Gaketha: where pregnant jumbos visit to give birth
What you need to know:
- The site looks just like any other ordinary place but not in the months of July and December when it is busy with one of nature’s rarest spectacle, when the world’s largest terrestrial mammal brings forth new lives.
- There is also a sticky-clay-swamp-mud, which is essential for smearing over the bodies of the young ones, to protect them from bites by insects such as tsetse flies, bees, safari ants and others.
- Gaketha is a major tourism site in Tharaka-Nithi as local and international tourist visits the place in big numbers during the two wet season to witness this amazing exercise.
About 10 kilometres from Nithi Bridge, on the edge of Mt Kenya Forest in Tharaka-Nithi County is Gaketha Elephant Maternity.
The site looks just like any other ordinary place but not in the months of July and December when it is busy with one of nature’s rarest spectacle, when the world’s largest terrestrial mammal brings forth new lives.
In these wet months, pregnant elephants from the neighbouring Laikipia and Mt Kenya Forest arrive in large numbers for the sole purpose of giving birth to their newborns at a ‘safe place’.
One can hardly tell why these big mammals prefer giving birth at this particular place. You can only guess these pregnant elephants prefer the area owing to its gentle gradient, which ensures safety for the animals as they slip out to the ground to avoid getting injured.
There is also a sticky-clay-swamp-mud, which is essential for smearing over the bodies of the young ones, to protect them from bites by insects such as tsetse flies, bees, safari ants and others.
There is also abundance undergrowth, which offers soft food for the young ones and an easy access to the neighbouring farms at night to get more food such as banana, arrow roots sweet potatoes, yams and maize cobs.
Tales has that long time ago; the mammals used to give birth deep into the Mount Kenya Forest until one time when a pregnant elephant painfully struggling with the labour pains slipped and fell into a cliff along Nithi valley, which measures about 70 metres deep and died.
This made the animals move to the current Gaketha area where there is an open and flat field free from accidents.
The cliff is currently known as Kajogu by the locals meaning a young one of an elephant.
Gaketha is a major tourism site in Tharaka-Nithi as local and international tourist visits the place in big numbers during the two wet season to witness this amazing exercise.
While at the place, about 100 metres away one can visit Solomon’s caves at the edge of the forest, which was used as the armoury for Mau Mau war veterans during the struggle for independence.
Less than 200 metres is the sacred Urumandi natural footbridge on Nithi River, which the locals believe, is a ‘holy place’ and ‘ritually unclean people’ are not allowed to use it.
