2023-X5.Love, Life & Elephants

Daphne Sheldrick. 2012.

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Nairobi to see the elephant sanctuary, I read this memoire by the woman who was one of the founders of the center.  Of British decent, her ancestors were early colonizers in South Africa and even before she was born, they immigrated to Kenya.  This makes for interesting reflection on what it means to be displaced in this manner in the context of decolonization, especially when at one point England announces they will no longer be able to return home or maintain a British passport.  I felt a huge missed opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a minority descendent of colonization when you can't go home, but also are not truly at home in the place you were born and raised.  I

Instead, her focus was exclusively on the damage done by poachers and her role in helping to protect the animals from hunting and negative living conditions.  To some extent, I found the book self-aggrandizing to a large extent, but even more so I felt like it lack any depth of thought surrounding he complexity of race and the repercussions of her somewhat superficial analysis of poaching and the role that Black Kenyans have to play in ending it.  I feel like that analysis has been widely written about since the 1990's and that there is no excuse for someone living that experience not to have something more insightful to say about it.  But, yes, the stories about raising abandoned wild animals were super cute and fun, if sometimes heartbreaking.

Not recommended.

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