Eyes widened. Shivers down spine.
"Hey guys, Pom wants to talk to you tonight"
SBJ.
Pom is the manager at ENP. Pom carries an aura of badass. Pom is the lady you move out of the way of before you even know who she is. Pom is the lady who exudes knowledge and experience. Pom is the lady who silences 400 howling dogs with one bark of her own.
Walking up to the exclusive nursery table, AKA Fort Pom, I became painfully aware of the multiple types of poo on my shirt that day: the standard coating of elephant poop had been peppered with a little bit of dog poop, with limited edition highlighting courtesy of a remarkably productive passing bird. I scrunched my curly hair in an attempt to look slightly better for her, but well aware that I was quite literally just rolling a turd in glitter. In this state I walked towards the small figure dressed in her classic black t-shirt and SnapBack with 'POM' emblazoned on the back, hunched over Mr Mustachio and Dr EvilFluff. Pom is like a Russian babushka doll: such a gentle and kind animal carer contained within a badass lady who is juggling eighteen billion plates simultaneously in order to get shit done.
"Lek has said you may go into the jungle and shadow the mahouts with some of the elephants. You will go in pairs and alternate groups. Look at the relationships, see how the elephants interact, learn their behaviours. Collect radios tomorrow."
This is a huge deal. Huge.
It's rare for volunteers to be allowed into the jungle as it's basically Cadbury Quality Control Centre in terms of happiness for them and it's meant to be a separate experience from the park and all the humans involved with that. Also there's so much work to be done day-to-day in Special Food and Enrichment that it's usually all hands on deck there! The fact that Lek and Pom had decided that we could go was so exciting to me - some people might think it dull to watch a micro-herd of elephants and their humans for 6 hours, but to me that's really super cool. The main aim was to get fresh eyes on the ellies and see how they're doing, any odd behaviours, how they're interacting with their mahouts and the other elephants they're hanging out with, and generally just getting a close up view of their personalities. Lush.
This is a huge deal. Huge.
It's rare for volunteers to be allowed into the jungle as it's basically Cadbury Quality Control Centre in terms of happiness for them and it's meant to be a separate experience from the park and all the humans involved with that. Also there's so much work to be done day-to-day in Special Food and Enrichment that it's usually all hands on deck there! The fact that Lek and Pom had decided that we could go was so exciting to me - some people might think it dull to watch a micro-herd of elephants and their humans for 6 hours, but to me that's really super cool. The main aim was to get fresh eyes on the ellies and see how they're doing, any odd behaviours, how they're interacting with their mahouts and the other elephants they're hanging out with, and generally just getting a close up view of their personalities. Lush.
Loaded with a Walkie Talkie on my hip and Nature Valley bar in my pocket, my partner Kerri and I set off into the jungle. A young man sat carving a miniature of his elephant on a log, and a slightly older man, Toon, stood waiting for us. We stood with Toon as we made our introductions, and we sat down around 20m from the three elephants who were clustered together in a small clearing in the jungle ahead. After about 20 minutes of us watching from our spot, Toon came over looking confused and slightly amused to say "go closer?" - we hadn't wanted to assume we could just run up to the ellies, and I think Toon quite liked that a little. We moved forwards but kept a distance from the elephants, keeping in mind that this is their happy place to be elephants rather than in the park where there are always people around.
We kept chatting away to Toon for a fair while despite our language barriers. His English was actually pretty good - a lot of the mahouts stay quiet because their English isn't too developed, but I tried to make awkward hand signal conversation with them whenever possible. I realised a couple of times that I had just moved with elephant goggles on straight to them rather than talking to their mahouts first, which I was quite ashamed of as I think that's pretty disrespectful, even though it's so easily done when there's such an incredible creature in front of you and a mahout who is purposefully trying to move away. A large proportion of Lek's mahouts at ENP are refugees from neighbouring countries, especially Myanmar, and many of them have a past relationship with elephants in using them as war animals whilst they were child soldiers. It's obvious that the transition for both elephant and mahout into an environment with previous connotations, new behaviours, and remaining personal issues is challenging, but it seems to provide a greater level of empathy as both try to settle into their new worlds together.
A lot of elephants are taken to the jungle as a decompression stage during their transition into the park in order to give them a little more space to come to terms with the change as well as letting them enjoy nature as a positive place rather than their previous prisons. Similarly, elephants with mental health problems often find it comforting to be out in their own section of jungle rather than in the main park with all the other elephants and regular visitors just yet. Likewise this helps new mahouts and their elephants to get used to each other, learn behaviours, and just generally become familiar together without distraction. Other elephants get to roam in the jungle as a periodic treat to shake up their daily routines and to let them explore a new area. One feature remains the same with all of these cases, however, and that's that the elephants just love a place they can destroy! Rubbing on trees til they bend, reaching to the tallest branches to sneak off the yummiest leaves, and foresting through any obstacle to get to that really good scratching branch and mess about in the process. It's beautiful to see the elephants having a great time in their natural environment and interacting together, as well as being able to see the really tight bond between mahout and elephant!
After a while Toon moved away to have a break from our incessant questions and we were chilling on the side of the valley watching our three charges for the day. Sau Yai is a big, strong girl. She's the biggest and strongest girl I've seen at the park so far: her tail is perfectly formed and still has lots of hair, her middle is round and stocky, and her eyes are full of mischief. So much mischief, in fact, that she'll stay silent and perfectly still for about 2 minutes at a time and then make a very sudden movement or noise which genuinely made me scramble up the valley in surprise! Sau Yai's past was in tourist trekking, so she's very comfortable in the steep valleys and can make her way up a near sheer mud face in a shockingly fast time! Sau Yai doesn't get on with too many ellies, preferring to have a bit of a tussle than a snuggle, but she's always got her buddy Lanna.
Lanna is fully blind in one eye and 80% blind in the other, but she's a beautifully adventurous gal regardless. Trunk up to sniff out the environment, she waits for Sau Yai to call for her and then follows her call with incredible speed to join in the fun! It was incredible to watch her scaling the same sheer mud face just after Sau Yai, but also slightly concerning seeing her thundering up between branches and trees with bugger all eyesight!
Sau Yai: *climbs to top of ridiculous valley side* Hey! Hey, dude! Lanna! Come up here!
Lanna: OH YEAH BUDDY! *runs for 5 paces at break neck speed* Oh wait *remembers she's blind* one sec *trunk up again* yep ok gotcha, I'M COMING *runs again with dubious bearings*
Medo: *Imma gonna keep eating, no probs bros*
Medo is the third musketeer in this band, and she's also my "yep, you" elephant. You know when you meet somebody and you just think "yep, you" about them? Or, more frequently, ice cream. When you hit that flavour and you're just like "YUUUUP". That's me and Medo. Medo is a young lady with a horrendous past. At 8 years old Medo was taken into illegal logging and had a terrible accident which broke her back left ankle. At 12 years old Medo was deemed useless by the logging company - they never set her ankle, couldn't work, and couldn't be sold as a lame elephant to another company. Eventually they sold her into an intensive breeding programme to try to get some income from her. Medo's first breeding match was with the largest male the company could find, a huge tusker. But this wasn't just a huge tusker. This was a huge tusker in musth, and Medo had been chained to the ground by all four legs. The bull attacked Medo, pinning her to the ground with his huge tusks, piercing her skin with them as he mated with her, attacking her so violently that he broke both her hips and dislocated her spine.
Medo fought for her life for 3 years after this horrendous attack, and her owners hid her away for 15 years - not in shame of what they had caused, but so that nobody would see her and think badly of them which might affect their income. She was put into tedious and painful work, forced to haul as many small logs in mountain villages as she could. During this 15 year period, Medo hadn't seen another elephant. She was brought to the park in 2006 and had a very slow adjustment period, essentially having to learn who and what she was from scratch and slowly learning how to be an elephant at all. Her physical injuries will never heal. Her gait will always be grimaced at as she swings her entire body from side to side to take a single step. Her form will always look like a healthy elephant from the front and a dismantled puppet from the back, but her mental health has transformed her from an isolated, depressed, terrified elephant into a social bean with an absolutely beautifully content personality. ENP has enabled her gloriously golden soul to shine out again in a life without fear, with her own kind, and celebrated for who she is.
Medo can't fight, she can't run, and she can't climb up sheer faces after Sau Yai. But that's okay. She's a happy bean strolling around the jungle flats, exploring new trees which the other girls have knocked down, and just chilling out with her pals when they come back from their adventures. I'm fully aware that it seems like a very wishy washy thing to say, but anyone who has had the privilege to meet this elephant will know what I am trying to say: Medo has a shining soul. She really does. She exudes a calm happiness and contentedness with life despite her horrendous injuries and her incredibly limited ability, because she's just happy with what she can do. Medo has been destroyed in every mental, physical, and emotional way possible, but she still finds the melon in every fruit basket and even when there isn't one, she'll lift up the basket itself and play with that. She's just beautiful.
When I came home from this jungle trip I immediately gushed about Medo and my day to my Mama, telling her all about it and waiting for approximately 9 hours for a photo to send through a photo of Medo to her. Being the beautifully compassionate and kind human my Mama is, she sent back a photo too: the certificate issued to you when you sponsor an elephant at ENP for a year. For 70GBP my Mum had helped ENP to support Medo by providing her food, shelter, extensive medical care, and all other aspects of her life at ENP to let her be herself for another year. It was so touching I had a little cry into my Mars Bar when I managed to download the photo and see what she had done with the caption "Important to you, important to me". If you're interested in doing the same, meet the herd here and you can enter your sponsorship (a maximum of 70GBP per elephant) here.
 |
| Elephant trunks can be so dextrous that they can peel an ear of corn one leaf at a time. |
We kept chatting away to Toon for a fair while despite our language barriers. His English was actually pretty good - a lot of the mahouts stay quiet because their English isn't too developed, but I tried to make awkward hand signal conversation with them whenever possible. I realised a couple of times that I had just moved with elephant goggles on straight to them rather than talking to their mahouts first, which I was quite ashamed of as I think that's pretty disrespectful, even though it's so easily done when there's such an incredible creature in front of you and a mahout who is purposefully trying to move away. A large proportion of Lek's mahouts at ENP are refugees from neighbouring countries, especially Myanmar, and many of them have a past relationship with elephants in using them as war animals whilst they were child soldiers. It's obvious that the transition for both elephant and mahout into an environment with previous connotations, new behaviours, and remaining personal issues is challenging, but it seems to provide a greater level of empathy as both try to settle into their new worlds together.
 |
| Sau Yai and Lanna hanging out in the jungle together |
A lot of elephants are taken to the jungle as a decompression stage during their transition into the park in order to give them a little more space to come to terms with the change as well as letting them enjoy nature as a positive place rather than their previous prisons. Similarly, elephants with mental health problems often find it comforting to be out in their own section of jungle rather than in the main park with all the other elephants and regular visitors just yet. Likewise this helps new mahouts and their elephants to get used to each other, learn behaviours, and just generally become familiar together without distraction. Other elephants get to roam in the jungle as a periodic treat to shake up their daily routines and to let them explore a new area. One feature remains the same with all of these cases, however, and that's that the elephants just love a place they can destroy! Rubbing on trees til they bend, reaching to the tallest branches to sneak off the yummiest leaves, and foresting through any obstacle to get to that really good scratching branch and mess about in the process. It's beautiful to see the elephants having a great time in their natural environment and interacting together, as well as being able to see the really tight bond between mahout and elephant!
 |
| 90% trees in this forest are red up to 8ft - here's Medo doing her decorating |
After a while Toon moved away to have a break from our incessant questions and we were chilling on the side of the valley watching our three charges for the day. Sau Yai is a big, strong girl. She's the biggest and strongest girl I've seen at the park so far: her tail is perfectly formed and still has lots of hair, her middle is round and stocky, and her eyes are full of mischief. So much mischief, in fact, that she'll stay silent and perfectly still for about 2 minutes at a time and then make a very sudden movement or noise which genuinely made me scramble up the valley in surprise! Sau Yai's past was in tourist trekking, so she's very comfortable in the steep valleys and can make her way up a near sheer mud face in a shockingly fast time! Sau Yai doesn't get on with too many ellies, preferring to have a bit of a tussle than a snuggle, but she's always got her buddy Lanna.
Lanna is fully blind in one eye and 80% blind in the other, but she's a beautifully adventurous gal regardless. Trunk up to sniff out the environment, she waits for Sau Yai to call for her and then follows her call with incredible speed to join in the fun! It was incredible to watch her scaling the same sheer mud face just after Sau Yai, but also slightly concerning seeing her thundering up between branches and trees with bugger all eyesight!
 |
| Lanna following Sau Yai into the highlands |
Sau Yai: *climbs to top of ridiculous valley side* Hey! Hey, dude! Lanna! Come up here!
Lanna: OH YEAH BUDDY! *runs for 5 paces at break neck speed* Oh wait *remembers she's blind* one sec *trunk up again* yep ok gotcha, I'M COMING *runs again with dubious bearings*
Medo: *Imma gonna keep eating, no probs bros*
Medo is the third musketeer in this band, and she's also my "yep, you" elephant. You know when you meet somebody and you just think "yep, you" about them? Or, more frequently, ice cream. When you hit that flavour and you're just like "YUUUUP". That's me and Medo. Medo is a young lady with a horrendous past. At 8 years old Medo was taken into illegal logging and had a terrible accident which broke her back left ankle. At 12 years old Medo was deemed useless by the logging company - they never set her ankle, couldn't work, and couldn't be sold as a lame elephant to another company. Eventually they sold her into an intensive breeding programme to try to get some income from her. Medo's first breeding match was with the largest male the company could find, a huge tusker. But this wasn't just a huge tusker. This was a huge tusker in musth, and Medo had been chained to the ground by all four legs. The bull attacked Medo, pinning her to the ground with his huge tusks, piercing her skin with them as he mated with her, attacking her so violently that he broke both her hips and dislocated her spine.
 |
| This is Medo standing straight |
Medo fought for her life for 3 years after this horrendous attack, and her owners hid her away for 15 years - not in shame of what they had caused, but so that nobody would see her and think badly of them which might affect their income. She was put into tedious and painful work, forced to haul as many small logs in mountain villages as she could. During this 15 year period, Medo hadn't seen another elephant. She was brought to the park in 2006 and had a very slow adjustment period, essentially having to learn who and what she was from scratch and slowly learning how to be an elephant at all. Her physical injuries will never heal. Her gait will always be grimaced at as she swings her entire body from side to side to take a single step. Her form will always look like a healthy elephant from the front and a dismantled puppet from the back, but her mental health has transformed her from an isolated, depressed, terrified elephant into a social bean with an absolutely beautifully content personality. ENP has enabled her gloriously golden soul to shine out again in a life without fear, with her own kind, and celebrated for who she is.
Medo can't fight, she can't run, and she can't climb up sheer faces after Sau Yai. But that's okay. She's a happy bean strolling around the jungle flats, exploring new trees which the other girls have knocked down, and just chilling out with her pals when they come back from their adventures. I'm fully aware that it seems like a very wishy washy thing to say, but anyone who has had the privilege to meet this elephant will know what I am trying to say: Medo has a shining soul. She really does. She exudes a calm happiness and contentedness with life despite her horrendous injuries and her incredibly limited ability, because she's just happy with what she can do. Medo has been destroyed in every mental, physical, and emotional way possible, but she still finds the melon in every fruit basket and even when there isn't one, she'll lift up the basket itself and play with that. She's just beautiful.
 |
| SUCH A HAPPY ELLIE |
When I came home from this jungle trip I immediately gushed about Medo and my day to my Mama, telling her all about it and waiting for approximately 9 hours for a photo to send through a photo of Medo to her. Being the beautifully compassionate and kind human my Mama is, she sent back a photo too: the certificate issued to you when you sponsor an elephant at ENP for a year. For 70GBP my Mum had helped ENP to support Medo by providing her food, shelter, extensive medical care, and all other aspects of her life at ENP to let her be herself for another year. It was so touching I had a little cry into my Mars Bar when I managed to download the photo and see what she had done with the caption "Important to you, important to me". If you're interested in doing the same, meet the herd here and you can enter your sponsorship (a maximum of 70GBP per elephant) here.
 |
| Medo killing the Factor 50 game |
A couple of days later we were back in the jungle shadowing Jaidee and Dau Tong. Jaidee is a beautifully strong girl but a bit reserved towards humans, and Dau Tong is similarly happy in her own skin but prefers to be around elephants at a distance than to interact with them as such. It was such a privilege to see the differences between these two and the three musketeers of the previous trip: Jaidee and Dau Tong were quiet and stayed in their respective spots, whereas the other girls were all over the shop exploring their jungle and hanging out together. Both sets seemed to be loving life, though, with all the smells, textures, sights, tastes, and just the open freedom of being in their own environment again just to enjoy it. It was such an incredible experience to just sit and watch these elephants for 6 hours in the day, seeing how they shake their heads when a fly comes by, learning their ticks like how many times they bash their food against their legs before eating it to shake out any bugs as they would in the wild, and seeing their beautiful expressions when Noi runs around them! I especially enjoyed watching Dau Tong's ears - she was so expressive with them! Every flick and shimmy conveyed exactly what she was feeling and fit every situation perfectly. Her mahout was so in tune with her it was really love to watch them interact based on her ear signals and him singing to her.
 |
| Dau Tong chilling out with her incredible ears |
Sadly the time came to head
back from the jungle with the girls. Medo is such a lady that when she
needed the loo on the journey back she paused, turned into the bushes,
and left her deposits there rather than on the main track path. Such a
dreamboat. I, however, am less elegant - on the way home I was trying to
be all cool with the whole one foot in front of the other game and
managed to trip straight over a pile of fresh poo right in front of me.
 |
| Falling over fresh poo as we walked Medo home from the jungle |
That evening we came home and told Pom about our day. I'm pretty sure she was looking for a "All bueno, no problemo, here's the radio" so she could continue doing actually important running-the-park stuff. Unfortunately for her, she got an overexcited toddler on Christmas morning giving her a blow by blow account of every awesome bit of my day, photos included.
Despite my ridiculous enthusiasm with all this, there is actually a point to it. Lek and Pom like to use the volunteers' fresh eyes to watch the elephants to pick up on behaviours or habits which might have crept in so slowly that their mahouts and the park staff might not notice them too easily, but as everything is so new to us we can describe well. When the ellies are climbing through the jungle like Sau Yai and Lanna do, it's easy for them to pick up scratches and bumps from branches and trees which are a bit more robust than they counted for and it's important that these get checked out before they get any chance to get infected. This is also really easy to miss when you see the same ellie every day for a long time (think about how long it takes you to notice if your housemate has a new zit - can you remember exactly when that started to come through?). Volunteers, however, are canvassing every inch of the wonderful creatures constantly in absolute adoration, so we can see these little things quickly.
Shadowing the mahouts in the jungle was an absolute highlight of the 2 weeks - the icing on top of the cherries on top of the icing on top of the cherries on top of the triple decker awesome sauce cake that is ENP. I learnt so much in 2 days about the elephants themselves, their mahouts, their relationships with each other and other mahouts and elephants, and their environment. Mostly, though, it was so lovely to see it all clicking together: elephants with elephants in their natural habitat being able to be elephants in their natural habitat. A true testament to all the incredibly hard work that goes on in ENP to get these elephants there in the first place, and then to make sure that their forever home is the best experience possible for them.
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| Noi loving life in the jungle outskirts - my reaction was similar |
On
my last day Pom walked past me in the kitchen as I was making rice
balls for Yai Bua. She was evidently on a mission - something which I
only recognised as I proceeded to break every social rule ever within
the next 5 words.
"Hi Pom! How're you doing?"
A
second of silence followed. I beamed at Pom, she looked confused at me,
whilst the rest of the rice ballers watched and waited to see what the
outcome of effectively high fiving the Dalai Lama would be.
Caught
off guard and in a semi-recognition phase, the corners of her mouth
curved upwards and out came a quiet and distracted "U-hello, yes, good"
as she continued on her path.
"YOU GOT A SMILE FROM POM.", "Whaaaat?!", "But you're not a cat!"
It was awesome.
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