The Great Elephant Escape
With a Paul Theroux-like
title, a stunning cover photo, and the usual meticulous design by Thailand’s
Silkworm Books, this small volume represents nothing short of an adventure
in courage and determination.
It starts here: One night in
the hills of Northern Thailand, two women talk late over a fire about the
fate of Thailand’s elephants. One woman is a Thai worker at the Elephant
Nature Park near Mae Taeng, and the other? Well, perhaps, not the most
likely candidate to get involved with elephants – a willowy blond fundraiser
by profession from the Netherlands, just ending a volunteer stint at the
Nature Park.
For this woman, Antoinette
van de Water, her experiences with the elephants have affected her deeply
and, somehow, it cannot end here. She’s smitten with the gentle giants and
immensely touched by their plight roaming Thailand’s mean streets and being
trekked to exhaustion and injury in the country’s camps. So that night, a
desire … a just-‘maybe-I-can-make-it-work’ plan was born: a project called
‘bring the elephant home.’
This delightful,
easy-reading book, The Great Elephant Escape, is the story of that
dream made real. As we live the adventure with Antoinette, we learn that
bringing elephants home to their rightful place in a natural habitat is not
so easy.
There’s the issue of poverty
in Isaan which forces the mahouts to keep elephants in the first place, and
then to leave their homes and march them to city centers to beg for food
with a degrading plastic bag tied to their tails as a reflector. Elephants
in the city are not allowed – Thailand’s 2003 law says so. But like so many
other laws in this country, they are made not so much to be broken but, more
accurately, to remain ignored and unenforced.
Elephants making their own
living is, unfortunately, the least of it. We learn how a baby elephant is
‘trained’ by being locked in a small cage in which it cannot move around,
with its front legs bound together. Villagers beat and poke at it; it goes
hungry and thirsty. All the while, the mahout ingratiates himself as the
elephant’s protector, bringing it food occasionally. This cruelty goes on
for about a week, until the young elephant’s will and spirit are broken.
“I find it strange in a
Buddhist society, where respect for life is strongly felt,” Antoinette
muses, “that the elephant has been turned into nothing more than a means of
making money.”
Those of us who have lived
in the country for a while understand that these kinds of contradictions
riddle Thai society and, indeed, are precisely what define ‘Thai culture’ in
many instances. But to a westerner, unfamiliar with Thailand, these
contradictions are begging to be resolved. Cruelty to animals and, yet, a
love for them cannot come together in any meaningful way.
Then, how to do this? The
most prevalent Thai way of resolving societal contradiction is through a
rather vague concept of ‘reconciliation.’ Never specified, however, is what
is to be reconciled with what and, then, to what degree will the final
outcome meet basic needs and retain the dignity of both parties. I suspect
what this term really implies is that the most powerful of the poles to be
‘reconciled’ expects that the weaker side will see the advantages of the
more powerful one and rally to its side in the name of a higher cause. I
think the vagueness of ‘reconciliation’ appeals strongly to the Thai
inclination to avoid conflict. But it provides no sustainable solution.
Harmony is a cultural
bedrock all throughout Asia. For example, it trumps the concept of human
rights in the modus operandi of ASEAN. But if one looks closely at
cultures who promote harmony over justice (recognition of one’s human
dignity), one finds that it’s built in many instances upon one side
acquiescing to the other and voluntarily throttling grievance, anger, and
hurt.
In the western world, where
diversity is commonplace and conflicting interests are openly acknowledged,
a strategy of negotiation is employed. This is the approach that Antoinette
uses in trying to solve the complex world of the Thai elephant. On the one
hand, for the sake of elephant health, they must be taken off the streets,
have enough proper food to eat, and ideally be in a habitat appropriate to
their natures. If this were done, what would satisfy the needs of the Isaan
families? What would be an ongoing workable solution without lingering
grievance?
As a logical extension of
her ‘bring the elephant home’ project, Antoinette, in cooperation with the
Thai Population and Community Development Association, has set up a village
microbank in which Antoinette’s project deposits 20 baht for each tree
planted as food for the elephants. In return, the villagers can apply for
micro-loans to set up tourism-oriented projects such as homestays. To date,
104,000 trees have been planted as an ongoing endeavor.
The conflict resolution
approach of ‘bring the elephant home’ does not rely on the vague concept of
‘reconciliation.’ Instead, the approach is to carefully analyze the precise
problem by talking with people who know well the elephant situation, and
then devising a compromised, dignified, sustainable, best settlement to meet
the needs of both elephant and mahout.
By book’s end, Antoinette’s
adventure has all come together – when the cruelty and overwork is redeemed
for at least two rescued elephants, for the time being. Her project has
been a success. As she sleeps in a tent to be close to the animals in the
fields, she can hear their breathing and teeth grinding. “I even see them
lying asleep in the moonlight - a sight to remember.” Words don’t convey
the full sensual and poignant experience of this comment, but you can’t help
but want to be a part of it. And you can.
Check out the web site:
www.bring-the-elephant-home.org. The Great Elephant Escape can be
purchased at Suriwong Books for 550 baht.
