Shirley Francona for Kennebec7(#8)

Shirley Francona for Kennebec7(#8)

Elephants and Mahouts

(Part III)

Having reached the age of 39, Jokia the elephant had not lived a happy life.  She had been overworked in logging camps, beaten, forced to toil in chains on the forest hills where illegal loggers had no pity, despite the fact Jokia was obviously pregnant. Pulling heavy logs at the time, when Jokia finally gave birth, the mother turned to watch in anguish as her newborn rolled down a hill and died before Jokia was allowed to try to help. She was blinded in one eye by her mahout, when she then refused to work, and blinded in the other eye by her owner, who thought a totally blind elephant would be more submissive. He was wrong.

          Then along came Lek Chailert. Life changed for Jokia, the sad, brutalized and exploited Asian elephant.

          Lek knew better than to reason with the owner. A man who would treat an elephant the way Jokia had been treated, would not appreciate Lek’s ideas about the dignity, intelligence and sensitivity of elephants. She offered to buy the blind elephant. The owner demanded an unreasonable sum of money for the disfigured animal.

          Lek wouldn’t give up. She returned to the owner with higher offers. He stubbornly refused to relinquish Jokia. Lek prayed for an angel to come and save Jokia, and a few months later her prayers were answered. Amanda de Normanville of California, co-founder and co-director with husband Gary Soden of All for Elephants, came to the rescue with needed funds.

          "Jokia had been badly abused and was very uncomfortable with people when we first got her," remembers Amanda. The journey from the illegal logging site to the Elephant Nature Park would normally have taken about four hours in the truck, but this time it took twice as long.

          Lek’s team had to stop the truck every fifteen minutes to try to calm poor Jokia down. She was so distressed by the uncomfortable journey, compounded by her blindness, that she nearly destroyed the truck, kicking fiercely and butting her head against the sides. The humans had to walk with Jokia for the last three kilometers to the park.

                  

          At the Elephant Nature Park, there are no hooks. Elephants are not worked, and they do not perform circus tricks. Tourists do not ride them. They just get to behave as elephants. They choose their own family groups: mothers, adopted-mothers, aunties, big sisters, and friends.

         

          Mae Perm, the first elephant Lek rescued, swiftly became Jokia’s best friend. Jodi Thomas explained to me that Mae Perm seemed to serve as Jokia’s eyes. “I like to think,” Jodi smiled, “that Mae Perm is telling Jokia everything that’s going on right now.” We watched the two of them grazing together, communicating quietly. “You know, stuff like, ‘There’s some really nice grass in front of you, and all the dogs are way over by the observation deck, and I think that guy from Discovery Channel is filming us right now.”

         

          Most elephants walk with their trunks hanging before them, half coiled and just barely touching the ground. However, Jokia walks one of two ways: either her trunk is constantly out in front of her, poking the ground like a blind man’s cane, or it’s resting on Mae Perm’s back or grasping her tail, You frequently see them wandering the park’s grounds, rumbling to one another, Mae Perm leading Jokia around like children holding hands.

         

          I had several occasions to feed Jokia. She requires special care. Her trunk weaves back and forth as she smells for food and the people she knows make the food appear.  I grab a piece of food from the basket – maybe a quarter pumpkin or a whole unpeeled bananas – and guide it to the tip of Jokia’s trunk.

          Her trunk is covered in rough, dry, thick skin stippled with spiny hair. The heavy, warm meat tube of a trunk is filled with surprising strength and dexterity. The end of Jokia’s trunk curls over the food and my hand. She takes it and guides the food to her mouth. Knowing what I know, I am so pleased to be in service to this special elephant.

         

          When I bathed her in the river, I remember looking up at her as I scrubbed, staring at a face pockmarked with injuries sustained over a lifetime of abuse…and marveling at how happy she seemed.

Shirley Francona

Santa Fe, New Mexico

05-29-2010

Shirley Francona for Kennebec7 (#6)

Shirley Francona for Kennebec7 (#6)

Elephants & Mahouts

(Part 1)

A dashing young man here in Santa Fe by the name of Brandon Rucker, seven-years-old and the son of my financial manager Pearl, asks me about elephant stories every time he sees me. He saw me on TV with Mimi and Bop, the two elephants I helped save in Thailand. He saw Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park where I stayed for a week after Mimi and Bop found their sanctuary there.

          “When’s the movie coming?” he always asks me, referring of course to “The Earth Trembled,” Kennebec’s planned motion picture based on my adventures in Thailand with Mimi and Bop, my son Andrew, and of course, Mintra, who bears a remarkable similarity to Lek herself.

          Brandon reminds me of Raki, the little five-year-old boy who lives among the elephants at Lek’s Elephant Nature Park. His mother is Jodi Thomas, an American who helps Lek care for the more than thirty elephants who have found a safe haven there. Raki’s dad is Debu, a senior mahout from Burma. Their home has been constructed out in the field where the pachyderms routinely congregate, so Raki’s nearest neighbors are elephants! When I show my videos to Brandon he wants his mom to move with him to Thailand so he can live with elephants, too!

          Raki’s name is short for ‘Anurak,’ which means, “to conserve and protect nature.” Every day his mom takes visitors from all over the world into the meadow around their home, to introduce folks to the various elephants who have been rescued from abusive and unhealthy existences. Jodi knows every one of them intimately and can tell visitors all the latest gossip from the elephant community.

          During my relatively short time in Thailand, I have seen the good and the bad as far as mahouts are concerned. Elephants may live to about the age of 75, so some mahouts have been with the same elephant for as many as twenty-five years. Lek and Jodi have told me a lot more about elephants and their mahouts. Some of their stories are funny and others are unbearably sad. Later, I will give you examples of both.

          But first let me tell you about Mimi’s mahout, Maitre. He was a young Thai man about twenty-six when I met him on the trekking trail prior to all the chaos and drama erupting, when Mimi’s life was threatened, and when Mimi and I escaped into the jungle, and the Thai army started searching for me, and I ended up on worldwide TV. Maitre had been Mimi’s mahout for about seven years when I met them.

          From all that I have seen from Mimi’s behavior toward Maitre, despite his involvement in taking Bop away from her, she is fond of him. She may be wary because of what went down with her baby, but I think she’s giving Maitre a second chance to be her friend. Now they are all together at Lek’s Elephant Nature Park (Check it out at www.elephantnaturefoundation.org.).

          Maitre and all the younger mahouts who took part in the jungle elephant trek I was on, were under the control of a honcho by the name of Krit. He was a nasty old bird who made me buy Mimi for $10,000 or else he would have shot her in the head. That’s how Mimi became my elephant.

          Krit had drugged her baby and sold Bop to an animal show who tortured the baby as a part of their training. Before Krit and his thugs escaped with Bop, Mimi fought back and killed one of the mahouts. Threw his body against a tree!

          I was able to use my personal weapons that Krit could not have anticipated. I disarmed him and escaped into the jungle with Mimi. That led to adventures in survival with an American woman and an angry elephant. At the start they barely knew one another.  It wasn’t easy. My practical knowledge of elephants in the beginning was practically zero!

          Then Pierre, the scumbag owner of the trekking camp, accused me of elephant theft, which led to many of you seeing me on TV. You know, the Thai rangers pouring through the jungle, the helicopters—all that hullabaloo.

          Anyway, this is about my personal experience not only with an elephant, but a mahout, too. Maitre secretly followed Mimi’s and my trail through the jungle. He found us and helped us survive our ordeal.

          Maitre was basically a victim of the system, just the way Mimi had been. In Thailand elephants are not yet protected by law. They are regarded as livestock. Dirt poor, Maitre had been forced to do what the elephant’s owner required. Krit (with the knowledge of Pierre) had made a deal with illegal loggers. He supplied elephants to help remove logs from a supposedly protected forest. This was more than six months before I arrived on the scene. Thai rangers attacked the illegal loggers and a nighttime gun battle broke out. Both Maitre and Mimi were shot and wounded, but both escaped by slipping away down a river.

          By the time I arrived at the trekking camp from New Mexico, largely unaware of the depredations perpetrated against elephants by owners who force pregnant moms to work as loggers and babies to work in animal shows, Mimi and Maitre had pretty much recovered from their gun wounds and were back working as a trekking elephant and mahout.

[To be continued]

Peter Alexander with Lek Chailert (L) and Jodi Thomas at the Elephant Nature Park.

Shirley Francona

Santa Fe, New Mexico

05/21/2010