An elephant’s last goodbye is something to never forget.
Goodbyes are difficult, often painfully sad…and when elephants say goodbye it is no different if even more emotionally profound.
Elephants have funerals and if you don’t believe us look at the photos. We watched as Kenyorra (the well known tuskless matriarch of Siana) led her family to where a young bull elephant had died after being brutally murdered by poachers just some weeks previously.
The young male elephant was estimated to be in his late teens and we are very certain that he belonged to Kenyorra’s family and his mother was very possibly amongst her group.
I personally felt very privileged (as I know the rest of the team did also) to have been allowed by Kenyorra to be a part of this very sad, very personal and deeply moving event. We knew that if we had been intruding, the family would have most definitely let us know and we would have left, Kenyorra however, knew who we were immediately and after acknowledging our presence, she continued to mourn with all the other elephants. In fact our being there was also serving the purpose of preventing the Maasai cattle, that were grazing nearby, from disturbing them.
We kept our distance none-the-less and watched respectfully as one by one, they all touched the young bull, gently stroking the remnants of his beautiful soul. They each had a quiet moment of farewell with him while the others reverently turned to look the other way. As they stood around him in complete silence, an atmosphere of prayer silently hung over us all. It was truly an experience we will not ever forget. To be capable of such empathy is to be capable of infinite feeling and to be that, one must be capable of love…elephants possess all of the above.
– Gini
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and they pay respect whenever they are in the neighborhood..