Day 17 - Kitchen and Sand Shifting

Another regular chore is getting the food for the elephants. We have our breakfast nice and sharp at 7am, and then at 8am we report for our work shift. There are basically 3 main tasks, so we rotate through them. That is food, poo and cutting something!!

Today we were back on the kitchen routine. Considering that each elephant eats around 200kg of food each day you can understand the regularity - I guess that it is a bit like our breakfast regularity.

I didn't realize that pumpkins came in so many shapes and sizes!! Still the routine is always the same - form a line and shift a pile of pumpkins to the water trough, then scrub the pumpkins (to remove any possible insecticides), then pass them onto the very NICE lady who swings a mean machete (bet her husband never says NO) and chops them into smaller pieces. Still it is interesting to see the way some elephants take a full pumpkin, and you can hear the crunch as the large teeth make very short work of it.

So here are some shots of our regular preparation.


(L - One of the other work groups heads off for their work duty)

(R - Ther usual view across the Park - each day I can't resist but stop and have a look - and wonder if I am really here!!)



(L & R - The elephants wander and at set times they are watered - well the tourists throw buckets of water at the sides of the elephants, most of which goes over the top to drench the tourists on the other side of the elephant!! - and the tourists gather round to have photographs taken with the family Group)

(L - Baby and Mother visit the mahout during a break)


(R - Afternoon work roster was to shovel sand. We were taken into the park to the large pile of sand, and then filled the trailer - the sand is destined for building foundation)


(L & R - Our transport around the Park for this duty is by the trailer - highly illegal in most places!! But fun here - especially with all the bumps, and still a bit of water left around the Park)





(L & R - Our group is ready to start - the enthusiasm ran out fairly quickly as the wet sand, mixed with rocks was quite heavy to shovel)














(L & R - The foundations for the new building - sand on top of smashed concrete bricks, and steel reinforcement - the upright poles contain reinforcement, but when it goes to a second level they sometimes will weld a second piece onto the reinforcement of the first upright pole))