So I was at the amazing Elephant Nature Park. I've already said a few times that we definitely didn't ride the elephants and there are no performances where the elephants paint those, admittedly, ele-fantastic paintings (gods, I can't help myself). So, what did we do?
I'll tell you what we did.
As a weekly volunteer, you pay a lump sum for room and board and then work your butt off from Monday morning until Sunday morning. We got to relax that first Sunday and just enjoy the beautiful park and the delicious food as well as a massage if we were so inclined. Yes, there were actual women at the park every night to give Thai body, foot, or head/neck massages! The dining platform had a second floor which was converted to a massage parlour so in the evening, freshly showered, you could enjoy a good massage for a pittance! Those tiny women twisted me into a pretzel and beat me into a blissful submission a few times.
There's even a souvenir shop for the daily visitors and a snack bar completely with fresh coconuts, wine coolers and enormous Singh and Chang beers for especially long days.
But to earn your Chang, you work for the changs...er, elephants. About 70 volunteers work each week, divided into groups. Incidentally, one whole group that week was a class of high schoolers from northern Virginia! Talk about the best school trip ever! France? England? What's that compared to an eco trip to volunteer at an elephant sanctuary?!
Anyway, the groups are divided up and then every day you're assigned a morning job and an afternoon job. They are as follows:
Ele-kitchen: Unloading trucks of pumpkins or watermelons were the two tasks this week, but it could also be making rice balls of bananas and tamarind paste, dicing the melons and 'kins, or whatever else you were asked. For us, it was forming bucket-brigade teams and tossing the suckers and stacking them on shelves.
Pros: GREAT workout! And sometimes, a wandering ele (pronounced "Eh-lee") would come by
and steal a pumpkin snack just feet away from you!
Cons: getting hit in the ribs, hip, or tit with a watermelon. But then it drops, cracks open and you
have a snack yourself, so really, maybe this is a Pro.
Cleaning the Park: Grab a shovel or rake, you're taking a stroll around the park to clean up the poop and discarded cornstalks. It's not so bad: you develop a "sandwich" system where you rake everything into small piles, then one person gets everything onto a shovel and someone else presses a rake on top and together you lift the pile onto the truck bed.
Pros: When you're on the grounds, so are the elephants and the mahouts. Curious eles might stroll
over and inspect the job you've done and generous mahouts might give you some bananas or
tamarind to feed the eles. Great for a photo op!
Cons: It's pretty tedious, but when everyone works together, it's a quick job and you usually finish
quickly and can go walk dogs or toss melons.
Cutting Banana Trees: Banana tree trunks are mostly water, so they're like ele-cele-ry...elery...They're a good snack. So everyone loads up in a truck bed and you're whisked down the twisty road to where banana trees are growing wild. No stubby little bananas to be seen, but they're free trees.
Pros: It's Arm Day, everyone! Lifting those trunks is an amazing workout for your back and arms.
And after, you can stop at a roadside shop and get ice cream and totally cancel out all that
exercise. Yay!
Cons: You don't actually get a machete. No, the 13 year old Thai girl and her mother and aunts get
the blades and set to work hacking the living hell out of trees.
Corn Cutting: Easily one of the hardest jobs at the park. You're loaded into a bigger truck bed and your truck along with a truck of men drive 45 minutes out of the jungle to a farm. The ENP has a deal with a farmer who lets you cut the corn you need. The team spends all day there, bagging some ears of corn, cutting stalks and making dozens of piles of 25 stalks. At 11:30, everyone gets a much needed break for a picnic lunch of rice, pad thai, crackers, sliced vegetables, bananas, and a giant omelet. Then, in the afternoon, the corn and stalks are stacked in the trucks. It takes about 2 or 3 hours with frequent breaks, but then you drive home on your mountain of corn stalks like the victorious corn-conqueror that you are!
Pros: The egg omelet. And the cookies. This is also the day you get to wield a weapon. They gave
us the sharpest scythes! Highlight of my day may have been watching one of the Thai men
sit down, pull a watermelon out of who knows where and use a scythe to just slice through
it like nothing then have himself a tasty treat.
Cons: It's exhausting work. Bending, cutting, carrying...it's hard and it's hot. It's worse when
some people don't do their fair share! But in the end, it's amazing to see the acres you've
cleared. If you get back on time, the VC even takes you tubing on the river!
Marta's Misadventure on the River: We started at a drop off. Thanks, Toby. I was the first one in. I sat down on my tube and pushed off. Right off the bat, I spilled out and went under. My tube started shooting down river and I had to scramble to get back on it. Looking back, my whole loving group was laughing. But I took it in stride and felt greatly refreshed!
Finally...
Ele-Poo: Closed toed shoes, check. Sunscreen, check. Shovel, check. Let's scoop some poop!
Pros: Elephant diets are high fiber, so their poo is like giant rabbit droppings: round and compact.
And if it's been in the sun, it's dry and doesn't smell at all.
Cons: The fresh stuff or anything that's been sitting in the shade smells, well, fresh. There's a
reason they tell you to wear closed toed shoes, too: the fresh stuff isn't so easy to shovel
and it tends to...drip.
But at the end of the day, you got great exercise, everything you did was for the good of the elephants, and if you were lucky, a grateful ele came by to say "thanks."
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