Save The Elephants!!!!!
This is the best I've felt since coming to Asia.
The elephant sanctuary is amazing. There's no internet or phone up there so I came back to Chiang Mai for the night to communicate with the outside world.
Pretty much, this woman, Lek, rescues elephants that have been really messed up from logging and/or jungle trekking (humans riding elephants) and/or street begging. I don't even know where to begin. There is so much to say. Please please please check out the website.
It's old, outdated and probably difficult to navigate, but they're working on a new one and I wouldn't be able to do the situation justice.
www.elephantnaturepark.org
Lek, the woman who runs this place, is a fucking amazing woman working for a really important cause and while the world (or the people who know about it from around the world) seems to be behind her, the country of Thailand is working as hard as they can against her. It's really sad. The first day we watched a National Georgraphic story on the situation and were told all the horror stories of how each elephant ended up at the camp. Really really sad stuff.
As for me, I'm having a blast. It's like summer camp (really good food, really nice people, beautiful surroundings) but with 25 amazing elephants all over the place!!! I've learned so much. The "work" is really laid back too. Feeding and bathing are the two major things and then there are different side projects all the time. On the first day we were told they'll always be stuff to do if we want to, but we never have to. "There are no good or bad volunteers." I was told by a returning volunteer that the most important contribution is really the money we pay to go there which goes to medicine for the animals and towards the purchasing of more sick elephants.
So I do the feeding and the bathing and yesterday morning I went banana picking! Or, more excatly, banana tree dragging!
Three mahouts (elephant caretakers) and six volunteers sat in the back of a pick up, drove up a mountain to a mud road, got out, pushed the truck up the rest of the way, got to a point where we couldn't move it anymore and stopped, and then went into the jungle to get bananas. The mahouts had the machetes so they cut the trees and then we (volunteers) would carry/drag it back to the truck. Add to this, we were in the middle of jungle land, and it had rained the night before so it was all mud. Everywhere, mud. It was also raing. We were slipping constantly. On the way there we had all been trying to not sit on the bottom of the cab of the truck cause there was some water left of from the previous night's rain. By the time we had finished filling the truck with banana trees we were all coverd with mud, front and back. At one point we realized it was faster to just sit on our butts and slide down the hill than to try to find any kind of stability in each step. It was a lot more fun too. Also, once we got back to the road a girl named Kelly and I decided to just run and see how far we could slide on our feet. Like snowboarding kind of. All mud. All fun.
We got back, fed the elephants, fed ourselves, then jumped in the river and used the elephant scrubbers to try to wash ourselves. Then we washed the elephants.
So there are 25 elephants in all. Sixteen female adults, 4 male adults (we don't hang out with them much, they're solitary and tempremental) and 5 baby elephants (SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!)
Lek's hope is that the baby elephants can grow up without ever knowing about the crap that all the other elephants have had to go through. And then they'll still be used for tourism (with camps like hers that show happy, heatlhy elephants) but trained with love and health instead of sharp metal objects getting stuck into their heads and broken backs from carrying around tourists on their backs all day.
But since what she's saying is so risky her camp is severely hated by all the other tourist camps and not advertised on the street and is therefore relatively unknown.
Driving up to her camp you pass a couple of camps with tourists sitting on elephant's backs, with the mahouts with the sticks with the metal hooks at the end and I know it can't be a comfortable situtation for anyone invovled. Some elephants are even bleeding from their foreheads!! And I have to imagine that if people knew there was an opportunity to actually hang out with the elephants really get to know them (THEY'RE REALLY SMART AND ALL HAVE REALLY DISTINCT PERSONALITIES!!!) and their situation, the sitting on the back thing would lose its appeal, real fast.
To be honest, in the beginning, I kind of thought I would do this thing and be all about the cause for 2 weeks but then maybe do one of the other elephant camps just to get a picture of me sitting on an elephant but I have absolutely zero interest in that now.
Ok, I should probably go, I have a ton of errands to run in my one night in town. If you have any questions on anything, elephant related or not, let me know. I really like talking about this stuff now.
Pretty much, I'm really happy, I'm learning a lot, meeting cool people from all over the world and will be sad when I leave.
And I don't have email, phone reception, a comfortable bed or hot showers, but I'm completetly fine with that.
The elephant sanctuary is amazing. There's no internet or phone up there so I came back to Chiang Mai for the night to communicate with the outside world.
Pretty much, this woman, Lek, rescues elephants that have been really messed up from logging and/or jungle trekking (humans riding elephants) and/or street begging. I don't even know where to begin. There is so much to say. Please please please check out the website.
It's old, outdated and probably difficult to navigate, but they're working on a new one and I wouldn't be able to do the situation justice.
www.elephantnaturepark.org
Lek, the woman who runs this place, is a fucking amazing woman working for a really important cause and while the world (or the people who know about it from around the world) seems to be behind her, the country of Thailand is working as hard as they can against her. It's really sad. The first day we watched a National Georgraphic story on the situation and were told all the horror stories of how each elephant ended up at the camp. Really really sad stuff.
As for me, I'm having a blast. It's like summer camp (really good food, really nice people, beautiful surroundings) but with 25 amazing elephants all over the place!!! I've learned so much. The "work" is really laid back too. Feeding and bathing are the two major things and then there are different side projects all the time. On the first day we were told they'll always be stuff to do if we want to, but we never have to. "There are no good or bad volunteers." I was told by a returning volunteer that the most important contribution is really the money we pay to go there which goes to medicine for the animals and towards the purchasing of more sick elephants.
So I do the feeding and the bathing and yesterday morning I went banana picking! Or, more excatly, banana tree dragging!
Three mahouts (elephant caretakers) and six volunteers sat in the back of a pick up, drove up a mountain to a mud road, got out, pushed the truck up the rest of the way, got to a point where we couldn't move it anymore and stopped, and then went into the jungle to get bananas. The mahouts had the machetes so they cut the trees and then we (volunteers) would carry/drag it back to the truck. Add to this, we were in the middle of jungle land, and it had rained the night before so it was all mud. Everywhere, mud. It was also raing. We were slipping constantly. On the way there we had all been trying to not sit on the bottom of the cab of the truck cause there was some water left of from the previous night's rain. By the time we had finished filling the truck with banana trees we were all coverd with mud, front and back. At one point we realized it was faster to just sit on our butts and slide down the hill than to try to find any kind of stability in each step. It was a lot more fun too. Also, once we got back to the road a girl named Kelly and I decided to just run and see how far we could slide on our feet. Like snowboarding kind of. All mud. All fun.
We got back, fed the elephants, fed ourselves, then jumped in the river and used the elephant scrubbers to try to wash ourselves. Then we washed the elephants.
So there are 25 elephants in all. Sixteen female adults, 4 male adults (we don't hang out with them much, they're solitary and tempremental) and 5 baby elephants (SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!)
Lek's hope is that the baby elephants can grow up without ever knowing about the crap that all the other elephants have had to go through. And then they'll still be used for tourism (with camps like hers that show happy, heatlhy elephants) but trained with love and health instead of sharp metal objects getting stuck into their heads and broken backs from carrying around tourists on their backs all day.
But since what she's saying is so risky her camp is severely hated by all the other tourist camps and not advertised on the street and is therefore relatively unknown.
Driving up to her camp you pass a couple of camps with tourists sitting on elephant's backs, with the mahouts with the sticks with the metal hooks at the end and I know it can't be a comfortable situtation for anyone invovled. Some elephants are even bleeding from their foreheads!! And I have to imagine that if people knew there was an opportunity to actually hang out with the elephants really get to know them (THEY'RE REALLY SMART AND ALL HAVE REALLY DISTINCT PERSONALITIES!!!) and their situation, the sitting on the back thing would lose its appeal, real fast.
To be honest, in the beginning, I kind of thought I would do this thing and be all about the cause for 2 weeks but then maybe do one of the other elephant camps just to get a picture of me sitting on an elephant but I have absolutely zero interest in that now.
Ok, I should probably go, I have a ton of errands to run in my one night in town. If you have any questions on anything, elephant related or not, let me know. I really like talking about this stuff now.
Pretty much, I'm really happy, I'm learning a lot, meeting cool people from all over the world and will be sad when I leave.
And I don't have email, phone reception, a comfortable bed or hot showers, but I'm completetly fine with that.
posted by beth at 11:05 PM
5 Comments:
infinite "yay"s to you.
Hi Beth,
Glad you had a chance to talk about what you're doing. I read the whole website about the sanctuary when you first entered your blog. It sounds amazing. I'm so glad you have a chance to participate in something that is so educational, fun, and life altering. You will always be spreading the "word" when you meet people. So much education is needed in matters like this. I'm sure most people, if they think about elephants at all, have the vision of the tourists you met.Just the information you shared on the blog is eye-opening.
I'm very happy that you chose this to have this experience .
Looking forward to your next blog!
Love,
Barbara and Randy in Sacramento, Ca.
Hi Beth,
Glad you had a chance to talk about what you're doing. I read the whole website about the sanctuary when you first entered your blog. It sounds amazing. I'm so glad you have a chance to participate in something that is so educational, fun, and life altering. You will always be spreading the "word" when you meet people. So much education is needed in matters like this. I'm sure most people, if they think about elephants at all, have the vision of the tourists you met.Just the information you shared on the blog is eye-opening.
I'm very happy that you chose this to have this experience .
Looking forward to your next blog!
Love,
Barbara and Randy in Sacramento, Ca.
very cool.
ahh!!! that's awesome, beth!
Now all you have to do is find a thai punk rock band and you're set-- can't wait to come on down, anything you want me to bring along?
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