An elephant never forgets

It took a lot of deliberation to sign up to volunteer at Elephant Nature Park, firstly due to the cost being more than our weekly budget. But also as we were still skeptical about whether the park was a compete tourist trap or whether it was sincerely about giving maltreated elephants a better life. I toiled with this all week, but it was an amazing experience that raised so many questions that we spent endless nights debating with our new found friends, as well as several tears shed. So all in all a pretty emotional but eye opening and enlivening experience. It all began with a 2hr bus ride to the park, during the ride they played us an emotive DVD made by some American journalists who had visited the park. It gave us a good introduction about ENP and its founder, a tiny Thai lady called Lek, who was appalled by the maltreatment of elephants since the abolition of logging in Thailand. Trying my hardest to be succinct (pretty hard for me at the best of times!) here's the bottom line (paragraph): Unfortunately due to years of logging in SE Asia and in this case Thailand, elephants have been plucked from the wild to face a life of miserable hard work, felling and dragging the trees that once formed their natural habitat. Not only having to go through a tourturous routine of training where many die, but then for many have their back legs broken as logs are catapulted into them as they yank them through the debris or part of their feet blown off by land mines. After logging was abolished, at least in Thailand, these elephants were left without work, making them a costly drain on their owners. With very little natural habitat now left elephants were either sold to neighboring Burma for logging or let into the tourist trade as either for riding or for football/painting/begging etc. ENP buys elephants who have either been rendered useless by their owners due to injury, or ENP have hunted out maltreated elephants. They have 35 elephants most of which are old or disabled as well as a few hopeful teenagers. Shit, I tried to make it short! Anyway, arriving at the park it became clear that it basically acts as a retirement/hospice home for these elephants. Set in 200 acres of ground aside a river, based around a central set of buildings housing the volunteers, canteen and elephant feeding areas. It became clear that this really was an ecotourism project, rather than purely the need for the help of volunteers, as the sanctuary in Bolivia was. I'm ok with that, they need to earn money from the park, it's still a business, the aim being to show other elephant business people that you dont need to exploit the elephants to draw in paying visitors. It's not perfect. Day visitors to the park still get to feed and wash the elephants  which they would quite happily do themselves and still requires a mahout to keep close watch. Hardly that relaxing for the elephant. Our week's work was all about  washing pesticides off tonnes of fruit (nail breaking), cleaning up shovels of shit (back breaking), cutting down fields of corn and carrying huge bundles of it into the truck (back breaking x10). It was very hard and sweltering work, but you really got to enjoy your shower and beer at the end of the day. Ultimately though there were enough workers at the park to do all this, it was really more about education which is what I did like about this project, despite it making us very emotional.  Each day we were shown DVDs. The most heart breaking of which was about how the elephants are trained. Now this is the over 18 bit you won't want to hear but really need to.... In order to make these wild creatures do what their masters tell them to do, whether its drag logs, kneel for tourists to climb on, or do tricks, they have had to endure 'the crush'. Of all the horrific things we have seen in our travels of humans doing terrible things to other humans, this makes me so angry because it is done to helpless animals for nothing more than, in one example, to let us stupid tourists ride them. The crush is a wooden triangular cage. A baby elephant no more than 3 years old is lured away from it's mother and trunk first into the point of the cage. As it struggles to back out, the back gate is closed and the elephant is paralyzed as the cage squeezes it's body still, causing sores on its skin as it struggles. It stays in here for up to 7 days. During which it has chains tied round it's legs. The mahouts stab the baby in painful soft spots around their ears, head and hind constantly, while shouting the commands and pulling on the chains so it lifts it's leg. This is repeated over and over for different commands. The baby is crying and squealing for it's mother as it goes through the relentless pain. About 40% of elephants die during this torture. But as it's a traditional training method, used for hundreds of years it's thought that the elephants that survive have stronger souls and therefore will work harder for their master. In fact the whole process is intended to break the elephant's soul so that it can no longer think for itself but will obey it's master. This animal isn't a domestic dog, it won't lift it's leg because you give it a treat.  So once it has helplessly relented and resists no more, once it's lost all hope and is mentally disabled it is finally released. It will then continue training and learning commands, receiving many more piecing jabs to enforce the mahout's authority. By this point the elephant will be scarred and bleeding, many die from their wounds even after surviving the crush.  So there it is. Every elephant you see at tourists sites, in cities or at Elephant parks have been through this. Most will be maltreated, over worked and malnourished, some are better treated but all have endured this torture.  Everyone wants to see an elephant when they come to Thailand, it can be hard to resist buying bananas for a begging elephant on the street, or riding one for the photos. But now you know and can make a choice.  The elephants need some sort of work or their mahouts and owners will abandon them to die. Therefore things like ENP at least show elephant owners and tourists a better way, where at least these traumatized elephants can live out their lives in relative peace. Hopefully this is just the beginning and eventually the locals will see there is no money in training them anymore so open national parks and reserves so people can see wild elephants from a distance. One thing is sure, there will be no completely wild elephants left in Thailand as there is nowhere left for them to live.  ENP also rescues dogs, of which they have over 200, rescued from floods and dog meat catchers. We spent a lot of time with the dogs giving them our love as they will never be re-homed and need human enrichment from somewhere. It was heart breaking and warming at the same time to see how much they loved our company and affection. While we were volunteering, 15 of the volunteers went to Bangkok over night to protest about animal protection rights in Thailand. For example elephants have no protection whatsoever, you can treat them how you like. I know, unbelievable. They were successful in raising the profile and therefore importance of the subject to be discussed in parliament.  We were shown other DVDs of other animal cruelty such as the dog meat catchers who mostly capture strays but also buy dogs from money needy owners to sell as meat to Vietnam and China. Their sick tradition is to torture the dogs by hanging them and skinning them alive. Apparently this makes the meat taste better! Lek is also trying to get laws passed so that this can no-longer happen, but it's a long way off. Anyway enough for now, I'm sure if you got this far you are now sufficiently depressed! I have lots more info and DVDs if your interested though.  On a more positive but what now seems irrelevant note the food was amazing. Huge buffets, oh how I love a buffet. And we made some great friends, who made the experience even more special.