I had quite a few fun little adventures during my stay at Ol Pejeta, and dont want to bore everyone with them all, but here is a more interesting one.
One night we decided to have a Barbeque, everyone from the ranch was invited and we cooked pretty much a whole cow on the grill. As the night progressed beer flowed until people started heading off to sleep. As is normal in this situation a few slightlier thirstier people stayed up later than the rest, on this occasion it was Brendan, Rachel (a friend from Lamu) and myself. Eventually we cleaned the house of alcohol and not wanting to waste our drunkeness discussed what to do.
We decided to jump in the car and go searching for elephants. Every night a herd of elephants break through the fences around the workers compound, eating all the food and generally trashing the place. The ‘Askaris’ (security guards) are supposed to scare them off, but are pretty useless and probably sleeping most of the time. It wasn’t long before we found the Elephants tromping in between the villagers huts, so we scared them off and then returned home, satisfied with using our drunkeness to some purpose.
Back at the house we heard an animal in the garden fence, we turned the car headlights on to the noise. A baby zebra was stuck in the fence with its mother seemingly trying to push it all the way through. It became apparent that the baby was well and truly stuck, we decided to see if we could help to free it. As we approached the mother ran off leaving the baby stranded, its neck and feet well trapped in the fence. We managed to free the baby which must of been very young and was still wet so possibly even new born. Once freed we expected it to run back to its mother, but instead it ran straight back into the fence, this happened a few times until eventually it ran down the fence line and out of view. We presumed its mother who was calling from not far away would find it during the night, so we went off to bed expecting this to be the end of the story.
The next day Brendan phoned up on the way to work, the Zebra had been found in a fenced off area all by iteself. The rest of us went off to investigate, it was obviously very weak and in desperate need of its mother. Being such a young baby it was happy to presume anybody or anything was its mother, at one stage it even tried suckling from a jumper sitting on a fence post. Everyone had become quite attached to the little critter and were trying to persuade Sandra to keep it as a pet, then promptly all left leaving us with a slight situation.
We chatted with a few people in the know, they all told us that Zebras dont make good pets, they grow up to be aggressive and generally rude animals. We were advised to ‘let nature take its cause’, which in this case would mean leaving the Zebra in the fenced area where eventually it would starve until it was so weak that the vultures and hyenas would feed on its near dead body. All of this in front of the staff housing area.
We hatched a plan and bundled the baby in the back of the Land Rover, by now the Zebra thought Sandra was its mother, so she sat in the back while I drove. Off we went in search of its true mother and the rest of its herd, in an attempt to re-establish it with its family. It took a bit of looking but eventually we found a herd that graze fairly nearby. It was quite tricky as the Zebra would only follow Sandra and not the other Zebra who were by now running away from us. Sandra walked the baby quite a distance while I sat in the car, on the signal I drove up Sandra jumped in the car and we sped off. The Zebra ran after us for quite away but eventually gave up.
Sandra checked later in the day and it was still sat by itself with the other herd grazing nearby, so signs werent good. Later in the evening however the other herd were spotted in the same area. So although we don’t know the true fate of our little friend, each person could presume their own ending.
