July 9-16th, 2018 Kigalle, Sri Lanka
What a week! The usual mash up of good and bad – awesome family/elephant vs me sick… again. Thought it was pneumonia but I think I ended up wasting the anti-biotics … it was just that I had a fever and that is never good.
What is really not good is being trapped on a little bed in a dingy room while everyone else gets to go do all the fun stuff like scrubbing Seetha, the elephant. bah! I did manage about 3 days before falling on my face… well, not really. I fell on my ass the first day going down the steep driveway gouging my foot. bleh But being the trooper I am, I carried on leaving a trail of blood. Nothing was going to stop me from meeting Seetha and helping to scrub her enormous back… At least not until day 4 when I was too weak to get out of bed. But until then I was on top of my form – walking, scrubbing, yakking English with students at the English school, chatting with visitors.
So let me tell you about the Elephant Freedom Project. It was started by this family, the Dissanayakas and their friend Tim. Tim had arrived in the area around 5 years ago to volunteer at one of the many elephant ‘rescue’ centers in the area but was dismayed to discover they still used chains and the bullhook. He was staying with Ananda and Mali and the three of them had many discussions about how awful the captive Sri Lankan elephant is treated… and those turned into discussions on how it might be different. Next thing you know Tim is off to Thailand to talk to Lek at the Elephant Nature Park and see how she was doing it.
My beautiful Sri Lankan family 
So you can do ½ day programs, full day and even multiple days and you can stay there and they will feed you the most amazing home cooked meals! They will take you to the Elephant Dung Paper Factory, you can go to an English school and the students can practice on you, and they will give you cooking lessons! The accommodations are basic but comfortable with a bottom-less tea pot. I hope if you are in Sri Lanka you will stop by and support this wonderful family.
You know how people often say, well what can I do? I am just one person/family… well this family didn’t say that, they just sloughed ahead and worked through the inevitable heartbreak and struggle when you are bucking tradition but they are making a difference, not just in Seetha’s life but as being an example to the tourists and locals that you don’t need the chains and the bullhook if you treat your elephant with respect. Every day she is walked once in the morning and once in the afternoon and every time there is a gaggle of tourists trailing behind her so the locals see this, other tourists see this and the ripple effect takes over. We don’t have to ride an elephant to enjoy her, in fact I think that my times walking with the elephants have been so much better, so much more real than if I was perched on top of her, hurting her back, listening to the chains rattle. ~shudder~ No, I get to look her in the eye and know that I am not adding to her suffering and that means the world to me.
People look at those huge bodies and can’t understand how it would possibly hurt her to ride them. Well there’s a reason riding elephants are drapped in chains – the elephant is is constant pain and will only tolerate you up there because she has no choice. Their spines are very fragile.
“Instead of smooth, round spinal disks, elephants have sharp bony protrusions that extend upwards from their spine,” Carol Buckley, president of Elephant Aid International, said. “These bony protrusions and the tissue protecting them are vulnerable to weight and pressure coming from above.”
In addition to wearing down the delicate tissue and bones on an elephant’s back, the chairs can also damage the skin and cause painful lesions on the elephant’s body, according to Buckley.
So do your research… on Trip Advisor go past all the positive reviews and find the negative ones. If they talk about abuse, chains, beatings etc, take your money and move on.
I also went to the Elephant Transit Home in Udawalawe. Baby elephants, orphaned for one reason or another, from all over Sri Lanka are brought here to be cared for until they are 5 at which time they are collared and released into Udawalawe National Park in small groups. The centre is open to the public during feeding times. It bothered me that one of the keepers used a stick to maintain some semblance of control but considering how rowdy the little buggers can get I guess they have to do something. Though I have a feeling that at the David Sheldrick Elephant and Rhino Orphanage that would not be tolerated. But they are cared for and they are given complete freedom to explore and meet their wild kin.
