Shaba is not “just” an elephant. She is a matriarch who has adopted dozens of orphaned elephants, taking them under her wing. She is a symbol of love and redemption from pain caused by cruel and unjust situations. It is a film made by the photographer Ami Vitale, who told the story of the orphanage in which Shaba found refuge through images and testimonies . Here, the local community fights daily to save the little elephants left orphaned by poachers.

Shaba, the movie

In the mountains of northern Kenya, a community of Samburu has built a sanctuary for orphaned elephants , with the aim of caring for them, protecting them and raising them until such time as they can return to the wild. This is the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, of which Ami Vitale – award-winning photojournalist and documentary maker – tells in the short film Shaba.

The protagonist of the film is, in fact, Shaba, an elephantess whose story is exemplary to understand her motivations behind the project: the pachyderm, still a puppy, was next to her mother when the poachers shot her, killing her.She was enormously traumatized, aggressive, extremely distrustful of humans and yet still unable to survive alone in the wild. 

It is here that the women of the Sumburu community intervened, who found a way to care for the little elephants and to nurse them with giant bottles , caring for them with affection and great care. Shaba is also their story, the story of a gender – the female one – that emerges from the shadow and silence to which her community had relegated him, to strongly attest to the importance of her role.

So, little by little, thanks to the loving care received, Shaba regained her confidence and became a real matriarch., who helped thirty orphans to recover from their bereavement and returned in 2019 to live in the wild.

To celebrate World Elephant Day 2021 (scheduled for August 12) Shaba is available to the public , upon donation to the Reteti sanctuary, from July 2 to August 31 . 

The Reteti Elephant Sanctuary

The Reteti Elephant Sanctuary Community United for Elephants (RESCUE) is a sanctuary owned by the Samburu and managed by the same community. Located in the territory where Kenya’s second largest elephant population lives, it welcomes orphaned and abandoned baby elephants, who are cared for and cared for with the aim of releasing them back into the wild herds adjacent to the Reteti. The Sanctuary was established in response to requests from the local community, which recognizes wildlife as an opportunity to improve their livelihoods.

The initiative, therefore, is part of a movement from below, which is gaining more and more recognition and which is growing new economies, improving the lives of humans and animals and contributing to the conservation of natural resources.

All caretakers come from the local community and are adequately trained in the care, rehabilitation and release of baby elephants.

An elected commission from within the community oversees all operational aspects of the Shrine. The facility – which can count on the support of the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Sambur County government – also hosts a mobile elephant rescue team.

The author of the film Shaba Ami Vitale had told the story of Reteti for the first time through some shots taken for the “National Geographic” . Her photos from the nascent project had won the 2018 World Press Photo, in the Nature section.

Poaching, a cruel reality

Although the ivory trade has been outlawed across the African continent, poaching knows no end. As the recent Great Elephant Census points out , in many parts of Africa this practice continues at an unsustainable pace: in Tanzania alone, in the last six years, elephants have more than halved, from 109,000 to 46,000. 

If before the pandemic it was estimated that around 60-70 African elephants were killed every day, from 2020 there is a further increase in the phenomenon . The economic crisis, accompanied by less surveillance and contrasted with an ivory black market in the Gulf that shows no sign of abating, in fact means that the pachyderms are persecuted because of their own, enormous, tusks.

Along with man-made wells and drought, poaching is the main reason that baby elephants are orphaned .