Kiss + Tell

Betty and her many fans.

I had a plan and everything of how I will kiss a giraffe or giraffes, take these killer pictures and write a post titled Kiss +Tell. I didn't know how difficult it is to actually kiss a giraffe and that said giraffes are celebrities, everyone wants to feed them and take pictures with/of them,so my plan clearly didn't take everything into consideration.But for future purpose I am now well aware and if  when I go back to the giraffe center again,I might just 'kiss' one.

The Giraffe centre is a non-profit making organization whose main objective is to raise the number of  the Rothschild giraffes that are endangered,in-addition to this the centre aims to provide conservation education to school children and all the education programs offered by the centre to children are free of charge :-) :-)

The Giraffe centre experience

Feeding the Giraffes

Me thinking-Gosh this is harder than I thought.....................

.................................and me knowing that Betty is very friendly.

Some of the Warthogs at the centre.

One of the biggest thing that you get is to see giraffes at really close range and to even feed them.

Maybe it's only me but Betty looks really thin or maybe giraffes are generally thin but maybe just maybe the management of Giraffe centre should reconsider having them and their feeding as an attraction because seriously those pellets are too small and they basically spend the whole day being fed pellets and maybe they don't get enough food, can you imagine going hungry in a place where there is a lot of food as the centre has a forest and trees are giraffes' food.Funny thing is there is this one poster that reads that each person should feed the giraffes one handful of pellets only as they are on a diet :-D :-D.

The Talk

What she is holding is a warthog's skull, it's brain space is so small hence it's very very very poor memory, like it could be running away from danger and 5 minutes later it forgets said danger and stops to graze, that bad!

Everyone knows about the big five right? but I am sure not many people know of the little five.Allow me to introduce them to you,they are; elephant shrew, buffalo weaver, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino beetle( I learnt this from the talk at the Centre)

I am not too sure,if they have organised talks each day or we just got lucky but this talk was really informative.The lady who gave the talk covered a lot of things during her talk like the different species of giraffes found in Kenya and the things that distinguish each kind from the other,why warthogs and giraffes are close friends in the wild,warthogs and their small brain problems, a lot of useful information but the highlight has to be that the females have hair on their small horns and the male ones are bald and this what distinguishes them, also that in the giraffe world as in all other worlds the female is king as she is the one responsible for looking for food,guiding the group when they are migrating and even fighting enemies.These females are doing us PROUD.

Conservation support

This picture was created by a student as an entry to one of the Center's conservation competitions.

Waste bins-Clearly they practice what they preach :-)

From the talk I also learnt that the centre is very keen on environmental conservation and hold competitions on conservation for school children and the winning school wins a trip to the Nairobi national park and sites around Nairobi to see pollution and it's negative impact first hand and that on Thursdays( I am not too sure if it's each Thursday or some specific ones) they allow school kids to get into the Centre for free and as if this is not enough they occasionally organize trainings for school teachers on issues around environmental conservation :-) :-).

The Nature Trail

The joys of seeing a water point.

The Natural trail is especially dope because it tells a story of how Nairobi,the whole of it was trees and truly a place of cool waters where Maasai pastoralists could bring their livestock when times were bad in Maasai-land(I joke) but it's so so pretty and each tree has a small board on it showing the name of the tree in English, it's scientific one and it's names in different Kenyan languages and what the tree can be used for.

If you are in Nairobi and have some free time and want to see giraffes and even touch them, then Giraffe centre is the place to visit.They charge 250 KES per person so I figure it's not too expensive either and totally worth it.