We transferred to the project sight today – a five hour bus ride, followed by a two hour ride in a smaller van. During the second leg of the trip we made a stop at Big C, a Walmart-like plaza, to pick up anything we may have felt we were missing. The common purchase for the group was water guns. I’ll get more into this later, but we will be celebrating Songkran, the Thai New Year at the end of the week. The water gun will prove to be extremely essential.
This program is much different than the reserve in Chiang Mai. We are in a village, staying with a mahout family in their ‘guest houses’. All the elephants here (and there are over 200) are privately owned. The main objective of the Surin Project is to end the domestication of Asian elephants. To do that one must understand why these people have them in the first place. It’s centuries old traditions and a very delicate situation for Alex, the project founder and coordinator. These animals are kept mainly on chains on the property of the mahout. My mahout family has two, a male and a female. They’re out back.
It bothered me to see these animals chained to a cement post. But, I understand they HAVE to be on chains. If you were to let 200 elephants free to roam in such a small area there would be twenty dead elephants the first day (not to mention the damage or destruction that could be caused to the village). I think it’s safe to say nobody wants that.
We were given our housing assignments and attended a welcoming ceremony headed by one of the mahout elders. In essence we were being prayed for and wished good luck. It was a wonderfully moving ceremony with ritual I can’t even begin to explain.
Tomorrow is a mystery so far. All I know at this point is breakfast is at 7.
A Fool Wanders, A Wise Man Travels 