We drove around Lake Naivasha, stopped at Elsamere and continued to the next lake in the row of lakes dotting the Rift Valley in Kenya, Lake Elementaita, famous for its flamingos.
On the way we spotted these tiny giraffes. We had never seen so young ones before, aren’t they cute?
We stopped at Elsamere, which was the home of Joy and George Adamson. He was her third husband and a senior wildlife warden. But it is the life of Joy, which is truly fascinating.
She was actually born in Austria in 1910, came to Kenya, married her second husband, who was a botanist and got her into painting plants and later also the indigenous populations of Kenya. We had seen some of her paintings in the National Museum in Nairobi.
When she met and married George Adamson, her third husband, she started to raise cats and release them to the wild. The first one was the lioness Elsa, later followed a cheetah and a leopard. She wrote books about their stories, the first one called Born Free, which was printed in several languages, and made into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. She spent the rest of her life raising money for wildlife and Born Free is still working to continue her legacy of protecting the wild animals left on our planet.
“Wildlife is something which man cannot construct. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.”
Joy Adamson
After the visit to Elsamere, including tea and cake in their parklike garden at the lake, we continued around Lake Naivasha, until we reached the main road again with its awful traffic. We took a turn off to a campsite at Lake Elementaita, where we spent 2 nights, enjoying the view and the flamingos and pelicans.
Our next lake will be Lake Nakuru and its national park – more soon!