Week 7 of my internship…..one more week and I’ll be done. I never actually thought I’d see the end @ the beginning and now its here. The thought of leaving home and coming back to Malaysia is killing me…..nooooo!!!
On Friday last week, that’s January the 30th, British Airways was set to donate milk to David Sheldrick of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. We @ Advance PRM Promax were incharge of branding as well as photography. Here’s the website to the Trust fund where you can read more about it and sample a taste of Kenyan wildlife.
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust embraces all measures that compliment the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife. These include anti poaching, safeguarding the natural environment, enhancing community awareness, addressing animal welfare issues and providing veterinary assistance to animals in need. An important project of the Trust is the rescue, hand rearing and rehabilitation of elephants and rhino orphans, as well as orphans of any wild species that can ultimately enjoy a quality of life in wild terms when grown. The Trust accepts vegatational progression triggered by indigenous fauna as a natural event.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust was born following the death of David Sheldrick in June 1977, established in memory of this famous internationally acclaimed Naturalist who was the Founder Warden of Kenya’s giant Tsavo East National Park. Since its inception, The Trust has played an extremely significant role in Kenya’s conservation efforts acting as a watch- dog on wildlife affairs, and having the courage to speak out when necessary, stepping in unobtrusively to effectively bridge the gap or meet a shortfall, and rendering practical and direct assistance whenever and wherever most needed, confident in the knowledge that all its Committee is well qualified to identify priorities and make swift and sensible decisions without endless paperwork and delay.
The British Airways milk donation was scheduled for 3pm at The Nairobi National Park. The milk came in all the way from the UK for the 14 month old elephant Sheldrick and the other baby elephants. Present from British Airways was the Area Manager and the Community Relations Manager. We presented the donation to Dame Daphne Sheldrick who in the early sixties, was the first person to perfect a milk formula and the husbandry necessary to hand- rear orphaned Black Rhino calves as well as the complicated re- introduction of rhino orphans back into the established wild population.
Everyone who knows me here in Kenya knows that I’m a tourist in my own country. This is because I spent a huge part of my school years in boarding school and I never really had time to be traveling around Kenya. So you can imagine the excitement of going to visit the elephants. AWESOME!!! I even got to touch them and see them bath in mud. There were also quite a number of warthogs. One of the beauties of all this is that the animals are not kept in Zoo’s (we don’t have even one) and so you get to see them in their natural habitat interacting with different animals from the wild as well. Dame Daphne Sheldrick appreciated the donation and introduced all the baby elephants to us (she knows all of them by name and knows how each one behaves). There’s one elephant, Ndii, who is quite the attention seeker. While we were having a chat and the elephants were playing in the mud, she came charging into our direction or rather Suneel’s direction. I think she wanted him to pet it. Marcia, Sophie, Suneel and I had a wonderful experience.
British Airways outreach to the community doesn't stop at only humans but extends to animals as well. Wildlife Tourism is one of Kenya's number one source of income and it's a plus that the airline works at preserving and maintaing it. The airline is also responsible for donating elephant blankets for the baby elephants last year.
The pictorial for the British Airways donation to the Kenyatta National Hospital’s Children’s Cancer Ward appeared in the Daily Nation Newspaper which has a daily circulation of 205,000. I’m glad that since I started work here, all the pictures I’ve captioned and delivered to the media have appeared in the newspaper. It’s not all the time that the journalists/ media publish every picture that gets sent to them. I’m now getting ready to pitch a story to two travel magazines on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust so that the pictures of the BA donation can appear in the feature story.
I also have to read up on the BA Crisis Audit. As human beings never really anticipate crisis and a lot of times, we always tend to think that nothing bad will happen to us but instead to someone else. This causes lack of preparation. Now last week, a major crisis happened in one of our super markets. The Nakumatt chain of stores is the largest in the country. One on its branches in the Nairobi CBD caught fire and the whole store burnt to the ground. The fire took place @ around 3:30 pm and being in the CBD on a weekday, the place was packed. Well, some people managed to escape while others, sadly, were burnt to death in the inferno. Reports say that the fire exists were blocked to keep away looters. The fire brigade was quick to respond but the CBD water hydrants were not working i.e. they had no water comin out of them . What a disaster. It took more than 24 hours to put out the fire. We are taking this crisis as a lesson that we should always be ready for anything, anytime. The CCM of BA is media trained and we hope on having Crisis management meetings every now and then in order to be prepared for the worst.
I hope that the last weeks I have here will be busy. British Airways have so far been my favourite clients. Working for them is always more than a pleasure. I'm really going to miss this....
xoxo
Carol Songa
Limkokwing University Malaysia
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