23-30 July JD at Elephant Nature Park
Elephant Background Info:
Asian elephants are easy to count, both in the wild and in captivity. They are an endangered species in all senses of the term. The total numbers are a classic downhill ski-slope graph. In
Thailand it is estimated that there are fewer than 2,000 “domestic” and less than 500 “wild” elephants around today. This is down from a total of 5,000 not more than 5 years ago. The domestic numbers are the ones diminishing even more rapidly than their wild cousins.
The wild ones actually spend time wandering between Burma, Laos and Thailand and are rarely seen by everyday people. Poachers and farmers get to see more than most. Farmers would rather never see any (elephants eat up to 500 pounds of food per day, all of it plant based) and poachers try not to be seen. Wild elephants are protected by a myriad of laws in Thailand and Laos. Domestic elephants have absolutely no legal protection… They are considered property, not unlike scooters, cars, chickens and cows. Herein lies the problem… Many owners/mahouts look upon their animals as machines instead of living creatures, and treat them as such. Lets sanitize the thought process:
First let us detach ourselves from the sentient being part of the equation. Imagine your giant pachyderm is a small business, lets say a Money Factory. Raw material goes in one door, processed material leaves through another. This is a negative-income generating factor as it costs money to handle both; a lot of money. However the factory cannot produce any income without this process in place. There are but a few ways your factory can actually make money. There is direct/indirect physical labor, and there is celebrity. Direct options include being a piece of heavy equipment: Bulldozer/freight hauler/etc. Indirect is more “light duty”, carrying small loads short distances. Celebrity is mostly for new factories. “Cute” is all it takes for money to be literally thrown at the building. No real “work”, just relying on good looks. Some factory production can involve a combination of any or all of the money-making methods.
Optimum factory conditions require up to twenty hours a day for raw material processing. Each factory requires hundreds of pounds of material and liquid to remain operational. A well-run factory devotes a lot of time to this processing activity, at the exclusion of all others.
Factory owners and managers want the greatest return possible on their investments. Knowledgeable directors try to find a balance between the internal needs of a factory and the needs of the business as a whole: Rest days, lots of raw material, maternity leave-which can be months, and mental stimulation. They realize a well-maintained factory can produce for decades, and even create additional factories all on its own (OK, with a little help from another factory…). Ignorant, or sometimes just plain greedy, directors do not have or choose not to use foresight. They instead look for maximum return with little or no consideration for the conditions in the factory. Some will have the factory working 24-hour shifts, with minimal raw materials and no employee health plans at all. If the factory collapses, they just buy another cheap one and continue on.
What these less aware owners do not take into account is the ONLY source for new factories are the current factories. Unless a factory is well maintained, it will not produce a functioning new factory. Period. Unfortunately there is a shortage of knowledgeable directors… This is what leads to a steady decline in factory conditions, as well as a decline in the number of factories themselves.
Elephant Nature Park:
All of this brings us to Elephant Nature Park: Part rescue, part retirement home, part halfway house, and foster home. Lek is a Chiang Mai travel agency owner who has devoted the last 17
years to helping elephants, one beastie at a time. She has spent considerable sums of her own monies to buy land, lease elephants, and educate elephant owners and mahouts on how to minimize the abuse of their charges. She is working against the solidly entrenched centuries of traditional behavior when it comes to the handling and training of said beasties. Her goal is not to eliminate the use of elephants for work, but rather the shift the paradigm of abusive training, mistreatment and mishandling that pervades the issue.
ENP is about 60 kilometers north of Chiang Mai. In fact, it is just a few k north of Maetaman elephant camp, on the same road and river. Lek and her long time friend Pom have 40+ acres
here, plus another few attached to a national forest reserve just downstream. Lek rescues and cares for all types of critters. At this moment in time there are 32 pachyderms, 48+ dogs, an uncountable number of cats, 7 water buffalo, another 8-10 cows, a few hundred geckos, and a few hundred thousand mozzies. For those who want to see what goes on there single and multi-day trips are available. Weekly and multi-week volunteer opportunities also exist for those who want to do more.
JD and KK, having spent the last 8 months together 24/7, felt this would be a great chance to have a little individual experience time. Weekly volunteers leave Chiang Mai on Mondays, and return on the following Sunday. JD was on a van with an organized tour group; 7 women and their guide, Sam. They were going to ENP for the week, followed by 4 days hill trekking, 5 days in Ao Nang, and 3 in Bangkok. The very first stop en route to ENP was still in CM. A couple of tons or so of fruit and vege needed to be loaded into the vans and an empty truck. As it turns out this is the mid-
morning snacks for the elephants and is picked up every day. One of the ladies (Katie) is having a birthday this week so a stop for spirits is in order.
The first look at ENP is magnificent. Set in a river valley, ringed by verdant hills and a distant view of misty mountain passes. The valley floor was an
expanse of tall grasses and small copses of trees. A few of the elephant family groups can be seen meandering around the property. It is easy to be mentally transported to a place far from the effects of man.
Day one is orientation day; background info on ENP, an introduction to elephant husbandry and treatment in the outside world, instructions on interacting with the resident beasties (No Touch Elephant, No Sleep with Mahouts, Watch for Elephants, If certain elephants are heading in your direction, move quickly away (read: “run your ass off”), etc), and a disturbing video on elephant training practices (Unchanged in the last nine centuries). The pajaan is a breaking process. A 3-4 year old elephant is placed in a tight stockade called a crush. It can’t move in any direction. It is then subjected to sleep depravation, physical torture, starvation, and isolation until it is completely submissive. This can take weeks, and even months. Lek is currently training two babies with
positive reinforcement vs. the pajaan. Thailand is a show-me kind of culture. If she can demonstrate the same or better results with a method that does not damage the elephant, village headmen will be more receptive to the change. The downside is the time factor. Positive reinforcement takes lots of time, years even, especially with critters as smart and rambunctious as pachyderms.
In addition to our van load there is also a group of Spirit Singers from San Francisco as well. Spirit Singers are groups of ladies who sing at births, deathbeds, and other emotionally charged events to help ease the transitions of those involved. They are here to sing to the elephants. While the volunteer coordinator knew they would be singing, she hadn’t realized that due to age and physical limitations the ladies would not be able to help with the more physical aspects of the week. Soooo… instead of nineteen bodies to do the weeks projects and chores we had nine (ten for the last couple of days; we lose one, gain two).
Sunday night brings in a group of local musicians playing traditional instruments. A number of teenagers are involved in the proceedings, this being the opportunity for them to practice their skills. The village Shaman (the retired abbot of the local Buddhist temple) comes by and purges the negative of the previous week and welcomes positive for the upcoming week. Anyone who wants can have a spirit string tied around his or her wrist. (Left wrist girls, right wrist boys).
Time to Work:
The daily routine will consist of an early morning breakfast at roughly 7:00-7:30 followed by morning chores (shoveling assorted shits, picking up fallen fruits, picking up trash) then morning project f
rom 8:30-10:15ish, and wrapping up the morning with the unloading of the fruit and vege trucks. If the trucks are not unloaded quickly, the elephants will try to do it themselves. Not a good plan. 11:00 or so is hand feeding the elephants the cleaned and prepared fruits and vege. Then it’s human lunch. After we eat it is time for elephant bath #1, usually around 1:00ish. 2:00-4:30 is afternoon project time, elephant bath #2 at 5:00, dinner 6:30. Yep- a full day indeed. Projects during the week consisted of tree planting, bamboo grass planting, hauling rocks out of the river to repair the road, picking up 3,000+ saplings at the tree nursery, and bench repair.
It wasn’t all slave labor- Thursday morning we visited the school in the nearby village, and Thursday afternoon we trekked to Elephant Haven to overnight with one of the elephant family groups. There was elephant study day, and elephant watch to round out the week as well.
Sam (AU), Katie (BR), Barb (AU), Abbey (BR), Karen (SCT), Janine (BR), Beck (AU), Lisa (US-
Jersey) and myself were the initial working crew. Carly (US-Cali) and Jennifer (US-Cali) made it later in the week. Barb, Katie and I shared morning chores. Day one was elephant shit and fruit scraps around the feeding platforms. Mmmmmm Mmmm, nothing like the heady aroma of fresh, still-damp corn cobbed elephant bombs the size of cantaloupes right after brekkie… (This will actually be the chore we prefer… more on that in a moment).
Nothing screams like the suspension of a ½ ton pick-up truck with well over a ton of vege in the back. Two vans and the truck would bring up the days snack provisions from Chiang Mai. The most efficient method to unload is the classic bucket brigade. Bags of cukes, small watermelons, and
ears of corn all get moved for processing. Bags break; Fruit flies (groan here…). Elephants, not unlike humans, are highly sensitive to agricultural chemicals. Smaller beasties can rapidly fall sick, and even die, if they have eaten in a chemically enhanced field. Anyway- all fruit and vege get a wash in potassium permanganate solution; A purple colored oxidizing agent that neutralizes all contact chemistry on the plant material. It itself rapidly neutralizes with contact to air. Each critter has his/her own basket. Herd hierarchy mirrors pack hierarchy. Certain ladies always get their baskets first. If they don’t, the poor beastie who brazenly ate before them gets pounded later. Pounded hard. ‘Baby-Finster-Shouldn’t-Touch-The-Dirty Money” pounded.
The three morning chore groups become two project groups. Today: Tree Planting and Grass Planting. The two groups will switch places fro the afternoon. Had I mentioned the eternal mist? Rain to anyone not from Seattle or London. Keeps us from overheating while working…
Remember ‘My Cousin Vinny”? (1992-Macchio, Pesci, Tomei- one of the funniest movies of the time) “We’s famous for our mud” was a line used to describe the material that was created after a good rain. The deep south has nothing on the viscous ooze found here in SE Asia- When it is dry, it may as well be concrete. Add a bit of moisture and it becomes bog-monster heaven. Tree planting was straightforward, if not backbreaking. Squat in the mud, dig a small hole, unwrap a seedling root ball, drop it in the hole, back fill, repeat. We managed a hundred or so before it was Fruit Time. Now as long as the dogs don’t dig, or the elephants don’t snack there will be a great arboretum in just a few years. (Things grow really fast here- these seedlings will be 5 meters tall in no time) I had watched local farmers shin deep in the rice paddies during planting and had wondered if they were barefoot or wearing thongs (Flip Flops- didn’t remember the Ozzie language lessons?). The afternoon project let us answer that question individually.
Grass Planting conjured images of walking with big bags of seed and spreading it around… Not quite. This particular grass is a bamboo varietal that the elephants eat by the ton. Literally. The s
tarts are foot-long sections of bias-cut bamboo stem. (Angle cut-sharp pointy ends- think any Vietnam war movie). Even getting to the grass field required maneuvering through a true quagmire. The morning group had recommended we just leave our footwear on the road. Should have listened… Barb had a full thong blow-out- the upper just left the footbed deep in the mud. After that barefoot was the plan. Warm, squishy, ankle-deep mud with the occasional pointy bit. A few rows of string guides are staked out, and you shove two cuttings into the mud at a 45-degree angle. We knocked out an easy acre +. We also all had cuts, bruises and sores. Another glorious day in the corps!
We participate in the evening elephant baths, giving us a chance to wash off as well.
The next day is more of the same, with the project shifting to pulling rocks from the river and carrying them to the access road. The road is mud and ruts. If the fruit trucks get stuck, the elephants will unstick them, and not in a helpful way. They love their fruit and vege.
Katie had a birthday. The 22nd one I believe. In our exhaustion we managed a small gathering and a few drinks. Mornings are already too early in the day for my comfort. The dog packs start daily howling session around 4:30am, and the roosters add their two-cents worth between 5 and 5:30.
Sam, looking for a way to take it easy, dropped the buffalo-shit cart onto his foot. He ended up with nasty gash and a loss of ambulation. He was trucked off to Chiang Mai for X-rays and painkillers. He was out of commission. No fracture, but a real nasty sprain. The tour company had to scramble to send up a fresh guide from Bangkok. We are another body down in the work crew yet manage to finish up the weeks projects.
Sleeping is outdoors on the bamboo platform, under a mozzie net. Just a tad achy in the morning, but who can tell on top of the other aches anyway…
To minimize illegal logging Lek had a brilliant idea: Have a local abbot bless some old monk robes
and turn them into sashes to wrap trees. Even illegal loggers aren’t going to tempt the fates by cutting down a “blessed” tree. Ignoring the law is one thing, ignoring your next lifetimes is something else completely. The abbot was so intrigued with the idea he and a number of the monks came out with her to wrap the trees. We all get a sash to mark a fresh tree on our walk out.
Saturday is low-key. Chores as always, but the project is elephant study. There are a few elephants that have not joined any of the family groups so we are to follow them around and take notes on their behavior. I spend the afternoon hanging with Mae Gaow, she has a large “R” branded on her butt. She is mellow, and her mahout is pretty low key as well. We hang in the mahout village most of the afternoon, keeping her out of the little garden.
Sunday is a return to Chiang Mai, hot showers, and a comfy mattress and an even more comfortable wife. Ahhh. (Husband points for this statement=zero; KK had to make note of his joy to see her with this last statement herself- sometimes husbands need to have their memories and not just their bits nudged after being married for this long.)
Elephants do have long memories:
A cop teased an elephant in India during a parade. The next year, the same elephant saw the cop in the crowd, grabbed him, held him upside down for a minute staring into his eyes (”I know you, I’ll find you, don’t f**k with me…”) dropped him and continued on.
An angry bull storms through a village to a hut in the middle of town. He flattens the place, crushing the occupant. Turns out 20 years earlier the occupant had shot and wounded the beastie in an attempt to get his tusks.
Another elephant snuck up on a woman carrying a baby. The elephant gently grabbed the infant and tenderly set it on the ground. She then beat and crushed the mother to death. This particular woman had participated in this particular elephants pajaan.
Musth is a type of male elephant “heat”: A testosterone type hormone is produced by the tear ducts. This fluid runs down the face and into the mouth. It turns on the “Insane Mean Bastard” switch in the brain. If the bull can’t hump it, he just wants to kill it. Sometimes even after he has humped it, he tries to kill it. Even mahouts stay away from a bull in musth. Two of the bulls are in musth while we are here, Boon Khum (BK) and Khun Min
More tidbits:
This is Medo. She was chained next to a bull in musth. She made it through three mountings before her legs gave out. Once she was down, the bull tried to kill her. Her pelvis was crushed. She has adapted remarkably well.
Everyone loves baby elephants. That’s why they are used for begging in the major cities
(Celebrity). Of course there is not enough food or water. Once they lose the cute factor it is off to logging or trekking. Sometimes both. The babies here are going through positive reinforcement training.
There is a female who was a trekking elephant by day, and illegal logging elephant by night. Every day and every night for twenty years. Her owner and mahout would pump her up on amphetamines to keep her working. She’s been here a little over a year as is moving around a bit better. She moves very slowly and deliberately, and has been known to get testy. Drug withdrawal is hard on both man and beast.
Lek has to actually buy the abused elephants from their owners. If they won’t sell, she will try to lease them. Buying a elephant is the cheap part. US$3,000-5,000 is enough to get most elephants. The downside is the US$5,000-6,000 each it costs per year to care for said beasties.
ENP was not what I had expected. It was however an excellent and eye-opening experience. I had felt a bit guilty about enjoying my earlier trekking experiences, but it was brought to my attention that same experience is what prompted me to do this… Not all trekking companies or owners are intentionally bad. It is now a matter of education, and ENP with the help of all of its volunteers and donors is working on just that.
Elephant Background Info:
Asian elephants are easy to count, both in the wild and in captivity. They are an endangered species in all senses of the term. The total numbers are a classic downhill ski-slope graph. In
Thailand it is estimated that there are fewer than 2,000 “domestic” and less than 500 “wild” elephants around today. This is down from a total of 5,000 not more than 5 years ago. The domestic numbers are the ones diminishing even more rapidly than their wild cousins.The wild ones actually spend time wandering between Burma, Laos and Thailand and are rarely seen by everyday people. Poachers and farmers get to see more than most. Farmers would rather never see any (elephants eat up to 500 pounds of food per day, all of it plant based) and poachers try not to be seen. Wild elephants are protected by a myriad of laws in Thailand and Laos. Domestic elephants have absolutely no legal protection… They are considered property, not unlike scooters, cars, chickens and cows. Herein lies the problem… Many owners/mahouts look upon their animals as machines instead of living creatures, and treat them as such. Lets sanitize the thought process:
First let us detach ourselves from the sentient being part of the equation. Imagine your giant pachyderm is a small business, lets say a Money Factory. Raw material goes in one door, processed material leaves through another. This is a negative-income generating factor as it costs money to handle both; a lot of money. However the factory cannot produce any income without this process in place. There are but a few ways your factory can actually make money. There is direct/indirect physical labor, and there is celebrity. Direct options include being a piece of heavy equipment: Bulldozer/freight hauler/etc. Indirect is more “light duty”, carrying small loads short distances. Celebrity is mostly for new factories. “Cute” is all it takes for money to be literally thrown at the building. No real “work”, just relying on good looks. Some factory production can involve a combination of any or all of the money-making methods.
Optimum factory conditions require up to twenty hours a day for raw material processing. Each factory requires hundreds of pounds of material and liquid to remain operational. A well-run factory devotes a lot of time to this processing activity, at the exclusion of all others.
Factory owners and managers want the greatest return possible on their investments. Knowledgeable directors try to find a balance between the internal needs of a factory and the needs of the business as a whole: Rest days, lots of raw material, maternity leave-which can be months, and mental stimulation. They realize a well-maintained factory can produce for decades, and even create additional factories all on its own (OK, with a little help from another factory…). Ignorant, or sometimes just plain greedy, directors do not have or choose not to use foresight. They instead look for maximum return with little or no consideration for the conditions in the factory. Some will have the factory working 24-hour shifts, with minimal raw materials and no employee health plans at all. If the factory collapses, they just buy another cheap one and continue on.
What these less aware owners do not take into account is the ONLY source for new factories are the current factories. Unless a factory is well maintained, it will not produce a functioning new factory. Period. Unfortunately there is a shortage of knowledgeable directors… This is what leads to a steady decline in factory conditions, as well as a decline in the number of factories themselves.
Elephant Nature Park:
All of this brings us to Elephant Nature Park: Part rescue, part retirement home, part halfway house, and foster home. Lek is a Chiang Mai travel agency owner who has devoted the last 17
years to helping elephants, one beastie at a time. She has spent considerable sums of her own monies to buy land, lease elephants, and educate elephant owners and mahouts on how to minimize the abuse of their charges. She is working against the solidly entrenched centuries of traditional behavior when it comes to the handling and training of said beasties. Her goal is not to eliminate the use of elephants for work, but rather the shift the paradigm of abusive training, mistreatment and mishandling that pervades the issue.ENP is about 60 kilometers north of Chiang Mai. In fact, it is just a few k north of Maetaman elephant camp, on the same road and river. Lek and her long time friend Pom have 40+ acres
here, plus another few attached to a national forest reserve just downstream. Lek rescues and cares for all types of critters. At this moment in time there are 32 pachyderms, 48+ dogs, an uncountable number of cats, 7 water buffalo, another 8-10 cows, a few hundred geckos, and a few hundred thousand mozzies. For those who want to see what goes on there single and multi-day trips are available. Weekly and multi-week volunteer opportunities also exist for those who want to do more.JD and KK, having spent the last 8 months together 24/7, felt this would be a great chance to have a little individual experience time. Weekly volunteers leave Chiang Mai on Mondays, and return on the following Sunday. JD was on a van with an organized tour group; 7 women and their guide, Sam. They were going to ENP for the week, followed by 4 days hill trekking, 5 days in Ao Nang, and 3 in Bangkok. The very first stop en route to ENP was still in CM. A couple of tons or so of fruit and vege needed to be loaded into the vans and an empty truck. As it turns out this is the mid-
morning snacks for the elephants and is picked up every day. One of the ladies (Katie) is having a birthday this week so a stop for spirits is in order.The first look at ENP is magnificent. Set in a river valley, ringed by verdant hills and a distant view of misty mountain passes. The valley floor was an
expanse of tall grasses and small copses of trees. A few of the elephant family groups can be seen meandering around the property. It is easy to be mentally transported to a place far from the effects of man.Day one is orientation day; background info on ENP, an introduction to elephant husbandry and treatment in the outside world, instructions on interacting with the resident beasties (No Touch Elephant, No Sleep with Mahouts, Watch for Elephants, If certain elephants are heading in your direction, move quickly away (read: “run your ass off”), etc), and a disturbing video on elephant training practices (Unchanged in the last nine centuries). The pajaan is a breaking process. A 3-4 year old elephant is placed in a tight stockade called a crush. It can’t move in any direction. It is then subjected to sleep depravation, physical torture, starvation, and isolation until it is completely submissive. This can take weeks, and even months. Lek is currently training two babies with
positive reinforcement vs. the pajaan. Thailand is a show-me kind of culture. If she can demonstrate the same or better results with a method that does not damage the elephant, village headmen will be more receptive to the change. The downside is the time factor. Positive reinforcement takes lots of time, years even, especially with critters as smart and rambunctious as pachyderms.In addition to our van load there is also a group of Spirit Singers from San Francisco as well. Spirit Singers are groups of ladies who sing at births, deathbeds, and other emotionally charged events to help ease the transitions of those involved. They are here to sing to the elephants. While the volunteer coordinator knew they would be singing, she hadn’t realized that due to age and physical limitations the ladies would not be able to help with the more physical aspects of the week. Soooo… instead of nineteen bodies to do the weeks projects and chores we had nine (ten for the last couple of days; we lose one, gain two).
Sunday night brings in a group of local musicians playing traditional instruments. A number of teenagers are involved in the proceedings, this being the opportunity for them to practice their skills. The village Shaman (the retired abbot of the local Buddhist temple) comes by and purges the negative of the previous week and welcomes positive for the upcoming week. Anyone who wants can have a spirit string tied around his or her wrist. (Left wrist girls, right wrist boys).Time to Work:
The daily routine will consist of an early morning breakfast at roughly 7:00-7:30 followed by morning chores (shoveling assorted shits, picking up fallen fruits, picking up trash) then morning project f
rom 8:30-10:15ish, and wrapping up the morning with the unloading of the fruit and vege trucks. If the trucks are not unloaded quickly, the elephants will try to do it themselves. Not a good plan. 11:00 or so is hand feeding the elephants the cleaned and prepared fruits and vege. Then it’s human lunch. After we eat it is time for elephant bath #1, usually around 1:00ish. 2:00-4:30 is afternoon project time, elephant bath #2 at 5:00, dinner 6:30. Yep- a full day indeed. Projects during the week consisted of tree planting, bamboo grass planting, hauling rocks out of the river to repair the road, picking up 3,000+ saplings at the tree nursery, and bench repair.It wasn’t all slave labor- Thursday morning we visited the school in the nearby village, and Thursday afternoon we trekked to Elephant Haven to overnight with one of the elephant family groups. There was elephant study day, and elephant watch to round out the week as well.
Sam (AU), Katie (BR), Barb (AU), Abbey (BR), Karen (SCT), Janine (BR), Beck (AU), Lisa (US-
Jersey) and myself were the initial working crew. Carly (US-Cali) and Jennifer (US-Cali) made it later in the week. Barb, Katie and I shared morning chores. Day one was elephant shit and fruit scraps around the feeding platforms. Mmmmmm Mmmm, nothing like the heady aroma of fresh, still-damp corn cobbed elephant bombs the size of cantaloupes right after brekkie… (This will actually be the chore we prefer… more on that in a moment).Nothing screams like the suspension of a ½ ton pick-up truck with well over a ton of vege in the back. Two vans and the truck would bring up the days snack provisions from Chiang Mai. The most efficient method to unload is the classic bucket brigade. Bags of cukes, small watermelons, and
ears of corn all get moved for processing. Bags break; Fruit flies (groan here…). Elephants, not unlike humans, are highly sensitive to agricultural chemicals. Smaller beasties can rapidly fall sick, and even die, if they have eaten in a chemically enhanced field. Anyway- all fruit and vege get a wash in potassium permanganate solution; A purple colored oxidizing agent that neutralizes all contact chemistry on the plant material. It itself rapidly neutralizes with contact to air. Each critter has his/her own basket. Herd hierarchy mirrors pack hierarchy. Certain ladies always get their baskets first. If they don’t, the poor beastie who brazenly ate before them gets pounded later. Pounded hard. ‘Baby-Finster-Shouldn’t-Touch-The-Dirty Money” pounded.
The three morning chore groups become two project groups. Today: Tree Planting and Grass Planting. The two groups will switch places fro the afternoon. Had I mentioned the eternal mist? Rain to anyone not from Seattle or London. Keeps us from overheating while working…
Remember ‘My Cousin Vinny”? (1992-Macchio, Pesci, Tomei- one of the funniest movies of the time) “We’s famous for our mud” was a line used to describe the material that was created after a good rain. The deep south has nothing on the viscous ooze found here in SE Asia- When it is dry, it may as well be concrete. Add a bit of moisture and it becomes bog-monster heaven. Tree planting was straightforward, if not backbreaking. Squat in the mud, dig a small hole, unwrap a seedling root ball, drop it in the hole, back fill, repeat. We managed a hundred or so before it was Fruit Time. Now as long as the dogs don’t dig, or the elephants don’t snack there will be a great arboretum in just a few years. (Things grow really fast here- these seedlings will be 5 meters tall in no time) I had watched local farmers shin deep in the rice paddies during planting and had wondered if they were barefoot or wearing thongs (Flip Flops- didn’t remember the Ozzie language lessons?). The afternoon project let us answer that question individually.
Grass Planting conjured images of walking with big bags of seed and spreading it around… Not quite. This particular grass is a bamboo varietal that the elephants eat by the ton. Literally. The s
tarts are foot-long sections of bias-cut bamboo stem. (Angle cut-sharp pointy ends- think any Vietnam war movie). Even getting to the grass field required maneuvering through a true quagmire. The morning group had recommended we just leave our footwear on the road. Should have listened… Barb had a full thong blow-out- the upper just left the footbed deep in the mud. After that barefoot was the plan. Warm, squishy, ankle-deep mud with the occasional pointy bit. A few rows of string guides are staked out, and you shove two cuttings into the mud at a 45-degree angle. We knocked out an easy acre +. We also all had cuts, bruises and sores. Another glorious day in the corps!
We participate in the evening elephant baths, giving us a chance to wash off as well.The next day is more of the same, with the project shifting to pulling rocks from the river and carrying them to the access road. The road is mud and ruts. If the fruit trucks get stuck, the elephants will unstick them, and not in a helpful way. They love their fruit and vege.
Katie had a birthday. The 22nd one I believe. In our exhaustion we managed a small gathering and a few drinks. Mornings are already too early in the day for my comfort. The dog packs start daily howling session around 4:30am, and the roosters add their two-cents worth between 5 and 5:30.
Sam, looking for a way to take it easy, dropped the buffalo-shit cart onto his foot. He ended up with nasty gash and a loss of ambulation. He was trucked off to Chiang Mai for X-rays and painkillers. He was out of commission. No fracture, but a real nasty sprain. The tour company had to scramble to send up a fresh guide from Bangkok. We are another body down in the work crew yet manage to finish up the weeks projects.
Oh yeah- the most nasty and vile morning job: shoveling the buffalo and cow enclosure. If the normal runny green foulness isn’t bad enough, one of the buffaloes is ill: More runny, more green
, and distinctly more foul. This, inconceivably, is even nastier than the normal maggot-gagging effluent. The overall trick is to shovel the drippy left over long grass and leaves into the cart first, so the more liquid of the buffalo shit doesn’t just drain through the bed of the cart before you can push it to the shit-pit. Not a good job to do barefoot. I made plastic baggie slippers. They lasted long enough to finish the job. Hallelujah. Additionally there was collecting the red-ant ridden figs, a special treat for the fastest elephants. A few would track you down while you still had the basket. This being Thailand, normal road rules apply. If the bigger creature wants your basket, it is theirs.
OK, enough about the slavery. The real fun began on Thursday. ENP has arranged a regular Thursday volunteer trip to the nearby village school. This gives the kids and volunteers a chance to interact and practice language skills. The school is technically on holiday this week, so the
headmaster told the children they didn’t need to show up if they didn’t want to. Needless to say, every child was there, in uniform. We had four or five teachers in our group. (Jen had just finished a teaching stint in Kenya last week), so we were good shooting from the hip. The kids separated into three groups: Activity, Art and Language. Barb, Jen and I took language with the younger kids. A few word games, some vocabulary, 
and then a bit of chaos. Young kids are the same the world over. I had the foresight to grab some snacks on the way over. The local version of Fisho’s is Bento’s. Dried fish snacks. Being me, I grabbed some really spicy, and some not so spicy. At an early lull in communication I plopped down on the floor and had interactive show and tell. There was a range of reaction to the spicy snacks… All of it entertaining to the masses. We added “spicy, chili, fish snack, not spicy, and water” to there English word collection.
A brief visit to the local temple, and then we were off to Elephant Haven. Lek has built an overnight
structure up in the 20,000 acre national preserve. Each week a family group gets to trek the 6k into the wilderness and spend the night as “free” elephants. In the morning you track them down and walk them home. The trip takes you right through the Maetaman camp. It is a steep and slow climb 
to the Haven. Elephants are slow and methodical climbers. We are quite the sight, a few dozen people slowly walking behind the four elephants setting the pace: Stopping to nibble, admire the view, smell the flowers, etc. It is all about the elephants.
At Haven the mahouts get to play a bit themselves. A couple of traditional instruments and it is sing-song time. Christmas carols are the main mix. Missionaries at the turn of the last century brought music with them. The tribes all enjoyed the music, then ate the missionaries. Dinner and a show… Most of our mahouts are Burmese Karin.
There are just a few Thai Karin. This leads to a regular friendly rivalry between the two groups. Pom tells a few stories, including the legend of were elephant’s come from. Brief synopsis: Greedy belligerent wife is punished for offending the spirits and becomes elephant. Her tongue has been reversed so she can’t speak.
, and distinctly more foul. This, inconceivably, is even nastier than the normal maggot-gagging effluent. The overall trick is to shovel the drippy left over long grass and leaves into the cart first, so the more liquid of the buffalo shit doesn’t just drain through the bed of the cart before you can push it to the shit-pit. Not a good job to do barefoot. I made plastic baggie slippers. They lasted long enough to finish the job. Hallelujah. Additionally there was collecting the red-ant ridden figs, a special treat for the fastest elephants. A few would track you down while you still had the basket. This being Thailand, normal road rules apply. If the bigger creature wants your basket, it is theirs.OK, enough about the slavery. The real fun began on Thursday. ENP has arranged a regular Thursday volunteer trip to the nearby village school. This gives the kids and volunteers a chance to interact and practice language skills. The school is technically on holiday this week, so the
headmaster told the children they didn’t need to show up if they didn’t want to. Needless to say, every child was there, in uniform. We had four or five teachers in our group. (Jen had just finished a teaching stint in Kenya last week), so we were good shooting from the hip. The kids separated into three groups: Activity, Art and Language. Barb, Jen and I took language with the younger kids. A few word games, some vocabulary, 
and then a bit of chaos. Young kids are the same the world over. I had the foresight to grab some snacks on the way over. The local version of Fisho’s is Bento’s. Dried fish snacks. Being me, I grabbed some really spicy, and some not so spicy. At an early lull in communication I plopped down on the floor and had interactive show and tell. There was a range of reaction to the spicy snacks… All of it entertaining to the masses. We added “spicy, chili, fish snack, not spicy, and water” to there English word collection.A brief visit to the local temple, and then we were off to Elephant Haven. Lek has built an overnight
structure up in the 20,000 acre national preserve. Each week a family group gets to trek the 6k into the wilderness and spend the night as “free” elephants. In the morning you track them down and walk them home. The trip takes you right through the Maetaman camp. It is a steep and slow climb 
to the Haven. Elephants are slow and methodical climbers. We are quite the sight, a few dozen people slowly walking behind the four elephants setting the pace: Stopping to nibble, admire the view, smell the flowers, etc. It is all about the elephants.At Haven the mahouts get to play a bit themselves. A couple of traditional instruments and it is sing-song time. Christmas carols are the main mix. Missionaries at the turn of the last century brought music with them. The tribes all enjoyed the music, then ate the missionaries. Dinner and a show… Most of our mahouts are Burmese Karin.
There are just a few Thai Karin. This leads to a regular friendly rivalry between the two groups. Pom tells a few stories, including the legend of were elephant’s come from. Brief synopsis: Greedy belligerent wife is punished for offending the spirits and becomes elephant. Her tongue has been reversed so she can’t speak. Sleeping is outdoors on the bamboo platform, under a mozzie net. Just a tad achy in the morning, but who can tell on top of the other aches anyway…
To minimize illegal logging Lek had a brilliant idea: Have a local abbot bless some old monk robes
and turn them into sashes to wrap trees. Even illegal loggers aren’t going to tempt the fates by cutting down a “blessed” tree. Ignoring the law is one thing, ignoring your next lifetimes is something else completely. The abbot was so intrigued with the idea he and a number of the monks came out with her to wrap the trees. We all get a sash to mark a fresh tree on our walk out.Saturday is low-key. Chores as always, but the project is elephant study. There are a few elephants that have not joined any of the family groups so we are to follow them around and take notes on their behavior. I spend the afternoon hanging with Mae Gaow, she has a large “R” branded on her butt. She is mellow, and her mahout is pretty low key as well. We hang in the mahout village most of the afternoon, keeping her out of the little garden.
Sunday is a return to Chiang Mai, hot showers, and a comfy mattress and an even more comfortable wife. Ahhh. (Husband points for this statement=zero; KK had to make note of his joy to see her with this last statement herself- sometimes husbands need to have their memories and not just their bits nudged after being married for this long.)
Elephants do have long memories:
A cop teased an elephant in India during a parade. The next year, the same elephant saw the cop in the crowd, grabbed him, held him upside down for a minute staring into his eyes (”I know you, I’ll find you, don’t f**k with me…”) dropped him and continued on.
An angry bull storms through a village to a hut in the middle of town. He flattens the place, crushing the occupant. Turns out 20 years earlier the occupant had shot and wounded the beastie in an attempt to get his tusks.
Another elephant snuck up on a woman carrying a baby. The elephant gently grabbed the infant and tenderly set it on the ground. She then beat and crushed the mother to death. This particular woman had participated in this particular elephants pajaan.
Musth is a type of male elephant “heat”: A testosterone type hormone is produced by the tear ducts. This fluid runs down the face and into the mouth. It turns on the “Insane Mean Bastard” switch in the brain. If the bull can’t hump it, he just wants to kill it. Sometimes even after he has humped it, he tries to kill it. Even mahouts stay away from a bull in musth. Two of the bulls are in musth while we are here, Boon Khum (BK) and Khun Min
More tidbits:
This is Medo. She was chained next to a bull in musth. She made it through three mountings before her legs gave out. Once she was down, the bull tried to kill her. Her pelvis was crushed. She has adapted remarkably well.
Everyone loves baby elephants. That’s why they are used for begging in the major cities
(Celebrity). Of course there is not enough food or water. Once they lose the cute factor it is off to logging or trekking. Sometimes both. The babies here are going through positive reinforcement training.There is a female who was a trekking elephant by day, and illegal logging elephant by night. Every day and every night for twenty years. Her owner and mahout would pump her up on amphetamines to keep her working. She’s been here a little over a year as is moving around a bit better. She moves very slowly and deliberately, and has been known to get testy. Drug withdrawal is hard on both man and beast.
Lek has to actually buy the abused elephants from their owners. If they won’t sell, she will try to lease them. Buying a elephant is the cheap part. US$3,000-5,000 is enough to get most elephants. The downside is the US$5,000-6,000 each it costs per year to care for said beasties.
ENP was not what I had expected. It was however an excellent and eye-opening experience. I had felt a bit guilty about enjoying my earlier trekking experiences, but it was brought to my attention that same experience is what prompted me to do this… Not all trekking companies or owners are intentionally bad. It is now a matter of education, and ENP with the help of all of its volunteers and donors is working on just that.
