Journey to Freedom 8 - Renovation

On we travelled, pick up truck style to our third village stop. We repeated the gift giving process with the village children and their mothers. As some of us were handing out flip-flops we heard a crash from the back of the house we were staying in! Stam, our Karen guide had been preparing dinner on the back veranda when the timber posts holding it up gave way under his 7 stone bulk! This sent Stam, pots, pigs and chickens flying in all directions much to our amusement! Chris and Tim went to investigate and found that the veranda was the pot wash location, over the years the dirty water running down through the slats had formed a lovely bog under the veranda rotting the posts! This was obviously a regular occurrence as none of the locals batted an eyelid.

Tim and Chris got to work clearing the debris and removing the old posts, a few locals wandered over to supervise and between 5 of them they rebuilt the platform in about an hour, with no words just pointing and laughter. The hardest part was trying to nail the teak planks to the posts with the village hammer. The wood is so hard that nail after nail succumbed until the best technique was demonstrated by the village carpenter.

A few of us accompanied the vet on a tour of the village to worm and give rabies injections to dogs. That evening the locals brought their hand woven wares to us to admire, we bought some skirts and a shirt.

In the evening around the fire we chatted to Lek and finally got some background to the project and insight into the full strategy she is employing across her various projects - she truly is inspirational. Every question we had was answered fully and her passion for Asian elephant welfare was contagious.

The next day we headed back towards the Elephant Park, on the way we met a majestically large elephant who was also part of the project. She was beautiful and very gentle. We fed her watermelons and sweet corn. She could strip the sheaf off the sweet corn quicker than we could with her dexterous trunk!

A typical north Thai sunrise

A lazy new moon still showing at dawn

Our standard cozy accommodation for the week

Stam preparing traditional dress for us to try and buy

Tim with our rebuilt platform including plumbing and drainage

It's a masterpiece

The group in traditional Karen dress

Our final elephant visit before the park

She loved maize and could peel it quicker than we could

Back in civilisation enjoying a Thai banquet

Journey to Freedom 7 – Back to school

The following day we visited the local school. We taught them some English, played games and held a drawing class with them. The pupils were well behaved and once both parties came out a bit we got on really well. Some of the group made spring rolls, which were expertly fried by Chris indoors on an open fire (hot wok work!). We handed out the fresh spring rolls to the kids, after quality testing.

We met another young male elephant that the vet was taking care of, this one had stomach problems. Elephants, like horses, can't throw up so when they have a digestion problem it has to be worked through! The vet had been treating the elephant for a week now and he was recovering well. The elephant seemed to enjoy the watermelons we fed him.

In the afternoon, Lek, the Founder and Director of the Elephant Nature Programme arrived. She brought with her some flip-flops for the school children, which we gave out (making sure they fitted well) and some edible treats. The message the project is trying to make here is that we came to support and see the elephants, and because they take care of the elephant they benefit too.

Spot the teacher giving a rousing rendition of head, shoulder, knees and toes

Sarah escaping the tentacles of the octopi

Kat gave a drawing class (star pupil in light blue at the back!)

Positive feedback from the kids

Alice & Katlosing at musical chairs

Chris doing his hot wok work - spring role master chef!

 The spring rolls went down well

  

Everyone at school

Tummy problems 

 Lek explaining the project to the children

Ella and Meg handing out flip flops

Journey to Freedom 6 – Trekking and a new village

On our fourth day as volunteers we took a hike into the forest to find the mother elephant with twins. We walked to the next valley with the remaining banana trunks but the mahout said that he was not able to find the three elephants. We hiked up a creek for about another hour to a waterfall, but no elly's were to be seen. I was actually quite pleased about this; if our lumbering group had managed to find them then they would have been easy targets for poachers. In addition, it proved that they really were free to roam.

In the late afternoon we moved onto another Karen village in the back of the now familiar pickup truck. It was a bumpy hour’s ride!  We had each brought a can of beer from the village shop for the journey, but most of it ended up over each other with all the jerks and potholes.

We hoped to observe an annual Karen ceremony were they bless their elephants. Unfortunately for us, the village shaman had decided best to move the ceremony forward a day and so we just missed it! The villagers were very welcoming; one lady took a shine to Sarah and invited her into her house to share tea and some of the local potent moonshine!

We all ate in a local’s house, cooking on their indoor fire, which made it pretty smoky indoors. The family owned a lop-horned buffalo, which gave us a giggle!

Some beautiful forest flowers

Walking up stream in search of the family 

Group shot 

Us by the waterfall

Sarah meeting the locals 

This lady took a shine to Sarah 

Flopsy buffalo 

Inquisitive calf

The village high street

Journey to Freedom 5 – Going Bananas

The third day of our elephant adventure we harvested some banana trunks to feed to the elephants that had been released from trekking by the Journey to Freedom programme. We all travelled in the back of a pick up truck for about 40 minutes along bumpy and dusty tracks. Arriving at a small valley bottom filled with rice paddy fields we saw some banana trees growing in the boarders. We spilt our group into smaller teams. Some cut down the trees with machetes, clambering through the undergrowth battling with vines, spikey creepers and ants! Some retrieved the fallen plants, peeled away the thin outer layers of the trucks (like peeling leeks!) and the others transported the inner cores back to the pick up truck. Gary sank up to his knees in mud in part of the paddy field that had not yet dried out with a trunk on each shoulder!

In the afternoon we took some of the banana tree cores down into a neighbouring valley to feed a mother elephant called Mae Kham Moon. She had young twins! These were the first elephants we had seen during our volunteering. Later on we learnt that previously the mother elephant had been leased to a trekking company. She had given birth before but her baby had died. Following the death of her baby the owner decided to bring her to join the project. The young boys were full of playfulness! They all looked fat and healthy.

At first we were confused as to why the mother had a chain around her leg. It was explained that the mahout had been out to retrieve them from the forest and brought them into the open for our visit and to allow the project's vet to give them a check up He had chained her to keep her there or she would have wandered back to the forest. Sure enough, as soon as we'd fed them the family trundled back into the undergrowth.

We then visited a seven-year-old male elephant. He was rescued from a trekking camp and so had gone through the horrid 'Punjab' process, where a baby elephant's spirit is broken so it fears it's handler. He is still not full grown. In the same manner as the mother with twins, the mahout had brought him from the forest so that the vet and we could see him and feed him some of the banana trunks we'd collected.

A few months ago the mahout had noticed that the seven-year-old was having problems using his trunk. He could not bend it and so could not feed. This resulted in his sudden weight loss; elephants need to eat 10% of their body weight every day. They were not sure what had happened to the little chap so they took him to an elephant hospital for an X-ray. That evening the Elephant Nature Park vet showed us the X-ray pictures. You could clearly see a long rod-like stick which had entered at the base of the trunk and travelled all the way up towards the head. The vet had removed the stick from near the middle of his trunk. I assume they broke the stick and removed the top and bottom half. On the pictures below you can see he has a dent in the side of his trunk where the incision was made. He made a good recovery. His trunk now has full movement and the incision wound is being treated. Without the quick help of the Elephant Nature Park this elephant would have ultimately grown too weak and starved.

Our banana trunk feast all loaded up

On the hunt for an elephant to feed

Mae Kham Moon and her twins

Our happy 7 year old boy with his fixed trunk

He was very friendly and loved to be fed by hand