Elephant Sanctuary

So we went to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hartbeespoort Dam, about an hour from our house. The girls had a day off and so we wanted to do something fun. At the sanctuary they take care of elephants that can't live for whatever reason in the wild anymore. It is really a caring team who love and take care of the elephants. They will introduce you to a unique experience of touching, feeding, walking and riding with these magnificent and gentle creatures.


Here the caretaker lets Jasmine and Juliet touch all different parts of the elephant. The skin is quite tough, but behind the ears it is soft and velvety. The elbows are very rough and the feet are surprisingly kinda soft again. The hairs on the tail are so bushy... This is needed to kill the flies. This is Temba, a baby one, only 9 years old, so cute ;-)


He was a very handsome boy with the longest eye-lashes! (scroll down to the other close-up in my previous post and you'll see that the older elephant didn't have such long lashes) Oh, and he is the best kisser!! The most gentle one, but the girls didn't dare to let him give a kiss. You would have had slobber all over your face, the girls and me didn't find that appealing. But many other visitors were kissed by him ;-)


This boy was 11 years old, and he showed us some tricks he could do. Like sitting down.


Here JJ walks with the elephant. All elephants walk in groups behind each other, holding each other's tail. So Juliet had to pretend her arm was her tail, the elephant takes her hand in his trunk... a bit snotty, but fun! Jasmine wasn't interested in doing this. She loves little creepy crawlers, but if the animal is a bit (a lot) bigger then she bails out. Which is fine, we just walked next to JJ.


The feeding part is so much fun. You get a whole bucket of dry pallets and you can dump a handful in their trunks. The girls couldn't get enough of this ;-)


Here is Jasmine with 2 hands full of food giving to one of the elephants. They made sure that each elephant got an equal amount... so cute!!


More, more, the elephants couldn't get enough, and Jezz is going back to the bucket to get more.

We had a fun day at the sanctuary. It is a beautiful surrounding in between the Magaliesberg mountains. The elephants go each day out for 2 hours to feed and walk around in the nature. Did you know that elephants only sleep 3 hours a day, in intervals of 30 minutes, not more. The rest of the 21 hours they eat!
The people who come and visit the elephants are a nice way of not getting bored, so we are THEIR entertainment ;-)

Living in Africa is fun, you can see so many wild animals so close by home!
Have a great day!
Mireille

Cry or laugh about it in 1 year??

Since Dirk was not here for Valentine's day, we decided to go out for dinner with friends on Friday. Khetho, our maid was babysitting the girls. There was a leak in the estate, so they closed off the water to fix it. When Dirk came home he wanted to freshen up, so he opened the faucet to get a bit of water out...but he forgot to close it...

We came back from our dinner at about 11:15 pm. We noticed some water dripping through the wall above the front door and were wondering if the sprinkler system from the neighbors was hitting our house?? Hmm...weird!
Khetho was sitting in the kitchen reading a magazine. So I asked her why she wasn't watching TV? The electricity fell out (again, that is also very common here).. I also asked her if everything went fine with the girls. Yes she said, but upstairs is a lot of water! Then she left to her room (she lives in with us). Curious as I was I went upstairs and to my shock I saw that the master bathroom AND bedroom was flooded with water. Dirk had left the tap open and when the water turned back on it came gushing down. So maybe after an hour or so Khetho heard a noise... went upstairs and closed the tap. But didn't do anything else... she didn't call us... she didn't mop up the water, she just went downstairs and continued reading her magazine. I was livid!! Could not understand her reaction... I mean COME ON I know this is not in your job description, but what would she have done if the house would be on fire.... read her magazine?? .. actually my magazine! I just couldn't believe that she just left the water standing in my bathroom and it just run into the bedroom, the whole carpet was soaking, the bath mats were floating in the bathroom and the cabinets under the sinks were just filled with water.
Everything... and I mean everything was soaking wet. At least 2 inches of water... so at 11:30 pm after a de-lish meal at the Fish & Wine co. we were on our knees mopping the water with huge towels.

Khetho left for the weekend to go to her family in Joburg, so I didn't see her all weekend. But I was so mad at her, disappointed and she deeply hurt my feelings... didn't she care?? That was my question, what went on in her mind that she didn't even take a few minutes to at least put some towels on the floor so the water could be soaked up?? The more I thought about it, the more I thought I don't want her to work for me anymore!! I gave this girl so much and helped her out whenever she needed, and then she just doesn't care for me to help me with this?

So I lined up already 2 other ladies for an interview but I was dreading Monday morning to tell her the bad news. How will she react, will she make a scene, I didn't think so, but you never know. The girls had a day off from school, so I told them to stay upstairs while I was talking to Khetho. Then she comes in and apologised immediately, she said that she felt she did wrong and felt terrible about it, but she felt ill on Friday and was too scared to tell me, and just couldn't get herself to clean up the water.

Here I go again, feel bad for her and give her a second chance... cancelled the 2 other ladies and life goes on as normal. But I had a good talk with her, and told her something like this can NEVER happen again! And she promised with tears in her eyes... we will see! You can look at a face but not into her mind, so I just hope that next time she will have a better judgement if something occurs that needs some extra reaction...

So now I know where that water came from that was dripping on our heads at the front door!! I just hope we won't get any problems with mold. We just have to wait and see. Because you don't think that in Africa they will repair or fix things that are not visible yet, just in case.... no way! That doesn't work like that over here... Living in Africa reminds me a lot of living in Thailand. In the moment these 'adventures' are very annoying, but later it is most the time a hilarious moment in life which we talk about at parties ;-) And this is my approach to most of these impromptus.... how do we feel about this in 6 months or in 1 year? Will I cry or laugh about it??

Well, that was my Valentines weekend! Being deeply dissapointed, hurt and angry when thinking about it. But my hubby made a huge breakfast with mimosas, just baked bread rolls, fresh fruit salad, yogurt, soft boiled eggs, chocolates, red roses... the whole romantic approach for his 3 girls, so cute!! He is the best hubby in the world... off to Lichtenstein a few hours later for 9 long days :-(

So since on Monday the girls had a day off and life with Khetho goes on, I decided to get away from it all and we went to the Elephant sanctuary where we could touch, sniff, walk and being kissed by an elephant was the matter of the day. More about this adventure tomorrow ;-)

Have a good Wednesday!
Mireille