Jumping with the Turkana tribe whilst filming for Oxfam

Diary excerpts from an Oxfam filming trip to the Turkana district in Kenya

2nd October 2013

Up in North West Kenya in the Turkana district, it's a bit like African cowboy country, hot, dusty and apparently lots of cattle rustling between the tribes. The 'Shepherds' all carry guns!
The women here wear beautiful beads in stacks up to their chin, with beautiful wraps of almost tartan description, the men wear funny little beanie type hats with feathers and also a colorful wrap and carry a long stick and a round wooden knife tool. I assume different patterns/colours are for different tribes.
We head North today to see some projects that Oxfam are supporting

4th October 2013

They told us that when we went to the remote parts of Turkana, the women may sing to us to show that they are happy to see us. Today they sang and danced towards us, as you can see in the video, they came closer and closer and then I switched off the camera to be with them. Then they started jumping at all different times and our fixer Joseph said if you want to jump you should jump with them, it was slightly intimidating at first, but after getting over my initial English stiffness, I started jumping too and they went wild with laughter and jumping, and then the men gathered round laughing, it was such a wonderful experience, an overpowering feeling. I guess that's what they call jumping for joy :)

6th October 2013

Went to the elephant orphanage today in Nairobi, a lot were orphaned quite young (most under 6 months) from their mothers being poached for their ivory  Elephants never forget they are one of the most intelligent animals so you can imagine the trauma these little guys have suffered. Almost cried when the 3 little ones came out (in the first photo) as they are only 5 weeks old and looked a bit traumatised and frightened, they kept so close to their keepers, who I guess are like their surrogate mothers. The keepers have to sleep in their stable with them and feed them every 3 hours. The other bigger ones are about a year and a half but they still need mothers milk until they are 2 years old. Dame Daphne Sheldrick came up with a formulae to feed baby elephants, because obviously you can't milk a wild elephant to give to orphan baby elephants! The older ones were more playful and seemed quite happy eating and playing in the mud together.
I adopted a baby elephant today as a birthday present for my 9yr old niece it's only $50 a year and it helps keep the orphanage running, it costs $900 per month for each baby elephant! If you are interested in adopting go to: 
                                                             www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org 
and adopt one of these beautiful intelligent babies, they live until they are 70yrs old!