I am taking a course in Creative nonfiction for fun and I wrote this for it. It’s a commentary on my trip to Thailand a year or so ago.
I’m the last out of the happy room, the Thai pit stop place. As I step away from the long palm-shaded building smelling of disinfectant and gardenia soap, mahouts lead elephants up a broad path for our ride through the Chaing Mei Elephant Park. Pachyderm feet thud beside brown human toes, and long, thick gray trunks hug delicate shoulders. The tiny men laugh, broad-brimmed hats shading their faces from brilliant sun and verdant fronds dangling from branches. I decide to fall in behind the parade. But teeth dazzling against dark lips, and black forelock tumbling into sparkling eyes, one handler takes my wrist pulling me next to his elephant. I’m not sure I’m happy. Weighing between two and five tons; and six to nine feet high at the shoulder, this largest of land animals could crush me. Instead he turns a mild sable eye in my direction, rumbling gently. The mahout smiles. Fear vanishes. I extend my hand, touch the elephant’s rough, bristled leg, and savor another Thailand experience. For the past three weeks, this country has exposed me to a way of living inaccessible from home. I return the mahout’s smile. “Kopkumka,” Thank you.
He presses his palms together, touches his thumbs to his forehead and bows, the Buddhist Hindu acknowledgment of my gratitude. The elephant steps off the path. Stretching and firmly but lightly grasping the animal’s ear, he guides it back. His attitude has become familiar. Walking from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport into my first muggy Southeast Asian night, I sensed gentle toughness in the people I met.
Now, a tiny wrinkled lady in pink sarong, purple tennis shoes, and black Mickey Mouse t-shirt cheerfully blocks the trail head with a wicker basket overflowing with pungent bananas. “10 Baht.” Bowing she points to the elephant. “Feed.” He stretches his trunk. How can I refuse? Selecting a deep yellow bunch, I give her roughly thirty cents.
But before I can offer the elephant anything the mahout leads him to a hitching post where the other animals wait, and the earthy odor of dung mixes with the aroma of fruit.
The smell is not unpleasant. It’s natural in this place, where yellow carnations, red roses, and white lotus adorn temples, and open markets seethe with silver fish, crabs, shrimp, green frogs, black snails, sea turtles, juicy meat on ice, vegetables still wrapped in earth, live chickens, sweet, pine apple-like jack fruit, and rose apples. Steam from charcoal grills announces that Thai cooks employ curry, cumin, garlic, and chili. The elephant smells fit right in.
At the hitching post, I break a banana out of the bunch. Ten trunks stretch toward it. Jumping, I think of a horizontal forest. Do I trust those big mouths not to take my hand off? The first elephant in line settles the question. Reaching between my fingers, he plucks the fruit as if lifting a Dresden china cup. Awed at his delicacy, I move down the line passing out bananas until I hold just one. Who shall have it? A tap on my calf makes me look down. A baby’s outstretched trunk dances. I bend to bestow the treat.
Now each mahout saddles his animal and takes it to a set of wooden steps. Two at a time, my traveling companions climb to a narrow red seat fastened to the elephant with a gold cinch. The gray stairs shake as I scramble up, and even with cushions, the seat feels hard. My elephant lifts his mahout onto his head and moves so the next people can mount.
The banana lady puts her wares under a palm and trots away. No one will take the basket. Even Bangkok, a city of several million has such a low crime rate, that people “lock” their shops by pulling brown tarps over doorways when the markets close during afternoons when the air steams and drips.
Evenings when the air cools, stores reopen under glittering white lights. Streets overflow with multicolored push carts, trailers, and trucks offering everything from luggage and shoes to parrots and groceries. Blue, red, and green money sits accessible to crowds jamming the sidewalks.
Stealing is unthinkable. I learned that from twelve-year-old Caricut, whose school I visited in the province of Cancanbury. After pointing out her classroom’s Apple computers, she invited me to sit in her wooden desk. Black bangs falling over serious brown eyes, she explained in halting English that thieves brought shame to their families. Their bad behavior blackened the world.
A jolt startles me. The elephant I’m sitting on has begun walking, crossing brown and ebony boulders no human could manage without a staff and cleated shoes. His rolling gait sets me swaying. I grab the hand bar in front of my seat as we rock down an incline and through a small clear amber-bottomed stream.
Thai knights jousted on charging elephants. For thousands of years, Chinese T’ai, Burma Mons, Aboriginal Australians, and East Indians wandered across Southeast Asia, settling down and driving each other out. The magnificent temples at Angkor Wat, today in Cambodia, passed between Buddhist and Hindu rulers. Today, Cambodia and Thailand squabble over religious relics on their borders. The Burmese-Thiland Railroad, built by Japanese prisoners during World War II stops fifty miles either side of the Thai-Myanmar boundary.
Thais reflect their vibrant genetic and cultural mix. Their skin ranges from yellow to brown. Their language comes from China, their writing from Sanskrit. Children learn Buddhist teachings of non-violence, reverence for life, honesty and clean living in Hindu tales of Genesha the elephant god using his tusk when his pen dried up to finish a poem he promised to transcribe for a dying man. Rulers have dodged European colonists, especially the British, by incorporating them into civic and political life. Thais say the Americans brought democracy during the Vietnam War, though monarchy is the traditional Thai government. A good king can be as good as a good president. A man introducing himself as Joe suggests that part of Thailand’s current civil unrest results from tension between those who want democracy and those who desire a constutional monarchy with a strong king.
I ponder that as my elephant steps onto level ground and strolls. What is the American phobia of non democratic rule? My mind wanders to an experience in Bangkok. I’ve gotten into the hotel elevator with four small olive-skinned men. Eying me from under bushy black brows one points to himself. “Iran.” He gestures at me. “America?” The car turns claustrophobic. I brace myself. “Yes.” He says, “America good. Bush c-r-r-r-razy.”
Are presidents always so great?
A rumble vibrates off beige paln trunks. My elephant flaps his ears. Glancing around, I discover the source of his excitement. The banana lady stands on a tall wooden platform resembling a miniature fire lookout. As the elephants ahead of mine pass, riders hand her Baht. She pulls tough green leaves off the fruit before tossing it to the buyers. I know she’ll wrap her lunch or fuel her cooking fire with those leaves. Thais waste nothing, and select purchases carefully. After China, Thailand has the next largest economy in Southeast Asia. Almost everyone in the city has a wide screen TV and computer. In villages the headman connects his television to a generator and shares. A house may have one or two electric lights, usually flourescent. Almost no one owns an expensive refrigerator. People visit the market daily to buy food. How delicious meals taste, cooked on a stove or a gas ring attached to a butane tank.
Homes range from western style apartments above Bangkok’s businesses to open-sided single rooms on teak stilts, covered with palm leaf roofs. Fans circulate air. When monsoons turn the ground into lakes, teak withstands the flood. Stilts keep possessions dry. Should a house wash away, the jungle provides fresh building materials. Computers and TVs escape with their owners in rowboats. What does get lost gets replaced or dismissed. Life is not permanent. Material goods create misery.
The banana lady smiles as I hand her another 10 Baht. I notice her teeth. Yellow and crooked, they crisscross. Lines cut into her forehead. People look young or old here. She looks ancient. I haven’t seen a doctor’s office anywhere except Bangkok, or Chaing Mei, the city near the elephant park. Suddenly, I want to run through every village crying, “Dental Clinic arise. Potable water flow from the tap.”
My elephant’s trunk arches. I drop a banana. Catching it, he pops it in his mouth as I might a grape. How different I am from an elephant. How different from a Thai. Yet in our differences, each has something important for the other. No one culture or species has it all. I look up. A jet has left a white trail in the cobalt sky. Let it keep flying, around the world Let it bring us together to see the good, and exchange ideas to stop the bad.
The gray trunk curls again. I toss. The banana misses the mark. Swooping, the trunk snatches the treat. I lean back and sway to the rhythm of careful elephant steps that disturb nothing on the emerald jungle floor.
Connie Gotsch is the author of two nvels for DLSIJ Press, ‘A Mouthful of Shell,’ and ‘Snap Me a Future.” Snap Me a Future is set in New Mexico, and stories like this one have found their way into it. Conne is also the program director for public radio station KSJE FM in Farmington, New Mexico. Her program Roving with the Arts can be heard mornings 8-noon on 90.9 FM, Farmington New Mexico, or at www.ksje.com Her personal web site, designed by DLSIJ Press’s talented editor, is www.conniegotsch.com If you like this essay, check Connie out.
Posted on November 29th, 2008 by Connie Gotsch
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