Journey to Freedom

JOURNEY TO FREEDOM (Week of July 13-19, 2015)

The difference between this program and the others that Elephant Nature Park offers is that for Journey to Freedom, there is only one herd at the location we spent the week at––just four elephants. They are all completely healthy and recovered at this point, and living a natural, happy life in the bush with their mahouts. The Journey to Freedom program revolves around the mission that we, the volunteers, are funding Elephant Nature Park to rent the elephants for the purpose of them living naturally in the bush, as opposed to them being rented to trekking camps. And, because they're in perfect health now, the volunteers get very up close and personal with them. You wouldn't get that same opportunity at the Nature Park. At Journey to Freedom, we learned about the Karen people living in northern Thailand as we stayed in their village with them, and got the opportunity to teach the Karen children English almost every day for at least a couple hours. We became very close with each other since there were only 14 volunteers total, compared to hundreds at the park. Journey to Freedom is a less touristy experience in my own personal opinion. However, that's not knocking the Park. It's beautiful there too, just a different mission. Also, elephant Nature Park has modern-day luxuries that Journey to Freedom does not, such as a proper bed, Wi-Fi connection, and beer available for purchase, so it would be a much better fit for some people!

The Journey to Freedom schedule was as follows:

MONDAY

On Monday morning, a van picked us up at our hostels and hotels and took us to Elephant Nature Park's Chiang Mai office to pay our remaining balances and receive volunteer t-shirts/water bottles. We watched the documentary I mentioned in my "How Your Bucket List Item is Killing the Asian Elephant" blog post on the drive up. The DVD was unsettling, but its transparency so utterly important: It depicted the harsh truths of the abuse the elephants endue during training, and set the tone for why our time and money was so desperately needed. We eventually got to our "remote location": the Karen peoples' village in northern Thailand.

None of us really knew what to expect upon arrival. When we got there, there was a covered picnic table, a kitchen hut (a small room with a stove, a large cooler for tofu and jam, and shelves for fruit and other food), and what we grew to affectionately call our "hotel," which was just as described on the website: simple tribal huts with sleeping pads on the ground, covered by mosquito nets. The campsite was modest.

One of the tribal hut sleeping accommodations and Karen farmers working in the background

The other tribal hut accommodation and our covered picnic table

Beautiful rice fields near our campsite

The sweetest Karen woman who was always hanging around and interested in what was going on

After we settled in, we balled up tamarind fruit and salt––the elephants' favorite food––and went to see the gentle giants for the first time. It was so surreal seeing elephants in real life; they're so majestic and gentle and massive. We would spend time with this herd of four for the entire week: Mae Yui, Mae Boui, Mae Boonsi, and Ararwan. The herd is completely healthy and able, unlike the 50 handicapped elephants at Elephant Nature Park. The herd at Journey to Freedom lives in the bush with their four mahouts. They live a life of eating (a lot), sleeping (a little) and pooping (a lot), and that's it. No performances or riding anymore, no separation from each other, just safety and happiness.

That evening, we had our first homemade dinner by our guides, Yo and Joe. They are excellent cooks and never let us go hungry. In fact, every day and night they made loads more food than any of us could ever finish. By candlelight, Yo expressed his sincere gratitude that we were all there helping incite change. Our money we paid to volunteer went to renting the elephants and paying the mahouts, similar to ENP, but also to renting the campsite land from the villagers, and supporting local farmers. We taught many hours of English to village children throughout the week, which was an enriching experience in itself. On top of this, we, the volunteers, got to see the elephants rescued and happy, thanks to our time and money spent at Journey to Freedom.

It's truly a win-win for all, and that's what makes it so incredible. 

The legends themselves: Yo and Joe

TUESDAY

We left at 9 a.m. to follow the elephants through the rainforest for 6-7 hours.

Moms will be moms.

The terrain was mountainous, slippery, muddy and altogether physically exerting. I immediately understood why being in good shape was a requirement for the program. It's feasible for anyone, though; the range of volunteer ages varied from a teenager to a handful of twenty-something's to those in their thirties, forties, fifties, and a 75-year-old.

Not pictured: my muddy butt from slipping/sliding down the trail.

That day we simply watched them living their lives, as if we weren't even there. It was an incredible experience. We watched them knock over banana trees with their trunks and anything else that may have been in their way. Even how an elephant drinks water is fascinating: They can hold five liters in their trunk at a time, and then they spray it all into their mouths. They need 200 liters a day, so you can do the math on how much water an elephant slurps up daily.

In the middle of the hike, we sat down and had lunch. Yo and Joe packed us fried rice with carrots and pineapple, wrapped in a banana leaf. We sat on banana leaves to avoid getting our pants soaking wet for the rest of the day (turns out banana leaves are pretty versatile!). 

It rained literally every day at camp. Some days it was pouring rain and then took a break, and some days it was constantly sprinkling from sunup to sundown. Between being in the mountains and it being monsoon season in Thailand, we couldn't really be surprised.

That day, we saw a crab (?!), spiders, wasps, leeches, a honey comb, banana trees, all kinds of flowers and more. 

This honey we found went on our pancakes every morning from there on out.

When we got back from hiking with the elephants, we went to the village to teach the children English. My co-volunteer Shaun and I were sitting comfortably in the backseats of the pickup while everyone else who was in the bed of the truck ran for shelter after we parked (it started pouring...surprise!). While we waited out the storm, our driver Tu passed me a piece of paper that said "will you please open the door?" in English, with Thai script written directly above it. I opened the door, then he leaned over and shut it and looked at us with the biggest smile on his face. We quickly realized he didn't know a lick of English but was trying to learn.

Shaun's Thai phrase app came in handy because when you click on a phrase, it says it in Thai. So Tu would write it down. Then, below his writing, we would write the English phrase and say it out loud so he could write the phonetic spelling (we have very different alphabets). We filled about two pages up by doing this and he was so eager to learn. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun.

When the rain lightened up, the children came out and we colored pictures with them, pointing to different things we drew and teaching them in English. You could literally see them learning from you, which was such an amazing and rewarding feeling.

The kiddos...and Tu!

That night (and every night to follow), we played card games at the picnic table by candle-light (shout out to no Wi-Fi for allowing us all to become a close-knit family in a matter of days).

Pumpkin/lemon grass soup

Hot tea with fresh ginger root we found in the bush

WEDNESDAY

I woke up with at least 20 bites on each foot and ankle. I thought they should get a refund for the mosquito net because it certainly didn't work. My anti-itch cream wasn't working, either. One of my "roommates" in the hut and I agreed that the relentless itching had to be some form of torture. From that point, I would never make the mistake of not drowning my feet in bug spray before bed. It became scientific, actually: if you put sunscreen on your feet and ankles, let it dry, then spray a ton of bug spray on your feet and ankles, then put socks on and tuck your pants into your socks...you'll be okay. I learned this by the end of the week. Someone learn from my mistakes, PLEASE! I beg of you!!!

Anyway, we woke up and had a delicious-as-always breakfast at 7:30 a.m., then set out to cut elephant grass at 9 a.m. The elephants will only eat leafy, younger plants, so we were handpicking their food from the side of the road where they wouldn't have otherwise been able to get it. We used machetes to cut and fill up the entire back of a pickup with leafy elephant grass for their snack later that day.

 Banana pancakes...our favorite.

No toaster? No problem.

Morning cuddles with Yo's puppy, Kiramazu

Battle wounds from cutting grass

...Made up for with the beautiful views

Later we got to feed the elephants, and it was so worth all the cuts on my arms and ants I found on myself throughout the day. We grabbed the leaves out of the truck and spread them in front of the elephants. Sometimes they'd let us set it down, and other times if we were walking past them with the leaves, they'd steal them from us with their trunks just to have a bigger pile. They were so funny.

 See that pile of elephant grass in her mouth? Yeah...she stole that from our hands.

Falling in love.

When the food supply was running out, I just sat in front of Mae Yui in the pouring rain. We stared at each other for a good 30 minutes. I've never stared into another creature's eyes for that long, but we seemed to be fascinated with each other. We had such a connection... I love that animal.

Teaching the village children English from 4-6:30 p.m. before dinner

That night, it was in the low 60s and damp outside. I was freezing. Thank Christ my roommate Casey had an extra pair of socks and an extra flannel or I would have been royally screwed. I recommend packing for this trip better than I did (which will get an entire post to itself), which means bringing a few warmer pieces of clothing. You never know!

THURSDAY

We woke up and set out for planting grass at our usual 9 a.m. departure time. This day was my breaking point with all the bugs. I think I did a pretty good job up until this Thursday, but the bitey ants and blood-sucking leaches on everyone's feet was a bit much for me to take. Every person besides me had a leech on their body at one state (and the only reason I didn't is because I was staring at my feet like a maniac the whole day). I went from being somewhat unhelpful to completely useless after Joe found a leach on his foot with blood spilling out of his sandal. I've never been so paranoid in my life––I was pacing and stared at my feet the entire duration of the time we were planting. It was exhausting. The work was physically hard, too, not that I did too much that day. Whoops.

All of us. Yeah for selfie sticks!

I would consider myself a girly-girl in the sense that you can hear my scream from a mile away if I see a spider in my room at home. But I really became a proper Amazonian woman on this trip. I became an observer of bugs, not a squisher of them. I survived (can you tell I'm a bit dramatic?...) painful ant bites, and more mosquito bites than I knew was possible. If I can do it...I promise, anyone can do it. 

Also, I realize I'm not making this sound like a walk in the park, but that's because it wasn't. The work we did was tough and we were camping, so bugs were everywhere. It comes with the territory. Yo joked around that we all paid to suffer, which in a sense was totally true. But every time I saw those elephants it made me remember why I was there. They're so beautiful and so were the people I was surrounded by. Despite the bugs, the rain, the heat...it's all so truly wonderful and worth it.

We got to our lunch stop, which doubled as one of the mahouts' sleeping places, and played charades and ate. We were all dead exhausted at that point and headed back to camp after seeing the elephants for a short while. 

It was raining so hard that evening that Yo thought the village children wouldn't come out, so we skipped teaching that night and just relaxed, which worked out since we were all so tired anyways. We sat around a fire under a covered area and just enjoyed each others' company for the evening.

A moment of R&R

FRIDAY

Our last full day at camp! Bittersweet. We were sad at the thought of leaving the four elephants we had grown to love and the beautiful campsite we were at. But we were all undoubtedly looking forward to taking a real shower with hot water and sleeping on a mattress that wasn't damp.

Friday was the only day that we didn't see the elephants, but we had such a busy day that we barely realized it. At 9 a.m., we left to teach the kindergarteners English at their school. Karen people speak Karen at home, but it's never written anymore. Children learn to read and write Thai and English at school. They were the cutest, goofiest hams in the world! There were three to four volunteers per classroom, and the Karen teachers would tell the children in Thai what we were about to do, to repeat after us, etc. It was imperative that she was there or else it would have been nearly impossible to teach them anything. They were a rowdy bunch as any kindergarteners are, but super sweet.

We went through the ABC song which they were all really good at, practiced numbers 1-10, and reviewed colors with blocks. We sang songs like "head, shoulders, knees and toes" and "Old MacDonald," and played Duck Duck Goose. When I took my camera out to take photos, they were all fascinated that I could push a button and then they could immediately see their own faces on the screen. I soon had a swarm of children around me posing for a photo and then jumping on me, eager to see it. They'd all crack up when I showed them the picture I had just taken––it was the cutest thing in the world.

The children had lunch and then we left to have our own lunch as well. Afterwards, we visited the middle/high school and did some alphabet and phonetic sound work with them.

 Learning Thai vowels

Modern technology

After, we went to a temple nearby and got blessed by a Buddhist Monk for doing the work we had been doing that week, and for helping the Karen people in general. He recited a Sanskrit blessing and wrapped a white bracelet around each of our wrists. It was an incredible experience. Yo did a Q&A with us to answer our questions about Buddhism, which is an awe-inspiring religion. We spent some time there, and then went directly to the village at 4 p.m. to teach the children English. They get out of school at 4 p.m. and then come straight to us to learn more English. Their aptitude and desire to learn is incredible.

SATURDAY

After breakfast, we took a short walk up past the rice field and climbed up a ladder to pile into a small tree house, which used to be traditional Karen living quarters. The oldest man in the village––96 years old––was waiting for us inside. He blessed us on behalf of the Karen people in the village which was another humbling experience, and then we said goodbye to the elephants by feeding them their favorite: tamarind and salt. We all literally waved goodbye to them (they're so similar to humans you can't even help it).

We piled into the back of the pickup truck to get to the vans up the road (the vans can't make it up/down the hill...God bless 4 wheel drive) and drove away from camp towards the Elephant Nature Park.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday until 4 p.m., everyone was at Elephant Nature Park getting a taste for life at the Park. Unfortunately I could only stay for a few hours on Saturday before I had to leave early to catch a plane back to BKK, but I was introduced to a few herds beforehand. Unlike Journey to Freedom, all of the elephants at the Park are handicapped from their previous lives. I was told a couple of heart-wrenching stories about how a few sustained their injuries: One was blinded as a result of human anger towards her, one was hit by a truck while he was on a trekking tour in busy Bangkok and another stepped on a landmine while logging a forest. It was sad, but also beautiful and uplifting to see them in a safe haven where they will always be cared for. Elephant Nature Park itself is an incredible establishment and I wish I could have stayed to hear the founder, Lek, talk to our group. The work she has done to get Elephant Nature Park to the state it is in today is so admirable. I'll never believe that one person doesn't have the capacity or ability to change the world, because Lek truly has.

ENP's founder, Lek

MY THOUGHTS

When I travel, I almost always think the places I see are beautiful and important for one reason or another. But I don't always plan to return, simply because the world is so big and there is so little time.

Journey to Freedom is a different story.

I will most definitely be returning to Thailand for multiple things; most importantly, to volunteer with ENP again. Spending a week with the tribal Karen people who have such big hearts; eating such wonderful, locally-grown food; teaching children (and adults) English; and going to the elephants to see them in their natural habitat instead of them coming to you. It was one of the most enriching, life-changing weeks I've ever experienced. My heart was broken by what I learned at the beginning of the week, and day-by-day, mended through hope instilled in me and the beauty of the project we were so lucky to be a part of. I met some amazing people and I feel like I got a little tougher out there in the wild, too! ;)

This program is a 10/10. If you ever find yourself planning a trip to Thailand, instead of tour trekking, please consider the elephants' safety and health and join a reputable volunteer program such as Elephant Nature Park. Elephants' best interest is most important, and I personally guarantee you that you'll get more out of it than you ever could by simply riding an elephant on the outskirts of a forrest.