Silver Flower: Love at first sight
Next to a pond on the terrain of the elephantfestival of Surin a young elephant comes running to me screaming. With panic in her eyes she stops just in front of me. A body full of scars and wounds. She feels cold and is trembling all over her body. She can’t be much older then six years, but her face looks like a sixty year old. Instead of playful and stubborn she looks afraid and stressed. Especially her forehead shows that she has been treated with the hook, her ears show infections. When I lay my hands on her face, she looks at me intensely. I feel she trembles, she’s breathing restless. It seems as if she wants to tell me something, a cry for help! For me it’s love at first sight. I silently promise her I will give her a better life.
The rest of the festival she’s standing in the heat of the sun on a chain which is far too short. Because she is so stressed she keeps walking in circles around the spot where the chain is fixed to. When I am with her she lifts up the chain with her trunk and drops it in front of my feet. Unchain me! So independent and hurt she looked yesterday, so angry she is now. We agree with the mahout to meet him at his home later this afternoon.
At night he arrives by car accompanied by a wife hung with all kinds of ivory decorations. He tells that Silver Flower has immediately gone in training again, after she had left the elephantfestival in Surin. We try to negotiate about the price. He sticks with his price which is too high. Lee examines the papers of Silver Flower and finds out that this man can’t be the real owner. We decide to go look for the right one.
Monday we first go to the animal registration office to check the papers. Silver Flower indeed turns out to be registered with another person then we met yesterday. The clerk tells us he thinks it’s a good idea to check the papers and offers to help us. In the afternoon we will meet the real owner in his village. We hope he will ask a reasonable price, but unfortunately he is drunk of rice wine, and the price is much too high. But he will discuss the price with his family. He also says Silver Flower isn’t in training no longer. His wife is sick, that’s why he can’t take care of the elephant anymore and he has left her in a rice field. The rice field and trainingcamp are at the same place, so we decide to go over there. The mahout is fetched and he drives with us.
We find her at a nice spot in a rice field. She comes walking to us. Blood is running from her ears and face. Moreover she has got sharp wooden pegs behind her ears invisible for the outside world. The pegs are used as part of the training, to stop the elephants from grazing left and right from trees and bushes when they are on the move. Thus when I greet her, she can’t even move her head. Maybe her owner has brought her to this spot to make a good impression, but it is obvious that she is in the middle of her training. If this lasts for more then a month she will be emotional wreck.
I find myself on her terrain now. She takes the lead. I go and sit on a rock and try not to move. She comes to check me out very carefully. Closer and closer she comes to me deeply sniffing with her trunk. When I want to lay my hand on her trunk, she pulls away: don’t touch me, now it’s my turn. She comes standing next to me, with her mouth wide open. I leave her to it. I trust her, even if she is in a traumatizing training right now. I hope she starts to trust me as well.
The mahout doesn’t seem to care, he sticks with his high price, which isn’t that odd with all this interest from us rich westerners. I decide to give it some more time. We have the papers, addresses and phonenumbers. That night I constantly think of Silver Flower. Why didn’t we bring bananas for her. Shouldn’t I have tried to secretly turn around the wooden pegs behind her ears, then she might have been able to walk around without pain that afternoon. But then we also would have lost the trust of the mahout, and because of this reduced the chance of buying her free. I console myself with the thought of giving her a better life soon. Because for me it’s definite that we are going to buy Silver Flower in December.
Silver Flower at rice field
Peg behind ear of Silver Flower
An elephant bringing in money at the elephantfestival of Surin
