Thursday
We decided to teach directions with the staff a the radio station today, so we spent an hour drawing make believe maps and teaching how to ask and give directions. We played a game at the end where they had to direct each other around obstacles which went down quite well. We then went to a village about 8km out, Liam me and haang all on one scooter which was quite interesting for all that way. We went to take some food supplies to a couple of elderly people who are being sponsored by the charity. The village is bunong but not built in the traditional circular thatch houses. They were wooden shacks, in lots of little settlements like different streets I suppose. We went into one ladies house which was like a garden shed with thatch roof, she was hacking away with emphysema on her little wooden platform. She greeted us by holding out her hand...it sounds silly but I had no idea what she was doing until Liam shook her hand after a moment of me not responding. I then shook her hand after. Nobody around here ever shakes hands, so it just didn't occur to me that she was doing it, I can only assume it was a sign of respect to greet us like we would be greeted at home. She was given her little bag of food and asked how she was doing. She showed us her fancy solar light which she looked very pleased and thankful for. She also tried to give Liam and I a big fruit of some kind which we tried to decline without causing offence knowing she most likely needed it.
We then went to another house but the lady wasn't in. We still went inside because of course they don't have lock or proper doors here! We dropped the food off and we were shown around the house, as much as you can be with one room! She had a basket kind of tied half way up the wall with a little chicken inside it asleep which was a bit weird, it must have been for eggs. After the brief visit we returned to the bunong place, excited to ask bill when he was repairing the roof of one of the ladies houses because we'd have loved to help. The reply was " when we have enough money" which means not for a while yet so we will be long gone. It's not rainy season now so it should be ok for the next few months until they raise the 100 dollars to fix it.
After lunch and some time booking our hotels for the next move, we went to the orphanage and after getting them all into their seats from various places around the village, attempted to do telling the time. What a bloody nightmare. We had them for the first 20 minutes but after that we just started to lose them and they didn't understand. I think we need to go to absolute basics with them in the next class. We tried to play a game at the end of class where we got them into teams, which is hard enough when you have about 30 students averaging at 11 years old. Then we got them to go off in teams collecting various things from around the outside of the classroom. It was chaos! All in all I don't think the class went that well today but we're learning their ability so it was ok And it was really fun watchng them have fun!
Later in the day, we were walking to the boarding school for the 5pm volleyball when one of the students pulled up next to us on the road on his bike. He offered us a lift the rest of the way so we hopped on then joined some others for about half an hour or so of volleyball. It was a really good lesson today, we had saved pictures of various things to do with England and its culture and spoke through things like weddings, funerals etc getting them to talk us through theirs and generally opening it up to conversation. One of the students had asked about Big Ben so we had found the height out for him and then bought a load of straws for them to build their own Big Ben in teams only communicating in English. It rained a bit on the way home but it was nice, we then spent a short time watching tv before having an early night ready for our day with the elephants tomorrow.
Friday
Early start today, breakfast at 7 and pick up at 7.30. We got into the back of a pick up truck with 4 other people and some people in front and drove about 20 minutes into the jungle. The weather was lovely so the ride was really nice with the wind in your face and the sun keeping you warm enough. We stopped at the top of a hill overlooking forest in all directions. We were greeted by a couple mor members of staff and 2 bouncy dogs, one a great big Doberman who was beautiful and the other was the same size as a collie but I have no idea what kind it was. We signed disclaimers saying that we would stick to the rules they laid out which were fairly common sense things like don't go behind the elephants, don't put your hand in their mouth, keep a 4-5 meter distance at all times unless the guide says otherwise etc etc.
We then had a 10 minute talk about the purpose of the project and the work they do there. There used to be many elephants in Cambodia, even more so in mondulkiri because more or less every family had one. They are a really important part of the bunong culture because the elephant spirit is the largest spirit in the forest. They use the elephant as a focus in a lot of their ceremonies and used to treat them like part of the family and take care if then very well so the forest spirits weren't angry. But through years of war and particularly the pol pot regime ( the Khmer Rouge) many elephants were killed. When the Khmer Rouge got to mondulkiri chaos erupted, many villagers were uprooted and moved, the majority of their traditional ways of life were destroyed by the soldiers and lost due to many older people dying. The bunong culture is one passed down through story telling and word of mouth, nothing was recorded so many ways of life were lost to the younger generation. Many elephants ran away across borders where they were shot, many elephants were so over worked that they died, and many were even killed for food by starving communities who needed to survive. Because there were so few elephants left, and the ways of life were lost, once people started to settle again and find elephants in the forest they simply didn't know how to look after them. It is bad luck for an elephant to be born and raised in a village, they believe that the elephant spirit has to travel very far from the forest to the village if that happens and it makes it angry. So they only ever go into the forest and take baby elephants from the wild. The project doesn't believe in capturing elephants, and the community doesn't believe in breeding elephants....so really it's a stale mate. There are 54 captive elephants in mondulkiri which is about half of all cambodian "domestic" elephant population. These will probably be the last domestic population mondulkiri had because of this stale mate situation and so few elephants being in the age range for breeding anyway. So the organisation went to make sure this last generation live out their lives roaming free like proper elephants in their sanctuary.
The sanctuary is a protected area of forest that is being rented from the people in the area by the organisation. The organisation have got all the paperwork to prevent anyone taking the land, which is more than what most other people have. Although the bunong have lived here for a long long time, they don't have any concept of land belonging to anybody, after all, the land belongs to the spirits. They have no paperwork to give them ownership of anything and leaving them extremely vulnerable to land grabbing. This is one of the reasons for mistreatment of some of the elephants, due to families losing their farms and therefore losing the ability to look after the elephants. So the sanctuary is fast becoming one of the safest places for the animals because everywhere else is subject to land grabbing. There are currently 12 elephants at the sanctuary, all of which have their own story for being there. Some are rescue elephants who were in terrible condition when found, having been terribly overworked and beaten. One elephant in particular has gone a bit crazy due to her owner carving out a chunk of flesh in her forehead and poking a stick in it to make her do what they wanted. One of them had become so aggressive because of being overworked for the last 30 years that they had decided they couldn't handle him anymore, tied him up and left him with no food or water for 2 weeks by the time he was found. There are no laws in Cambodia about animal cruelty, so where as in England they could just be taken away, here it has to be negotiated despite the abuse. It can take months or years to get an elephant to the sanctuary and it usually involves a large some of money to make up for the money the would lose by not having the elephant work for them. Some of them are being rented from the owners, due to them not being particularly abused as such but there is some mistreatment there. The sanctuary take the elephant to their forest and rehabilitate it, whilst paying the family a monthly sum to keep it there. The family then have the right to request the elephant back for any ceremonies throughout the year with them being such a big part of the community. Another reason or requesting an elephant back for a short time can be something like a member of the village is sick and they think its because the spirit isn't there, so you can see what a big role the elephant has and why it's such a good partnership they have in renting them.
We had walked down about 15 minutes into what they have named "heaven valley" because its the perfect environment for elephants. It was gorgeous, all the insects chirping, the sun shining down, the green forest spreading for as far as you can see. The further in we got we started hearing the elephants. It was so amazing just being able to hear them in such a forested area, in the wild. They were trumpeting, which we were told by Jemma meant they were either happy or scared and considering there was no risk it most certainly meant whatever they were doing they were happy. There was also an odd sound like a mini trumpet, more of a squeal. We were old that it was one of the elephants learning to trumpet like an adult despite being in her 50's!, because she had been taken as a baby and not been around an adult elephant to learn how to do it. We got down to where the elephants were, there were 3 of them in that area...in this project you find the elephants the elephants aren't brought to you. They were just going into the river for a wash, we were allowed to get in with them and use buckets of water to help them wash the dirt from them. They need to put dirt on themselves as like a sun lotion and also as a fly repellent, but it's just as important to wash it off every day too because it becomes filled with bacteria and bad for the skin if left on. You could see that some of the elephants were better at the mud throwing than others because some had it spread nice and even, others had it in big clumps! When they were finished we had to step back and give them their space, that's the great thing about the place, you get to go close enough to get personal but then you also have to alternate and give them personal space.
Nobody is allowed to ride them aside from one mahout and even that is only in the really abused elephants in the first stages of rehab. We were shown the different back shapes, one of them had a round back which is apparently how they should look. A lot of the others had kind of a cone shaped back where the spine sticks out. This is from carrying really heavy goods on their backs for years and their rib cages being pushed down. A common misconception is that elephants are strong do they can carry heavy loads, this is actually completely wrong. Yes they're strong but the strength is in their lower bodies and legs, not in their backs. So they can essentially drag and push heavy things ok but carrying on their backs causes a lot of damage. We didn't know this before, and despite already deciding weeks ago that we would never ever ride an elephant again because we didn't feel comfortable with the industry, this really just confirmed our earlier feeling with fact.
A couple of the elephants who still had mahouts on also had the poles it's the hook and spike present that they use to control the elephant. In the sanctuary this isn't used but is more of a visual representation of what needs to be done due to the fear of it. Because they have been so abused this is the only thing they know to respond to...so they begin by showing the stick at first, which is more than enough to get results, and gradually taking the stick away to just verbal commands. This is all that's needed, that was certainly proved in our time in the forest following them. So when an elephant is first brought to the sanctuary they are often kept on a chain at first because that's what they're used to. They have a few mahouts hired to be with them at all times, instructing them to do the most basic of elephant behaviours. Many elephants get to the forest and simply don't know what to do. So they spent weeks, months, maybe even years retraining the elephant to be an elephant again. They get them to go to all the food they need and graze on fruit and bamboo etc, they get them to go in the river to bathe, and throw mud on their backs like wild elephants do. A lot of these behaviours have been scared out of them by their owners, one particular elephant had been beaten so badly for throwing that she was terrified to attempt it. They trained her to do it by even going as far as covering themselves in mud! All of these behaviours are so ingrained and have important purposes for wild elephants that its really important they learn to do them. They also have forest rangers and scouts making sure the area is safe at all times.
All the elephants are just so different, you can tell they have their separate personalities. Some are quite nervous, some are a bit more confident, some are like babies still whist others are very nurturing of the others. They're all at different stages of their rehabilitation back into the wild and you can see how they rely on each other and copy each other, it's amazing to watch. There is one male who has to have one mahout on him all the time and one other around just in case due to him being so unpredictable still. He is much more relaxed than before but still needing time for full rehab. So when we saw him we had to give a lot more space than with the girls. We followed them around the forest giving them space all the while but still being close enough to really feel close. They would often rumble to each other, it was almost like a big purr. I'd never heard them do that before. We were told thats the standard communication between a family of elephants that are relaxed and just "chatting". We were also told that the majority if the rumbling we can't even hear, a lot of it is through vibration which they pick up through the floor with their feet. Imagine how the elephants being worked in the cities feel with all the different vibrations coming through the floor, it must feel like s constant scream!
It was so great just following, watching and listening. At one point they came towards us and we were told they felt comfortable enough to be touched. So we got to give them some nice gentle stroking to make them feel relaxed. One smaller one was a bit jittery so we made sure to give her space. After a couple of hours we made our way back up to the top of the valley which was pretty hard going in the heat. It was about a half hour walk to the living quarters for the more permanent volunteers there and staff. The place was great, all little wooden bungalows and houses on stilts, all the buildings were named after the elephants. It was a little community tucked away in the forest. We had about half an hour to sit back and relax before lunch, so we all went up to the sitting room which was a big open space room raised by about 2 meters off the floor with lots of circular weaved baskets with cushions in as chairs. There were book shelves and tables, with one side of the room completely open to look out across the forest. It was so relaxing!
After a communal lunch we then had another 45 mins or so to relax before heading out again. By this time it had started to rain, we didn't have any rain coats but it just made it even more fun! We went a bit further into the forest where they had built a bathing area which is kind of a concrete area with a bit trough of water with a flow of water coming from 2 hose pipes, plus a little stream. We go the opportunity to wash down some of the elephants here which was amazing! There were a few more people in the afternoon so we were separated into groups of 4 and each group had 2 or 3 elephants to wash. You'll see them download through buckets of water on them and used brushes to wash all the dirt off. They were so dirty! They all stayed put really well because one person stayed by their heads and gave them a constant supply of water from the hose which they loved. One of them in particular towards the end I really loved because I was washing her face with my hand and some water and she LOVED it. She was closing her eyes and resting her head against a tree just basking in being washed and touched gently. Liam had the time of his life as well, his eyes were just lit up the whole time we were there an due couldn't get enough of them.
By the end we were absolutely filthy from all the dirt and wet through from both the hose pipes and buckets and the downpour of rain. It didn't stop there though we then had to walk all the way back up to the top of the valley in the rain and has more time to watch the elephants go about their business. Ordinarily we would usually have another hour up there but it was raining so much and we were wet through that we all decided to leave half an hour early. We got about 10 minutes down the road before the jeep just couldn't get up the hill in the mud. So we all piled out and had to walk up the hill in the rain again, but then when the jeep got to the top it broke down anyway due to the engine over heating. After half an hour of being stuck we finally got going again, getting back to the hotel freezing cold and sopping wet. Who knew we would feel like that here in Asia??
With numb fingers we managed to have a shower -hot woohoo! - and get ready for class. We ende dip being 20 minutes late due to the break down and the slow going trip back due to all the rain. But as it turned out not many students had turned up anyway because of the rain. We had about 8 or 9 students today so it was quite nice because they got to ask more questions. We showed them pictures of English houses, farms etc...they loved looking at the pictures whilst we described things and they learned a few new words which was great. A couple of them said they would like to take us out tomorrow to see a few of the sights too. We had a lift back on the bikes to a place to eat and a bunch of people from the elephant project were there having a few drinks and food so we joined them for a short while. By about 8.30 we were heading home, only some of the ladies had mentioned a garage with western snacks in so we just had to go see. What a mistake that was. As soon as we had walked about 5 minutes ( in the opposite direction to our hotel ) it started absolutely pouring down with rain. I've not seen rain so bad for quite some time. We tried to wait it out for 5 minutes or so but when there was no sign of stopping we ran for it up the road before ducking under another roof for shelter. In the30 second dash we were drenched. We waited again another 5 minutes, it just got worse so we ran for it again. We carried on like this a few times, ducking into shelter. I don't know why we bothered, we were wet through anyway! We eventually got home and had another load of wet clothes to try and deal with! After a bit of tv we settled down to bed for a morning of sight seeing tomorrow.
