My first week in Elephant land!!!

ok, so where to begin with my elephant adventure so far.
it's been one week and one day and i've already had a chance to work with all our elephants (5 in total) as well as some great people whom i've already had to say some sad goodbyes to.....strange how close you can become in one week.
to start...the elephants...and their stories...
Somboon is 30 years old. she had been roaming the streets for several years and was hit by a speeding truck in 2006. the traffic collision caused her enough damage to leave her limping. Fortunately for her there were people that wanted to help but without the financial support of a lovely Australian woman called Joan Pearson, Somboon would never had made it to the Rescue Centre.
Somboon has pink patches with black flecks on her ears and around her head and is quite pretty...for an elephant...lucky she's a girl!!....she also has the most beautiful eyes with long lashes....very jealous of that!!
Somboon and Khan Kluay share an enclose and this is the only enclosure you are not allowed to enter as Khan Kluay is not a happy camper...given his life so far, i am not surprised either.
Khan Kluay was born in captivity at an elephant camp however the camp did not want to keep a baby boy as males are more difficult to control than females and therefore less saleable on the tourist market.
At one year old Khan Kluay was torn away from his mother (of which elephants stay with their mothers till they are about 6 years old) and put through the Phaajann ( this training entails him being pegged to the ground with the legs spread apart..to achieve this they tear the skin tender skin under his legs (where it joins the body) which is excruciating for an elephant of any age, they then starve the elephant for 3-4 days and do this over a period of a few weeks until the elephants spirit is broken. He was then forced to perform tricks and beg for food to make money from tourists on the city streets. Khan Kluay was found by Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WWFT) on the streets in Cha-Am and taken to the refuge. He is very small in comparison to the other elephants here and he has scars where his skin has been torn from the sharp picks during his training. He constantly sways from side to side which is his begging motion and it is so sad to watch him. once distracted by food he races around the enclosure to where you are throwing treats. he is quite dangerous and becomes distressed when there's too many people around...he has attacked a few people already who have not listened to the warnings about staying away from the fence line...their own fault really....and no-one was killed so don't get all humanitarian on me....one of us made him like he is!! needless to say I am very watchful when on duty with him....he's cute but hey...he's a friggin elephant!!!
Pai Lin is our 60+ year old female who came to live at WWFT in 2007 after spending much of her life on the city streets. She was in such poor condition when she arrived, underweight, dehydrated, respiratory condition and infections in her eyes and ears. With the love and care that volunteers and staff give she is quite a fat little chick now....
unfortunately Pai Lin has a deformed spine from where she had been carrying a heay seat with up to six tourists in it (see those elephants rides are just not worth it when you know how they are trained and how it leaves these poor elephants in the end...)..she is now so healthy that she has a little trot in her  step when you enter her enclosure, she is one of the elephants that we get up close and personal to...still shit scared but have figured her out....a little anyway...enough to get me by and stop my heart from racing when you see an elephant heading straight for you!!!...
She has the funniest face as her cheeks are very sunken and her skin looks about 3 times too big for her...her trunk is quite soft though and she like her hugs...just not when it's feeding time...then all she does is flick you away...generally in the vacinty of the electric fence....i think she enjoys the spark!!!We get to take Pai Lin for a walk everyday to her other enclosure that has a little pond in it...she goes for a nice dip in the water and sprays herself like mad...she loves to fart and shit as soon as she is in the water...one of the jobs here is cleaning the shit out of the pond in the 'poo boat'...now that is treat!!!
Bua is our next old girl at 65+ and she was taken from her mother when she was two years old and trained to become a logging elephant destroying her own habitat. She has never grown to full size due to the heavy work load she endured for most of her life. After she was too old to log (or too slow) she was then sold to the tourist market where she made to carry tourists on her back for many more years and then sold as a begging elephant to financially support her new owners. When she arrived at WWFT she was very thin and had so many sores that were infected that they thought she would never survive her first week here (amazingly enough these elephants are bought...the WWFT has to pay for these elephants to take care of them and they are never cheap as the money asked is to set up the Thai owner for life....)
Bua still has many sores over her body and most have no nerve endings so there is little hope that they will heal completely...it's really hard to be with her when the vet comes in to clean the areas as there is enough puss  to squirt a meter away...it's awful but lucky for her there is little pain in most of the sores except for her hind leg which is a huge opening.(they clean the sores using a spoon to get out all the mud and dirt....it's bizzare to watch). Lucky for Bua she has gained a lot of weight and is looking very very healthy besides the fact that there are several deep wounds on her.
She's quite slow and loves company...she is one of the elephants that we can feed directly and she loves to be fed into her mouth with that big sucking tongue...you have to careful she doesn't suck your hand up at the same time!!!...this is one of the elephants that i love being around....she so much fun...slower that Pai Lin and faster than our oldest girl June.
June is around 70 years old and is still very very thin. she only came to WWFT 6 months ago and is still very sick and weak. you can see her bones including her whole spine....when she is next to Bua (they share an enclosure) it is really obvious how thin she actually is. On Wednesday she collapsed some time during the night and was not able to get up herself...we waited for a crane for about 5 hours and once it arrived it was mayhem...trying to lift her after she had been down for so long was incredibly difficult...volunteers lifting her head and others helping to push her from the side...i hate to say it but the crane nearly came down on all of us....it took 3 attempts before we finally got her up and she then had to spend 2 days inside something that looks like a boat lift with a strap under her belly 'just in case'...
when we finally got her out to wonder she went straight to the forest and roamed around for about an hour...it was so good to see her up and about again....we are generally around the clock with her and someone needs to be with her at all times during the day.....she also doesn't have any teeth so her food has to be peeled and cut up and hand fed to her...it's again one of my favorite jobs...
Now for the work load....
we start at 6.30 am with a feed...banana trees...sometimes fruit hidden in tyres and thrown into the enclosure
7am we start the poo clean as well as the left over of the banana trees...huge mess to say the least
7.30 we do a water round which generally means filling up the water tanks after we've washed them out from the slime!
8.30 we have a special project...which equates to either doing a harvest (will explain that later), or putting piles of elephant poo or waste banana trees into the back of the tractor and taking it into the forest to dump (elephant poo is very good for growing mushrooms and we have a lot of mushrooms in our food!!!)
Harvest - we get driven in the back of ute (open style like you're a mexican) to a location and the Mahoots (thai elephant trainers) cut down the trees while us white folk pick them up on our shoulders and carry them to the back of the second ute...my first day we did this and had to do two loads...it was about 38 degrees and we were sweat soaked after 3 hours on heavy labour in the sun!!!...thank god they stopped at the river bed on the way home and we got to jump in (fully clothed) and swim around for 10 minutes....it made all that hard work worth it...and that was my first day!!! most harvest since then have been one truck load but the people are much less so they don't push it too much....thank god!! we harvest every 2nd day so there is no shortage of hard labouring here.
9am we have breakfast...which we make ourselves
10am we do another feed of banana trees
11am we do a water round and offer the elephants water from the hose...i like this job as well...it's fun watching them spraying themselves.
12pm lunch
1pm water round again
2pm feed time
2.15 another special project.....this could be rock picking, sweeping the paths, moving dirt piles....always something very physical
4pm feed time
5pm cleaning time.....actually you just clean all the time...there is not shortage of elephant poo!!!
and depending on the other duties you are allocated....like dog washing or kitchen duty or more elephant poo!!!

no time to talk about the people as yet but will post the experience and those that have touched my life very soon.....i am really living a bizarre little world at the moment....and loving every smelly, dirty second of it!!!

love to all and big smiles from my heart into yours
xxxx
P.S. will be on Skype for most of Xmas day so if you're around look at my previous post for my skype name cause i already forgot it...sorry....:))))