What are you looking forward?

No matter how tired or whatever.

You.

Will never.

In northern Kenya, near the Mathews Range, lies the Nyack Conservancy.

It is home to the Samburu people, nomadic pastoralists who have shared this land and wildlife and lived side by side with these elephants for centuries.

Unfortunately, poaching, climate change and the extreme drought that took place over four decades brought elephant populations up from 15,000 to 400.

But thankfully, all that is changing.

This story is about hope, survival, and a community working to save its wild elephants.

It is the story about the elephant sanctuary.

Created by the Sirah Foundation in 2016, the Samburu owned Elephan Orphanage is showing the world how a community committed to saving their elephants and protecting their wildlife also transforms lives, grows economies and safeguards a cultural heritage.

Even though it takes a monumental team effort to care for these orphans, there are some special women who help make it a success.

None of us had ever raised an elephant, you know.

We'd never done this before, so we were learning so much.

It's a huge undertaking and it is a huge dedication.

And anyone that knows anything about looking after animals is so much about love and care and patience and this sort of ability to connect with an animal that's been through so much trauma and all these thing that take that little bit extra, you know, that you have to inconvenience yourself to have this animal survive through.

The women have this way of just sort of making it look really easy.

And.

You can.

You.

In my family they always say I love elephants more than anybody else.

My name is actor and I'm from the Somali community.

I grew up in a village near by Namibia Conservancy.

The Sambur people take care of livestock.

We take care of God's camels, and we migrate from one place to another.

And I'm lucky because I was among the first women to be elephant keepers in East Africa.

I can say workin with the conservation as a woman has really made me to be someone great in my family life.

In my community, because I'm able to save the life of these animals.

And when you save a suffering baby, you just feel like if this baby can make it, like after going through a lot of challenges, why not me?

Caring for these elephant orphans requires round the clock work by the elephant keepers.

But this special love and dedication is what nurtures these babies back to health, heals them from the trauma o losing their mothers and family, and most importantly, prepare them to be wild elephants again.

All of these, anything that has a life is, is always a challenge.

Tolerance.

So you can imagine going for rescue and you, you get our baby in a very traumatizing condition.

You bring them here, you have that hope that you will make this animal to survive.

But because of the stress they have gone through outside that they feel like I should not be alive.

Our mission is to rescue, rehabilitate, and then we rebuild this animal back into way.

It's incredible to see a community rallying to to save and an elephant's life.

Long arrow was found in a cement well.

Some hyenas had had his cause in distress and gone for him.

Taken a good hold of his trunk, and pretty much shredded his his trunk.

It was pretty harrowin seeing that kind of damage done.

So when the keepers at Ricchetti and their city team heard about this, all kind of everythin was deployed planes and keepers and vets, and he was picked up and brought up to a tatty for his healing journey.

Considering what he went through was pretty unbelievable.

It was.

It wasn't long befor he was trying to roll in the mud and getting his water through his trunk, so he does tr and he splashes with his trunk.

So he definitely is keeping up.

What do we have to understand is these are very intelligent animals.

So it's like you are raising someone who understand what you are doing.

You need to be careful and know the reason you need to be good to these animals.

You need to support them.

You need to teach these babies a lot of things.

What they are supposed to do in life.

Are babies understand?

All of them are all fun and they are always welcoming to each other.

So the moment you introduce t the group, they want to know who who these everybody we run to time an those who feel the connection.

At the end of the day you will see them always looking after their newest one.

You have that heart of loving.

You will not even differentiate your baby with itself.

So I started to experience being a mom before I had baby babies and there is no different, honestly, no different.

You have to commit yourself to them.

It is not that easy being done.

It is a commitment.

It is something you need to do from all lik from the bottom of your heart.

I don't you?

One thing that's the key to the success of the Elephant Sanctuary and really sets it apart, is the role of the local community, and especially Samburu women.

A no better example of thi is the Milk to Market program.

The Elephant Sanctuary partnered with the Samburu women to develop a nourishing formula for the baby elephants, using excess goat milk fro the Samburu women's goat herds.

The result is a sustainable food source for the elephant sanctuary and a new livelihood for Samburu women who have.

Returned to us, really support both communities and announce the benefits that is going into the community.

It is amazing.

You know, we were really exploring into how to make roti sustainable like really, truly sustainable for the community but also for the planet.

We felt like shipping in formula from the other side of the world didn't feel right.

We just knew that there was, another way and that we had to kind of unearth it.

And it was really there right in front of us the whole time.

Collecting 480l every day from the 850 women is like us, supporting the whole the Samburu community, Africa's.

Number one.

No, no, Danny.

Okay.

And then I don't need no carrageenan with our new Jersey.

So we need to say it's an item.

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No no no no.

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My.

No.

We are living in amongst pastoralists who look after goats and raised goats and goat milk was readily available.

And looking into the breakdown of, you know, the composition of goat milk, it kind o just made more and more sense.

But then at the very same time, be able to work very closely with women and lift up their lives and be able to impact their lives in a more positive way.

The women come to sell their milk with their kids into.

Some of them will have their children on that back, so some will be holding their hands.

And for those kids to watch their mothers, conducting themselves in business and, you know, bringing in the household earnings is going to be this incredible generational shift.

So for me and other ladies who are working in that sanctuary, we are proud of ourselves.

We can say we, raise the voice of women in the community.

Once the goat milk is collected, it is delivered to return to be pasteurized.

Each baby has its own special needs, so the keepers must be diligent in making sure all the details are perfect.

Then I joined royalty as an elephant keeper.

I realized that it's a lot that an elephant baby needs from the mother.

So our daily activit is always around the 24 hours.

Every baby, especially young, has that special for me.

Now you pick the goat milk that we get from the local community of late will pass cherries and the one for their body temperature.

So at the beginning of the feeding, you prefer the milk because it is a lot of work.

Then you add the supplement to raise the calories.

Every feeding is always exactly for the elephant.

So how you see them?

Chasing that out to grab from each other?

How they finish and go around them.

They're just like babies.

They're good thing they keep us understanding.

And they know who are the sneaky ones.

You.

But it takes much more than just feeding to bring these babies back to health.

The keepers must teach these babies the skills to survive in the wild.

We do the first feeding at 6 a.m. in the morning.

After that feeding, the elephants will walk out for grazing.

When the elephants are going out for graze and when you land their natural behavior, you also want to understan what their loved ones are doing.

These are animals you have preparing psychologically to go back into the way.

So when they go out for grazing, you just observe from a distance.

You allow the animal to interact better with others.

That's all they learn how, how they can use their trunk, how they can pick soil and throw into their skin, how they can even, roll down together.

It is good for them to learn from each other.

When the elephants are going out for Christmas, some of us will be left to clean their stables where they was, sleeping at night.

And others are cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bottles.

Other than measuring the milk and then preparing the feed into also entails the paperwork.

Because you need to be consistence in your records, will you to produce a positive results upon arrival that never help?

So the tradition team work closely with the veterinary team.

Make sure we ar giving these animal the specific need in their health, and everybody will look like when the elephants are babies.

What we do after the feeding of 6 p.m. in the evening, we lead the young babies into the extended.

Team.

And then after every three hours, these animal have like a clock in their hand.

When it is almost feeding time, they will start waking up and then everybody's facing the kid until the day they are waiting for their bottle.

Even they can decide to, get their trunk out there is to maybe get the instinct and see if my mom is around for their milk.

So after feeding, you will see the baby going back.

Then they will lie down like this.

They have.

Good thing.

Like, the way we have made our stable, they can always exchange their.

Can they, they can communicat and they can feel that company.

No stress because you can always feel that that's near you.

So I always like ready to perform all these duties because this is the thing we have promised.

And this is the thing that we cannot fail to do.

The weaning process is long, but these dedicated keepers are tireless.

They understan that teaching an elephant orphan to be independent involves many steps.

We will used to give them a very rich formula with a lot of ingredients.

We reduce and make it more time for those that we are preparing to go back into where we started reducing contact with human will.

The moment you do that, these animal will understand my mom is about to kick me out of nursing and now I'm a grown up boy and gir who need to take care of myself.

This is a gradual thing has to be done slowly, as we always study and also monitor the behavior of the animal, even though the still understand who you want.

But they will not be like babies.

When you try even to go closer to them, they can say hi to you and I say, well so that you will understand.

The baby is preparing themselves psychologically and also to be now independent boys and.

Sometimes even you can find them with wild elephants.

And the wild elephants refused to go away from them.

They, they feel like we should now learn from our brothers and sisters and not be human, who are free to.

We want them t go and live like wild elephants.

We want them to have families.

Our aim is to maintain and also raise the population of northern Kenya.

We want the next generation and those our sons and daughters, to be able to see the beauty of our land.

I hope my son will one day be proud of his mother, that he gets to recognize that I, my mother, contributed to increasing number of baby elephants.

They're not a part of kin.

You.

Is like you are one baby you can imagine.

What if a family member leaving you.

You will see everybody prime sent to elephant is very sad.

And even we cry.

These baby you raised.

You have had some good memories with your father.

A lot of things together is like this.

You baby living.

But again, it is part of success that we want to leave them to enjoy and even have peace outside them.

So it is a way that you feel, motivated with watching.

It is a way that he makes you to be a very strong woman.

And she, like I, should always be loving to these girls.

I should always be a good mo to them, because they have done a very good thing in my life, in my families.

We've been the local community, the animals and the people all over the world.

And I love you so much.

At some point, I feel like we can be leaders of tomorrow.

Female elephant is a leader.

Accessible.

They can reach new land.

They're not like dandruff So you get the skills of this.

And when you transform that into human life, this does the same thing you need to do to be a leader.

Because conservation is so much is being under conservation is life.

So being a conservationist woman, this is like being a role model to the entire world.

Do it with all your heart.

Don't expect anything.

So for me, I'm very happy to be part of conservation as a woman.

And they know I will do this as long as I will.

And I will always love and hug every woman who will give first priority to conservation.

For.