Lek by Robert Kiener

THE

WOMAN WHO

SAVES GIANTS Lek – Thai for tiny – has created a haven for Asia’s largest creatures BY ROBERT KIENER

On a humid summer day in a hill tribe village in northern Thailand, five-yearold Sangduen Chailert, whose family called her Lek (“tiny”), was darting between bamboo and banana trees in her © PALANI M OHAN

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family’s lush garden. Suddenly she stopped and her deep brown eyes widened in wonder. Coming towards her, treading silently on the damp earth, was an elephant. Lek was awed, but not afraid, as a man was astride the massive animal’s head. He looked down at the astonished child and said, “She is for you. Her name is Golden One.” Lek walked up to the elephant and boldly put her arms around its trunk. The animal explored her slight figure with the tip of its dexterous trunk, sniffing and running it over her skin. It was a moment so entrancing that Lek would remember it all her life. Lek’s grandfather, a healer and a shaman, had saved the life of a young boy. In gratitude the boy’s father, a Karen head tribesman, had walked three days with the elephant to present it to the family. “Can we keep her?” Lek pleaded with her grandfather. “I promise I will feed her and take care of her.” The grandfather, who called her Little Monkey for her ability to climb trees, could not find it in himself to refuse her. Each morning before she went to school, Lek would make sure there were bananas for Golden One, and she would rush home from school at lunchtime to feed her. The rapport between the elephant and the little girl

was remarkable. Within weeks Little Monkey was even running up Golden One’s trunk and perching on her head. To her fellow villagers there seemed something almost magical about the little girl’s rapport with the massive beast. As Lek grew older she developed

alty and obedience simply by talking to her and rewarding her with bananas. Although once revered as religious and cultural icons, elephants seem to have lost their way in modern Thailand. A century ago there were about

the ability to coax Golden One into helping with small jobs, such as carrying rice or vegetables from the field to their village. In many parts of Asia, elephants are subjected to phajaan, a training ritual in which they are confined in cages, poked with wooden spikes and beaten to break their spirit. The mahouts who ride them prod them with a sharpened steel hook, whipping them if they become rebellious. But Lek won Golden One’s loy-

BELLOWING WITH DELIGHT, THE ANIMALS WADE INTO THE SHALLOWS 100,000 elephants in the country; today there are maybe 5000 to 6000. The vast majority of Thailand’s 2700 domesticated elephants work in the tourism industry, though some are used for transport and farming. Thai law considers them as livestock rather than wild animals, so they are not covered under Thailand’s conservation rules, and owners can pretty much do what they wish with them. Abuse often goes unpunished. Recently an

elephant was burned to death by its drunken owner, but the man was never charged with a crime. Lek was in her mid-teens when she first saw elephants being used for commercial logging. She had gone to the heavily logged Burma-Thailand border to act as a translator for a group of missionaries. What she saw shocked her profoundly. Many of the working elephants had heavy wooden harnesses around their necks and were scarred where they had been rubbed raw by the hauling chains. She saw them whipped, beaten and abused. There was nothing she could do to help the animals, but she would not forget them. When Lek completed secondary school, there was no prospect of finding work in her village, so she resolved to continue her education. With Golden One in the care of relatives, she enrolled at university in the northern city of Chiang Mai and paid her way by selling luggage and kitchen utensils door to door. After graduating, Lek opened a small travel agency in the city center. She worked hard and the agency prospered, but she still remembered the elephants in the northern forests. Sometimes she encountered elephant abuse on her own doorstep. On 5

some nights as many as 30 elephants, often babies, were brought into Chiang Mai to entertain the tourists and attract their money. The sight of the great animals buffeted by traffic and taunted by drunken patrons of bars and nightclubs was more than Lek could bear. She saw one prodded in the anus with a stick and another splashed with a container of scalding coffee. One crisp November evening Lek noticed a man leading a frightened sevenmonth-old baby elephant down a crowded street, asking tourists to pay for a bunch of bananas. It was the last straw for Lek. She created a hand-held sign in English, German, Swedish and Thai that read: “Please do not support the abuse of this baby elephant.” Then she planted herself in clear view near the elephant. The owner was outraged. He smashed the sign with his fist and knocked Lek to the ground. She was taken to hospital, badly concussed and with a fractured jaw. For the next month she could eat nothing but soup. Lek was undeterred. She learned to use the media and conservation organizations to draw attention to the plight of Thai elephants. When she helped expose the widespread use of the phajaan, she and her agency 6

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staffers received death threats from people concerned that her work would damage the country’s tourism industry. The travel agency’s window was smashed with a brick. It would take more than a brick to stop Lek. She had been successful in drawing attention to elephant abuse.

profits from her travel agency to pay for upkeep. To raise more funds she hoped to attract visitors with a genuine interest in elephants to experience the animals in a natural setting. In 1996, with help from other elephant enthusiasts and wildlife charities, she opened the not-for-profit Elephant Na-

As the elephants’ mahouts and volunteers unload two pickup trucks full of fresh bananas, watermelon, papaya and grapefruit, many of the park’s pampered guests trundle across the high napier grass meadows for first pickings. Lek, a slight, energetic woman with dark, smiling eyes, leads me to an elephant calf who only reaches half way up my chest. “This is Mae Toh Koh’s baby, Pupia,” she says proudly, referring to the eight-month-old male elephant. The baby deftly snatches a bunch of small bananas from her grip. “No one knew his mother was pregnant. So they worked her until she got too skinny.” The calf was so underweight it could not stand up or walk when it was born, and Toh Koh couldn’t produce enough milk for him. But now, under Lek’s care, they are both flourishing. Lek has a poignant story for each of the 28 rescued elephants in the park. Jokia, a three-tonne, 43-year-old former logging elephant, was blinded in one eye when her Burmese mahout shot her with a slingshot to hurry her along. Later, the elephant’s owner deliberately shot an arrow into her other eye after she had broken his arm by swatting him with her trunk. “I found her chained, blind and being beaten

WATCHING THE ANIMALS TAUNTED BY DRUNKS WAS MORE THAN LEK COULD BEAR But she wanted to help the victims: the old, sick and maimed, most of whom were simply shot or abandoned. What they needed, she decided, was a place they could roam free, but safe and secure. But where? After an exhaustive search, she was given permission to use a government forest area temporarily. To get the project started, she sold her house, her car and virtually everything she owned. She would use the

ture Park. The first arrival, Mae Perm, was a female, like Golden One. The wheel had come full circle. The elephants found a permanent home in 2003, when a US wildlife charity donated a 16-hectare site located 56 kilometres north of Chiang Mai. © ROBERT KIENER

On a sticky, humid May afternoon I arrive at the Elephant Nature Park to be greeted by over a score of trumpeting elephants of all sizes and ages.

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whenever she bumped into a tree,” says Lek. Today Jokia roams freely in the reserve and is watched over by her constant companion Mae Perm. “Look,” says Lek, as we watch Jokia and Mae Perm amble towards the riverbank for a mud bath. Hovering over Jokia, nudging her with her trunk and communicating with subtle squeaks and louder squeals, the older elephant keeps her from bumping into a fallen tree. Amazingly, Jokia deftly steps over it. Mae Perm rarely leaves her blind companion’s side. “Nothing will ever happen to Jokia as long as she lives here. Mae Perm will see to that,” says Lek. Some of the elephants were abandoned, and some bought (for as much as $10,000) to rescue them from abusive owners. The biggest, 3.6-metrehigh Max, worked as a “begging” elephant on the streets of Bangkok. On a dark night after he finished his rounds, an 18-wheeler knocked him down and dragged him along the highway for six metres. He could barely walk when he arrived and was little more than skin and bones. Riding on an elephant’s back is a no-no for visitors, and none of Lek’s charges perform for them. “This isn’t a circus,” she explains. But visitors are encouraged to feed, bathe and virtually live with them. As I walk with Lek through the park, dodging bowling-ball size elephant droppings, we spot a group of elephants making their way into the muddy Mae Taeng River that winds through the reserve. Lek smiles 8

broadly, hands me a pail and a scrub brush, and says: “We’re going to give them a bath.” The massive beasts wheeze, snort and swing their trunks from side to side. One swat from a 130-kilogram trunk could flatten me like a fly. “You’re not afraid are you?” asks Lek as we approach. “Of course not,” I lie. Bellowing with delight, the massive animals wade into the shallows and playfully soak us with trunks full of warm river water. Nervousness forgotten, I scrub the bristly, grayishbrown forehead of seven-year-old Jungle Boy. He stares at me with a deep black eye, encircled by thick, butterfly lashes. As I fill the pail to dump on his head, he blasts me with water. It’s like being sprayed with a fire hose. With the growing success of the park – she has saved nearly 30 elephants and more than 4000 people visited last year – Lek’s fame has spread. Support for her work has enabled her to expand a free mobile medical clinic for elephants and villagers throughout the region. Her elephant conservation work has won her two honorary PhDs, and her reputation is spreading abroad. “Lek enables these elephants to live out their lives with dignity and grace,” says Bert von Roemer, president of the U.S.-based Serengeti Foundation. “She is the Asian elephant’s best friend.” As I stand waist deep in the Mae Taeng River, soaked in water, covered with elephant snot and surrounded by elephants as happy as toddlers in a bathtub, it’s impossible not to agree.