Water for Elephants

Today I got my elephant ride! All the volunteers get one on their last day. Unfortunately due to his leg injury we can't ride Raja, so I settled for Lakshmi instead.  Riding an elephant is, um...different.  First of all, you are riding bareback so you have to grip with your legs to stay on, secondly contrary to what you might believe, elephants are not smooth skinned, well they might be underneath all the prickly hair they have all over them.  And third, they have very broad backs so its hard to get a good grip.  So off we went, Lakshmi and I on our little adventure, me alternately clinging on for dear life, and waving my hands in the air saying "look ma no hands". We crossed the bridge as I precariously rocked violently from side to side as Lakshmi meandered across the 5 foot wide bridge.  My life may have flashed before my eyes.  After our walk around the area, we ride down to the river.  This entails the elephant walking down extremely steep steps, with you hanging on with all your strength so you don't flip over their heads.  Very exhilarating.  Once in the river you have to lean forward on the elephants back and then they proceed to douse you in water.  Yup, you get a trunkful of river water in your face.  That's my shower for the day.  All in all, an amazing experience, one of the coolest things I've ever done.
Today is my last day at MEF. Tomorrow I take the train back down to Galle to spend my last couple of days with Jen and Linzi and the other volunteers from Michael's.  It's time to have our last arrack fueled night at the disco at Unawatuna.  Then Saturday I take the train to Negombo and fly to England.  How did 6 weeks go by so fast?

Yogacharya

I decided to hang around Kegalle over the weekend due to the assortment of activities that were going on...Saturday evening we trekked over to Rambukkana to watch the Perahera, a big festival/parade.  Arriving at 8:30 having been told it started around 9pm, we ended up waiting 3 hours on the side of the main road for the parade to start.  Past us walked flame dancers, whip dancers, men on stilts throwing flames, Kandian dancers, drummers, monks in a pimped out jeep, about 25 elephants and much much more.  It was so long we didn't even stay for the end.  Imagine a snails pace...the parade was moving slower than that.  Yeah. So we headed to bed late and woke up bright and early at 5am on Sunday to go to Karunegala.  Sandith had planned a day of yoga for us.  So we drove up a beautiful palm tree estate where we met the famous Yogacharya (he's the director of multiple Ashrams-where you study yoga-In India).  Apparently he frequently appears on TV? Anyway after our porridge, which wasn't porridge at all, more like a thick green grass tea, we sat down on the mats to begin our yoga session. We learned the basics for stress relief and how to breathe.  We are all breathing wrong by the way.  After numerous positions with our legs in the air and yoga inspired fist pumping it was time for lunch and relaxing by the pool.  Needless to say I woke up Monday morning and my shoulders were in physical pain. Haven't had a workout since....well, you get the picture.

Roti's and Tuktuks

Yesterday, all the MEF volunteers came over to Kumari's for lunch (because they don't get proper Sri Lankan cuisine at the bungalow they stay in). Kumari outdid herself with 4 curries, fried rice, eggs, chicken, daal, and for desert, ice cream and jello/jelly! So good. Also, I found out that she only gets paid 500 rupees a day per volunteer, thats like 50 cents.  Not okay.  I'm going to file a complaint with the company because she deserves wayyyy more than that considering she feeds us 3 meals a day, and we use water and electricity, etc.  Plus she is an amazing host mum.  She was saying yesterday that volunteers usually just eat and then go back to their rooms, they don't stay and chat or learn how to make food.  Which in my opinion is the best part...why would you want to sit in your room all afternoon on your own? So I've been taking full advantage of my opportunity to learn how to cook Sri Lankan style.  Kumari has been teaching me how to make roti.  It's a sort of flat bread that is made out of coconut, flour, sugar, salt, and water.  Then you fry it like a pancake. It is nothing short of AMAZING. I eat it almost every day...
Also, I got to drive a tuktuk for the first time yesterday, so Sri Lankan drivers-be afraid, be very afraid.

Habarana

Volunteers with the bee box

Teaching

MEF has an ongoing project in a town up north called Habarana.  Habarana is one of the major sites of the human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka as the town was built on an elephant corridor (migratory route).  Wild elephants are now posing a problem for the village and its inhabitants.  MEF volunteers go up to the primary school and teach the kids a lesson on elephants (in English).  We want to educate the village about elephants and ways to protect themselves without killing the elephants that come through the village.  We have also donated bee boxes around the village, elephants are afraid of the bees, and can hear the buzzing from a mile or so away.  In theory this should help minimize instances of conflict.  So yesterday, 7 of us volunteers went up to Habarana, 3 and a half hour drive up north.  The school kids are adorable and we taught them all the parts of the elephant and then sang songs like "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" to reinforce body parts, etc.  Some of the kids are brilliant at English already and were translating for the others in the groups.  After that, 5 of the group went to the national park called Meridian, but Dan and I (on our restricted budgets) opted out of the expensive excursion and spent the afternoon exploring the town (really not that much to see) and eating vanilla/chocolate ice cream (which all tasted like banana....weird?). Driving home we pulled over and bought fresh mangoes to eat on the way/for breakfast the following morning.  Yum!

TB Testing

We tested the elephants for tuberculosis today.  Apparently elephants in captivity are at quite a high risk for contracting TB so the vets here do a test every 6 months.  Because of the amount of contact that elephants have with humans, it is easy for sickness to spread.  For the test we bring the elephants one by one over to the mounting block (which we stand on), then the mahout tells the elephant to raise its trunk.  One of us then grabs the trunk and pours this liquid into it.  We then have to hold the trunk upright for 20 seconds.  After the 20 seconds is up, the elephant gets to spit out the liquid, but we have to catch it in a bucket so it can be sent to the lab for tests.  Seems simple right??? Well it would be if the elephants wanted to cooperate, Pooja was, in her own wonderful way, a nightmare.  She wouldn't let us grab her trunk and when Ruan (the elephant manager) tried, she knocked him off the block.  Then when we managed to get the liquid in her trunk she turned and sprayed all of us with it.  Thanks Pooja.  So it took us a couple of hours to do all the elephants, but we did it, not we just have to wait for the test results!
After our busy day, a couple of us volunteers decided to lounge poolside for a while where i got my long awaited massage from Dan who is a qualified masseuse...didn't tell me he used baby oil on my back so went home after continuing sunbathing to find that i had semi fried my back...it was a wonderful massage though!

A little bit of everything.

On Wednesday I left for a four day trip around the hill country with my former host dad Michael and 4 other volunteers (from Scotland, France, Canada, and LA-what an eclectic bunch). Our plan was to reach the ancient city of Anuradhapura and tour around there on Wednesday afternoon because it was a Poya day. That's the day on which Emperor Asoka’s son, the arahant Mahinda, officially introduced Buddhism to the island in the 3rd century B.C. and he converted the king at Anuradhapura to Buddhism, hence why all the pilgrims go there. Anyway, after 3 hours on our quasi-pilgrimage we concluded that it would not be feasible to reach Anuradhapura because we had been stuck in traffic for hours.  Pilgrims travel from all over the country to pray at the sacred sites and everyone gives them tons of free food along the roads so vans are constantly stopping in the middle of the road for curries, ice cream, fruit, drinks, etc.  So we went to Sigiriya instead...usually a peaceful climb to the top, we attempted to climb with thousands of locals. I'm surprised people weren't falling off the steps on the way up.  These innocent little grandma's were elbowing people out of their way! 1236 steps later, the view from the top was amazing, we could see for miles.  

The next morning we finally made the rest of the drive to Anuradhapura.  It is a 24 square mile complex on dagoba's and old ruins.  We only got to see a tid bit of all there was to see as to explore properly would have taken days, if not weeks.  We saw the impressive dagobas which were built by various kings and the massive reservoirs that seemed far ahead of their time.  For the holy week around the Poson Poya, thousands of people camp out at Anuradhapura to pray, so it was pure insanity-people sleeping everywhere, bathing in the reservoirs, etc.  Was very cool.  We also saw the Bodhi tree, which apparently is the oldest tree in the world??? It is the tree that Siddhartha Gautama sat under when he found enlightenment.  Anyway there are guardians of the tree, and you have to be a direct descendant of the first guardians to get the job.  They sit around the tree with slingshots and guns and shoot at the birds and monkeys that try and sit in the tree.

 Sounds like my kind of job. Friday morning we ventured to the Dambulla rock caves....it consists of 5 caves ornately decorated with Buddhas and ancient artwork, truly an incredible feat.  A King went into hiding in these caves for 14 years and when he regained power he returned to build a temple around the caves to thank them for keeping him safe....at least that's what i think the guide said? We also managed to get a picture with a 12 year old monk! I didn't know that families can give their children into the monk service...hence why there are (as I affectionatly called them) "mini monks" running around everywhere.  After Dambulla we saw teh giant golden Buddah.  He is the tallest buddah in the sitting position in the world, at a height of around 100 feet.  The afternoon found us at a government funded spice garden which was fascinating as we learned all the applications of variosu plants in the medicinal realm. Cloves are recommended for toothache and sore throats. Nutmeg and black pepper stimulates digestion,Ginger alleviates motion sickness and Spices mixed with king coconut oil make an excellent sun cream while citronella repels insects. Who would have guessed?There are also RED pineapples. Weird.  After completely relaxing us with a 20 minute head/shoulders/arms/legs massage they then proceeded to ply us with products from the pharmacy-how mean of them! It was so difficult to say no when you are in such a good post-massage mood.  Yet, I walked out of there hands free, unlike the other four volunteers! So proud of myself.  The evening we went to Kandy (again) and I saw the Temple of the Tooth (again) and the Kandyan dancing (again). But we did go to pizza hut (again)!!!! It was the first time for the other volunteers so I just went with the flow, and managed to get pictures of the fire walking this time. After our tour I dragged Linzi and Sara to the shops to try on sari's with me, I mean I'm in Sri Lanka, I had to try one on at some point! The sales man gave me a sheet of diagrams detailing how to put one on, except all the words were in Arabic so that didn't help much.  I just walked out of the dressing room half naked and shouted help, so the lady came over and patiently showed me how its done! So I can now successfully say i can put on my own sari, when that will come in handy again who knows.  The hotel in Kandy where we stayed had a gorgeous view, and an outside pool so after a long hot and sweaty day us girls had to go for a swim pre shower...saw the sign after we jumped in saying please shower before using pool.  Oops.  Then the shower water ran out during Linzi's shower so she walked out completely covered in soap and bubbles which we all thought was hilarious. 

Saturday morning we set out for Nuwaraeliya which is high up in the mountains south of Kandy.  We stopped at a tea factory on the outskirts and took a tour of the inner workings of the tea industry-unfortunately all the women had decided to go on strike that day so there was not a worker to be seen.  Typical.  Was still very nice to get a free cup of tea (really good Ceylon tea) and some cake! My fave! Nuwaraeliya is a small city and no joke it is like we had transported back in time to 18th century England. When all the colonizers came to Sri Lanka they settled there because the climate was so similar to England (why you would choose that I'm still trying to figure out) and so all the buildings are English style.  Was a culture shock for all of us for sure.  Driving back we saw hundreds of women in the tea fields, apparently the strike was over, so we pulled over and were talking to a couple of the women before the field overseer started walking towards us with a scary look on his face, so we scooted out of there pretty fast. But apparently these women are under contract to pick 16 kilos of tea a day and for that they get paid around 540 rupees, that's about $5-for a whole day's manual labour.  If they pick over that amount, they get paid more.  Driving down the mountain we were doing hairpin turns all the way down and there were little boys selling bouquets of flowers who would sprint alongside us on the road and when we passed them would shortcut directly downhill and meet us on the next flat part of road and repeat it over and over again.  So we ended up giving them some money purely for their persistence. No I'm back in Kegalle, ready to start my LAST 2 WEEKS at MEF.  Where did the time go???

Colombo

Poolside at the Hitlon-we fancy huh?

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to catch the 8am bus to Colombo.  On the way there, our tuktuk ran out of gas so we all had to get out and push the tuktuk to the nearest gas station, great way to start the day!  I have to make one comment about the bathrooms in the train station-I wouldn't wish them upon my enemy.  Anyway we all boarded teh train safely and two hours later we were in Colombo.  Sandith (MEF VP) has a friend Sara who LIVES in the Hilton in Colombo so we got to spend the morning poolside, soaking up the sun.  After an amazing lunch in Sara's apartment (which overlooked the ocean) he drove us to the rugby club so we could watch the Kandy's private school team play Colombo's private school team.  Trinity versus Royal-the big game.  The rugby club reminds me of the gentleman's clubs that must have been prolific in my grandfather's day, it has that old colonial feel to it.  We hung out there for a while listening to these three guys who just started playing music at the bar, Portuguese influenced sort of samba rhythms.  Very cool.  Then Sara broke the news that he could only get 4 tickets and there were 8 of us.  So all of us girls in a heartbreaking decision decided to give up our tickets so the boys could go and we reluctantly agreed to TRY and enjoy ourselves shopping and eating :) . We headed to the Pettah, Colombo's bazaar and walked around there for a while.  I have never felt so loved in all my life, people (all men) would come up and start chatting and wave hello from shop windows, etc.  It could have to do with the fact that we were the only white people there and all us girls were wearing shorts, scandalously showing our thighs in public! Shame on us.

After strutting our stuff around the Pettah we headed over to the Galle Face Hotel which sits right on the waterfront.  It's the oldest hotel in Colombo and for $9.50 it is all you can eat and drink.  Boy did we eat.  There were sausage rolls, pizza, made to order sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, kieves, chicken puffs, and the DESERTS! Chocolate mousse, cake, fruit in syrup, scones, biscuits, things I can't even pronounce.  None of us have eaten for the past 12 hours because we are still full!  Before leaving the hotel we did some window shopping at the jewelry store where i proceeded to try on probably $15,000 worth of jewelry.  The man in the shop kept saying "sizing no problem" to which i responded "yes, money's the problem" to which we all laughed.  After that we decided to stroll down the promenade (don't we sound fancy). Upon walking out of the hotel a man steps in front of us and wraps a PYTHON around my neck. Holy F***. So I'm standing there negotiating with him on price as this python is coiling itself around my windpipe....great.  He says some tourists pay him 1000 rupees, I told him I'd pay him 100.  And he looked at me grinning and said "but i have to feed this whole chickens!", so I told him to feed it half a chicken and gave him 150 rupees.  Serves him right for wrapping a live snake around my neck in the first place.  We just freed ourselves from one snake when a man with a dancing cobra stepped in front of us...so naturally I just ran the other direction.  I had enough snakes for one day.

Kites

My new scaly friend

Play Time

After our morning at MEF on Thursday, four of us volunteers decided to go to the children's school to play games with the kids.  It's an after school program and volunteers can go and we are supposed to play educational games that involve using English words.  We don't always follow these exact guidelines though and many times our games just resort to laughing, screaming, and running around.  These kids are some of the cutest kids I have ever seen.  When we drove up they all ran outside to greet us "what is your name?" and "what is your country>".  They were very impressed when we responded in Sinahala "mage nama Olivia!" We played soccer (football), tag, charades, hangman, and tons of other games we kinda just made up on the spot which the kids loved! WE only got to stay for an hour though and so at 5pm when our tuktuk came to pick us up all the kids followed us out to the gate.  I had a little girl clinging onto each hand and the three other volunteers were in similar situations.  None of them would let go! They gave us all hugs and made us promise to come back next Tuesday, which of course we will! Probably one of the highlights of my trip so far (mum is reading this and thinking "she doesn't even like kids" hahahaha). I guess I found a maternal bone in my body after all!

Also, woke up this morning with a cockroach on my face.  Awesome.

Some fun facts...

1) I shower with a frog and a lizard every morning/night.  I think im going to have to give them names soon.

2) Apparently they take elephant dung and make it into paper, which is what i've been writing on for the past 3 weeks. weird. 

3) Kumari (our host mum) makes the most amazing food. Literally my mouth is burning for at least 10 minutes after finishing. I'm going to have to learn how to make a decent curry because otherwise i'm going to go home and be thoroughly disappointed by curry's at home.

4) Apparently you shouldn't take malaria pills on an empty stomach, it says this on the bottle, but i didn't read that part.  Oops.  Not a fun night.

5) I keep finding cockroaches....in my suitcase. 

6) I've decided I don't like shoes at MEF so i walk around barefoot. 

My MEF Project

Rani likes to suck on her trunk. Adorable

So after our morning chores at MEF we are kind of on our own as to what projects we want to embark on during our stay.  Some volunteers do general clean up around the orphanage while others organize files, update systems, etc.  The idea is that you play to your strengths and use your own ideas to improve MEF. My project revolves around the issue that volunteers have when they arrive about not knowing which elephant is which and which mahout goes with which elephant and who to talk to about what, etc....So, my plan is to photograph all the elephants, mahouts, and other staff and create a wall that identifies everyone and their job at MEF. It's really hard when someone says "Go give Lakshmi's mahout these vitamins" when you don't know who Lakshmi's mahout is! So this way new volunteers and visitors to MEF can quickly figure out whose who and what's what.  I know, im brilliant, go figujre.  It's a simple project, only issue arises with photographing everyone and compiling it all together without ME messing it up! It would be just like me to put the wrong name to the wrong picture. So yeah, that's my project for foreseable future.

Raja squeaky clean right after his bath

Raja. 1 hr post bath covered in sand and grass. The point of a bath was??

Kandy for the weekend!

  Thursday:

the pool at the villa-gorgeous.

All the volunteers at MEF took a 3.5 hour van ride to go up to Kalpitiya, which is on this little peninsula on teh west coast.  The vice president of MEF, Sandith said that we would be looking into a new volunteer project about coastline protection and eco friendly dolphins, etc.  Somehow we all ended up at a $1000 a night villa and spent the whole day eating, drinking and swimming in the pool.  Apparently Sandith knows someone??? Local politicians, psh. It wasn't exactly a wonderful day as the 3 adults who came with us proceeded to get reasonably drunk while the 8 of us volunteers just watched. We were all slightly disappointed that we drove all the way (and let me assure you that the drive was far from pleasant being bounced around in the back of a van) just to sit around all day, not that we were complaining bout the location. It was just an odd situation because we couldn't leave until Sandith called the driver which he kept refusing to do so we didn't end up leaving till really late.  Then we got to enjoy the added privilege of trying to sleep while bouncing up and down the whole drive back.
Friday:
Waking up bright and early after 4 hours of sleep, Tom, Tiffany, and I got sentenced to heavy labor at MEF on perhaps the hottest day of the week, typical! We were set the task of creating an area in the eco garden for carrots or some other form of vegetable.  My favourite part was pushing/pulling wheelbarrows up and down the side of a small mountain in order to fill the area with compost.  After hours spent dripping in sweat all 8 of us volunteers went to this hotel where for $2 we can use their swimming pool which is gorgeous, so we spent the afternoon there before going home and collapsing.
Saturday:

Tiff and I in front of the Buddha's tooth shrine

Tom, Tiffany, Robbie, and I took the bus from Kegalle to Kandy, a beautiful city set amidst the hills in the heart of Sri Lanka.  from some places it looks like the whole city is hidden in the trees, probably helping with the fact that this city has withstood two and a half centuries of attacks by the Portuguese and the Dutch.  The lake located in the center was actually man made by King Sri Wickrama Rajasinha in 1807, hard to believe given its size and location.  We got there around lunch and headed straight for pizza hut...i don't think pizza ever tasted so good.  Yum. And since we were there I had to get the chocolate lava cake for desert, is anyone surprised?? It's me we are talking about! After our deliciously satisfying reminder of western food we explore the man made lake and visited the Temple of the Tooth which is Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist shrine, housing the legendary Buddha's Tooth which came here during the 16th century.  You can't see the tooth but you can walk past the gold casket that houses it.  We also saw the Raja Tusker Museum which is devoted to Sri Lanka's most famous elephant Raja (no, not my Raja) who was responsbile for carrying the tooth in the festivals for 50 years (called the Maligawa Tusker) and was declared a national treasure.  We walked inside to find ourselves looking at Raja, no not a picture of him, but the actual Raja, or rather the dead and stuffed version of him.  He's the only stuffed elephant in the world.  Fun fact of the day: To be the Maligawa Tusker there are certain requirements-the elephant must be male and they must be a Sathdantha elephant, meaning that all seven parts of their body must touch the ground while standing (all four feet, penis, tail and trunk).  Also the tusks must be a certain shape.  How they find the perfect elephant is beyond me, but apparently none has filled Raja's big boots yet, I guess it is rather a tall order for an elephant. After that we went to see the Kandyan dancers at the art association which was a really cool exhibit of the traditional dancers and drummers of Kandy and the southern regions.  The last act was 2 men who walked across burning coals literally right in front of me, I was covered in ash from the fanning of the coals.  It was right before this that my camera decided that it had run out of battery life, I guess that's what happens when you don't charge it. fml.

Kandyan dancers

We also got really sad news when we got home, one of the baby elephants at Pinnawala died on Saturday.  Apparently his trunk got stuck under the water (maybe caught under rocks or something???) and it drowned. The mahouts were counting the elephants on their return to Pinnawala and found one missing and went back to the river only to find its body in the water. Surprising that no one saw anything as there are always tons of tourists watching the elephants bathe, but I guess there are so many elephants it would be hard to see them all.
New volunteers coming today-exciting!!

MEF-the basics

So the place we are volunteering is called the Millenium Elephant Foundation.  It's right next to Pinnawala but unlike Pinnawala it's focus is primarily on conservation rather than on tourism.  All the elephants at MEF are temple elephants which means they are owned by various temples around Sri Lanka and are used for festivals and other ceremonies.  The elephant that i work with is called Raja, he's a tusker (has tusks, because not all male Asian elephants have tusks- who would have known?!?) who worked at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy (we're going there on Saturday!), but last year he fell during a festival and broke his leg.  So he's now retired and his leg is mended, although it's bent a lot more now because I don't think it was set properly (although, how does one set an elephants leg???). He's got the most gorgeous face though and he's huge! Tiffany and I go up in the morning and have to count all the dung balls in his night nest, we have to keep record so that when the vet comes he can make sure everything's normal.  Then afterwards we have to bathe him in the river.  The mahout gets the elephant to lie down in the water (apparently they know around 30 commands!) and then we use a coconut cut in half to scrub him....I'll have to upload a picture soon!
On a side note---Tiffany, Tom, and I heard there is a Pizza Hut in Kandy so we are heading there this weekend because we can't eat any more rice and bread! American food here we come!