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Happy New Year!


Happy New Year! Hope all your dreams come true in 2018.

Here’s an elephant New Year’s kiss for you.

The displays of love and affection among elephants are some of the behaviours that make them so dear to us. However, although this might seem like merely an enjoyable French kiss, the act may actually also serve another purpose.

The elephants are exchanging information by connecting like this through their mouths, an elephant handler explained to me. By ‘kissing, they can find out where the other elephant has travelled from, and what the soil and food was like there, for example. This is research I would love to find out more about!

I met these particular elephants at the Knysna Elephant Park, in the Western Cape. For this and more elephant stories, please check out my new book ‘On the road to elephants.’

A gentle giant has gone

Among the many elephant pictures in my new book ‘On the road to elephants’ is a portrait of a man. His name is Tom Mahamba.

Just the other day, I found out that Tom had sadly died unexpectedly. At the time when I made my book, this selection of photographs – a row of elephants, and then a man – may have seemed a little unusual. But now, that choice makes ‘perfect’ sense. These were all clearly pictures of gentle giants…

I met Tom when I visited Tembe Elephant Park earlier this year. I went to Tembe to see its special ‘tuskers’ and the successfully community-driven conservation model adopted by Tembe Elephant Lodge, of which Tom was very much an integral part.

You can read more about Tom and the Tembe elephants in the book. I filled pages in a notebook in my conversations with Tom at the lodge, where I was treated like a welcomed guest and a friend.

Tembe is definitely a special place to meet gentle giants, including the elephants. I leave you with some of Tom’s words about them: “The elephants are indigenous. They were not brought in. It’s a good gene pool,” he said. “They are big in size and they have big tusks. And here you have the best elephant sightings in the province.”

Deep condolences to Tom’s family, friends and co-workers at the Lodge. I could see he was a very bright light to many.

Elephant blog

Copyright Eva-Lotta Jansson 2017. All rights reserved.

Copyright Eva-Lotta Jansson 2017. All rights reserved.

Now that my elephant book is finished – and it’s making its way into the online bookshops – I think it’s time I started a blog.

Writing blogs to highlight an issue is something I do for my clients as a social media consultant, as it’s a great way to tell stories. So it’s about time that I also write a blog for myself and the elephants. Stay tuned! I’d love to connect with you here about elephants and conservation. (And please come the Creative Experiences FB page, to discuss some more.) From time to time, I’ll also share with you what I think are good practices when it comes to communication online about these sometimes sensitive and political issues – if our aim is to serve the greater good.

My new book, “On the Road to Elephants” is a photography book with a written essay. Although it’s not really a ‘normal’ wildlife book. It’s a book about elephants, and more. I explore, with my camera, how elephants live in modern day (South) Africa.

It’s a mixture of photo book, personal travel experiences and informal guide book. Beyond fun pictures and travel anecdotes, it’s also a more serious journalistic document about South Africa, and an exploration into our relationship, as humans, with elephants, both today, and throughout our past.

Elephants are a keystone species in Africa, which means that the rest of the ecosystem, including other wildlife, depend on their survival. The issues affecting elephant populations vary from region to region. That’s why I focus on South Africa, on its own, and in context of what’s happening on the continent.

“On the road to elephants” is available in online bookstores, including Amazon. You may also special order the book through your local online bookstore, or directly here at CreativeExperiencesSA.com