Nairobi National Park

I am in Nairobi, Kenya for my business trip. On Sunday, I took a half day tour to Nairobi National Park. This is probably a national park closest to the urban centre in the world. Wildlife such as lions, zebra, and giraffe live here with skyscrapers behind.

I was lucky enough to see white rhinoceros which is rare here (they are perhaps southern white rhinoceros. Northern white rhinoceros are going to extinct, sadly). The funniest moment today was when we were chasing a rhino, which was chasing other 3 rhinos. 10 ostriches were marching in beautiful straight line. They have massive kicks which are stronger than karate masters and even lions fear. So, be careful. A female lion failed hunting an antelope after awaiting for a good timing. Might be because of too many audience? Oh, poor lion.

I also stopped by the monument where a hundreds of ivories were burnt, which used to belong to elephants. They were sadly poached to sell to markets (mainly, for Asian traditional medicine markets). I was shocked with the rapid declines of the elephant population in Kenya, decreased from 130,000 to 16,000 from 1973 to 1983. So, here is the symbol to make a strong commitment to conserve elephants in Kenya.

Unfortunately, there are still markets and poachers still want to sell ivories and horns, and there are also corruptions enabling such business even though strict rules exist. When I was in the park, rangers equipped with rifles were watching from the sky and on the ground to protect animals.