Alia

On a June day, I visited a Nairobi nursery to see my baby girl, a brilliant specimen of a pachyderm.

Alia was orphaned at 19 months old and might have died had she not been rescued. Last year, I saw her photograph online and decided to adopt her. From afar, I would help pay for her care.

Gamekeepers found Alia separated from her mother and the rest of her elephant herd at a Kenyan wildlife conservancy last October. She was thin, feeble and all alone. It was clear that she had been struggling for some time. They named her Alia, after the hill near where she was rescued.

Alia was airlifted to stables run by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where she recuperated before joining other orphans at the organization’s Nairobi nursery. I read her story on Sheldrick’s website and sent money to help care for her in her new home.

“The spooked, painfully thin calf we rescued began to settle down and fill out,” the keepers wrote in their elephant diary. “Eventually, she was strong enough to join the herd in the forest. We escorted her to a small clearing, where the older girls welcomed her with soft rumbles. Nyambeni and Mzinga were especially hospitable, trunk-touching her and encouraging her to come closer.”

Daphne Sheldrick founded the trust in 1977 in honor of her late husband David Sheldrick’s animal conservation work. He was the founding warden of Tsavo East National Park, Kenya’s oldest and largest national park. Most of the Sheldrick trust’s operations are based in the Tsavo ecosystem. It’s where the gamekeepers found Alia as well as many of the other elephant orphans in their care. The trust is best known for its pioneering orphan rescue program, which saves elephants like Alia, raises them and returns them to the wild when they are ready to live independently.

So far, the Sheldrick orphans project has successfully raised 327 elephants, according to the data posted on its website. And 94 babies have been born to orphaned elephants now living in the wild. That’s a remarkable number of animals given a second chance at life. It’s important because African elephants, both the savannah and forest species, are considered at risk of extinction after years of threats from humans. For decades, poachers slaughtered these amazing beasts just for their ivory and their natural habitats have been greatly diminished by human encroachment for agriculture, roads and development.

Sheldrick allows visitors at its nursery on the outskirts of Nairobi, and I knew I could not travel to East Africa without making a trip to the Kenyan capital to see my adopted elephant child. On a warm June morning, I took a taxi from my hotel to the nursery and waited patiently with other visitors. Some, like me, had come to see the baby elephant they had adopted. An English woman standing next to me had adopted 8-month-old Wangalla who, like Alia, had been found roaming all alone. We stood patiently under a blue sky for our orphans to make their grand entrance.

The reason I love elephants is surely because of my exposure to them in India, where elephants play a large role in the culture. Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity, symbolizes wisdom, good fortune and the removal of obstacles. Images of Ganesha are everywhere. Many people invoke him before embarking on a new venture, like starting a new business. Elephants are also associated with Indian royalty and nobility; kings rode them on battlefields. And they are employed in ceremonial roles. I attended a wedding once in which the groom rode in on a decorated elephant in the baraat, the groom’s wedding procession. Stricter animal welfare laws have curtailed the use of elephants in such pageantry (and rightfully so) but elephants remain enmeshed in cultural motifs. They appear in art, on sarees and even in jewelry. My favorite silver bangle has an elephant’s head on it and I was wearing it on the day I visited Sheldrick.

India is home to 30,000 wild Asian elephants, more than half of the world’s population. They, too, are considered endangered because of poaching and human encroachment. The Indian government has established reserves and wildlife corridors to preserve elephant habitats, but I am not aware of a rescue program like the one Sheldrick runs in Kenya.

Every day at 11 am, the keepers at Sheldrick’s Nairobi sanctuary escort the elephants in their care out to a viewing pen where guests like me can gaze in awe at these beautiful creatures. On the day that I visited, the keepers introduced the elephants one by one, calling out their names. I could hardly contain my excitement. When Alia’s name was called out, I felt my heart beating faster. I watched her frolic in the mud, her thick skin covered in hues of brown and red. She exchanged trunk touch greetings with her fellow orphans.

I waited for Alia to walk my way so I could see her up close. She was no longer the frightened, underweight calf the game keepers had rescued last fall. She was 2 now and confident and playful. I could see that she had come into her own. A brilliant specimen of a pachyderm.

Elephants of course cannot smile. Yet somehow, I knew Alia was happy. I could see it in the way she interacted with the other elephants, in the joyful lift of her trunk. I could see it in her eyes.

There she was.

My baby girl.

And she was magnificent.