This baby was unique, being Ugandan as opposed to all the other Kenyan orphans we have rescued. She simply wandered into a fishing village near Lake George in Queen Elizabeth National Park, was thereafter transported across the Channel in a fishing boat and dumped back in the bush, because her rescuers didn't know what else to do! Fortunately, word got out, and she was re-captured by an expatriate who had heard about her, and taken to the Uganda Education Centre, where she was cared for round the clock by expatriate volunteers and two National Park Rangers with telephone instructions from us in Nairobi. Meanwhile, the ponderous bureaucracy of getting an elephant across a territorial boundary had to be tackled, which involved 6 long weeks. Eventually, however, "Mweya" (thus named by the Ugandans) arrived on the 27th February 2001 by Helicopter.

She was tiny for her age, but what she lacked in size, she certainly made up in character - an extremely forceful and playful little elephant with a strong personality and a mind of her own! She was held in the Uganda Education Centre which she shared with some chimpanzees, who obviously gave her a very hard time, but she proved well able to look after herself and them!

Mweya is now an ex-orphan in Tsavo East National Park who sometimes visit the Voi stockades every now and then.