I woke up and opened my eyes. It was dark and moonless outside. Stars were shining through the upper corner of our bedroom window, a sure sign it was not yet 4 am. I mentally ran through the check list of reasons I might be awake: Cold? No. Hot? No. Need to go to the bathroom? No. I looked at my watch. It was 2:58 am. Then I became aware of sounds; loud breathing, guttural grunts, munching, the occasional clunk and a branch snapping.

John, also awake, whispered from beside me “Do you hear that?” “Yeah,” I replied. “What is it?” We lay there for a minute or two listening. It got closer and louder. “Why does it sound like a toilet is flushing?” I asked, by now up on my elbows peering through the mosquito netting into the night. It is no more than 30 feet from our bedroom window to our outdoor shower. Whatever it was, it was somewhere in that scant 10 yards.

John crawled out of bed and crouched beside the window. We both held our breath. “It’s got to be an elephant,” he said. I agreed. More crunching and watery gurgles. Then one enormous shadow loomed right in front of us, and then another. There were two of them! “I’m going to shine my flashlight on them to scare them away,” John said. “No wait,” I squawked and scrambled out of bed. “I want to get out of the way.” Even though I was reasonably sure the elephants wouldn’t charge the house, they were too close for comfort. I preferred to watch the action from the safety of the next room. John turned his high-beam, Nitecore flashlight on two enormous bull elephants less than 15 feet away. One quickly high tailed it into the grass to our left. The other spun around, its tusks flashing white in the light, close enough to touch. John jumped back from the window with a gasp. Another sweep of light and the second one disappeared. We laughed, went back to bed and listened as the sounds moved into the distance.

A couple of minutes later, John got up, put on a sweatshirt and headed outside. “Scared the shit out of you?” I teased.

“Yeah, sort of,” he laughed. But instead of heading to the toilet, he detoured to the shower area. I could see his flashlight bobbing around as he investigated. The verdict: the elephants had ripped up the water line outside the shower and left a small geyser gushing into the yard (which explained the gurgling and sounds of a toilet flushing). John went in search of Kathati to see if there was some way to shut off the water. A few minutes later the two of them returned; big John in his underwear and sweatshirt, tiny Kathati in his ragged wrap-around skirt and khaki jacket, their bare legs – two white and two black – glinting in the narrow cone of light. They trooped around in the dark until they found the master valve and closed it. We all went back to bed.

All told, the elephants managed to tear up two sets of pipes — one to our house and one to the guest house – break some tree limbs, knock over a large potted plant, literally on our doorstep, and deposit a small mountain of dung. We are without water until Lewa maintenance fixes the plumbing and refills the water tank. Such is life in northern Kenya.