Elephants

Natasha, an American who coordinates the production of the Human Rights Book on Burma, arrived at our table at the Night Market to find an elephant at our table. Mel, a feisty friend of mine from the UK who travels to camps all along the border on an education project, had a scowl on her face. She was yelling at the man on top of the elephant in Thai. The woman who owns the food stall we were eating at came out and joined her in the yelling. A crowd of young children had condensed in the area (there is always a crowd of them in the Night Market running around throwing stones at the dogs, yelling, playing, watching Power Rangers on one of the restaurant's TV's. Perhaps Thailand has an all-Power-Rangers/ all-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles station, it always seems to be on.) There is a tiny, mangy, puppy asleep at my feet. It is terribly cute, but all the same, I hope it doesn't have fleas. This is the same place the man fired his gun into the air a month ago to avoid paying for his dinner and tonight's entertainment is the elephant, or, at least, that is what we are supposed to believe.

Elephants in Thailand are smaller than the African variety and fairly functional. They do not roam over romantic landscapes trumpeting and stampeding to make the ground shake, or, at least, not to my knowledge. They help with construction projects and farming and any labor that requires strong muscles that they can be harnessed to. So you can come across elephants in the strangest places: towing jeeps out of the mud deep in the jungle, for example. However, they are also used to get tourist dollars. So they can be found deep in the heart of Bangkok as well.

I am told that an elephant can hear an apple fall over eight kilometers away. Even if this is partially true, what it must be like for an elephant to walk along one of the busiest streets in Bangkok, where I saw an elephant last, must be unimaginable. Their feet, like humans, is tough flesh, not bone, so the heat of the sidewalk must be intense. Yet there they are, walking through the city with someone riding on their head, offering rides for a fee, and selling bags of bananas to feed to the elephant. And here is one such elephant, standing near our table in the Mae Sot Night Market.

This elephant has small, dark eyes and is extremely dirty. The children are half afraid of it and half in awe. It makes them excited. They dart up to it and race back. They are doing strange dances and screaming and laughing. Mel tells the man sitting on the elephant's head to take the elephant away and give it a wash. The restaurant owner sounds angry also.

So the elephant turns it's great head and ambles slowly through the traffic out of the Night Market and into the night. Natasha sits down, looking confused. We order food for our Friday night dinner. And it's just another night out in Mae Sot.