The People - The Mahout
'Driving' an elephant!
Unlike most young men, at 21, Trac Chan is not the least embarrassed that he hasn't learned to drive a car yet. Instead he boasts that he can drive an elephant. Although still young, Chan has been a mahout for nine years, working his father's elephant hauling timber and collecting resin. These days he and Ring, a gentle male, are working for WWF's Srepok Wilderness Area Project trying to preserve the unique Dry Forests from which this once wild animal was taken a decade ago.Going where no Toyota truck dares
Ring and Sre, a domesticated female, play an important role in the project. So wet is this wilderness along the Srepok River in eastern Cambodia, that there are times of the year when it can only be reached by elephant. And while patrols during the dry season can be carried out on motorcycle or by foot, during the wet season elephants are essential. They will plod through thick mud and clamber over slippery escarpments where no Toyota truck dare go. In the evenings, when the rangers are resting round the camp fire, the elephants graze on grass and special species of bamboo in the forests, their brass bells clanging around their necks.A tradition of mahouts
Set Cren has also been a mahout for about ten years, inheriting Sre from his father when he died. But like Chan, he has been around elephants all his life, washing them in the river when he was a small boy and minding them when they were left to graze. Both men are from the same nearby village and are members of the Phnong ethnic tribe which has a long tradition of domesticating elephants and are renowned as mahouts.Training an elephant: a disappearing skill
It usually takes about three months to train a wild elephant and for them to learn the essential 12 commands to sit, stand, walk, stop, and turn. There is one very convenient word that instructs the elephant to rip out the tree that is obstructing the trail, which a well-trained elephant will do either by stomping on the offending tree truck or ripping it out by it roots with his trunk.Although experienced mahouts, neither Cren nor Chan know how to train an elephant. This skill is apparently being lost now that it is forbidden to capture wild elephants. Nor are domestic elephants bred. A modest people, the Phnong have an aversion to the sight of elephants mating and follow the practice of keeping male and female elephants apart during the mating season from December to January.
"Having one elephant is like having three babies"
At 47 Cren doesn't expect to always be a mahout. The job is difficult he explains. When the day's patrol is over and the rangers are relaxing in their hammocks, he must take care of his elephant. Every day they must be bathed to protect their sensitive skin. This can be difficult in the dry season when only a few pools of muddy water can be found. Then before bedding down for the night, the mahout must lead his elephant back into the forest to graze, shackling the animal to ensure it doesn't stray too far before morning when he must then rise before the others to go and collect his elephant."Having one elephant is like having three babies," he says.
