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<\/a>\nNext up, our orientation and lunch. Vegan lunch ended up being something we can absolutely manage for a week. No problem.<\/p>\n
Following that, we scooped the elephant poop for the evening placement of the elephants.<\/p>\n
We then cleaned the duck and geese ponds. Fun story about the ducks and geese: The founder (Lek) spotted these birds in a market, hung up by their feet, being sold as food. The birds were all still alive, so she bought every one of them and brought them to the sanctuary to live out a long healthy life. I remain unsure why they didn’t put drains into the three ponds when they built them. At any rate, we all scooped water while standing in knee deep water mixed with duck poop and insect larvae. Seriously disgusting. We managed to empty all three, scrub them clean, and refill with fresh water. This was the single (only?) grossest and most unpleasant thing we did for the whole week.<\/p>\n We had the fun job of feeding the sweet elephants next. One of the elephants was a sweet older girl who had been horribly abused in the logging industry by her mahout. Because she leaned toward the defiant side from time to time, the mean mahout had blinded her by injecting her eyeballs with saline. His goal was to increase her dependence on him. I never heard if it did or not, but she managed to end up on the sanctuary in her later years to live a happy ending to her life. Because of her age and failing teeth (did you know they only have four teeth at a time?!), her diet is supplemented once per day with soft rice, bananas, and vitamin pellets.<\/p>\n Dinner and blessings by the shaman rounded out our day. Scott was “fortunate” to have the shaman notice him sitting uncomfortably on the floor (in the proper sitting position for greeting a religious leader) and called him to the front in order to bless his knees and legs. The kids almost lost it with giggles. I’m still hoping that blessing starts working.<\/p>\n Day Two: After scooping the poop to prep the evening beds for the gentle giants, we took off on a six hour jungle walk with the elephants, their mahouts, and some heavily armed rangers.<\/p>\n The second night sleeping arrangements were a little more chaotic. Caden’s mosquito tent somehow ended up with a very large, very angry cicada that screamed as Scott tried to get it out. Success finally, but Caden refused to sleep in his mosquito net. I agreed to switch with him, which lasted about 4-5 hours until all the bugs that got into the tent came alive in the middle of the night. Keali unknowingly shared her twin bed with mosquito net with me until she woke up a few hours later. At this point, we are unsure what we have gotten ourselves into.<\/p>\n Day Three: Day Four: Afternoon was an outstanding nature walk with the elephants.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nBecause the sanctuary is actually on a national park (with no exterior fences), the elephants are housed in specific areas at night so they don’t just wander away and get captured by folks who want only to exploit them for labor. The old blind elephant is in an enclosure, while the other three are held by a chain attached around one of their feet to a concrete anchor in the ground. This is all very temporary however. The sanctuary is building a large enclosure for the elephants to be in at night that will not involve them being chained up. They were estimating it being about six weeks from completion.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nShe is the only elephant anyone is allowed to touch. By softly touching her trunk, she knows to curl it up and food will be gently offered for her to grab with the tip of her trunk. I am in love with this beauty.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nTwo other elephants at the sanctuary are really new. One was very recently rescued and is currently emotionally attached to one of the older elephants that has been living there a while. They consider the older one the nanny to the younger one. Their relationship is very strong as they wander around during the days side by side.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nCleaning up involved a “shower” that was really just a bucket of water and a private stall where you could lather up and then dump some cold water on yourself to rinse. I thought it would be awful until I realized how much it cooled me down from the hot day.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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\nEvening at the facility also meant power and internet for 3-4 hours. It was a special time that included fans and lights. The basics had suddenly become something to look forward to.<\/p>\n
\nSleeping is overrated. After a restless night that started hot and ended up cool but with far more bugs than any of us were expecting, we actually welcomed a 6:30am wake up. Vegan breakfast was passable. Who knew rice would be a pretty decent breakfast?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nThe walk was hot and difficult at times, but walking alongside the elephants and observing them being free to roam never became boring. Keali was so close at one point that she got inbetween an elephant and a prickly bush. The sweet mahout rescued her.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nOnce we returned to camp, we fed the elephants again, cleaned up, and had another vegan meal. I’m not sure how vegans enjoy that sort of eating. The bigger problem for our very high maintenance group of four is that the ice man didn’t show up. Room temperature water was all there is to drink. (Room temperature is somewhere around 85-90 degrees.)<\/p>\n
\nWednesday morning started out with another vegan meal, scooping poop, and then making a bed for the older elephant. Since she is so big and getting old, lifting herself up and down off the ground for sleeping has become difficult. In order to help her, every week, a large pile of sand is moved to give her an incline to lay down and sleep on at night while still being able to get up on her own in the morning.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nThis task was one I was dreading as it involved wheel barrows, shovels, and too much sand. Our volunteer group though giggled our way through the hour or so of work, making conversation, creating challenges for one another, and generally just cracking up the whole time.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAnother vegan lunch followed, and then we were off to the local school to help the kids learn english. It’s important to note that the jungles of Cambodia used to cover about 70% of the land, but now cover less than 3%. The wild elephants have all but disappeared. In creating the sanctuary, the goal was to employ the locals in order to give them a way to make money that didn’t include logging or poaching. As a function of this, the army came in and trained locals to be rangers to help protect from logging, but also to track poachers.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThe Sanctuary also employed many locals, and the Sanctuary provides weekly volunteers to go teach english at the local village school for a couple of hours. I would say the school was one of my personal highlights. It was eye opening for my kids to see the conditions of the small village school. Caden loved taking charge and interacting with them, and I was pleased to see Keali warmed up after about 30 minutes. The school itself consisted of two rooms (one for younger kids and one for older) in a single building without electricity or fans or air conditioning, and a dirt floor.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nIt was easy to see that the expected uniform was a white shirt (or one that at some point started as white) and navy blue skirts or shorts (long enough to cover the knee). There were a few kids whose families clearly couldn’t afford the uniform but were still in attendance and completely accepted by the others. The school (and the wedding reception discussed below) were the easiest places to really appreciate the level of poverty that the locals lived in. It was inspiring and heartbreaking all at the same time. They were warm, respectful, kind, and extremely affectionate. They loved touching Caden and Keali, but they hugged all the volunteers repeatedly. The children were always smiling and full of joy.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nWe went back to camp, fed the elephants, ate yet another vegan meal, and called it a day.<\/p>\n
\nThursday morning, after eating what some (rabbits) might call breakfast, but the Hoopers call “near fasting”, we set out to scoop poop again. Next on the list was planting bamboo trees on the river bank to help protect it from erosion. Again, our volunteer group had so much fun completing this task. By the end of it, we had around ten people in a line passing the buckets of water up and down the hill. We made quick work out of the task.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nLunch was, you guessed it, something vegan. The kids seemed to start to shrink at this point. It was amazing how little they were eating yet still functioning.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nThe highlight of this one was that at one point, the nanny and baby elephants became separated. One was down in the river, while the other was up near the shelter taking sugar cane from us. They suddenly became aware that their partner wasn’t in sight. They yelled to each other and then took off running, ground shaking, to come together where they happily circled each other and spoke soft reassuring sounds. We were in love all over again.<\/p>\n