Luo Laughter "I speak of Africa and golden joys"



Tuesday, 12 September 2023

Giraffes !


I bought this book some years ago, and found it again on my Africa shelves .... and having seen a report on the BBC Africa news about spotless giraffes I was prompted to see what  I could find about this amazing, tall and strange  animal !  







This is a newspaper cutting I found tucked into the book, about a giraffe with a broken neck !

   


 The newspaper report is from 2015, and says the giraffe (living in the Serengeti), had been injured five years previously, probably in a fight with another male and had recovered from its injury without any vet attention.  Extraordinary !

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A giraffe conservation organisation has announced the sighting of a spotless giraffe calf in Namibia.  The unique giraffe is thought to be one of the first of its kind to be spotted in its natural habitat.  The giraffe calf was reportedly observed running alongside its mother.

Another spotless giraffe was born on 31 July this year at a zoo in Tennessee in the United States.

The public voted to name the baby giraffe “Kipekee”, a Swahili word for “unique”.

“Only weeks after the birth of a spotless giraffe in the USA, the first spotless giraffe has been spotted in the wild in Africa!” the conservation organisation Giraffe Conservation Foundation reported.  According to the organisation, photographer Eckart Demasius photographed the spotless giraffe in the Namibian wild, near the Mount Etjo Safari Lodge.

(from BBC Africa news)

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And finally, this is a (poor) copy of a copy of a photo I took in 1996, at Langata Nature Education Centre ... my son Tim feeding a giraffe from the top of a tower, so that visitors are eye-level with the giraffes.  


Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Woolly jumpers for babies !

 At Hands Around the World, we have supporters who don't go on projects, but who do like to knit, using any odd donated wool they can collect.  

So I was delighted to see this three photos of new born babies in Zambia wearing some of the newly donated multi-coloured jumpers from our knitting ladies !

                    



People have asked me, why WOOL jumpers in Africa ?    Because the altitude means it gets very cold at night, and new-borns can be very vulnerable to the cold !