When I applied to Fulbright
Thailand, I had no legitimate connection to the country. Don’t tell my
scholarship advisor, but I believe half the reason why Thailand appealed to me
when other South East Asian countries didn’t was because the country itself is
shaped like an elephant (thus the title of this blog compilation). The culture
is sprinkled with symbolism for elephants- particularly in Buddhism.
Taken from Bali Sun Tours website. Note the mahout up from with the bull hook.
What most tourists don’t
know, what I didn’t know, is the absolute torture that elephants are subjected
to in tourism and logging industries in Thailand. If you make someone think
about it, it’s doubtful that they expect elephants to have a truly pleasant
time working in circuses or painting pictures but you don’t expect, or want, to
draw the connection from something so cute to an act so disgusting. In order
for that elephant to paint a picture or prance around at the circus, its spirit
is broken by being beaten, starved, chained, awake for days, and forced away
from its mother as a baby. The process of domesticating an elephant in order to
use it for tourism is an extremely brutal, disgusting process. The elephant
only consents to “perform” out of absolute terror: fear of being beaten or
stabbed by its mahout. The baskets that you see so many tourists nestled into
as they wobble back and forth up a mountain is slowly crippling an elephant that
isn’t built to hold that weight on that part of its body. One look at the
pictures advertising this “once in a lifetime experience” to tourists will
reveal a mahout perched on the head holding the hook, a weapon of choice that
is similar in shape to a fire poker, to the head of the elephant urging it to
continue when it has been walking tirelessly all day. The logging industry
wraps chains around elephants to haul enormous trees up the mountain side;
once again with the mahout atop poking it along with a knife, hook, or whip.
Taken from AlternativeWay.net.
A baby being "broken".
Elephants are revered in
temples but treated so poorly in reality. This is not exclusive to
Thailand but throughout South East
Asia. Luckily some people are starting
to take notice. Many trekking camps are converting to non-violent practices and
are getting rid of the baskets. There are sanctuaries in Thailand, Cambodia,
and Myanmar for rescued elephants.
I took the opportunity to
volunteer a week at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. It is
self-described as a rehabilitation park for handicapped and rescued elephants.
Their injuries are as devastating and varied as: mutilated feet from land
mines, broken legs from logging accidents, broken or displaced hips from forced
breeding, blindness from torture or years of camera flashes, and numerous
mental problems due to years of torture in logging or tourism.
Taken from Elephant Nature Park website.
Maedo enjoying the mud despite her ongoing injuries.
Arguably the park’s most
handicapped elephant, Maedo, has the most devastating story that I heard. She
was working in the logging industry which is constant labor hauling trees up
the mountain in steep, slippery terrain by a chain that digs into the elephants
skin with each pull. When the elephant isn’t going fast enough it gets stabbed by
the mahout’s hook. Maedo had an accident while logging and broke her ankle. It
never healed properly. The mahouts didn’t find her entirely useless: they
chained all four of her legs and led a bull to her to breed. Some interaction
between Maedo and the bull was poorly received: he raped her, beat her, and
stood guard for several days so that no one could get to her to help. Once they
were able to unchain her they found that she couldn’t even stand on her own as
her hip was dislocated and her spinal cord separated from her spine. They build
a wooden structure to hold up her limp body and bring her into the city to beg
for money on the streets. Luckily this is where the people at the Elephant
Nature Park found her and began the process of negotiating for her. Despite all
of this in her past, she is said to be the kindest elephant in the park, but it
breaks your heart to see her inch across the lawn, her hip dislocating every
step she takes.
This is the norm. No elephant
has a pleasant story any more. There are so few left in the wild and most that
are working are the most cruelty treated
animals I’ve ever seen. The camps that have started
to change their ways have done so only out of support of tourists. If you have
the special opportunity to visit this beautiful corner of the world and you
want to interact with these amazing creatures (as you should), do your research
and be sure you are supporting the right industry. Avoid the elephant paintings
and circuses, don’t ride in the baskets, don’t give money or food to begging
street elephants, don’t use your flash if you take a picture of an elephant,
and don’t go to any camp that still uses hooks, knives or anything violent on
the elephants in order to control them. The industry will not change so long as tourists are requesting these practices, if you express that you don't want that life for these elephants then you'll start to make a change. Elephants are fascinating animals for
who they are: let them be their happy selves, not who the mahout is forcing
them to be.
