Clean clothes for the Autistic Ele Kids.
The GPS chip in my poor old phone is worn out, the Bluetooth chip has provided patchy e-mails from jungle corners and bare hotel rooms, in these days of easy communication there's no excuse for having been out of touch and said blue teeth have even provided the Youtube site with a couple of videos...
...and yet silence on these pages, bet you've been wondering what I'm up to? Well, for some reason the full moon in late November causes elephant folks to pack their trunks and travel (the full moon always drives us a little crazy) as we go out and test the water, meeting other ele folks and eles along the way.
First stop on our trip was perhaps the most important, we had to drop off a present to one of my favourite projects, Chiang Mai University and K. Prasop's programme to use elephants as therapists for Austistic kids - the programme has reached a level whereby they are ready to go regularly residential at the Elephant and Mahout Training College in Lampang.
Well the mahout school is fired up to receive trainee proffessional mahouts, the odd Western guest and tribes of foreign students but hardly too many kids and their well-to-do parents - the mahouts' wives have been doing the laundry there for years in the most traditional manner possible and, to save their hands from turning prune-like and arthritic, we felt they could do with an heavy duty washing machine.
So we dug into the funds raised at last year's King's Cup Elephant Polo and bought them a shiny new machine - if no-one else is, we hope the mahouts will be grateful for their newly silky handed wives!
...sorry the picture isn't more exciting, I hope to provide before and after photos of the horny handed but for now you'll have to make do with K. Prasop in his jogging kit and K. Tu - Chief Elephant Coordinator at the School - in her pre-work clothes and what, I assure you, is a full box of washing machine.
It was a chilly morning and we had promises to keep, some 1,500 km to go before I (the driver at least) slept.
...and yet silence on these pages, bet you've been wondering what I'm up to? Well, for some reason the full moon in late November causes elephant folks to pack their trunks and travel (the full moon always drives us a little crazy) as we go out and test the water, meeting other ele folks and eles along the way.
First stop on our trip was perhaps the most important, we had to drop off a present to one of my favourite projects, Chiang Mai University and K. Prasop's programme to use elephants as therapists for Austistic kids - the programme has reached a level whereby they are ready to go regularly residential at the Elephant and Mahout Training College in Lampang.
Well the mahout school is fired up to receive trainee proffessional mahouts, the odd Western guest and tribes of foreign students but hardly too many kids and their well-to-do parents - the mahouts' wives have been doing the laundry there for years in the most traditional manner possible and, to save their hands from turning prune-like and arthritic, we felt they could do with an heavy duty washing machine.
So we dug into the funds raised at last year's King's Cup Elephant Polo and bought them a shiny new machine - if no-one else is, we hope the mahouts will be grateful for their newly silky handed wives!
...sorry the picture isn't more exciting, I hope to provide before and after photos of the horny handed but for now you'll have to make do with K. Prasop in his jogging kit and K. Tu - Chief Elephant Coordinator at the School - in her pre-work clothes and what, I assure you, is a full box of washing machine.
It was a chilly morning and we had promises to keep, some 1,500 km to go before I (the driver at least) slept.
Comments