No country for elephants: Living with the giants
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At age 15, Y Vin already looks like an adult with his dark brown skin, cold face, and muscular body. As the sun was disappearing in a splash of gold, in a vast lake, he was bathing Y Dok, a male elephant that will soon turn 50.
Like many other ethnic M’Nong boys, Y Vin was allowed to sit even as a child on the back of an elephant by his father, Y Ben Nie, and began his first lesson in becoming a gru (an elephant hunter) when he was just six.
This was a difficult beginning for a boy who was barely a meter tall.
Nie taught his son the first lesson: how to become familiar with elephants. A man who used to accompany gru’s when they went looking for wild elephants to trap, he wanted his son to become a real gru.
“To be able to control an elephant, one must be its sincere friend first,” he said.
“An elephant usually chooses one master and only obeys its master.”
Y Vin said: “Touching [the elephant] Y Tu’s body for the first time scared me since Y Tu seemed to hate children. So, it took me a few months to get close to it.”
Initially, he only touched the elephant to familiarize it with his smell but often sat on its back along with his father to go into the jungle. Traveling round with the elephant in the jungle helped the little boy learn more about his giant friend.
When he first rode Y Tu for it to feed, the animal suddenly ran into the forest. Y Vin grabbed its back and hooked its ears with the kareo (the elephant prod) to keep it under control. The boy’s bravery seemed to conquer the giant beast. After a few months, Y Vin and Y Tu became attached to each other. Every day he took it to the forest to feed, drink water, and swim.
Their friendship lasted for six years until one rainy evening Y Tu went to the forest and never returned. Its body was found by a stream and people in the village said the 46-year-old animal had died of sickness.
Y Vin has never overcome the sadness. “During the six years of being friends with Y Tu, I regarded it as a classmate. Y Tu was only 46 and I don’t know why it died so young. It died but I could not even see it for one last time …”
After praying for Y Tu and burying it in the forest, he returned to the village. That was the first time people saw the boy return alone from the forest.
Overcoming loss
Soon afterwards, Y Vin’s father signed a contract with a tourism company to take care of an elephant called Y Dok. He thought this would enable his son to overcome his sorrow.
It seems to have worked. Y Dok is a big comfort for Y Vin; every day, he takes it to bathe in a big lake in the forest. He climbs steep slopes and travels through a jungle to reach the spot where the animal feeds.
Sitting on its trunk, he said: “Y and Dok I have been attached to each other for three years, and I love Y Dok as much as Y Tu.
“It’s strange that Y Dok has a similar personality to Y Tu’s even though it’s a bit more stubborn.”
Y Vin spoke about Y Dok as if he understood it very well: It hates red objects, children, and even women; when its dung is watery, the animal has a bellyache and so it’s a must to use brocade to tie a corn to feed it.
Y Dok is big but obeys Y Vin. It kneels on its two forelegs when he blows his horn so that he can clamber on its back. He said with pride: “Y Dok is wild and does not accept strangers. But it has become familiar with me and recognizes my voice from afar.”
Y Vin has spent part of his childhood with wild elephants, his true friends. In March every year he and Y Dok take part in the traditional elephant racing festival in the Central Highlands.
The boy said he no longer cherishes the dream of becoming an elephant hunter.
| Man and beast: A tale of friendship For people living near the forests of Thanh Chuong District in the northern province of Nghe An, a thin man riding a giant elephant in the forest was a familiar sight since the 1980’s. The man is Nguyen Van Tan and the elephant, now dead, was Ma. The two became friends in 1988 when he was 28 and it was 27. Ma once saved his life, his fondest memory of the animal. The elephant was carrying two giant logs to a farm when the cables broke and Tan fell from its back on the logs. Ma froze so that the logs did not crush its master, turned, and picked him up with its trunk. Three months ago Ma was sent to Hanoi and died during the trip. “Ma was the first, and perhaps last, elephant I was attached to in my life,” Tan says sadly. |
| Elephant conservation in Daklak Dr Cao Thi Ly, a member of the elephant conservation project and an expert on wild animals, says the project partly aims to conserve wild elephants on an area of around 140,000 hectares, nearly 110,000 ha of it in Daklak’s Yok Don National Park. Of this area, 30,260 ha of forests belonging to Ya Lop and Ea H’Mo forestry companies (Ea Sup District) will either be turned into a biosphere for wild elephants or continue to be exploited in a way that safeguards wild elephants and reduces conflicts between wild elephants and humans. The recently approved project will be earmarked VND61 billion (US$3.05 million). |
