Did we or didn't we?

A few months ago, The British Women’s Group gave some money to the Elephant Conservation Network for equipment. I went up to stay in Kanchanaburi last weekend with my family to present the equipment to their rangers who were in dire need of the kit.

During our correspondence, Belinda, their Director said ‘Just so you know, you probably won’t see any elephants…” Weeeell, okay, I wasn’t only going to see elephants, but really to hand over their equipment … Still, I thought it’s better to be prepared … manage your expectations, and all that. Then Belinda said ‘You will see lots of shit and footprints.”

Good, okay, then. Did you know that elephants crap every ninety minutes?

There are about 170 elephants in the Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary and each mature adult requires between 200 and 300 kg of food EVERY DAY. That’s a lot of poo.

Elephants are hugely important in Thailand. They are royal, religious and national icons but they are still threatened by growing human population. Human elephant conflict is a big problem. The forests, the elephants’ home, have been encroached upon, exploited and developed. Now this means that the quality of food available in the forest is diminished and the elephants crop raid (they eat local farmers’ crops) which cheeses the farmers off, quite understandably.

Elephant Conservation Network is an NGO working alongside local people, other NGOs, local and national government agencies to find solutions to these problems.

So did we see an elephant? We certainly saw lots of poo. Belinda told me she’d never seen an elephant in the daytime up at the ranger station, but Pi Nui, the head ranger, said that a young bull elephant had wandered into the camp just the day before!

On the way back from our tour … we did see an elephant. Can you see the elephant shaped thing behind the heads and the trees?







Click to make it larger
if you can't see it.

Problems

Tonight I fly to the UK.

I have peeled off all my plotted post it notes from my big piece of card and stuck them together. By rights, I shouldn’t be here talking about it. I said I wouldn’t, but I think I’ve got to talk about My Problem. Or maybe Problems.

I’m not writing. I am thinking, but mostly about why I’m not writing. I know what I want to write but when I try to do it I don’t or can’t. I wondered if perhaps I didn’t know how to get there, so I planned to plot. I talked about plotting; I cleared my desk and completed my other jobs. I bought some new stationery. And for a few hours I did plot onto a big piece of card that won’t fit into the ‘allowed to check a bag this big’ space they have at the check in desks.

So. What am I to do? I have two and a half weeks of 2/3 days in any one place and seeing people we haven’t seen for a year or so. Will I have a chance to write? Should I write about that instead? Should I continue to try and plot so that when I get back I can write?

I want to tell you that I plan to have a break from blogging BUT I think that may be a lie… I’m not sure that I can. I may be lurking…

I think that what I need is to have permission not to do any writing/plotting/thinking about writing or plotting. I don’t know where this will lead, but thinking about it hasn’t worked, so now I’m going to try not to think about it.

I may blog so do continue to look in on me, but it may be a bit sporadic too.