Manual Labor

May 23-26

Ok. So there are a lot of jobs we did at the elephant nature park that I have not yet talked about. Ill mention them in a list with some descriptions here if I haven't already written about them in previous posts.

Ele food
Ele food may have been one of the easiest tasks we had, but it was still hard work. In the elephant kitchen there are just mass amounts of pumpkins, watermelons, and bananas on shelves or in closets. They're all stacked up and jammed in. As I mentioned before, it takes about 3 tons of food to feed the elephants for a day at the park.
All the elephants have a different diet base on their health. Some of the elephants don't have great digestion anymore or their jaws are not able to chew hard things very well. Some of the elephants need the watermelon or bananas peeled or don't eat pumpkins. Some of them even need the bananas mushed up. Part of the kitchen is preparing the banana balls for these eles. We go through some of the bananas and peel the more mushy or ripe ones. Then we mush the bananas around with our hands and add corn flakes and some other grain things. Then, once it is a good consistency (doesn't stick to your hands as much and can be balled up) we roll them into balls, a little larger than the size of a baseball, and put them in a basket.
We always started by getting 5 baskets of pumpkins and 7 baskets of watermelons. The pumpkins are green and orange and all different sizes and shapes but not like the pumpkins we have at home that are orange and round. The watermelons were WAY smaller than the watermelons we have at home. Some are the size of baseballs or smaller but some are maybe half the size of the larger watermelons we have at home.
We filled the buckets up and had to drag them over (we used a T-shirt strung through the handle and pulled the ends of it to drag the bucket) to a pool full of purple solution. I think Apple said it had ammonia and some other things in it. We had to take scrub brushes to the pumpkins to clean them just in case the farmers had used pesticides or other chemicals. We loaded all the pumpkins into the pool and then washed them and put them back into the buckets to be cut. The watermelons we did the same process but instead of scrub brushes we used a smooth sponge pad.
The buckets with the clean fruit were then moved aside to be cut. What was the cutting tool? A machete! More machete use! I think I am rather skilled with a machete at this point haha. I cut fruit almost every time I was in the ele kitchen. A lot of people seemed a little nervous about cutting the fruit. I figured I have used a paper cutter so much that it was pretty similar to that. It actually was similar with making sure my fingers were out of the way.
Once we did all the washing and cutting the Thai women who worked in the kitchen would organize the baskets for each of the elephants. We would then make a food train. A bunch of baskets were lines up and we would each stand in between a basket and grab handles from both baskets. We'd all pick it up and walk the baskets to the different feeding areas for when it was feeding time. We had to make sure to place the baskets pretty far away from the edges where the elephants come up to the sides because they sneak their trunks into the baskets, knock them over, and steal the food! There were a few times I saw eles sneaking food! Once the mahouts saw they came rushing over to stop them. Sometimes the elephants had eaten all the food! It was pretty funny. Their trunks can reach really far. They also have a really good sense of smell. They also sense vibrations through their feet. Their vision is pretty poor though.
Ele food usually took at least 2 hours. After you washed the watermelons and pumpkins your hands got stained a yellow color. Luckily, after peeling and mushing the bananas your hands became totally unstained. It was perfect!
Usually if we did the ele food a fruit truck would come in as well and we would need to unload it. During the week we unloaded a watermelon truck when we first arrived with all 21 of us... We made a train and passed the melons along to put them in a wooden bin area on the floor.
We also unloaded 2 banana trucks I think. The banana trucks kind of sucked. Well, all of the trucks sucked. They jam so much fruit into such a little truck! It took between 30 minutes and an hour to unload them depending on how many people were helping.
The banana trucks came with a bunch of bunches of bananas but with all the rings and levels. Some of them were so massive and awkward to pass along in the train. We had to put the bananas on a shelf. We pretty much crammed them in. They counted the bunches as well (our volunteer coordinators) and for roughly ever 50 bunches they took a banana off and put it in a bucket. Then at the end they could have a very rough estimate of how many bananas had been delivered. They weigh the truck by the kilo to price it out so I don't really know why they count the bananas. We never counted the watermelons.
When we unloaded the watermelon truck the second time during the week there were only 6 of us because it was just our group doing the ele food. It took so long! We were unloading melons for maybe an hour. We didn't have enough people to make a train so we had to fill buckets and drag the buckets over and dump the buckets into the wooden holding pen. To unload the fruit you have to get right down in the truck bed. I was literally standing on watermelons, sitting on watermelons. Haha. I even busted a watermelon open with my foot. Whoops, sorry elephants.
When we were unloading trucks we had to be conscious of bad fruit as well. For the bananas most of them could go toward making banana balls, even if they were brown. For the pumpkins and watermelons, we had to make sure to throw out any parts of them that were mushy or moldy because those are bad for the elephants. There was always a "bad basket" for the rotten fruit. With the watermelons it was quite fun... Like playing basketball with trying to throw it over the truck from inside the truck into the basket. I put a nice spin on all mine. Made them all in. Woot!
There was ALWAYS music in the ele kitchen. One thing I have noticed is that even though everyone has their own taste in music and the local bands they like, a lot of the music around the world is the same. The pop and rap music... Top 40... That we listen to in the US is really what everyone else has been listening to as well. You hear it in bars, on iPods, on the street. It's really cool. Music really does being everyone together.

Planting banana trees
This day we actually combined groups. There ended up being 14 of us. Before we left the park we had to get out of the truck and load the banana trees that had been collected the day before into the truck. They really like trains there so obviously, we got into 2 lines and started passing the banana trees along up to the truck. There were times we did this same thing with unloading them as well throughout the week. This was when I saw my first massive centipede. Like literally 6 or 7 inches. It was disgusting. I hear they bite and it is pretty painful although not poisonous.
Once the truck was loaded with the trees (there weren't as many sometimes because the elephants would get into them and steal them), we rode a long way out to the place where we were planting banana trees. Once we got there, we luckily didn't have to dig too many holes. We had to use hos to dig the holes which is really hard because the ground was hard. You kinda just had to chop away at the ground til the hole grew. We put 2 banana trees in each hole. Then we had to kick or fill in the dirt around the trees. The dirt came out of the ground in chunks so we also had to break all those pieces up by smashing the ho over them.
After we did maybe 10 trees at that spot, we got back in the truck and drove to another area. Here all the holes were dug for us. There were ladies taking a break and sitting there watching us plant the banana trees. Again, it was 2 trees per hole. I stayed on the truck and handed trees to people with Vicki, an older woman from the other group. We handed everyone 2 trees and they walked around and put them in the holes. We planted on a hill and at the top of the hill. With all 14 of us it went pretty quickly.
They told us originally we were going to have to dig holes but we ended up just watering the trees we had already planted. Again, we employed the people train method! Apple stood at the well and got water and we passed the buckets up the hill. There were 3 buckets so the last 3 people went around and watered the trees. It was really fun! We threw the buckets to each other on the way back and while they were full we had to walk to each other a bit.
We rode back standing up in the back of the open truck. Apple always said, "Britain, no. Germany, no. America, no. Thailand, we do."

Collect banana trees
Collecting banana trees was an easy afternoon. We again had to cover up. Long sleeves and long pants. Gloves. They recommended a hat but I skipped on that. We drove a while with the 6 of us from group A in a truck. It looked like one you collect animals from the street in.
Once we got there, we went with the women who work there to collect the trees. Once again, the favorite train method was used! We went from pile to pile of already up rooted (correct terminology?) banana trees and grabbed a pile and passed it along up to the truck.
The trees were wet and you got pretty dirty. It didn't take very long at all! We were pleasantly surprised with our afternoon job. We were 100% convinced we were going to have to do something else or that there would be a surprise job. That seemed to happen a lot.

Move rice straw
Speaking of surprise jobs! This one was a surprise and it BLEW! I think this was my least favorite job. Saturday morning, our second to last day at the park, we did poo or food and then we had extra time so they gave us another task. We started loading rice straw onto a truck.
It really doesn't sound like it would be too bad but it was. Ha. The rice straw was all piled up on the side of the river. It was hard to pull it out of the pile and keep them in their tied bundles. It was dry and the feeling on your arms was uncomfortable. Hay got everywhere. In my hair, in my mouth, down my shirt, in my bra, while we were passing the stacks along a few pieces even stuck up my nose. It was so dry and dusty. I still had a cold so I was sniffling all the time and therefore breathing it in. It was horrible!
There was so much of it as well! We loaded 2 trucks before lunch. All 3 groups, aka 21 of us, were doing this job. Half of the group rode with the straw/ on top of the straw to help unload it. They were gone for what seemed like forever. When they came back we were dismissed for lunch and our afternoon break.
Unfortunately, we were not done. We spent the rest of the afternoon (until around 4:10pm) moving rice straw.
When we came back from lunch we loaded 2 more trucks and this time our group, the half of us that hadn't gone to unload the first time, got in the trucks to unload.
We had to drive a long way. We crossed the river and ended up at a farm looking area. There was a fenced in area with a house and a million cows on the other side of the fence. The trucks drove up really close to the fence and 2 people threw the rice straw down to us/on the ground so we could stack it in a huge pile.
The cows loved it! They started mooing every time they saw a truck pull in and they would rush up to it and try to eat the straw off the truck even though there was perfectly good straw all over the ground. Literally the ground was covered.
Once we unloaded the trucks we sat in the shade and waited for the other group to load them and for the trucks to drive back to us so we could unload them. I think we unloaded both trucks 3 times. And they kept telling us only 1 more so that was the worst. Every truck we were like yey! We're done! And then Mix would say oh no, there is one more coming.
It didn't help that it was really hot out... Like every other day so I don't even know why I mention that anymore.
We had entertainment while the trucks were getting more straw for us to unload. The cows. They had a bunch of loose extra skin on their necks. It looked kinda rooster like, but white and on a cow. The calves were also trying to get milk. I think one if the calves was trying to feed from a cow that wasn't its mom because the cow started freaking out and running in circles to get it off and kicking it. Her calf was also feeding from her though during this. They really yank on the utters! It looked violent.

Ele poo
I know I had discussed ele poo before. However, we only did it 1 time with just the 6 of us and it took a long time. When we split into 2 groups and there were 10+ of us it went so much faster AND it was way easier! Mix and Can ended up showing us that if you use 3 people with a combination of shovels and rakes that you can pick up a whole massive pile. And by massive I mean it fills the entire wheel barrel and then some. It was pretty cool. And made it way more fun. If you didn't time it correctly and move together to the wheel barrel it all fell apart.
Team work definitely made the dream work at the elephant nature park haha.

I don't know if I said this earlier or not but the machetes are pretty heavy and I got more blisters from those in the corn field.