Where in the World is Marta Senn-Diego? Part Twelve: Lek...Small but Large

“Lek" Chailert. Her nickname means "small" and indeed she is a petite Thai woman who started the Elephant Nature Park with just a few acres and a handful of hurt and soul-damaged elephants. Now, she has a beautiful and natural working center. Everything is wood and bamboo and woven thatch. The food is cooked daily and in Thai style with plenty of rice, curry and fruit. 

Dogs and cats have the run of the place and gladly follow people around for a cuddle or a scrap of the delicious food. The dining platform extends into a sky walk along the riverbank so you can enjoy a breeze and the trumpet and squeals of elephants. When you shower, you can look out the window and watch an elephant munch its dinner.

The first evening before dinner, we watched a video about how wild elephant calves are taken from the jungle, strapped in a wooden cage called a "crush" and brutally beaten and stabbed to break their spirit and "tame" them for human use. Phajaan is hard to watch but without it, young wild elephants grow up and invade farms for bananas, sugar cane, melons and the like because the farms have replaced their natural foraging grounds. When they do, farmers have the "right" to shoot, beat, blind and even kill the elephant. 

The first evening, we also received a "good luck" blessing

It's a vicious cycle if ever there was one. We also met Jodie, a former weekly volunteer who now lives in a small house on the park's property. Jodie gave us the safety run-down and very pointedly told us the purpose of the park was not to ride or swim with the elephants like other parks boast, but to make their lives more comfortable. After the years of trauma they've suffered, it's the least we could do as volunteers. 

We even met some of the elephants and volunteer coordinators. Prom introduced us to a young bull who had been discovered trapped by the foot in a tiger snare. The reduced circulation caused an infection and for months, his foot has been wrapped into a large club-shaped bandage which he scratches with his tiny tusks. We said hello to Full Moon whose former mahout worked with her for her whole life (over 60 years) but eventually couldn't take care of her anymore and chose to give her to the park. She has a new mahout, but was heartbroken when her old one stopped coming to visit her. Every time he said goodbye was painful and he just couldn't keep doing it. 

Jokia hasn't been so lucky. When she was younger, she was sold into the logging industry. She was pregnant at the time and on her first day of logging, the effort of the heaving the log up the hill caused her to miscarry. She immediately lay down in grief and to get her back up and working again, she was shot in the eye with a slingshot and blinded. When she couldn't log anymore, she was sold to a trekking group. When she tried to protest that, too, she was stabbed in the other eye. Now she's completely blind. When Lek found her and bought her, Jokia had nothing but her sense of smell, touch, hearing and her fear.

But compassion won out when another female at the park reached out and became Jokia's constant companion. Today, the two elephants are never without each other. 

After all that information, we received a rare treat: as we listened to Jodie talk, a small family of elephants passed under where we sat on the sky walk on their way to the river for a bath. The only thing between our butts and the elephants' was about seven inches of wood planks and air! 

Naughty Navaan says "Hi!"

Our contact between the elephants was limited to whenever we were out on the grounds under supervision maybe scooping poo and only if the elephants felt like checking us out. The priority wasn't going to be touching or riding the elephants. 

Unfortunately, that plan didn't hold up so well with some of the guests. Apparently, a few people used a travel agency in the UK that seemingly led them astray and told them ENP was a park where they'd have close, personal contact with individual elephants and get to ride them. 

The view's better when you're not on their backs

But even after all the talks and videos, they were still miffed that there wouldn't be any riding! One couple even had the audacity to say "We wanted to end our trip on a high note." Maybe they misspoke. But I'm inclined to think they just didn't get it. Eventually, they gave up saying they'd leave after just two or three days. They still left early, but not as early as some others. For some odd reason, most of the complainers were in my group. I tried to keep putting a positive spin on things to keep other groups from thinking I was a "Twitter" too (I developed that nickname because this group was also obsessed with the WiFi and having Internet and constantly whined about not having better service in the middle of a freaking jungle).

So for example, when a Twitter said, "It's so hot! I can't keep carrying these banana trees," I'd say, "But think how good a cold shower will feel!" When one said "Tossing melons is too hard!" I'd reply, "Think of it as a medicine ball at the gym: who needs zumba to get ripped?"

Sure, it probably made me look like Susie Sunshine, but it was better than just whining like the rest of them. Of course, the kvetching bugged the volunteer coordinators, even though they kept their annoyance well hidden...most of the time. One of our jobs on the second day was cleaning the grounds by shoveling and raking poo and uneaten corn stalks into truck beds for composting. When we finished early, we walked from the river to the "elephant kitchen" where another group was tossing pumpkins. Our VC, Toby, told us we'd take the shovels back to the tool shed then could go walk dogs or help in the kitchen, one Twitter squealed, "We have to walk there? Last time we rode in the truck!" 

Toby looked at me, then looked at her, incredulous. "Huh?" he asked, incredulous. 

"The truck has poo in it," I said. And besides, the tool shed was just up the road and we'd walk through a garden to get there. It was literally a 2 minute walk. Either the heat had gotten to her or she was just a spoiled child. Her parents were sponsoring her gap year so I started to think the latter. She was also the same girl who, on corn cutting day, spent half of the day sitting in the shade while the rest of us carried 100 bundles of corn stalks and 50 bags of corn from the field to the truck. The mahouts had to pick up the slack and put us all to shame by carrying 4 or 5 bundles at a time while we each struggled with one at a time.

Seeds of hope...or pumpkin. Sometimes, it's hard to tell under all the poo.

Lek, the VC’s, the mahouts, and the people who just work on the park’s property make very little money and work every day in heat and sun and rain without complaint. I couldn’t believe anyone would have the set to complain within earshot of any of them. Fortunately, Lek was away on elephant business. It would have been so embarrassing to be around her knowing she’d hear about the people in my group. I did what I could to set myself aside from all that negativity and asked Jodie how I could keep helping the park remotely until I saved up enough money to return to Thailand. She told me about the Elephant Ambassador program and encouraged me to apply. More on that as it develops!