Helping the elephants

Photo: Contributed

Holly Wankin is pictured with an elephant. The Kelowna resident has volunteered at numerous elephant sanctuaries.

Holly Wanlin thinks about elephants often, especially on World Elephant Day, Aug. 12.

Wanlin, owner of Shawanda Rocks Crystals and Gems Wellness Centre in Kelowna, volunteered for two weeks at an elephant sanctuary at Surin, a small Thai village near the Cambodian border. She also volunteered at elephant sanctuaries in Northern Thailand, and in India.

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By Holly Wanlin

There was an attempt to pull elephants out of tourism, so the mahouts (elephant rider, trainer, or keeper) were built a house, the elephants a structure. The queen of Thailand had outlawed logging to gain incentives for the mahouts to bring their elephants here where the tourists would pay them to help with their elephants. The queen also gave them a monthly subsidy to develop this program.

I was assigned an elephant named Kumsun, a 33-year-old pregnant grandma. I walked her to the river and bathed her three times a week.

I became quite attached to my elephant and planned to return the following year for the birth of the baby.

We also cut bamboo stalks and cleared fields for replanting. We cleaned up elephant dung and made sure Kumsun had fresh water.

The mahout was always present and never spoke English. The program paid him a portion of the proceeds and the volunteers were placed in a guesthouse and lived communally with shared rooms and bathrooms. All meals and transportation were provided for.

The elephants were super friendly and safe. No riding is permitted except by the mahout who rides bareback.

As a group, we helped with other jobs in the village as time permitted. We painted the tombstones at the elephant cemetery and helped women pick chili crops, so they could get them to market. We saw how elephant poo can be made into paper and had a chance to make some at a small factory.

My trip was booked for the following year only to find that the elephants were taken from Surin by their mahouts and trucked without warning back to Phuket where they could earn more money giving rides to tourists, which is extremely harmful to the elephants.

Long days carrying heavy loads and inadequate nutrition leads to many problems.

I never saw Kumsun again.

Instead, I flew to Chiang Mai where I was trucked high into the mountains where 12 camps consisting of more than 70 elephants were being developed. The elephants are completely free to roam here.

Some mahouts are still around but most surrendered their elephants because they are expensive to keep and their owners fell into hard times.

This was an amazing experience.

The elephants approached and looking for sugar cane or bamboo would be motivated to just hang around while we worked. We packed sand from the river chain gang style to build cement foundations for elephant shelters.

There were numerous mud holes where the elephants came together for mud baths. The camps were a fair distance apart and accessed by 4x4 truck.

There is a vet centre and regular check-ups for all the elephants. The males were in separate groups from the females. The elephants loved Reiki, a form of energy medicine, and I always had a group following me around.

I have been goosed by and kissed by an elephant. I also learned some mahout language to speak to the elephants.

These camps are probably more developed now. Structures were being built for tourists to come in and work. I bathed in the river and slept on a simple mat on the floor.

In India, I worked for SOS at an elephant sanctuary in Agra. It was completely different. These elephants were traumatized by their life experience so we were only allowed to spend time with them unpenned when they were on walks with their trainers. They were in large enclosures and we prepared and weighed their daily food.

One elephant was completely blind and a few had killed their previous owners. We barely had any hands on. It was very hard work, painting structures and upkeep. We stayed in a gated compound for safety reasons and were transported 30 minutes each day to the sanctuary. The elephants were very well cared for and monitored closely. I also worked for the sloth bear rescue, the dancing bear. It was an amazing experience, although heartbreaking.

Big moral: never ride an elephant and never support a hotel where an elephant is their featured guest.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.