Elephant Ladies of Amboseli

This Easter Sunday we will be screening Amboseli Elephants on our new wildlife documentary series Wildlife Warriors on Citizen TV at 4.30 pm. This series celebrates African conservation heroes at the front line. Amboseli is home to some of the biggest elephants in the world, the longest studied elephants in the world, and the best known elephants in the world. Every story has a fascinating back story.

I first met Norah Njiraini and Soila Saiyalel in early 1990’s. I was working for KWS but scouting around looking for a research project for a PhD and in those days it was hard for Kenyan students to just start research. Apart from the glares and discouragement I got from friends and parents about doing fierld research, I really had no idea about what was possible.

Richard Leakey didn't seem to notice. He gave me a list of people’s names and places. I was flown to Kiwaiyu Island where a troop of baboons survives in unlikely mangrove forests it was a stunning place but I had to get a boat. That seemed impossible. I was dropped in the Tana River delta where I followed monkeys and measured trees - it was dangerous, remote and full of armed rebels but I loved it and spent a year and a half there. Then I was sent to Shimba Hills where the late Ted Goss took me under his wing and gave me all the support I needed. I tried to study baboons... fun but scarey. One day he said “Take this letter and go see Cynthia Moss in Amboseli”. I can’t even remember how I got to Amboseli but I met Cynthia, who is the matriarch in charge of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants. She invited me into the camp to stay for a week to learn about elephants. Norah was put in charge of training me.

Steve Waguwa is the Director of Photography for Wildlife Warriors

It was a memorable time. Norah Njiraini and her colleague Soila Saiyalel would go out together every day. I slept in a tent in the bush camp with them we went off early in the mornings in a small landrover to look for elephants. Everything was new to me. The location, elephants, and driving off road and into the herd to study these majestic giants! I was taken through the basics, how to tell a bull from a cow, how to identify individuals, how to age them, and how to record behavior. My brain told me that we should have been scared, the elephants were right next to us! But they were so calm. It was magical.

In those few days I fell irreversibly in love with elephants. The two ladies laughed so much. It was such a joy to be with them in the car. Their chatter and giggles were contagious. The elephants knew them and would approach the car. Norah would talk to them as if they were humans. “What do you want Eliot?” she would ask. Or she would introduce me to the elephants “Have you met Paula?”

Norah Njiraini has been studying elephants for her entire lifetime - 35 years.

I wanted to do my research there but there wasn’t space for the project that I wanted to do, and so I ended up setting up my own study in the Shimba Hills which is on the Kenyan coast. As a scientist I was totally on my own out there, I had an 18 month old baby and I really missed that comraderie that comes with being in a camp with others. I was lucky to have great advisors. Joyce Poole, Dan Rubenstein and Andy Dobson advised me on the elephants, they visited me in the field. But it wasn’t like Amboseli – Shimba Elephants are smaller, shyer and they spend most of their time under the cover of forest. They were hard to study in comparison to the Amboseli elephants. I spent 8 Years doing my research and I loved Shimba. I got my PhD and I stayed in touch with the Amboseli ladies throughout.

When filming the elephants we visited the community to talk about human elephant conflict.

I never stopped loving Amboseli. I’ve returned again and again after I completed my PhD to spend time with Soila and her sister Katito who also joined the project. Soila was extraordinarily generous. She spent weeks with me and helped teach my annual undergraduate courses for Princeton University. She had endless appreciation and true love for elephants and would identify any elephant whose photo I would send. My studetnes adored her. She was motherly, loving, caring and just amazing all round.

Sometimes I would just drive to Amboseli to watch elephants and Soila would join me for a day. We’d sip wine at sundown (she drank sodas) and just enjoy the sound of elephatns munching grass all around us, the soft rumble of tummies and the dry slap of ears against heads as elephants grazed all around us in the fading light of vivid sunsets. I always visited the camp to see Norah and her sister Katito during the course as well. These girls had the funniest stories about life into the camp. I would be laugh so hard that tears would roll down my cheeks as they recalled the incident of a leopard in the shower. Images of two women running naked across the camp screaming for their lives when a leopard suddenly jumped down from a palm tree right next to the open air shower. It was always my dream to tell the stories of these extraordinary women who have spent decades in the field camp, fell in love, got married, raised their children, and every day gone out to study the elephants.

I have always wanted to honor these Amboseli ladies for their incredible but largely unrecognized contribution to elephant conservation. They are famous around the world because they feature in BBC and Nat Geo documentaries. But in Kenya they are not known. I wanted to change that and let Kenyans know that Norah, Soila and Katito deserve PhD's many times over. Their knowledge of elephants far exceeds that of most scientists. But it's more than that. These ladies have inspired and trained so many conservationists. I for one would not have gone into elephant conversation if it was not for their support when I was looking for a project.

So the first season of Wildlife Warriors I knew that I wanted to shoot for Amboseli's unique Elephant Ladies. But it’s a hard story to tell so we waited until we had everything in place, including the help of a Nat Geo crew with us on the ground. We spent ten days and got amazing footage, stories and moving moments with both Norah and Katito.

With Norah and Katito in their camp

Telling the story of decades of work by two women in half an hour is impossible. There’s just so much juicy stuff going on every day. The work is fascinating. The women are so knowledgeable, interesting, and accomplished. So, this episode is going to be a scratch on the surface, and a peek into the lives of field researchers. I could have stayed there for weeks – life in camp is a story of it’s own. Then there’s the research, and families, and all the other animals that share the park. There are amazing community issues, and interesting problems that are being handled every day. We focused on Norah and Katito to get a taste of how extraordinary these two women are. They are among a very small number of people who know every elephant in Amboseli by name. We are so lucky to have such dedicated conservationists in Kenya.

Soila helped teach all my undergraduat courses on elephants.

Sadly Soila we were unable to tell the story of the third amazing lady, Although Soila worked for the Amboseli Trust for Elephant for over 30 years, she will not be in this episode. She tragically passed away last year from cervical cancer. It was just like her to not make a big deal about it. She told me that she was recovering and that she would be better in time for the shoot. I was so looking forward to it.

Making the film without her felt like something big was missing. I found myself saying her name by mistake again and again. So maybe she was with us afterall.

I dedicate the Amboseli Elephants episode to Soila and hope that her legacy will live on through her children and grandchildren.