"Flower" drags her back leg and hitches it with a jerk for each step, her sloping back and corkscrew tail are the results of serious work abuse and long years spent in the jungle pulling logs while malnourished, and sometimes while giving birth. She broke her back in an accident (logging work is often done on steep jungly slopes) and became useless to her owners. An elephant who cannot work is not worth the amount of food they require and Flower's life, given in years of servitude to the logging trade, was about to come to an end with a fatal blow. Mae Jong (the names have been changed to protect the innocent!) was a large, strong female elephant who also worked tirelessly in Thailand's northern forests. She was constantly impregnated, as the females are, to give birth in a ceaseless succession. Again, like many Thai elephants, she delivered her baby while in the middle of work. The baby rolled down a hill, still in it's sack, and died. Mae Jong, being the sensitive and intelligent creature elephants are, mourned her died baby and refused to work. Her punishment was a severe beating, so bad she was blinded by the blows to her head and eyes. Her miserable life was about to end as tragically as many of the overworked elephants in Thailand and Burma. But villagers, knowing of an elephant rescue center, called Lek, a Thai woman who has taken on elephant conservation as her cause, to come rescue Mae Jong.
This petite but strong Thai woman started with a few rescued elephants and now has a rag tag herd of 34. Some are have broken bones, some are missing a foot (land mines). They range from orphaned babies to rambunctious teenagers, like Hope, who I was told is "very, very naughty elephant," to old grandmoms, who at 70 and 80 years old, are no longer useful. Hope's mother also worked to the end of her days, and died shortly after Hope was born. Villagers put the 2 week old Hope in a bamboo cage and called Lek to come get him, knowing the amount of milk and food he'd require were way beyond their resources. When she arrived, the baby had been caged for days and was seriously sick, weak, and "crying" for its mother. Lek had to hire a truck and built a crate with jungle foliage all around it to help calm the baby Hope as he made his ride to what she calls "Elelphant Heaven."
Thailand has had a long tradition with elephants, using them as war machines, logging, farming and transportation. Can you imagine riding an elephant to school or town to pick up groceries? Traditionally, the hill tribes of Thailand have domesticated the Asian elephant to do many types of work and often there are elephants, still today, in villages. But modern days have brought changes good and bad for these noble beasts. After Thai's government deemed logging illegal, elephants suddenly became unemployed and not worth their weight in fruit. Elephant owners looked at other ways to use the beasts, including riding them into tourist places like Bangkok and Chiang Mai, to "beg" from tourists, who pay a handsome price to feed fruit to a street elephants. But elephants are stressed in the city-traffic, noise and heat take their toll. They are often malnourished because the elephant camps on the outskirts of the cities lack enough food and water. Babies are often taken from their mothers to cities because they attract more tourists, causing great stress to them. I've seen pictures of baby elephants on the hot pavement of Bangkok, in front of McDonalds, swaying and making stress sounds (swaying is a way for elephants to self-sooth, not a good sign) while the owner collect many baht in exchange for a petting session.
Thank god for people like Lek, who started the Elephant Nature Park some 10 years ago. She grew up in the hills of Northern Thailand and was raised in a village with elephants Their intelligence, sensitivity and personality always attracted her to study more about elephant husbandry. She began to come to the aid of elephants who were beaten during the ritual of "breaking", asking if she could at least apply salve and herbal ointments to the wounds the young elephants received during what is essentially elephant torture in order to "break" the elephant's spirit and make it subservant to its mahout.
To support her growing herd (she is often called to come pick up an elephant about to be destroyed or who has suffered unthinkable abuse) she runs a conservation camp, where anyone can come and spend the day or weeks working with the elephants. The 50 acre park is on the edge of the hills of Chiang Dao, with beautiful greenery and a river running through it. The elephants get bathed daily, fed cut up pineapple, bananas, pumpkin and cucumbers-among a variety of other produce, and there is an elephant medical center on the premises with both volunteer and local veterinarians.
Every elephant here has a heart-breaking story. It's hard to believe how much abuse they have received in their lives. Logging is hard, tough work, and one elephant at the park is a recovering meth addict-yep, that's right-apparently giving meth to a working elephant will keep it working day and night until it drops. Although the stories are sad and hard to fathom why someone would be so cruel to these amazing intelligent animals (and be clear, not all are, there are plenty of kind human owners and most Thais love their elephants and would not think of harming them), visiting this camp you can feel good that your money is going to a worthy cause. Lek has created a safe house for some pretty big girls (sorry, males have to go elsewhere once mature because of the trouble and havoc they cause) who deserve to spend the rest of their lives in bliss-or "elephant heaven!"
Next, I am off to Baan Chang, or Elephant Home, where I will be in training for 3 days as a mahout, "owning" and working with my own elephant for the time I am there. I hope to learn more about how elephants think, behave and what makes their day-mud baths, naps and fruit salad? Sounds like the kind of life I could get used to!
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