Street sweeping (on the look out for Bangkok's non-existent eles)
What's an ele team to do? Our land requests have been submitted and are sitting on someone's desk, somewhere while the wheels of Government grind around them, we've GPS'd and counted several trees and jumped through the flaming hoops thus far required; the Anantara greenification is now an Environmental Management System and the solar lights are trialled in the elephant camp, our tractor now runs on old kitchen fat; the plans for the new, improved, three day mahout training course are not set in stone but are at least writ in jelly (and when did you ever get more from me?) and the elephants, of course, rule everything still with their unfillable stomachs and guest charming eyes.
We find ourselves sitting at if not a loose end, on a manageable plateau of fifty e-mails a night, thirteen mahout problems a day and, unfortunately, fewer guests than we could reasonably expect - what's an ele team to do?
Well, we accept invitations, that's what we do - the other week a seminar on introducing elephant camp standards and a chance to visit the work we are sponsoring in Lampang, this week a glittering invitation to put on our city shoes and head to Bangkok to attend a Thai Elephant Conservation Centre press conference and, more importantly for us, talk about the Thai Elephant Assisted Therapy programme for Autistic kids and how we go about starting our help for that.
Knowing nothing (yet) about Autism or therapy, it is going to be our job to bring (and pay for thanks to the King's Cup Elephant Polo Auction 2009) elephants off the streets to be trained to be therapists - or as K. Manoonsak put it for the gathered news hounds, if my Thai is good enough, "we already have elephant doctors, now we'll have the world's first doctor elephants" - though it is trickier in Thai as the phrase, mor chang (หมอช้าง), is the same for both so it may not have been a joke at all.
Now, as I may have mentioned before, the plight of the street eles has been getting some attention from on high and all the Government departments involved have been launching initiatives to solve the problem - something was obviously being done as the mahout telegraph was awash with rumours, some said all the street elephants had gone back to Surin, some said to amusement parks on the outskirts of Bangkok at one point the best information I could get was that they were all in a field, without their owners or mahouts, somewhere next to the big bus station and being fed by donations from local people.
So, what was the truth? In order to find out we went, armed with Lung Lord, a mobile phone, a driver who could contain himself when it came to our crazy requests, an undercover official friend from the Elephant Rescue team, a few vets an Elephant Camp Manager and myself as ballast we hit the mean streets to find out.
First we checked the traditional campsites, the places Lung Lord knew from his days on the streets or that we had been before - no dice, no eles, no mahouts - a few phone calls established that the usual suspects had, indeed, been hounded out of Bangkok and were on the run down in Pattaya and Prachuab Khiri Khan; no time, this trip, to go after them - this is going to be harder than we thought.
A few more phone calls and we begin to zone in on a campsite, but just as we're pulling up, before we get out, city officials arrive (coincidentally) to perform a raid - how does this go? Fines? Arrest? Confiscation? What is the new policy? We see dart guns, flashing lights and I.D. cards but we have to move on before either the officials or the mahouts see us - our work amongst the street mahouts depends on us not being connected with the authorities. Our bemused driver, having driven for hours to find the campsite is told to floor it, get us outta here.
Following the next lead, we speed out to the next area only to spot two unattended eles under a large flyover, we stop and have a look, take photos - our first two Bangkok eles of the day - but there are no mahouts nearby and an elephant in tallish grass next to a big road can only tell a little of their own story.
...on we drive until we spot another elephant and, this time, what looks like a mahout truck and a campsite...
...we begin piece the story together, campsites in the city are being raided often, those that have chosen to stay on have had to move to the outskirts - this means better grass but, as they still work the same inner city beat each night, either a long walk or a truck into town - what can they say? Diesel's expensive so a walk it is.
...the vets inspect, the ele-detectives put the story together - I take photos...
...on the way back into town we come across one of the elephants from the first campsite, unarrested but fined, annoyed but treating it as an occupational hazard and he fills in the final pieces of the puzzle for us...
In summary; faced with a tide of conflicting reports from different quarters (or eighteenths given the size of the tide), with at least five different initiatives working concurrently but not necessarily in tandem we went to seek the truth on the streets and, not knowing official policy, here is what we found...
...the elephants have had their campsites moved out of the city centre where the grass and habitat is better but as there is not yet any disincentive to work nights in town the walk back in is longer - extending their working night by a couple of hours (they still have to stay in town eight to ten hours a night to make the money) or drive into town (which also means the elephant has to work longer hours to pay for fuel). When a campsite is found it is officially raided, arrests and confiscations aren't made but substantial fines are levied, again meaning the elephant has to work longer to make this life worthwhile for the mahout.
On reflection - and despite this not being, I suspect, official policy - I feel this is a positive development, the fact that fewer mahouts are willing to try to make a living this way means that, although those elephants that stay have to work harder, the pitfalls must be beginning to outweigh the pure financial benefit.
Now to keep this effort up (perhaps easier as it is cheaper to enforce than the previous 'arrests and confiscations' policies which require trucks, fodder, DNA tests etc.), start a similar effort in other towns and perhaps make a disincentive from being in the town centre...
...oh, and give me more land so I can rent more elephants giving more mahouts and elephants a new life.
We find ourselves sitting at if not a loose end, on a manageable plateau of fifty e-mails a night, thirteen mahout problems a day and, unfortunately, fewer guests than we could reasonably expect - what's an ele team to do?
Well, we accept invitations, that's what we do - the other week a seminar on introducing elephant camp standards and a chance to visit the work we are sponsoring in Lampang, this week a glittering invitation to put on our city shoes and head to Bangkok to attend a Thai Elephant Conservation Centre press conference and, more importantly for us, talk about the Thai Elephant Assisted Therapy programme for Autistic kids and how we go about starting our help for that.
Knowing nothing (yet) about Autism or therapy, it is going to be our job to bring (and pay for thanks to the King's Cup Elephant Polo Auction 2009) elephants off the streets to be trained to be therapists - or as K. Manoonsak put it for the gathered news hounds, if my Thai is good enough, "we already have elephant doctors, now we'll have the world's first doctor elephants" - though it is trickier in Thai as the phrase, mor chang (หมอช้าง), is the same for both so it may not have been a joke at all.
Now, as I may have mentioned before, the plight of the street eles has been getting some attention from on high and all the Government departments involved have been launching initiatives to solve the problem - something was obviously being done as the mahout telegraph was awash with rumours, some said all the street elephants had gone back to Surin, some said to amusement parks on the outskirts of Bangkok at one point the best information I could get was that they were all in a field, without their owners or mahouts, somewhere next to the big bus station and being fed by donations from local people.
So, what was the truth? In order to find out we went, armed with Lung Lord, a mobile phone, a driver who could contain himself when it came to our crazy requests, an undercover official friend from the Elephant Rescue team, a few vets an Elephant Camp Manager and myself as ballast we hit the mean streets to find out.
First we checked the traditional campsites, the places Lung Lord knew from his days on the streets or that we had been before - no dice, no eles, no mahouts - a few phone calls established that the usual suspects had, indeed, been hounded out of Bangkok and were on the run down in Pattaya and Prachuab Khiri Khan; no time, this trip, to go after them - this is going to be harder than we thought.
A few more phone calls and we begin to zone in on a campsite, but just as we're pulling up, before we get out, city officials arrive (coincidentally) to perform a raid - how does this go? Fines? Arrest? Confiscation? What is the new policy? We see dart guns, flashing lights and I.D. cards but we have to move on before either the officials or the mahouts see us - our work amongst the street mahouts depends on us not being connected with the authorities. Our bemused driver, having driven for hours to find the campsite is told to floor it, get us outta here.
Following the next lead, we speed out to the next area only to spot two unattended eles under a large flyover, we stop and have a look, take photos - our first two Bangkok eles of the day - but there are no mahouts nearby and an elephant in tallish grass next to a big road can only tell a little of their own story.
...on we drive until we spot another elephant and, this time, what looks like a mahout truck and a campsite...
...we begin piece the story together, campsites in the city are being raided often, those that have chosen to stay on have had to move to the outskirts - this means better grass but, as they still work the same inner city beat each night, either a long walk or a truck into town - what can they say? Diesel's expensive so a walk it is.
...the vets inspect, the ele-detectives put the story together - I take photos...
...on the way back into town we come across one of the elephants from the first campsite, unarrested but fined, annoyed but treating it as an occupational hazard and he fills in the final pieces of the puzzle for us...
In summary; faced with a tide of conflicting reports from different quarters (or eighteenths given the size of the tide), with at least five different initiatives working concurrently but not necessarily in tandem we went to seek the truth on the streets and, not knowing official policy, here is what we found...
...the elephants have had their campsites moved out of the city centre where the grass and habitat is better but as there is not yet any disincentive to work nights in town the walk back in is longer - extending their working night by a couple of hours (they still have to stay in town eight to ten hours a night to make the money) or drive into town (which also means the elephant has to work longer hours to pay for fuel). When a campsite is found it is officially raided, arrests and confiscations aren't made but substantial fines are levied, again meaning the elephant has to work longer to make this life worthwhile for the mahout.
On reflection - and despite this not being, I suspect, official policy - I feel this is a positive development, the fact that fewer mahouts are willing to try to make a living this way means that, although those elephants that stay have to work harder, the pitfalls must be beginning to outweigh the pure financial benefit.
Now to keep this effort up (perhaps easier as it is cheaper to enforce than the previous 'arrests and confiscations' policies which require trucks, fodder, DNA tests etc.), start a similar effort in other towns and perhaps make a disincentive from being in the town centre...
...oh, and give me more land so I can rent more elephants giving more mahouts and elephants a new life.
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