Bring the Elephant to school
The temple we are staying at is on the border of Lopburi, in a small village named Thanon Jai. This time there’s no school with the temple, so we look for a school nearby. Because we would like to introduce the children to the elephants, a school as nearest by as possible would be best. Then we could walk to the school with the elephants in the early morning. At 6:30 am, still dark, we leave. At 7:30 am a Buddhist ceremony will start with monks from the surrounding area and we would like to join them. Allthough we are walking through a small village the traffic is hectic. The elephants don’t seem to be bothered, they just keep on walking. Meanwhile they look around for tasty trees. Every now and then they grab for a branch on a tree next to the road. Duang is leading us, he checks the road for sharp objects and warns us for putholes. Narong is sitting on top of Sri Nuan, to guide her, and to avoid her from grabbing to many tree branches. Wiseat is walking next to Douk Ngern (Silver Flower), who is following him very well. By walking on the middle of the road I try to avoid the cars getting to close to the elephants. We thought we could turn left somewhere into the field, and make an off the road shortcut to the school from there.
But all the fields are private property and are fenced off. So we have to continue walking next to the road. All in all the road is only a kilometer or so long but it already feels awfully wrong to be walking here. I’m glad we didn’t choose to walk like this for three months…
The sun has come up when we get to the school. Next to the sports field in front of the school already a nice spot for the elephants has been arranged: in the shade of some trees there are some freshly cut banana trees laying. We hang up a rope around it for the children not to get too close. The elephants immediately start pulling at the trees. First they take off the banana leaves with their trunks, then they finish off with the rest of these juicy trees. Then the children start bringing bananas to the elephants, which makes that a whole group of children now are gathered around the elephants. The mahouts are taking care that the children stay behind the rope. The teacher hands us a welcome sign and –book: We welcome the Bring the Elephant HOME team, Douk Ngern and Sri Nuan to the Wat Thanon Kae School. The book is already full with drawings the pupils made. Great! The vets from the animal registration office Lopburi are there as well, they want to help us sterilize and castrate dogs and cats. In front of our Bring the Elephant HOME stand they are preparing an operation table. When I see the knifes laying ready for use, I hope they will not start operating here outside.
As a sort of international animal protection cooperation they thought this would be a good idea. Our whole team is present, two elephants on the sports field, 350 pupils and their parents, elephantlessons by dutchies, Jumbo Express with “live” sterilization and castration, the village leader presents Bring the Elephant HOME by speakers, all officials of the local government are there, ITV is filming, chaos! 
Before we even notice it three dogs are already laying under narcosis on the table. We can’t pay to much attention to them cause we have to go inside to start our program. The room is filled with children and parents who are watching little plays the children perform on stage. A class does a traditional dance, a girl sings a song, and a teacher gives some speeches.
Being “farang”, which makes us special, we are asked to give away the prices. Then the last act before it’s our turn to go on stage. An about 12-year old boy, with make-up on, wearing a top and hotpants, appears on stage. The public gets really excited now. On a funky beat he starts doing sort of a pole dancing act, while all parents are clapping. Then the music stops, and the act comes to a sudden end. The head of the school announces us in English. We have prepared about the same program like we did in Ayutthaya, we just shortened it a bit. When we want to start to thing the chang-song, the head of the school says they have a real chang at their school. A fat girl is pushed forward, and the whole school starts singing the chang-song for her. Fortunately a teacher joins her, and together they start to dance to the song. It’s feels uncomfortable to me, it’s a pity for the girl. Meanwhile the team takes a look at the drawings, and then the prices are handed over to the winners. There’s one large drawing made of cartonboard, made by a group of children, for them we have a special price.
Because it really starts to heaten up, and the children don’t come outside all at once, we can’t make a picture of the whole group. Meanwhile the elephants are walking home again, and we end the program by handing over little writing books and pens. When we are cleaning up, we have to step over dogs which are still under narcosis laying on the sportsfield waiting for their owners to pick them up.
After the program ends we go for a lunch with the people of the animal office, and then prepare the transportpapers for Sukhothai. When we walk into the office everybody is talking about Bring the Elephant HOME. The vets jealously start to question their colleagues who have been with us today about what they have done. When Lee shows the article from The Nation, everybody comes to take a look if it’s really me. They start filming and making pictures as well. The head of the animal offices in the Lopburi province, comes in and warmly welcomes us. He just received the compliments from the head office in Bangkok. It then turns out that they have asked them for advice how to deal with us. Bangkok is proud at Lopburi for working together with us so well. They hope in the future we will work together more often.
At the end of the day we hear some nuns walking into our camp giggling. We go to meet them and the explain that they want to give bananas to the elephants. Lek has sent a load of bananas from Chiang Mai by train, and we wait for them to be brought to our camp. Together with the nuns, who are daring to get closer to the elephants more and more, we feed the bananas to Sri Nuan and Silver Flower. A nun uses her mobile phone to take pictures of us and the elephants. We in turn make pictures of her doing that. The nuns try to make something clear to us by saying “kitum”. We think it means that they will miss us and that turns out to be correct. Kitum means “I will be thinking about you!” Lee explains to us. We are certainly gonna use this word more often from now on, starting with these sweet nuns!
