Visiting Ol Pejeta and the last northern white rhinos

Roughly a four-hour drive from Nairobi, spreading out at the foot of Mount Kenya, Ol Pejeta is a conservancy that specializes in taking care of rhinos and chimpanzees. The site is home to over 165 black rhinoceroses, and its major attraction are its two northern white rhinos, the last exemplars of their entire species. The two females were brought over as part of a four-member family unit, but the males died a few years ago without helping them produce any progeny. Attempts have been made to crossbreed the northern white rhinos with their southern counterparts, but these have failed, so it appears that surrogacy – using frozen sperm from the males and eggs from the living but aging females – is the only remaining option to keep the species alive.

After arriving at the main gate of this park at around ten in the morning, we made a small game drive before our scheduled visit to the white rhinos. We saw a lioness with two cubs, as well as a few black rhinos, an elephant, a jackal, and the usual cast of herbivorous quadrupeds. To meet the northern white rhinos, we drove into a special fenced area within the conservancy, where they are kept with another southern white rhino female who helped habituate them to their new life in Kenya. As the northern white rhinos were brought over from the Czech Republic, they still respond to Czech commands, especially the word “pojď” (come), which usually accompanies feeding. 

In some ways, the tour was a fiasco. It had been rescheduled from the previous morning with no prior notice and a perfunctory apology, after which the minor annoyances only kept piling up. We made several unannounced and poorly explained stops, including one to pick up the tour company’s intern. We also stopped by the equator, where the driver silently handed me over to a few swindlers purporting to show how the water swirls in different directions just two or three metres across their white line on the asphalt. The one random stop that partly redeemed the experience was when we picked up a ranger in the park. It was he who told us about the lioness and advised us – against all the rules of the park – on where to drive off the official road to get closer to them. 

A black rhinoceros
A jackal
A lioness
A zebra
The blind black rhinoceros Baraka
The southern white rhino living with Najin and Fatu
The same
Fatu, Najin's daughter
A marker showing the equator
Water buffalo
Two black rhinos
The same
A black rhino trailing the pair

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