a lot of their kids to go to school, because they have seen the importance of educating a woman. When you educate a woman, you educate the entire Samburu Community.

AMY: Samburu women also sell milk from their goats to feed the elephants at the sanctuary, which helps to funnel more money back into the community. All of these different projects combine to help dispel the myth that people and wildlife are inherently in competition for resources.

DOROTHY: The animals are living in harmony because of the good relationship that we have built between the two. And I think that's a good way to go. If we continue to support both parties, we'll always enjoy living in peace. And our land will come back like before, because this was the most richest land, with animals, with the ecosystem was beautiful.

MUSIC

DOROTHY: With the elephants, I can say they've become my role model. I have experience a lot of their challenges they go through, the trauma, the stress, even a lot of pain because of the complications they came with. The reason why I'm saying they are my role model, they accept life the way it is, but they still believe there's life after.

AMY: Dorothy tells me that she recently lost three close family members over a very short period of time. And then her mom fell seriously ill too. In fact, she was still sick on the day Dorothy and I were talking.

DOROTHY: That's one of the difficulties that I've really experienced. And it is very, terrible one that has really made me like even to feel life has no meaning. But at some points, when I think of elephant babies and the trauma they came with, they still making life. I also take myself as an elephant baby and accept God wills, and move on with life. Yeah.

AMY: Dorothy bonded deeply with one elephant in particular in the early days of Reteti.

DOROTHY: Yes, I have my special elephant. Her name is Shaba. She's among the first elephants to come to Reteti. I love Shaba so much.

NAOMI: Shaba's mother was killed by people.

AMY: Naomi Lechongoro also loved Shaba.

NAOMI: And she witnessed the death of her mother. And when she came here she was about one and a half years and she was very, very traumatized and very stressed. And she don't want even to see the people around.

AMY: For seven days, Naomi says, Shaba wouldn't eat.

NAOMI: We put the milk in a bucket. Shaba is just like throwing and crush the bucket. When she see a person from far, she runs direct to the person and try to kill the person.

AMY: She knew that people had killed her mother.

NAOMI: Exactly.

DOROTHY: It is very sad. You can imagine small baby about one year, seeing her mum dying. And few of her family members. It is really terrible.

AMY: Eventually, they built a small tower of tires. A keeper would crawl inside of it and remain out of sight, while lifting a bottle out of the top. Finally, Shaba came to drink.

DOROTHY: And after that, she joined us here. She accepted us. Even though she has, like, confirmed, people like these people has hurt my family. So, like, after that, she accepted and she moved on.

AMY: Dorothy says Shaba seemed to channel the grief of losing her mother into the work of mothering the other orphans.

DOROTHY: She became like a matriarch, leader of the other babies. She will always protect them. When she hear the elephants like our babies screaming, she go and check, she go to confirm what is happening. And she tell them a lot of good things and even, like being so selfless. She knew how to hold a bottle when she was about 15 months, and she can drink a bunch of milk and leave something later for one of our small baby we had. So Mebai was like the smallest, and then Shaba always leave something later for Mebai. So she was so kind and so loving.

AMY: Here’s Naomi again.

NAOMI: We learn many things. We go across many challenges. But all in all we made it to success.

AMY: Where is Shaba now?

NAOMI: Shaba has gone back into the wild. After she is about seven years old she gone back into the wild.

DOROTHY: She was the best elephant ever. I just visited her like the month of September last year. She is progressing well. And I was very impressed by her, because she still recognized when I call her, and she just raised the trunk and even, like, look at me. And then I ended up, like, crying.

AMY: Yeah.

DOROTHY: And I don't want, I couldn't wish to bring her closer, because I want her also want to adopt, like, another life. And I'm glad she has joined other groups of elephants, and she's, she's coping with life. I’m just praying for her, and for the life of her babies when she get one.

DOROTHY: I love, like, I don't know…I can't explain how much I love her, and how much I miss her as well. She knew that I loved her so much. Wherever she is, I know she still know that I love her.

ELEPHANT: rumble

NAOMI: chit-chatting with the elephant

AMY: It’s late afternoon at the sanctuary, and Naomi is walking in a long line of elephants back toward the corral.

NAOMI: singing

AMY: One of the youngsters stops to sniff me before ambling quietly on.

AMY: Hey beautiful….hey...how are you doing sweet thing?

AMY: For as long as there have been people there have been elephants. The connection these keepers and many other people around the world feel with these creatures isn't some modern disneyfied affectation. It's an expression of a very old truth, a feeling of relatedness that goes all the way back to our origins.

NAOMI: walking and singing with elephants rumbling

AMY: We happen to be living during a bizarre spasm of violence against elephants—destroying their habitat, chopping up and selling their bodies, and overheating their world. This isn't normal, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get normalized to it.

NAOMI: walking and singing with elephants

AMY: And as I watched and listened to these elephants, the poem that Stella and the kids at the school recited kept ringing in my ears. Am I not lucky, to have had the chance to meet these beings, and the people who are so devoted to them. And are we not lucky, our whole species, to share this planet with them. We’ve abused them terribly, and often continue to approach their existence as a problem rather than a precious gift. But Samburu people are demonstrating that we can make other choices. Just like Dorothy said, we can think of elephants as our role models, showing us how to move through the landscape together, listening carefully to each other’s voices, and caring for one another in a rapidly changing world.

MUSIC

NAOMI: walking and singing with elephants rumbling

Credits

AMY: This episode of Threshold was written, reported, and produced by me, Amy Martin, with help from Erika Janik and Sam Moore. Music by Todd Sickafoose. Post-production by Alan Douches. Fact-checking by Sam Moore. Special thanks to Ami Vitale and Tilas Lekango. Threshold is made by Auricle Productions, a non-profit organization powered by listener donations. You can find out more about our show and support our work at thresholdpodcast.org.

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