Elephant Volunteer Programs – Volunteering with Elephants Part 2

What do elephant volunteer programs do for the elephants?

I am 3 weeks in to the elephant project. I am still amazed by these gentle creatures as I was the day I arrived. Elephant volunteer programs do incredible things for these amazing animals.

Natsuyo and her blind elephant Lam Duan.

The month of July was very busy with day trip tourists… This made our jobs as
volunteers a little more stressful, because that meant that each of us had large
groups of people we were responsible for. I continued butting heads with the volunteers I thought things had been resolved with. Their time at the sanctuary is now finished, so it is no longer problem.

I have been talking a lot with the lady Mahout named Natsuyo. She was born in
Japan, but had lived in Seattle for the past 32 years. She made the decision to
sell everything, and move to Thailand to become a Mahout and work with elephants.
She has been here since December, and got her own elephant almost 2 months ago.

She is very knowledgeable regarding all the elephants. I sincerely enjoy all my
conversations with her, because I get the inside scoop. Her elephant is completely blind (reasons unknown), and came all the way up from Koh Samui.

Crystal feeding Songkran, the oldest elephant at Elephants World, sticky rice balls!

One of my favorite elephants is 73 year old Songkran. I feel like I protect her
during the sticky rice feeding. She likes the food directly into her mouth, so
all the tourists love shoving it in for her. She often gets irritated with all
these hands coming at her. I have to tell people to only feed her on her right
side since she can’t see very well out if her left eye due to a cataract. I like
to rub her leg while she eats. I am now confident she recognizes me. Most elephants recognize us people by our smell, not by our look. It’s been said that a Mahout that cheats on his wife is putting himself in a risky situation withhis elephant. Their elephant can smell the new woman, and often will reject the mahout and can get quite aggressive. All you mahouts, take note of this. This is serious business!

Crystal giving Somboon a nice mud bath, with Malee in the mix.

My favorite part of the day has changed from bath time (which is still super
fun) to mud spa time! Somboon, 58 years old, absolutely loves to be rubbed down
with mud. Her preferred spot of choice for mud is her trunk, since this is hard for an elephant to do on its own. You can really see it in her eyes how much she loves this. Unlike African elephants, Asian elephants are very susceptible to sun burns. They are jungle elephants, who mainly live under the canopy of the forest. So, they have to cover their skin with the mud as a natural sunblock. It also functions as a bug repellent.

It was a very sad day for all of us here 3 days ago. Our beloved baby, DooDoo,
was taken back by his owner to be put through elephant school to join the circus.
This is upsetting on a couple different levels…

Baby DooDoo having fun in the water at Elephants World

First, we miss him so much! He was our little toddler to take care of. He was
soaking up knowledge like a sponge. We miss his carefree attitude, and seeing
his relationship with his Mahout grow. DooDoo was put in the new shelter that was built. He cleverly figured out how to slide the wooden bars over, and he would then squeeze through the remaining wood and escape. He would run around carelessly like a child on a playground. As soon as someone would direct him back to the shelter, he would run back and squeeze back through the bars. It
became a fun game for him.

Secondly, we all know the training that he is going to experience very soon.
And it’s not the type if training that deals with positive reinforcement. He
will go through Phajaan training, which is designed to break the spirit of the
elephant while teaching fear. I am very upset that little DooDoo is going to have to go through this awful, barbaric training just to entertain tourists to make money. It’s absolutely disgusting.

Crystal scrubbing off Moey, one of the new elephants.

I am already getting my mind ready for leaving the sanctuary. I have made close relationships with a few of the elephants, and I am bracing myself for the day when I must leave them. These elephants are so intelligent, clever, and witty… it is such a sad thing to me that they are forced to entertain and carry tourists around for most of their life. Elephant volunteer programs help educate tourists about these gentle giants, in hopes that one day there will be more in the wild than in captivity.