Updates

Lewa Downs saves elephant. 

Sunday August 7th afternoon at 2.30 Lewa received an urgent call from a nearby farm, Embori that borders the Mt. Kenya Forest Reserve, reporting an elephant that had fallen into a pit latrine and was totally stuck. The exhausted elephant was surrounded by disconsolate local community farmers. Ian Craig, Richard Moller and the Lewa crew, flew to the farm to try and rescue the elephant. They also sent a Land cruiser, kindly donated by WSPA, with lots of heavy-duty slings and ropes, kindly donated by Martin Bucher at Zurcher Tierschutz.  The elephant, a bull about 20 years old, was lightly sedated and then the slings were maneuvered into place to enable a tractor to pull him out from the pit. The Elephant, now named “Smelly”, was slowly but surely pulled free from the pit amidst huge puffs of black smoke coming from the tractor as its wheels spun.  Sometime later, the very tired Elephant recovered, got up and disappeared back into the forest from where he had come.

There is more to Borana. 

Life on a Kenyan ranch isn’t just about living close-up with a whole album of Laikipia’s unique wildlife, including some of Kenya’s most habituated elephants. It’s about so much more. Each day some sort of equilibrium must be sought between the needs of Africa’s predators and abundant wildlife and those of the doe-eyed hump-backed Boran cattle that give the ranch its name. Alongside this, we have to ensure the commercial viability of our smaller-scale projects such as the tannery and leather workshop, manned by blind and disabled workers whilst also putting energy into the success of schemes to enhance the lives of Borana‘s pastoralist neighbors. The Borana Mobile Clinic.  The Borana mobile clinic was launched in January and regularly visits all the schools in the area as well as setting up shop amongst far-flung communities with no access to basic health care. Working with the Ministry of Health has brought child immunization to the wilderness and also given many women the choice of family planning. The pink land rover carrying the nurses with Jackson the driver and AIDS councilor has become a very popular attraction. The Borana Education Support Program.  Thanks to tremendous generosity from many of our guests the Borana Education Support Program has gone from strength to strength with a large number of children from the five primary schools that we support going on to secondary school with 100% bursaries. We have built two new class rooms and an administration block at Ethi primary school and created a permaculture garden at the Ngare Ndare School. The Laikipia Wildlife Forum Education Bus has become a regular visitor to Borana and our resident guides Boniface, David and Stephen join these expeditions imparting a wealth of knowledge and understanding to both teachers and children. Both Boniface and David are studying for their Silver level guiding exam.

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