elephant nature park (part two)

new pictures!

i've just concluded my second week at the elephant nature park, and the amazingness just kept on coming. i was finally able to meet Lek, the park owner. She is so kind and sweet and has such a huge heart. I was able to learn most of the elephants by name and even some of the 35 dogs.

later in the week we went on what's called a "Jumbo Express" - we drove out to a remote karen hill tribe village. before arriving to the village we went into the forest and tied blessed monk scarves around trees to protect them from illegal logging. it would be nearly unthinkable for a thai to cut down a blessed tree. i chose some really big trees off in the distance that i thought needed a little extra karma.

when we got to the village we administered medicine to the children and a few residents. the kids happily lined up for their shots and we would give them sweets and balloons. they loved those balloons. i'm not sure they had ever seen one before.

the next day we bamboo-rafted down the river to an elephant camp that had some sick elephants. upon arriving we were ushered into the back - as it turns out they would allow us to treat the elephants (for free mind you) but we had to do it out of sight of the tourists. we treated about 5 elephants for cracked feet. because of over-working and extra dry conditions, their feet were cracking. some were worse than others, but you could see that they were very tenuous when it came to going up or downhill. we squirted this milky solution on their feet and coated their nails with iodine. they were'nt too happy about it.

another elephant had a huge hole in its head. their mahout said he didn't know what it was from but Pom, the one running the Jumbo Express, said the mahout probably hit him with his metal hook. the final treatment involved putting anasceptic on a gash on the side of an elephant, clearly from the harness used to carry toursists. it was deep and bleeding.

the hardest thing about this trip was that we couldn't say anything to the tourists. these elephants needed to rest for about a week with no work, but instead were going to be carrying more people in about 45 minutes. i'm sure, if the tourists had known, they wouldn't have ridden the elephants. besides, elephants are slow and terribly uncomfortable to ride on for any length of time. but if we had told the tourists what was going on, the park would not allow Lek and her group to treat the elephants at all, and they would be far worse off without treatment.

sigh.

i hope to return to the park if i can find a substantial project to work on. i feel like i've cleaned up my fair share of elephant shit. still looking for an apartment here with a kitchen - you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find one.

p.s. as far as those huge spiders are concerned, they're totally harmless (although still fast as lightning). i ran into enough of them at the park that i can now expertly shoo them away. a moment of silence for the poor guy who met his demise on the bottom of my shoe the other week.