Day 1 with Rani!!!

The day count is reset now that I'm at MEF and have an Elephant :)

**My new favorite thing: (obviously) Elephants!!
This morning I meet up with the other volunteers at 7:30 and we each go with our elephant handlers known as Mahouts (pronounced mah-HOOT) to our elephants' sleeping areas. We clean them out and do a poop count as the Mahouts lead the elephants down to the river and their day areas. Annabob and I go down to the river after cleaning and help our mahout, Chandana, wash Rani. She really is the most beautiful one here. Also let's take a moment to absorb the fact that I got to WASH an ELEPHANT!
Rani lay down on her side in the river and we scrubbed her with coconut shells. Nope, still need more of a moment to abosrb the fact that I got to WASH an ELEPHANT! Today I just scrubbed her back, but
Annabob tells me that soon Rani will trust me more and I'll be allowed to scrub her head and sides.**

After she is clean, Annabob brushes off the bottoms of her feat and feeds her a dough ball with medicine in in. Just before lunch Annabob tells me that there are only 2 elephants here who paint and Rani is one of them! We get the paints and set up the eaisel. I take pictures as Rani paints and Annabob gives her the paintbrushes. Annabob wants me to chronicle the process because she is planning to buy the painting that Rani makes. I promise to give her the pictures of the creation of her newly acquired art.

At lunch I discover that in taking Fran's place with Rani I am considered quite lucky. Bert and Kevin cannot wash Raja becaue he attacked his Mahout a few days ago. Leiah's elephant Seetha, has been loaned away from the foundation for 4 months, and everyone agrees that Rani has the best Mahout who Annabob and I get to work with.

In addition to working directly with the elephants, we all have duties around the foundation. I pick gardening to be my project. I work with our gardener Cherith (a Sri Lankan man), Bert, Kevin, Judy, and Annabob. We are trying to grow as many things here that we can to feed the elephants and sell in order to make MEF more self sufficient.

Today we clear weeds, harvest sweet potatoes, water the beds (with watering cans that have to be filled and lugged back and forth), plant okra, and clear a spot of land in the garden for a massage hut. I have never been more exhausted in my life! As we are harvesting sweet potatoes, Annabob decides to eat one raw so she borrows my Leatherman to peel it. I clip it to my belt as I work and everyone has been admiring it, but this is the first time it's needed to be used. 10 minutes later we are eating a delicious sweet potato as I take her to my medicine cabinet for the first time my cut ointment and bandaids need to be used.

I absolutely adore working with Cherith (we all call him Cherry) and have requested to Helena that this be my permanent project. Cherry is very good at speaking English, and is going to help me with my Sinhalese while I'm here. Today I was asking him what he calls all the tools we are using, some of which I don't even know the english name.
I think I will like it here.