Back? Down? Again? To Heaven

     When there's a location called "Heaven" around, the use of prepositions gets tricky.  Most frequently used is "down," but in my opinion "down to heaven" sounds plain weird!  But weird or not, that's where we went. 
     Day by day I was learning to carry and wear less and less.  Gone was the jacket--better to get wet from rain than from sweat.  Mostly gone was the cap--a sweaty head is a miserable thing.  Gone were the socks AND the metal water bottle (too heavy and cumbersome, and the dreaded plastic bottle was lighter and fit in a pocket).  Only one camera at a time (this day it was the new movie camera Scott bought, and do I ever like it!)  And I ADDED a walking stick, which was particularly welcome going down those slippery steep clay trails and Scott's fishing vest, which consists of a whole bunch of pockets held together by mesh.  I was less glamorous than usual, even, but I did NOT vomit, which is a good thing.

     And, feeling so much better, this time I was able to participate in the best of Heaven's activities, among them getting into the stream and washing the Supremes by throwing buckets of water on them. and building a little rock dam, so the water would back up enough to give the Supremes a deeper pool to splash around in.  Here's the splashing:

     I suppose these elephants may not appear to be particularly abused, but these ladies have gut-wrenching histories.  One, Onion, was rather unruly in her younger days, and so her owners carved a HOLE in her forehead where they could insert a hook to control her better.  When she arrived at the Project, her head was encrusted with mud, but when she was cleaned up, there it was, perfectly square and of course subject to repeated infections.  Another was unfortunate enough to be owned by people who believed that infertility could be treated with pieces of female elephant genitalia.  The wound that resulted from THAT belief also became infected periodically, and I was glad to learn that the antibiotic powder I'd brought from home gave her almost immediate relief.
     Here's my co-volunteer Klara (can you guess she's from Australia?) talking about one of the other elephant's ill-fated misadventure into a farm.

     These elephants have had a history of hard hard work.  They are mainly quite old.   Bob's in his 70's apparently, and my good friend Buffy is, like me, 58.  Most of them spent their working days in the logging industry where they carried heavy loads.  This is very painful for elephants, particularly on their backs, and some of these elephants' backs still show the wear of the loads they carried.    
     Some were "tourist" elephants, obliged to carry tourists around in wicker boxes all day.  Those boxes are NOT made with the comfort and safety of the elephant in mind, like, say, horses' saddles are, and the worst of it is that they are unable to eat the requisite number of hours when they have to plod around the same old trail all the time.  They get malnourished and dehydrated.  It is good to see animals with that kind of past enjoying their new life "down in Heaven."
     We also built a little rock dam, so the water would back up enough to give the Supremes a deeper pool to splash around in, particularly for when the rainy season is over and the creek levels decline.  I found this project so satisfying that I made this clip of the finished product.