Customer Reviews

A Keeper's Diary

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a DVD of an educational film shown around Africa to educate people about elephants and the work of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an organization devoted to wildlife conservation in Africa. DSWT does a lot of things such as de-snaring, community education and development, and wildlife preservation, but what it is most famous for is the elephant orphanage.

The film covers both the Nairobi nursery, where the baby elephant orphans under 2-3 years of age live, and the facilities at Voi in Tsavo. Although the DVD came out in 2008 here, it was filmed around 1999-2000, so if you are hoping to see some of the more recent arrivals, you will be disappointed. However, the film itself is not disappointing! I foster elephants at the DSWT, and I have seen a lot of the available videos (including the BBC's Elephant Diaries, which is not available in the US), and this film still has interesting things that I hadn't seen. I really enjoyed watching it.

It does focus mostly on the elephants at Voi and their interaction, presumably because that is the location that Kenyans are least likely to know or have seen. It also talks a little bit about the keepers, which is nice, since they are such a crucial part of the operation, both in taking care of the elephants, and helping to educate their home communities about elephants, wildlife, and conservation.

If you don't have a region-free DVD player and want to see Elephant Diaries, this DVD is actually a reasonable substitute. It isn't as slick with the editing and sound effects as the BBC production, and the narration is sometimes a bit awkward (I think it may have been written in Swahili and translated into English?), but the overall quality is high. The DVD offers 3 languages- English, Swahili, and Kikamba (which is the native language of the communities near Voi). The beginning of the video has one of the longest-serving keepers telling the story of how he got his job, and he speaks in his native language, which is subtitled into English, but the rest of it is not subtitled - it has English narration done by a native English speaker.