Elephants

Mum and Dad gave their Elephant excursion to us, a Christmas and one year Aniversary present. I love elephants and from them I understood this to be a day of elephant riding.

Bumping along a dirt road that climbs a steep mountain (after a hour long car ride) I say "I'm looking forward to riding an elephant". The Swiss American woman who now lived in Bali, sitting next to me, says "oh no, we've not riding elephants". At first I was disappointed, this was soon to change.

The Elephant Sanctuary is in a valley surrounded by hills coverd by jungle and the orchards and pastures of local famers. There are nearly 30 elephants on the property, nearly all of them are rescued from being work animals in cruel logging camps, or from tourist places where they are made to perform or be ridden on. Then there are a few babies born on the property, incrediably cute little things that play like children and playfully annoy the older elephants.

Our host is an Aussie woman named Michelle, incrediably skinny and smoking like a chimney. But lovely and welcoming and glad to see some fellow Aussies. In our van load there is the Swiss American lady and her Balinese husband and their child, a strange Sydney sider giantess, and two fat loud American blokes. We become part of a bigger group, with a few other Americans and a few European families (maybe Scandanavian?). The main building is a bamboo structure, with walks between the bathrooms, main building and the feeding area. The latter, like the rest is open air but with thatched roof, with a slightly raised verandah area from which the feeding took place.

We are given an introduction talk where Michelle told us about the Elephants and all their complex stories. Its like a soap opera she tells us. There are sorts of characters among them, the dopey old male, the prude (who won't let anyone mate her), the hussy (who backs into all the males so that they will mate her), the drug addict (an Elephant that was put on speed (before she was rescued) so that she could work night and day) and a rabble of young elephants. Through the day we learnt of other stories; sad stories of the elephants before they were rescued. But also encouraging stories of their lives now. A blind elephant who was befriended and cared for by another elephant, a desperate female who won't leave the side of a male that isn't interested in her, and of an Aunty who seperates two young elephants because she thinks one is a bad influence for the other who is in her care.

In the wild elephants form natural social groups of family units with the mother as the leader. When the mother is pregnant (for 20 months!) and gives birth, her sister will take on the role of nanny or aunty , sometimes producing milk also! She helps care for the baby who like human young need lots of care. In the elephant sanctuary where their are no natural family ties, the elephants have created their own social groups, and female elephants have taken it upon themselves to become aunties, some even producing milk (so great is their inate desire to care and help!).

First order of the day was feeding. We lined up along the verandah with big basktets of food and gave it to the elephants who scoped it up with their tunks and gulped it down, huge watermelons and whole hands of bananas going crunch, splattering juices in the huge mouths of these beasts. Em fed them while I filmed her. She even got to fed a little baby one, who could only eat peeled bananas and small pieces of watermelon, for two hundred kilos of elephant he was still pretty cute.

After our human lunch in a dining room on the top floor (360 degree view of the valley) we headed to the river to wash the animals. It was amazing to walk beside these huge beasts, powerful enough to kill you. There is something incrediable about being right next to such huge creatures, walking right next to them and being able to touch their rough leathery skin. At the river people went in with the animals and scrubbed and cleaned them. Once clean the great beasts lumbered out and promptly got dirty again, flicking dust onto themselves. We learnt that this is a natural sunscreen to protect them.

In the afternoon we viewed a film the founder had made. It showed the horrible conditions that elephants are in during their 'training'. They are poked and proded, stabbed and whipped into submission. It is a cruel and nasty practice that I believe should be stopped. These are wild animals forced into submission, to be entertainment for the tourist whim and desire to ride them like a horse. We learned that elephants' backs are not made for uncomfortable carriages and saddles. This whole experience was a re-education for me. I naively thort, as many others do, that the elephants here were well treated, that they liked being ridden, that they liked performing. I was so very wrong. To get elephants to do what we see them do, they go through so much suffering, its terrible. What the founder of the sanctuary wants to see is a change, to have elephants trained in a gentle way, through reward, not punishment, like horse husbandry and horse 'whisperers'. But eventually she wants to see all the elephants returned saftely to the wild and to be left there untouched by human hand. It was so wonderful to see stewardship of creation in action at this sanctuary. We returned to Chiang Mai with a renewed love and care for elephants, and a desire to promote change in people's minds.