The Elephant freedom project - Sri Lanka

When I was accepted to volunteer at the elephant freedom project, I was pretty excited and imagined exactly what it would be like. The project revolves around two elephants (Kumari and Meneki), which were rescued from exploitative tourist companies and are now kept in animal-friendly premises and in species-appropriate conditions. However, my ideas did not correspond to reality. The project mainly offers 'tours', whereby a maximum of 6 visitors at a time can walk with the elephants and wash them in the river. The volunteering was very uncoordinated and disorganized. So most of the time you just went with the groups and only had to briefly clean the habitat once a day. It had nothing to do with work.

It was also noticeable that the visitors who booked such tours had quite a good income and that, in relation to other prices in Sri Lanka, a lot of the money from the tours ended up in the hands of the founding family and not the mahouts (the local elephants Supervisor). You could only work on your own initiative and so spent two hours collecting plastic from the river in which the elephants were bathing. After half an hour a 7 year old local girl came and helped me diligently and we played fun games picking up the trash until we had a huge mountain together.

It is still incomprehensible to me how people here throw their rubbish into nature so unconsciously, although they earn money from tourists through the wonderful nature and mostly still hand in hand with their lives. The lack of education, the lack of feeling for long-term consequences, the lack of infrastructure for adequate waste disposal and the lack of money are the sparks of this problem, while the increasing consumption and consumption caused by the gradual economic recovery is the gasoline.

Nevertheless, the elephants were kept in a very animal-friendly manner and it was an incredible experience to be in such close contact with the largest land creatures. The mere presence of the animals is both awe-inspiring and attractive at the same time. The animals simply radiate such peace and serenity!

Then I visited the "elephant poo factory" with a Canadian backpacker, where elephant excrement was made into paper and then made into notebooks etc. Pretty crazy, but sustainable :D

Things got particularly interesting when we were asked if we wanted to teach a little English in a local school for 2-3 hours. I generally thought the idea was great, but I have no pedagogical training and, above all, no plan on how best to teach languages. I know a little bit about medicine, so I asked if I could teach basic medical science and the project manager was enthusiastic and told me that all the students there actually spoke good English. Accordingly, I then taught the basics of anatomy, physiology, disease theory and wound management to a class of 100 students (between 10 and 21 years old) for two hours. It was just fantastic. The children were all very interested and especially those who want to work in medicine later were involved. Although I was quite nervous, everything went as I had prepared and it was a wonderful experience. The art is just to present complex topics that you have understood yourself in a simple way and still do them justice. The Canadian backpacker did the same with climate change only, since she works in that field.