Instant Kenyan Video Sensation

"It is said charity begins at home. And for these young orphaned elephants, this charitable foundation is what they call home." 

"I'd kept my distance, but I was so focused and didn't even realize they were getting close."

"At first I felt the elephant trunk’s contact on my back but decided to keep going because I was doing my almost 10th take of my piece to camera."

"I wasn’t gonna let anything stop me. Until the baby elephant stuck its trunk in my mouth."

Alvin KIaunda, reporter for the Kenya Broadcasting Corp.

Elephant interrupts reporter in Kenya  Still from video

 It was an assignment. A little out of the ordinary, perhaps, but this man is a professional, and he decided he would take his story, backgrounding it at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a non-profit operating an elephant orphanage in Nairobi. The foundation of the story was to emphasize the critical condition of Kenya's wildlife as the country battles its worst drought in decades.

According to local authorities, the extreme weather is ending up causing the death of twenty times as many elephants as poaching has. The country's Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife revealed in a recently released report that over a thousand animals have perished as a result of the drought. Animals whose lives have ended directly resulting from drought conditions include wildebeests, zebras, elephants and buffaloes, among others. 

When Reporter Kaunda  was tasked with tackling the item for his employer, the Kenya Broadcasting Corp., he thought that doing so from the location of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, would add an extra touch of drama and engage his audience with the presence of orphaned elephants. He was experiencing initial difficulties in his delivery, however, and had already attempted ten full takes, none of which spoke to the issue in the way he had planned.

 

At the beginning of the clip the reporter was able to keep a straight face and remained very professional as he spoke about the young orphaned elephants

 

 Finally, as the elephants drew closer to where he had stationed himself on the reserve, in the midst of detailing the effects of human action on the natural world, he felt the tip of an elephant trunk behind his left ear. One of the  young elephants was clearly curious and had taken the opportunity of proximity to explore the visitor with its sensitive trunk. Which it draped over the journalist's shoulder, then twisting higher, investigated his ear, so unlike her own.

As  four-year-old Kindani's trunk gently ran over the side of his head, the seasoned reporter held fast to his journalistic unflappability and continued to recite the delivery of his message to viewers. When the elephant's trunk began snuffling along his face, he could no longer remain unreactive and burst into laughter. Resulting video clips took no time appearing on line on the weekend, resulting in millions of views

"Most of us would have lost our professionalism far sooner."

"An important piece pertaining to the drought, but our orphans just saw a visitor to investigate!"

Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Nairobi, Kenya

Not long into his report the wild animal started running its truck over Alvin's ear and head

 

 

 

 

Prehistoric Grief of Loss

"This is at the root of the symbolic mind that characterizes Homo sapiens."

"The child was buried in a residential site, close to where this community lived, evincing how intimately life and death are related."

"Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration and even tenderness they treat the living [with]. Even when we die, we continue to be someone for our group."

"[Ancient Homo sapiens and Neanderthals practised funerary behaviour], a type of behaviour that allows us to maintain links with those who died and offer a farewell."

Maria Martinon-Torres, director, National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH), Spain

 

"This would likely have been a group act, perhaps by members of the child's family."

"All of these behaviours are, of course, very similar to those observed in our own species today, so we can relate to this act even though the burial dates to 78,000 years ago."

Nicole Boivin, archaeologist, director, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany

Excavations at this African cave site called Panga ya Saidi revealed the continent’s oldest known example of an intentional human burial.   Mohammad Javad Shoaee

Scientists revealed this week their finding of the oldest-known human burial in Africa. Not surprising in the sense that Africa is the continent where the human species arose. The burial site of a young child -- [estimated to be between 2-1/2 years of age and three when it died, its gender remains indeterminate] -- in a cave called Panga ya Saidi, near the coast of Kenya. The child's remains were given the name "Mtoto", translated from Swahili to English: "child". 

 

This virtual reconstruction shows the original position of a child’s bones in a Kenyan grave dug around 78,300 years ago, making it Africa’s oldest known human interment. Jorge González, Elena Santos

The fragile skeleton was found buried in a shallow grave beneath the overhang of the cave. Its head rested on a 'pillow' with the upper torso carefully wrapped in a shroud, both pillow and shroud hypothesized to having been composed of dried, decayed vegetation. It is a discovery which the researchers claim sheds light on the development of early complex social behaviours in Homo sapiens.

Africa gave birth to the first Homo sapiens species over 300,000 years ago. A species which gradually, through migration, spread throughout the world. The archaeologist/researchers encased the decomposed bones in plaster after lifting them from the circular pit where they had lain over the vast space of millenna on end, to be taken to CENIEH for eventual study. 

The skeletal remains were found in the grave placed in a flexed position, body on its right side, knees drawn toward the chest. A void left by the decay of a pillow composed of perishable vegetation that had collapsed caused the cranium and three neck bones to fall into the depression. 

 

The researchers hypothesized from the position of a shoulder bone and two ribs that the upper body had been wrapped in similar perishable material -- after which the body was covered with earth dug up from the floor of the cave.

"The next oldest grave in Africa is about 74,000 years old. Interestingly, that was also a young child, but it was poorly excavated about 50 years ago, so we don't know much about it."  

"Here, there is definitely a sense of personal loss. It's evidence of people who had a more symbolic representation of the world around them."  

Dr Louise Humphrey, Natural History Museum, London    

The scientists have named the child Mtoto, which means 'the kid' in Swahili   Fernando Fueyo

That Which Humankind Has Destroyed ... To be Restored

"We are very happy that after this first procedure on Najin and Fatu that they have recovered very smoothly and they are doing really well and fine today just twenty-four hours after this first procedure."
Dr.Robert Hermes, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW)

"I am pretty sure we will overcome that hurdle [perfecting the technique whereby the species can be renewed]."
"But even if we are able to have those frozen embryos and store them for 3,000 years or longer, we can say we have saved the whole organism for future generations."
IZW spokesman

Rhino keeper James Mwenda checks on Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos on the planet

"Both the technique and the equipment had to be developed entirely from scratch." 
"We were able to harvest a total of 10 oocytes - five from Najin and five from Fatu - showing that both females can still provide eggs and thus help to save these magnificent creatures."
Professor Thomas Hildebrandt, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Germany

"On the one hand Ol Pejeta is saddened that we are now down to the last two northern white rhinos on the planet, a testament to the profligate way the human race continues to interact with the natural world around us."

"However we are also immensely proud to be part of the groundbreaking work which is now being deployed to rescue this species."

"We hope it signals the start of an era where humans finally start to understand that proper stewardship of the environment is not a luxury but a necessity."

Richard Vigne, managing director, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya

Fatu is surrounded by her keepers and Dr. Stephen Ngulu of Ol Pejeta before the procedure

China's immense population, the largest in the world, has some cultural appetites that seem unappeasable. It has been well documented and well publicized that many wild animals on all continents are threatened with extinction. Yet the appetite in China for bones, skin, horns, and various parts of endangered species as well as common species of animals knows no boundaries. Animals illegally slaughtered so that their parts can be used in Chinese traditional pharmaceuticals, in potions believed to have health-giving qualities as well as those viewed as aphrodisiacs.

Animals favoured and valued, and bringing huge profit to the black marketers to be used for exotic and highly prized food preparation, recipes unique to China. And there is the matter of bones and tusks used for traditional art, proscribed by most countries of the world in recognition both of the cruelty of slaughtering great beasts and leaving their bodies to rot after their prized horns and tusks have been removed.

The prohibition against hunting endangered species hasn't stopped poaching nor the illegal trade; game preserves in Africa can be monitored but the will is there to make a way to supply the black market. All efforts to stop poaching appear to have come up hard against human greed unwilling to forfeit the opportunity to extract huge sums for prohibited goods. And those whom the black market serves appear to have little conscience respecting their illegal and immoral destruction of animal life.

Demand for rhinoceros horn for Chinese medicine and for dagger handles in Yemen were the cause of a crisis, the result of which was these animals being swept wholesale into extinction from the 1970s forward. The northern white rhino was declared extinct in the world in 2008. An animal population survey was unsuccessful in finding any live specimens in the wild. A handful of the beasts were kept on a Kenyan wildlife reserve where they were carefully monitored and protected.

There were two males left out of the huge numbers that once roamed the grassy plains stretching along the southern edge of the Sahara desert, from Uganda, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad. There were no natural predators, other than human beings who were more than eager to continue supplying the illegal market demanding rhino horn. One male named Suni died of natural causes in 2014. The sole remaining male then died in 2018. Leaving only two females.

Neither of the females was able to become pregnant though the older of the two had borne the younger one almost two decades ago. Najin is the daughter of the male Northern White, Sultan, who died last year. She is 28 years of age, and had given birth to a now-18-year-old female, Fatu, both of them living under 24-hour armed guard in the same reserve. Biologists involved in the preservation of a species now doomed to extinction felt it would be worthwhile extracting eggs from the two females.

Years ago, sperm had been cryonically preserved from four male rhinos. Should the scientists involved ultimately be successful in breeding living offspring with the use of the frozen sperm and eggs, the goal they envision is to create a herd of up to fifteen animals. The intent then would be to return the beasts to their natural habitat in Africa, an ambitious project that may well take a decade to succeed with.

This will represent a new procedure in artificially inseminating frozen sperm in a technique never before attempted that must be experimented with to ensure the technique can be properly perfected. The projected involves the Italian biotech laboratory Avantea, the Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic and the Kenya Wildlife Service representing an "attempt to push the boundaries of what is medically and technically feasible."

A skeptic might ask what good it would do to return fifteen animals to Kenya when the problem that led to the collapse of the species to begin with has not been solved. What is to stop that small herd of fifteen animals from becoming prey once again to unscrupulous poachers and reprehensibly unscrupulous buyers of prohibited exports?

The team performed the ovum pick-up procedure on Fatu to collect eggs from her ovaries

All Is Not Necessarily Fair in Sport-League Corruption

"Whenever I see the words 'commitment fees', 'commitment bonuses', 'access fees', 'access bonuses', that for me raises a red flag. It's language used to dress up bribes traditionally.
John Githongo, Kenya anti-corruption leader

"Because of Nike's secretive meetings with the top three A.K. [Athletics Kenya] officials, it is my opinion that Nike officials have always been aware that the payments in question are improper."
Affidavit, former Nike administrative assistant

"[Bribery, embezzlement and] unsavoury, improper business practices [are common in sports federations]."
"I hear it all the time from sporting officials. To survive in this world, these are the rules of the game."
Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado

Current 800m world record holder Rudisha

Blowing the whistle on malpractice is always fraught with controversy, denials on the one hand, accusations on the other with each side having its share of champions. And the one who blows the whistle is never very popular with either. A disaffected former employee of Athletics Kenya, a 10-year administrative assistant, has unleashed a storm of offence and defence in a major sport scandal in Kenya, a country well mired in corruption, like most African countries.

It is generally agreed that Kenya produces the world's best competitive runners, although Jamaica claims that place for its runners. Champions of any sport irresistibly draw the attention of commercial interests. What greater impressive public relations advertising could make for a happy marriage between a celebrity and a seller of a product than having a world-renowned sport-footwear producer sign a contract with a country's sport federation whose runners are recognized as the best?

Wilson Kipsang of Kenya hoisted his country's flag after winning the New York City Marathon in 2014.  Kipsang won in an unofficial time of 2 hours, 10 minutes, 59 seconds.   Craig Ruttle/AP

Nike Inc. that had privilege. And when a Chinese clothing company offered sponsorship of Kenya's runners Nike blanched considerably. Leading to a 2009 contract where an agreement to pay hundreds of thousands in honorariums and a 'commitment bonus' of a half-million to sweeten the deal led Kenyan federation officials to view Nike most favourably again. The whistle-blower was blunt; this was a bribe, unsurprisingly.

The Chinese Li-Ning Company had offered only $200,000 as a bribe, and Nike proved it could do so much better. The new contract with Nike was negotiated where the agreement to pay Athletics Kenya an annual sponsorship fee of $1.3-million to $1.5-million, along with an additional $100,000 honorarium annually and the 'commitment bonus', balanced the scale of corruption completely in Nike's favour, and incidentally avoided a lawsuit where Nike could have claimed no grounds existed for termination.

The pot-sweetener ostensibly to be in support of training and the support of Kenyan athletes who required a financial leg up ended landing in private bank accounts owned by officials, swiftly withdrawn from Athletics Kenya's bank account. As an investigation unfolds and investigators peruse letters, bank records and invoices, all courtesy of the whistle-blower, Nike protests its innocence; pure altruism on its part, those payments meant to benefit Kenyan athletes.

Investigators with Kenya's Directorate of Criminal Investigations repeatedly asked for Nike to provide additional information, but evidently what they ask for is being construed as confidential, therefore a reluctance to divulge based on client-provider confidentiality. "Why was such a huge sum of money paid as commitment? It's only Nike who can tell us", commented one detective.

Nike's twenty year involvement with the national runners' association has meant that millions of dollars have passed hands to ensure that Kenyan runners wear Nike's swoosh-brand. And since Kenyans hold world records in the 800 meters, 1,000 meters, 3,000 meters, 20,000 meters, 25,000 meters, 30,000 meters, half-marathon, marathon, it naturally follows that without Nike's signature product they would be incapable of producing such sterling results.

It hasn't sat well with Kenyan athletes to learn that hundreds of thousands of dollars that could and should have been disposed honestly and fairly to give needed financial aid to impoverished Kenyan athletes were taken instead by the privileged authorities in Kenya's sport federation. Which led to a Nairobi protest at Athletics Kenya headquarters.

The investigation revealed that the organization's chairman, Isaiah Kiplagat had requested that Nike wire the bonus to his personal account, but was refused. Regardless, within days the $500,000 had been withdrawn by top officials with Athletics Kenya, as revealed by bank records. Mr. Kiplagat and two other officials deny that did anything that could be construed as ethically questionable, let alone criminal.

The Slaughter of Elephants

"Vicious poaching for bush-meat is experienced in both protected and non-protected areas throughout the range lands. All species of wildlife are harvested indiscriminately using snares,bows and arrows, spears, clubbing and occasionally firearms. This practice is unsustainable and could lead to extermination of many species." 
Lifting the Siege: securing Kenya's wildlife, task force report on wildlife security

"It gives us real insight into their day-today behaviour. At any given point they fire up Google Earth and check on the latest locations of the elephants and what they're doing. We can look for behaviour such as an elephant that starts slowing down because it becomes injured or sick. We're also very concerned with elephant poaching for ivory, so one of the algorithms I designed looks at whether an animal has stopped moving for a given period of time, which would signal that the animal has been killed."
Jake Wall, PhD student, University of British Columbia geography department

Ivory's tragic price

As though slaughtering elephants to supply the illegal and hideous trade in ivory isn't bad enough, subsistence bush meat poaching appears to have soared to dangerously emergency levels, making the growth of the commercial bush meat trade a multi-million shilling industry in Kenya. A month ago there were reports that a 45-year-old behemoth of a bull elephant known by name as Satao, had been slaughtered in the huge Kenyan Tsavo National Park, an important wildlife preserve.

Satao's death came from poisoned arrows. His face so dreadfully mutilated he was identified by measuring his ears because where his tusks once appeared on his massive face, tusks so large they touched the ground, only two massive holes were left. "Satao is dead, killed by an ivory's poacher's poisoned arrow to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in far-off countries. A great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantlepiece", mourned the Tsavo Trust.

"When he was alive, his enormous tusks were easily identifiable, even from the air."




Now, there is a new tool that can be used to track the movement and activities of elephants by rangers, researchers and conservationists throughout South Africa and northern Kenya in their battle to combat poaching. Jake Wall, who works for the conservation group Save the Elephants has helped to fit almost one hundred elephants with GPS satellite-tracking collars. He designed software algorithms to survey live data and reveal patterns, alerting rangers to deviations from familiar patterns.

This is an advance from the satellites that have been used for decades to track the movement of elephants. The new system gives rangers a heads-up, along with researchers and conservationists, enabling them to be more effective in their management and protection of elephant herds. The live feed opens an avenue into the movement of the elephants, their interactions and allied behaviours to help conserve their lives, endangered by the illegal ivory trade.

Armed groups of poachers are anxious to cash in on the increasing value of ivory, trading their tusks for arms and ammunition. The largest market for illegal ivory is China, along with other Asian nations like Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The surge in trade has resulted in the deaths of an estimated annual 30,000 elephants to feed this market, placing at dangerous risk fragile animal populations in Africa. The tusks are in huge demand, selling for thousands of dollars, encouraging the lucrative and brutal trade.

"The surge in the killing of elephants in Africa and the illegal taking of other listed species globally threatens not only wildlife populations but the livelihood of millions who depend on tourism for a living", explained Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations environment program.

Inexcusable Violations

"As a woman and a mother I am outraged and angered by this inhumane, traumatizing and inexcusable violation."
Amina Mohamed, Kenyan foreign minister

"She is doing very well. They are hopeful she will walk again. We wouldn't know how big a problem rape is in essence just because we do not have all the numbers of reported cases, but from the number of cases that we do receive, it is a very, very high number."
"When you have a statistic that low, [number of convictions] what are you inspiring the public to do? The institutions that are supposed to protect and serve us, for instance police and prosecutors, have to start doing a better job. We have to put it out there that there is going to be punishment for people who sexually violate other people."
Lydia Muthiani, deputy executive director, Coalition on Violence Against Women

AFP

The sixteen year old girl was gang-raped, then thrown into a pit latrine in the western Kenyan town of Tingolo. After hospitalization and care she is in a wheelchair. She underwent two surgeries -- one for a fistula, and the second for spinal surgery. When the girl's mother had originally reported the rape to police they said her daughter should be taken to a pharmacy and take painkillers.

Cultural traditions in rural Africa by custom force a victim of rape to leave her home, and to move to another town where her rape might not be known. The incident which occurred in June received little notice until news sources picked up the sentence meted out to her attackers. Police instructed the young men that they would have to mow the grass at the police post, and then they were permitted to leave, sentence carried out.

Since that time the young girl's plight and the punishment given her rapists have become a tinderbox of inflamed emotions. The Internet activist group Avaaz raised a petition calling for prosecution of the men involved and an investigation of the actions of the police involved. Almost 1.4 million people signed that online petition.

Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the young men involved is currently unknown. The chairman of a council of elders in Busia County where the girl lives wants "severe action" taken against the officers who took the complaint of rape and "mishandled it". Some understatement that is. Kenya's inspector general of police has signalled his support of the victim from his personal Twitter account.

The young girl's grandmother has stated: "I want those policemen that released the boys that they had in custody to arrest the parents of the boys who raped my granddaughter so that they can say where the boys are hiding." It's a start, one might like to think, of a social conversion of a virally vicious custom that has too long made victims of women and girls.

DANIEL IRUNGU/EPA    Women hold underwear as a symbol of calling for change as hundreds of people participate in a rally in Nairobi, Kenya.

Kenya: Four Year Old Boy Confronts Terrorists, and Escapes Alive
by Ari Soffer   -- Arutz Sheva 7 - 24 September 2013

As Kenyan security forces continue to battle Somalian Al Qaeda-linked terrorists, more stories have emerged, shedding light on the horrific events of the assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, which have killed at least 62 people and left more than 170 wounded.

Gunmen - and, it is emerging, at least one female terrorist - stormed the mall, hurling grenades and firing indiscriminately with AK 47s as the building was packed with both locals and tourists enjoying the end of the weekend.

Chillingly, eyewitnesses have told of how the gunmen selected many of their victims deliberately - forcing people to prove whether or not they were Muslims by reciting Islamic prayers or by answering questions from the Qoran. They then executed those found to be non-Muslims, and allowed Muslim shoppers to escape.

Other escapees said that the terrorists mutilated the bodies of their dead victims, chopping off hands and even burning their faces to mask their identities.

But there are also stories of remarkable bravery.

One such story is that of four year-old Elliot Prior from Berkshire in Great Britain who, in an astonishing show of courage, confronted and even chastised one of the gunmen - and escaped with his life.

According to the Daily Mail, Elliot had been hiding with his sister Amelie and their mother Amber under a table in a grocery store, with Amber sheltering her children under her own body for an hour and a half, when they were discovered by the terrorists, one of whom shot her in the thigh. 

But when the terrorists asked if there were any children still alive in the store, Amber stood up and answered in the affirmative, in the hope that they would be spared.

It was at that point that little Elliot confronted the terrorists, telling them that they were "bad men."

Bizarrely, upon learning that Amber was of French origin, the gunmen began to plead with her for forgiveness, insisting that Islam "is not a bad religion" and urging her to convert.

"He told me I had to change my religion to Islam and said 'do you forgive us? Do you forgive us?'," she told The Independent newspaper.

"Naturally, I was going to say whatever they wanted and they let us go."

Then, in an act which stood in stark contrast to the brutal massacre they had just committed, the terrorists handed the brother and sister chocolate bars before they fled with two other children, including a 12-year-old boy who initially refused to leave his dead mother behind.

Kenyan security forces are still battling terrorists as they move to clear the mall, amid claims that at least some of the attackers are citizens of western countries, including two Americans and a British woman.

In an interview with PBS Newshour, Kenya's foreign minister Amina Mohamed said that "two or three" of the attackers were American, and that another was a British woman who had "done this many times before."

That has raised speculation in the UK of the potential involvement of Samantha Lewthwaite, a British convert to Islam and the widow of one of "7/7 bombers" who attacked London's transportation system in July 2005.

Lewthwaite, also known as "The White Widow," has been on the run in Africa for two years after she was accused of plotting to bomb tourist sites in Kenya, and has evaded capture on a number of occasions, mocking her pursuers on social media.

Mohamed claimed that the Americans were 18 or 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin, and lived "in Minnesota and one other place".

Tags: terrorism ,Al Qaeda ,Kenya ,Nairobi ,Al Shabaab ,Nairobi attack

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