Natumi - early days

In the beginning she was nearly invisible - not because of her diminutive size but her frail, shy manner. Not that any baby wants to be orphaned, but some you sensed were resigned to make the best of it from the moment they arrived and others, like Natumi, carried for days the feeling that this would all just go away if I don’t accept it. At first so many others were bolder, more precocious, warm, or needy. Natumi was definitely the little girl who I nearly missed entirely – until this photo emerged.

Who is Natumi?
She was born sometime in February 1999 and rescued in April. She was orphaned after falling down a dry well on the Eland Hollow Farm, near Nanyuki, in north-central part of Kenya, East Africa. (Dry wells are often the result of mature elephants digging into the sandy creek or river bottoms in water during periods of drought – in 1999 the number of such well ‘strandings’ became chronic as a period of several years without rain began forcing elephants to dig deeper and deeper in search of water – eventually such deep holes entrap tiny calves.)