Day 1

May 21

There are 21 volunteers this week. All females. 3 different groups. Its supposed to be good because were so small it means that we have an opportunity to all do something during our work times. Buttt that can also suck too haha. I am in group A. There are 6 of us. Chrissy who I mentioned yesterday, Debbie who is also my roommate (she is older. She has 2 boys somewhere between the ages of 8 and 16. I have met so many people now I'm starting to get details confused. She is also Jewish. She is nice. It was a little strange at first and I was bummed I wasn't with any of the girls my age but it has been very good. She's from California and works with blind students. She is in Thailand for another 6 weeks. Her sons and husband are coming to meet her in a month.), Annie and Claire (they traveled here together and they are from Scotland. I am getting pretty good at understanding different accents. Scottish was so hard for me to understand while I was in Scotland but I think I'm getting it now. They both went to film school and hated it but they aren't sure what they are going to do now. They are traveling for a while as well.), and Sophie (she is from the UK and is a vet nurse. She has 3 dogs. She is just here on a 1 week vacation).
This morning we went with Mix, one of our group leaders to scoop elephant poop. It sounds gross, but it really wasn't too bad. We each got a shovel and a wheel barrel and went to work.
The elephants are vegetarians so their poop isn't too bad. It is a lot lighter when it's been dried out by the sun though. They put grass over the poop too. So there are piles of grass and poop in it so we look for those to scoop up. There is then a dump pile in part of the park where we dump out the wheel barrels. I'm not sure what happens to that pile or how often. It's pretty massive though.
Even though it doesn't sound like a great job it is actually pretty cool because the elephants are right there with you. They walk around us and we actually even got to feed them some bananas at one point. We're not supposed to put our hands in their mouth to feed them because their teeth are really strong and will (and have) grind your fingers to mush. Instead, we just put the food into the end of their trunk and let them put the food into their own mouths. It's still so cool. I don't really even have words to describe it. They look so happy when they are eating. Which is a lot. They eat at least 10% of their body weight everyday and spend 18 hours a day chewing. I think I heard that all the elephants in the park together eat 3 tons of food a day.
After we got back from scooping ele poo (as they say here) a banana truck came in. We made another 2 lines and unloaded bananas into the elephant kitchen. We put them directly onto shelves from the truck. They also count as accurately as possible every 50 bunches and then put a banana in a basket to make sure they can keep count of how many bananas came in later. It doesn't seem too accurate. Some of the banana things... No idea what the name is... Are super heavy, and or oblong. Trying to get the dirt and stickiness off our hands after was the worst. I think I scrubbed my hands for maybe 7 minutes and there was still a bunch of gunk left over that had kind of stained my hands.
While scooping poop, I developed 2 new blisters. Both on the left hand. One at the base of my pinkie, the other at the base between my middle and ring fingers.
After lunch we went lychee picking. We had to load up into a truck. the sides are metal bars and the back is open. We had to help the other group load banana trees onto the truck and then we went on our way to go pick lychees. I hated this. It probably would have been really fun if we would have been able to eliminate the millions of fire ants and spiders that would run up your body every time you tried to pick the lychees off the tree. We just needed to break the branches off the tree and put them into a basket. Super easy task. The only problem is the lychees are really high up... Even for tall people. We were trying to climb in the trees and pull branches down for others to pick the lychees off. Once we all got bit a few times we didn't want to do it anymore. Mix ended up getting up in the tree and climbing around and breaking the lychees off. We pretty much failed that task.
Lychees are really good! They are little, rough, red balls on the outside. You peel that part and inside is a white fruit that looks kind of like the inside of a grape. There is a pretty large seed inside of it though. It's very sweet if you get a ripe one.
When we got back we had a talk from Jody. She has worked here for 10 years doing elephant journals (about their behaviors) and typing up publications. English is her first language so it was great to listen to her tell stories. She told a lot of stories about the injured elephants. She also talked about how males are more difficult to have in the park. They go into musk which is when testosterone levels are higher so they are less obedient. It is especially difficult when the elephants haven't been broken in, but they don't want to do this to them because it is really abusive and terrible. I am going to try to go with Debbie tomorrow to film Jody talking about some of the elephants individual stories.
From the first video we saw, there is a blind elephant. I can't remember any of their names. They all sound similar to me because I don't know Thai. The elephant was a working elephant and was doing logging. She was pregnant but they wouldn't let her stop working. She ended up having her baby while she was on the top of the hill. When baby elephants are born they are incased in the placenta still. The baby rolled down the hill and died. The elephant was heart broken and refused to work and just laid down. Her owner shot her in the eye to get her to work. She then tried to fight him and he stabbed her other eye.
There is also Hope who is one of the males. He is an orphan. His mom died when he was really little and his owners didn't have enough money to buy the food. They called Lek and she agreed to take him in for free. They originally only wanted her to take him for a bit but Lek raised enough money to buy him. He didn't go through any of the breaking in training.
The way they talk about the elephants and their behavior is the same way we talk about people. Also even though they are not family, they have formed their own family groups.
The nature center also doesn't encourage breeding but they don't stop it if it happens. There are already so many elephants that don't have a great place to be in the wild and who are being put to work still that it doesn't seem right to breed them into that environment. They also don't want to make it an option that is not available to the elephants because it would happen in the wild.
With elephants, they learn how to behave based on older elephant being present to teach them. Since there are not that many male elephants at the nature center, the 4 and a half year old elephant thinks he is the boss and its not very good. They are considering bringing in an older male just for a little bit of time to teach the male elephants.
In the future, the center really wants to move toward a way of tourism that is centered more on watching the elephants in the wild... subjecting them to less human contact... instead of riding them or touching them or feeding them. They really hope other tourist places will start to follow what Lek has done but it is very controversial in Thailand because elephants bring in so much tourism. She would like to be able to buy more land that would be good for them to live on in the wild.
The thing I really like about what Lek has done is that she admits that there is a lot of space to improve the conditions for the elephants, but at the same time, she is doing what she can to keep them alive and wild. Most other places focus on breeding and working and tourism.
Bed time!