Elephants Freak Out at ENP

In this video Mintra, from Elephant Nature Park freaks out when she hits the river! Something must have spooked her and she spent about 5 minutes trumpeting her heart out screaming for anyone and everyone around her to 'back off!' She was scared first, then pissed off that she got scared in the first place!

...These girls are really just a bunch of drama queens...

I was watching this further up the river and was lucky to have one of my volunteers, Liz, ready with her camera for the action. Great catch Liz and thanks for sharing the video footage!

Road of Resistance, Burma documentary

Gross human rights abuses by the Burmese government have prompted the outflow of hundreds, thousands of refugees to Thailand. Burma also exploits more child soldiers in its on-going internal conflict than any other country in the world, with an estimated 75,000 children-in-arms right now.

I have seen first-hand victims including elderly, children, ex-child soldiers, fleeing this persecution and I know that after 60 years of little to no change for these innocents it's time for all of us to do more.

The situation in Burma has become an obsession of mine. I know that most of you reading this right now are thousands of miles away, but even from afar we can do our part to help. When I'm not working in camps along the Thai/Burmese border, I do weekly documentary viewings and hold educational group discussions with every single one of my volunteer groups (regardless if they are directly or indirectly working with Burmese people.) It's a small task for me, but I can honestly say I have educated hundreds of young minds about the plight of the Burmese people, and it is my hope that maybe 1 person out of a 100 will be inspired to take action in the near future.

This is the most recent documentary I've started showing my volunteers, and now you can view it online for free! So please, spend the next 45 minutes being moved, and hopefully moved to action!

The Road « Road of Resistance

"In the summer of 2006, four friends from San Diego, California set out on a mission to expose the atrocities being done to the people of Burma, more specifically, the Karen people – one of the country’s largest ethnic groups. Burma has quietly been host to the world’s longest running civil war – waged between the country’s military dictatorship and detractors from the regime.

Burma is a closed country known for strong penalties including imprisonment for people found inside its borders without the proper documentation. However, they knew that in order to capture the story they needed, they would have to sneak across the border through Thailand. With backpacks filled with borrowed film equipment they set out without a clue of how they would break inside a countryside filled with landmines, Burmese soldiers, and wet season torrential weather. They didn’t know what they would find, or if anyone would listen to their story when they returned."

-- Road of Resistance: A Journey into Burma's War-Torn Karen State.

Inspired to do more? Start here:

FREE BURMA RANGERS

BURMA CAMPAIGN UK

US CAMPAIGN FOR BURMA

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Ban Lao: Building classrooms in Thai villages

Saturday, June 11, was my 26th birthday and I celebrated it in pain...I wish I could say I aged gracefully, but of course God, Buddha, Allah and Baba bless each threw me a curve ball this year.

I had a new group of volunteers coming to work for Elephant Nature Park, fresh from America. We were leaving the park to go to a remote village for a construction project and as I was grabbing my backpack to load up the minivans something in my right shoulder snapped, directly behind the shoulder blade. It all happened so fast! As soon as I heard the pop I dropped to the ground in shock. I couldn't feel any pain, but I had absolutely no movement in my right arm.

It took nearly an hour for me to be able to move my arm again, and with it came the wrenching pain. I felt so nauseous I wasn't sure if I would vomit or pass out first! Luckily, neither came and friends managed to locate two traveling paramedics at the park (how convenient!)

While I couldn't lift or hold anything I was at least able to rotate my arm. The pain was blinding, produced stars behind my eyelids, but I was grateful to be able to feel it move at all. The paramedics told me it may only be muscular, considering my history of pain with this shoulder. I think the years of heavy construction projects and over-exertion with climbing and white water rafting have started to take their toll on my body.

I decided to suck it up, took a Vicadin (or 2) and trucked on with my group to the jungle to start our construction project. I couldn't lift or move any muscles in my right shoulder, so I spent the better part of the week in a self-made shoulder sling looking pretty sorry for myself. Now (one week later) I can move my arm, and while the pain is still there every day it lessens a little and my shoulder regains some strength.

Last night we came into Chiang Mai city for a weekend break and I went to the hospital for an x-ray; everything checked out OK, so no bone damage. The doctors think it might be more than muscular, maybe a torn tendon or ligament after all, so next week I'll have an MRI if it still doesn't get better.

On a lighter subject, despite the pain we had a fantastic week in the village. Ban Lao is a rural Thai village high up in the mountains, nearly a 1.5 hour's drive away from the city. The kids here are mostly Thai, with a small mix of local Hmong minority hill tribe children. We lived on the school grounds and fashioned a cozy home in one of the classrooms. Thin mattresses, mosquito nets and a small pillow each was more than enough luxury! We shared squat toilets and bucket showers with the kids who were boarding at the school, and after only a few days we molded ourselves within the community.

Our mission was to start the construction of a classroom. The school desperately needed more classrooms built since the teachers were struggling to find space for the 150+ students studying there, mixed primary and secondary levels.

The kids were incredibly well disciplined, a common feature in village schools far removed from the cities. Every morning they started their day with cleaning chores around the school grounds including: scrubbing toilets, emptying trash bins, sweeping, and refilling communal drinking water jugs. They also sang the National and Royal Family anthems, and performed 'wai' ceremonies to each other and the main Buddha image on the school grounds. This ceremony involves greeting your classmates formally (with hellos in Thai "sawatdee" and a formal bow of the head with hands raised in prayer-like fashion); this as well as paying respect to the main Buddha image and chanting in unison asking for prosperity and protection.

The kids who boarded at the school were Hmong children from nearby villages who lived on the school grounds since the commutes to their villages were too far to be done daily. Normally they spend the week at the school, supervised by teachers who live on-site, and travel home during the weekends for family time. The kids really look after each other, with the older kids being responsible for the cooking, cleaning and feeding of the younger kids each evening. They rotated chores amongst themselves and never slacked once.

Something incredible happened our second night there. I recognized one of the kids running around the school! A few years ago I helped construct water tanks for a Hmong village located the next mountain over, and we spent a lot of time playing with the local kids while their parents were away working in the fields and plantations.

These same kids were now boarding at Ban Lao, and some of them recognized me too! I searched my laptop, hunted through my old photos and showed them pictures we had taken during that project. We had laughs all around about how fortunate we were to find each other again! This was also the moment my group was invited into their tight-knit world with open arms and blind trust. From that day on, the children and our volunteers were inseparable.

(pictured: classroom foundation before and after)

With only a week, we had a big task ahead of us. We had to start the foundation for the classroom, knowing that the next group of volunteers coming through would finish the construction of walls and a roof. We had to dig 10 holes (each 80 cm deep), install heavy concrete pillars, build a frame to make sure the pillars lined up straight and evenly, and mix enough concrete manually to fill all the holes and stabilize the structure.

During our free time we taught English to the school kids; played games (soccer is the sport of choice in this village!); chatted with the local monk learning more about the religion and their daily habits; and took the time every day to enjoy the sunsets lying low in the mountains and the mysterious foggy nature of the jungle after fresh rains.

We also visited a 'miang' farmer's shop and sampled some of the local product. Chewing 'miang' has been a recreational habit in Thailand for centuries, and it's a mix of pickled tea leaves and tobacco that's chewed, spat and followed with swirls of water to bring the flavor out. Along with betel nut chewing, it's addictive in its nature and a staple of the older Thai generation from rural villages like this one.

The kids had something to teach us too during our stay. Jack, our volunteer coordinator and good friend, decided to help me teach a Thai language class to the volunteers. The kids crowded around and helped our volunteers with pronunciation, by far the most difficult challenge for our foreign tongues!

Click here to watch a video of Jack teaching us Thai language...

A Real Thai Ghost Haunting

If you read my last post, you know I spent last week building a road in the jungle. What I didn't put in that post was the story of our group being haunted...

First, a little background story to set the mood...Elephant Jungle (the name of that particular project, check it out on Facebook) has been in place via Elephant Nature Park for a couple years already, but only recently has development occurred on the property.

P'Pom has been working with ENP since the very beginning of its foundation (over a decade now) and a few nights ago she told me the story of the first time she ever visited the property. The night before her first visit, one of her staff told her he dreamed about a house in the jungle with a red roof. He wasn't sure where or what it was, but Pom was involved in his dream somehow and he felt he was supposed to warn her of something.

The next day she visited the property and asked another staff member to find the spirit house associated with the hut. Thai Buddhist belief dictates that every building or occupied land must have a spirit house (pictured here) to appease and provide housing for any spirits who lived on the land or space before you moved in. Thai people must make daily offerings of food, flowers, sweets and incense to the spirit house, thanking the local spirits for their generosity, protection and prosperity.

Pom's staff came from the forest saying the spirit house had been neglected, but it was easily spotted with its red roof. P'Pom felt the chill of her staff's warning down her spine, and to this day she worries every time she visits the property that some bad omen may fall on her.

Since then, a Burmese family has moved onto the property, working for ENP to protect the land and more importantly to make daily offerings to the spirit house. This family has surrounded themselves with dogs and cats for extra protection because they feel ghosts wander freely around the land at night. Sometimes the ghosts even take on human form to communicate their needs.

One story goes back to my time at the property 2 years ago. Jack and Chom were our construction leaders when we first started working on the road. Chom is ethnic Karen, and most of his people are Christian. Jack is a practicing Buddhist, so he was in charge of the offerings to the spirit house. Because he heard the land was haunted, he made very special offerings of food. One day two women came to visit Chom in the afternoon while our group was swimming in the river. The women had long beautiful hair and spoke with a strange accent. They thanked Chom for the delicious food they had yesterday, asked for a little less garlic next time and then walked off without another word.

Chom asked Jack if he had fed anyone garlic, and Jack admitted that he made a special dish of garlic chicken last night...but that dish was reserved for the spirit house only. Chom, normally a non-believer, was adamant he had been visited by local ghosts who have been around for a very long time.

The Burmese family that recently moved onto the property has had many strange experiences with noises and shapes appearing at random, and they associate a lot of bad luck with the unhappy ghosts on the land. While our group was there last week the local construction worker, Inge, woke up one morning feeling a force pulling his leg and dragging the blanket off his bed. (Sound a little paranormal familiar? I can 100% guarantee this Burmese worker has never seen the movie!)

And now, our story. A few days ago none of us had been told anything of the ghosts, with good reason too considering that Thai people think you're inviting bad omens by merely speaking of them. These previous stories only came out the last day, upon our departure from the project, as the local staff made sense of our strange experiences.

Every day last week, our volunteers had strange and violent dreams usually involving loved ones back home. Over breakfast each morning we would take turns sharing the details of our dreams, and we never thought more of it. On the second to last day I had a dream that one of my co-workers was trying to kill me, and the dream felt alien to me...like it wasn't coming from my sub-conscious, but being forced from another. When I talked it out with my group, we realized that all of our dreams had one theme in common: the feeling of waking up, wanting to take our revenge.

Another night one of my students woke up to the sound of my voice outside her tent. She saw me pressed against the net of her tent, and I was speaking my name over and over again. When she opened the zip of her tent I was already gone. The next morning she asked what I was doing last night, and I told her not once did I wake up or leave my tent...unless I was sleep-walking and possessed, there is no way I crouched to her tent in the middle of the night.

The very last night, I had a private haunting. My group was inside the main hut playing cards and singing songs, and I was tucked in my tent on the outside balcony trying to fall asleep. As I started to drift to sleep, I heard soft chanting coming from the front of my tent from the direction of the forest. I know it was chanting, positive that it was, since the sounds of monks chanting in their Pali language is a very distinct sound. I asked my group if they heard anything, and two girls tried to assure me it was just them singing inside the hut. I pressed my ear to the walls of my tent, and the sounds of chanting got louder and louder. I freaked out! I was the only one that could hear the monks, and knew what I was hearing something impossible since there were no people, monks or temples anywhere near our property.

The locals shared their stories and told us they think an old village once existed here since there are so many ghosts visiting in so many different forms. This land is dangerously close to the Burmese border, and 700 years ago during the height of the Lanna period, this part of Northern Thailand was regularly invaded by Burmese kings. When the Burmese invaded they were notoriously violent, and burning villages to the ground would have been common practice. Maybe that's what happened here...maybe not. One thing for sure is that I'm damn certain I lived in a haunted house last week.

Elephant Jungle, Build a Road!

Our volunteering escapades with Elephant Nature Park have amplified this past week! We took our 13 volunteers to ENP's new private property with the important tasks of building the road up there and tree planting to reforest the once heavily logged area.

The property will one day be a second sanctuary for rescued elephants, and we hope to make it a jungle paradise for them, ripe with sweet fruits and tasty native trees the elephants will someday feast on!

The biggest mission for this project is construction of a road. Right now the only way in and out of the property is a mud track, and in the rainy season only 4 wheel drive trucks can make it through since the road actually washes away in big chunks. 2 years ago we started this project, and now I have returned to the same project, the same road and all the same challenges!

I have led volunteer groups through the construction of over 4 road culverts (water filtration systems designed to limit road erosion) on that property now, putting in over 100 man hours and shedding buckets of sweat and ripped callouses into every batch of hand-made concrete! The work is so hard: physically demanding; the heat and mosquito infested jungle can make you feel like you are losing your mind; and on top of that we deal with the strain of sharing an accommodation with 16 people (and all sorts of poisonous wildlife) with electricity for only 4 hours each day and only 1 cold bucket shower....that's right, just take a second to imagine that... Yet, at the end of the day when you get the job done and you survive the elements, you feel indestructible!





Our accommodation is remote, simple, bare, but beautiful. While my volunteers tend to struggle without electricity and heated showers, I feel right at home here. I skipped the line for the shower nearly every day, choosing instead to bathe in the river just down the hill from our hut.

The poisonous wildlife made life exciting, especially the night one of my volunteers nearly stepped on a poisonous centipede. (Imagine a centipede with fiery orange colored legs, the length of a bookmark!) Even more terrifying was the fact that this centipede was crawling its way up the stairs into our living quarters...*shudder*

Please note: this particular species of centipede in Thailand is toxic enough to kill small dogs and can seriously incapacitate adults for several days. The Thai way of handling these critters is to scream your bloody head off, jump around frantically to avoid their speedy fast mad-driven crawling, and then cut their heads off with sharp tools. This we did with great relief.


(pictured here: our jungle hut accommodation; and my private tent on the balcony)

We also put our hands in the construction of a super-adobe mud-house. A first for me! This house will eventually be an information center for the project and local forest, and we're attempting to build it with all natural and recycled materials: mud house, thatch roofs, recycled glass windows and tires for structural stability, and a sticky tapioca mixture for natural glue.



The tree planting was hard work since the sun beat down on us nearly every day, but the end result will be great! In a couple years these young trees will up be up and blooming, and forest life will eventually rejuvenate itself.

Sao Yai, The Rescued Elephant

Sometimes the job is just the job. Sometimes the job is your life. I'm not sure which category I fall into. More and more it feels like my personal life is slipping away from me, and I can't differentiate between job satisfaction and personal achievement.

Maybe this isn't such a terrible thing, considering that yesterday I got to witness a miracle.

I've been at the Elephant Nature Park this week with a group of 13 volunteers from the USA and Canada. The last time I led a project here was nearly 2 years ago to the day. I cried heartily when I left last time, because I was bound for New Zealand and I wasn't sure if or when I would be coming back. The day I turned up at the park again it felt like coming home; my best friends welcomed me, not too much had changed and I fell back easily into my old routine.

We've been working incredibly hard: cutting enough corn to feed 35 elephants; shoveling poop from shelters spread out all over the property; assisting with the veterinary care for elephants that are sick and injured; handling tons (literally 3-4 tons daily) of pumpkin and watermelon to be washed, cut and fed to the elephants; and handling the daily maintenance/repairs required around the park (i.e. fencing, planting trees, repairing shelters.)

Earlier this week Lek (the founder) gave us some incredible news. She, with the help of donations and foreign sponsors, was able to buy and rescue another elephant from a neighboring trekking camp. This elephant, Sao Yai, is precious to Lek since she had temporarily taken care of her nearly a decade ago. Back then, Lek did not have the land or money to be able to buy Sao Yai, so this was a great personal triumph for Lek on many levels.

Since Lek last treated her, Sao Yai has been living her life locked in a camp where elephants are subjected to beatings and heavy tourists clamoring onto their backs, each of them suffering years of abusive riding. She has had her babies stolen from her, and she has worked day in and day out for her owner and handlers to make a meager living. For Sao Yai now, all of this was about to end...forever.

Thursday morning we finished our chores (you guessed it, shoveling poop!) and hitched a ride to the elephant camp where Sao Yai was waiting for us. She was freed from her foot chains, fed a batch of freshly chopped bananas, and eagerly welcomed by all of us. Her handler (mahout) led her out the front gate, onto the foot path towards the Park, and we started walking together.

We walked with her for 2 hours, slow and steady, up the road to the Park and encouraged her all the way with sweet bananas and water poured directly from our water bottles into her soft-tipped trunk.

The moment we turned off the main road, and finally set foot on ENP property a cheer erupted from every one of us as we realized that never again, will she suffer at the hands of man. One more elephant life saved and spared!

We bathed her and led her gently to Jokia and Mae Perm. These elephants were two of Lek's first rescues, and old friends of Sao Yai. After decades apart, it was obvious that after a few gentle sniffs and trumpets the small pack welcomed her back and remembered her intimately.

It's true, an elephant never forgets.

She's only been at the park for less than 24 hours now, so we'll have to watch her carefully and see how she's received by other members in the herd. Our hopes are high that she will be welcomed warmly, and adopt a new family herd of her own to live out the rest of her happy days as a beautiful, strong and healthy elephant.

It was such an honor to be a part of this experience, and I will cherish the memory always.