I learned a lot on this trip from listening to Tim, his film crew, and Lek. We went to the Surin Elephant Buffet, where the streets are lined with tables of food, and 200 elephants come in and eat with their mahouts on their backs. Next, we went to the Surin Elephant Round Up. This is a show celebrating elephants, performed every year since 1960. Spent many days at the Elephant Nature Park working with Tim and Lek, learning about the elephants there. I went to two trekking camps, at Tim's suggestion, to observe the treatment of the elephants there. And I saw a street elephant late one night in Chiang Mai. After observing so many different domesticated elephants, I have learned the importance of educating the public about the truth behind the treatment of domesticated elephants in Thailand. Many times, when a tourist sees an elephant show, or rides an elephant at a trekking camp, they do not think about what it took to get the elephant to behave in such a way. These people need to learn that it is not natural for an elephant to play an instrument, stand on its head, or carry people on its back while walking through the jungle. To get the elephants to do these unnatural activities, they were abused. The standard training process for an Asian elephant in Thailand is first to separate it from its mother at about age three. This traumatizes the baby and the mother, making the baby more vulnerable to train. Next, the elephant is forced into a wooden cage called a crush box. The elephant will spend many days in the crush box, deprived of food, water, and sleep. During this period, the elephant is beaten each time it struggles. The point of this process is to break the elephant's spirit. The mahouts do not want the elephant do disobey him, so they make sure the elephant is so beaten that it will not even try. Then, the elephant is trained to do whatever work the mahout decides it will do. It might be trekking, logging, circus tricks, painting, or street begging. Each type of work is made possible by the endless abuse from the mahout, with a bull hook. The life of a domesticated Asian elephant in Thailand is not a good one. Many of the elephants will never know a life better than the one they have, because they were trained as babies, and they will be worked until their death. There is hope for some elephants, however. When people like Lek Chailert and Tim Gorski step in and devote their time to helping these beautiful creatures, their lives can change forever. Tim creates awareness about the abuse of elephants by filming these situations and exposing them to the public, while Lek aranges to purchase abused elephants in need from their mahouts, and provides a natural habitat for the elephants to live at her park. Together they have changed many lives of elephants, and will continue to.
