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Godoma, the mini matriarch of the Nursery family and leader of the younger group, fully understands her role and always comes to the other babies when she is needed. At the public visit today when their time was up and they had finished their milk, the first group was on their way back to the forest. Godoma was leading the group out and across the little bridge where the water runs down the rocks and the others were following in line, all except Kuishi and Esampu who were being very playful and shoved the smaller babies to the side to get to the front. Musiara hates to be pushed around and yelled out loudly for help as he ran back to his keepers, but little Sattao was pushed into the water. Godoma was very concerned and pushed all the others out of the way to get to the little ones. When Musiara saw Godoma coming he ran towards her as she rumbled and pulled him under her neck. Sattao made his way out of the water and he and Luggard also joined Godoma as she walked out with Musiara. There was no more pushing after that as they all knew they would suffer the consequences from Godoma if they dared. At 3pm while Enkesha was enjoying soil dusting, Ndiwa accidentally stood on her trunk and she shouted out in pain. It was Malkia who ran over to check she was okay and although it was an accident she drove Ndiwa away from the area for hurting Enkesha.

As the orphans were preparing to go down for the public visit today Ndiwa, Maramoja, Ngilai, Pare and Esampu came across a gang of buffalo in the thicket. They ran towards those that were ahead of them with the keepers ready to start walking down to where their milk bottles were. This was the first group of the young ones and they made Esampu and Kuishi so nervous that they hid themselves in the middle of the group and they remained unsettled for some time. Esampu and Kuishi together with Malima came running down for their milk shouting as they ran. After they had their milk Kuishi was still in a funny mood and started causing trouble in the visiting area, running along and shoving everyone she came across. She found a bag belonging to one of the visitors by the rope cordon and mistook it for a football, and kicked it to Esampu who trumpeted and kicked it back to her but luckily a keeper got there first and removed the bag to hand it back to the owner! Kuishi ran over to the keeper and tried to snatch the bag away from him but in vain. They went on causing trouble until their time was up and they returned to the forest with the rest of the young group. In the second group of orphans Maramoja seemed to really like the lucerne pellets today. When she arrived at the ground she ran for the pellets before going for her milk bottle! In between her two bottles she took a break for some more pellets too, before returning to finish her second bottle. She charged at Lasayen and Rapa whenever they tried to share some of the pellets in that pile too.

Maktao is settling down very well into life at the nursery and has stopped his funny habit of trying to eat mud. He is very attached to the keepers and if he happens to lose sight of them for even a minute he will start yelling. Today there was a bit of a fight between him and Musiara over the keepers as Musiara is still very fond of them and he isn’t ready to relinquish all of their attention to Maktao. He has been losing to Maktao though so recently he has spent time with Luggard, Malkia and Esampu instead. Murit has always been a peace maker amongst his younger friends and today was another good example. During the public visit Ambo and Tamiyoi started fighting in front of him over a pile of lucerne pellets. He took some time before intervening as if he wanted to see if they would settle the fight themselves. Eventually he just pushed them in opposite directions and did the same thing later on when Enkesha and Kuishi were fighting over some other pellets.

Kiko had a hard time trying to join the orphans as they browsed in the forest this morning as Maramoja, Mteto, Sana Sana, Rapa, Pare, Ngilai and Tagwa ganged up against him and charged at him prompting him to run to the bushes. Mteto and some in the group kept charging after him though in an effort to drive him right away, and stamped around in the bushes trumpeting. Kiko has to watch from far away with his long neck poking out of the bushes to see. During public visiting it was very sweet to watch little Musiara clambering over Kuishi who was enjoying her time soil dusting on the ground. As he was failing to climb over her body with his little legs he caused some laughs when he settled his little bottom against her head and decided to scratch himself there!

Ngilai decided to entertain Rapa in a wrestling match in the early morning hours today. It’s not often we find Ngilai engaged in such a game with Rapa as he usually prefers to play with the more gentle bulls, even though he is also quite a rough little boy! Everyone else was busy browsing but perhaps these two boys wanted to warm themselves up on this cold morning. It is habit among the orphans that when one starts something, others will sometimes follow and after watching their game for awhile, Murit invited Godoma to a pushing game. Kuishi became jealous of Tamiyoi and Jotto who had started playing beside her and she decided to separate the two by pushing them apart, but Mbegu came over and hugged them and pushed Kuishi away from the herd.

The orphans began their day in a happy and high spirited mood today. As they walked out to the forest they encountered some buffalos, some who were standing and some who were still lying down. The orphans got very excited and Godoma, Tamiyoi, Esampu, Mbegu, Ambo and Malkia charged around and trumpeted, stamping their feet in an effort to scare the buffalos away. Eventually the buffalos got bored of their charging and moved away into the forest. Once all the orphans settled down Kuishi, Ngilai, Tagwa, Malkia and Mteto proceeded to join the little ones. Sattao, Maktao and Musiara were standing quietly with their keepers when these friends of theirs came to join them and as they surrounded them it was as if they were all having a serious conversation. Eventually Rapa came over which disrupted the meeting as he went to climb on Tagwa but Ngilai pushed him away and engaged him in a wrestling game. Rapa was too strong though and was playing a rough game with Ngilai which Kuishi noticed and she joined him to help push Rapa away. Together they managed to push him and Rapa surrendered and walked off to join some other boys who were browsing nearby. During the private visit today little Maktao got stuck in the mud bath and started screaming for help. Mbegu and the keepers ran over to help him and after he was extracted and righted he seemed to make fun of the situation and went back to lie in the middle of the pool again – making it very difficult for anyone to get to him! Later on Mbegu managed to pull him to the edge of the mud pool for the keepers to get him out.

This morning whilst the orphans were busy browsing in the forest, it was very funny to watch Ngilai rustling about in a bush he had been browsing on and then a huge butterfly moth flew out causing him to back away quickly before going back to inspect the bush again. He had his ears held high as he followed the moth which danced above the bush in the air trying to settle back down to the place it had been resting. Ngilai tried to catch the moth in his trunk but it kept challenging by flying up again, which made him lose his temper and start to trumpet and charge around in frustration. This earned the interest of Mteto and Kuishi who joined him in trumpeting and stamping around in the bushes, which meant the moth flew up into a tree for refuge to get away from the feisty elephant babies. In the afternoon we rescued a young male elephant baby from the Tsavo Conservation Area who was very skinny and had obviously been without its mother for some days.

During the public visit today after the first group of orphans had finished their milk bottles it was quite funny watching Kuishi who was in a very playful mood and was down on her knees pushing the plastic water trough with her head and trying to spill all the water out. The keepers cautioned her and she is a clever elephant so she listened to them and walked away, but after a few minutes she walked back to the water trough as this mission was obviously firmly on her mind, and this time he was accompanied by the naughty Esampu. They both got down on their knees and before the keepers could do anything they quickly tipped over the water trough spilling the water everywhere. They happily pushed and kicked the water trough around in a fun new game they had invented. Their game came to an end though when Kuishi kicked the trough so hard it rolled into the mud pool. Kuishi tried to pull it out with her trunk but it rolled further away into the mud, making it harder for her to retrieve it. The playful Kuishi conceded defeat as she stood on the edge of the mud pool and trumpeted as she watched the water trough float around on the surface of the muddy water, out of reach.

Today it was the first group of orphans turn to tussle with the resident warthogs over their lucerne pellets during the public visiting time. Little Musiara, Sattao and Maktao were chasing after the warthogs babies that had accompanied their mothers to eat lucerne pellets. These three little boys kept themselves busy chasing the young warthogs around the mud wallow and taking sharp turns, but at one point Musiara miscalculated his turn and fell over! He fell over and yelled which brought Godoma, Kuishi, Tamiyoi and Malima running over kicking up a cloud of dust as they found the warthogs close to where Musiara had just fallen over. Tamiyoi and Malima checked him over as Godoma and Kuishi drove the warthogs away from the area. Sattao and Maktao had also got a fright when Musiara fell over and did not want to chase the baby warthogs any more but they stood next to their keepers instead.