Day 3: 5/21/2010

It was raining a lot today, so I didn't get to work with the elephants as much. Funny thing, Sri Lankan men are terrified of the rain. They either have an umbrella, or they cover their heads with a plastic bag at all times.

However, I did get to go into town and experience some Sri Lankan driving. First, there's a lot of motorcycles. They may be cool status symbols in the U.S. but in Sri Lanka they're just a way of life. A surprising number of people do wear helmets, but they zip in and out of traffic and get almost run over a lot. Then there are tuk-tuks, which are little 3-wheeler vehicles. Finally there are vans, which generally don't have very functional doors and are very bumpy.

A line-up of tuk-tuks

Taught English today at a nearby temple. The kids are so much fun, and they learn so quickly! The mothers sometimes come with their kids and do their best to help us communicate and teach, which is really cool. You can tell that the mothers really want their kids to learn, and the kids really want to too.

Day 2: 5/19/2010

Today was my first full day of work at the MEF. I've been assigned to work with Pooja and her mahout Upali, so my first task of the day is to go up the hill to her night bed and clean up her poop. Using my hands. Yep. We clean the balls of poop (about the size of a softball) up one at a time and throw them onto a big pile. From there, they get recycled at the paper factory next door, which breaks it down and combines it with recycled paper to make really cool stuff like picture frames and journals. The rest of the poop is used for fertilizer in the eco garden on the MEF grounds.

After getting thoroughly filthy, I followed Upali and Pooja down to the river where Pooja lay down and we scrubbed all the dirt and mud off of her with coconut hulls. She uses her trunk like a snorkle when she's laying down, and when I scrubbed her hip she started kicking her back leg, just like a dog.

I had a special treat today, I got to go out with the Mobile Vet Unit (MVU) to see an injured tusker. He's owned by a rich family who lives in the city somewhere, but he lives out in the jungle with his mahout, who had to have been at least 80. The tusker's name was Gamini, and he was in pretty bad shape. He had a skin condition that made him itchy all the time, so much so that he had itched the tip of his tail off. He had also knocked one of his toe nails off and a huge sore had developed over the gap, and the nail bed was separating out from the bottom of his foot. He needed to come to the MEF for surgery, but we have to wait for approval from his owners before we can bring him in. In the meantime, Ruwan, the MVU vet, poured hydrogen peroxide and iodine on the sore and treated it with some dusting powder.

Gamini and his Mahout. Notice that his tusks touch!!

Gamini's tail-or lack thereof

The big sore on Gamini's foot, and his missing toenail

The mahout treating Gamini's foot, while Gamini eats a tree

The whole time he was being treated, Gamini was eating a tree. Literally, he ripped it open using his tusks and feet and trunk and ate all the juicy meat in the middle.

Once we returned to the MEF, we went up the hill with a vet from the university to see Sumana. She's a 79 year old elephant who was mistreated before she came to the MEF, and has huge pressure sores on both of her hips to show for it. She was treated with antibiotics for a while, and then switched to a regimen of native medicines, and now they've put her back on antibiotics. While we were watching they gave her 100 cc's of amoxycilin. She's amazingly good-natured, and didn't complain once while they were jabbing needles into her backside.

Something I learned today: students here don't get to choose their subject of study at the university. They're just told what they'll study by the faculty. And if they fail out of doctoring they become a dentist, and if they fail out of that, they become a vet.

Day 1!!

Hi everyone! Internet access was difficult in Sri Lanka, so I'm going to be posting over the next couple of days from the past week.

Day 1: 5/18/2010

Got a late start today due to the jet lag, so I began my day with vet checks. Basically this is a routine the elephants go through everyday that involves getting their feet cleaned and checked for injuries. There are 6 elephants at the Millennium Elephant Foundation (MEF), and this is me cleaning my elephant, Pooja's, feet.

After everyone's feet are done, we feed them balls of dough made out of grain and water that are filled with the vitamins and supplements they need for the day. Some get more than others...Sumana, the oldest elephant at the MEF at 79 years old gets 8 or 9 different types of vitamins a day!

It's so interesting to watch the elephants think. We got a big new tusker in today and he was trying to eat. He figured out how to step on the palm fronds to use his trunk and rip the individual leaves off.

In addition to working at the MEF, I'm also working with DogStar, which is an organization that works with a university in Sri Lanka. They host spay and neuter clinics and they vaccinate a lot of the local dogs. One of the other volunteers, Elena, took me up to a temple to visit some puppies they had been treating. The country is mostly Buddhist, so a lot of the temples have dogs and cats under their care. These puppies lived in the volunteer bungalo for a few weeks to regain their strength.

Fun note: The squirrels here are tiny like chipmunks, and they have 5 white stripes down their backs and chirp like birds! And there's king fishers too, which are suuuuuper bright blue, beautiful birds.