Greetings from Thailand!
After falling ill last week, I have a little catching up to do with my blog.Because my study abroad is a more non-traditional internship abroad, there’s no university life to talk about.
I don’t have any formal classes or student life with clubs to join or sports to play, but I do live at a wildlife sanctuary in the hills of rural northwestern Thailand. Near the border to the country of Myanmar (formally Burma), in the town of Mae Sot. The main land crossing between the two countries, Mae Sot has continued to grow as more and more tourists visit both countries. Because Mae Sot is 6 hours from Chaing Mai and 8 hours from Bangkok, many people spend a day or two in town when going for visa run to return into Thailand. Almost an hour outside of Mae Sot in the village of Ban So-O, quaint little village in the Prop Phra District along the route to Umphang. As you take the corner through the main road, the mountains begin to appear in the distance. As you leave Ban So-O, you’re surrounded by thick small farms of corn and tapioca, and even smaller pockets of dense foliage that used to be exotic jungle just fifty years ago. After just about 10 minutes, a forest green sign for “William E. Deters Foundation for Gibbon and Wildlife Conservation Projects” will appear.
A sanctuary that opened by accident over 25 years ago, Highland Farm Gibbon Sanctuary houses almost 70 gibbons, over 20 macaques, and a small menagerie of other animals. Overseen by the director and founder Pharanee Deters, her staff of five includes her assistant and animal care manger Nok as well as four animal care staff. The four men who work here at the sanctuary are from local Thai villages, and when I arrived, didn’t speak a word of English. I see these six people every day, along with volunteers who come and go for stays of anywhere from five nights up to a few weeks. People can stay for up to three months here, but those are usually the students coming from the States who are participating in a study or internship abroad program. In this past month, we’ve had a middle-aged couple from France, another university student from the states, two recent high school graduates from Germany, another university student from Australia, and two Israeli girls who just completed their time in the military. This doesn’t include the tourist groups from the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Spain, or France, or the incoming volunteers arriving this week. Most of the people who have come to stay here at Highland Farm are just looking to try something new and different for a few days while on holiday. Being with a mix of others from abroad as well as the permanent Thai staff has been different. Learning to communicate effectively has become a daily chore with new people from different corners of the globe at varying levels of language skills.
Although I don’t have courses to talk about, I can talk about my coworkers and our daily routine. Anyone in this line of work knows that no two days with live animals are ever the same. We prepare food daily and clean each enclosure, but each day brings new challenges and opportunities to face. Some days I spend hours socializing with the juvenile gibbons, and others I’m pouring cement all day. We give the dogs baths almost weekly, and even sometimes bathe the gibbons too. I’ve been working to implement enrichment and training for the animals on site, so morning will be spent harvesting and rinsing browse and afternoons full of handing out their treats and taking behavioral notes. My days are long and packed, and time goes by quicker than I had anticipated. My list of things I hope to accomplish grows continuously as I lose more and more time each day.
My other coworkers to bring up aren’t truly coworkers, more like the beings that I’m working for. And they want to make sure that I am awake and ready to start my day a few hours before we are set to begin. Mornings at Highland Farm start early, but the gibbons usually start calling us well before 6am. Their duets ring down into the valley, and into my bedroom window just a few feet from the first enclosure. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m more of a night owl than a morning person, but I could never be angry being woken up by the calls of gibbons in Thailand as the sun begins to rise.
I spend almost all day everyday here on site at the sanctuary, but every few days we get low on produce and have to make our way back to Ban So-O or out to Prop Phra. Sometimes we even make the almost hour drive to Mae Sot to the market instead of hoping from stand-to-stand between the villages. We pick up our vegetables and leafy greens, and my favorite, many different types of tropical fruits. Papayas, pamelos, lychee, bananas, guava, mangoes – you name it. One of my favorite visits is close to the District Office in Prop Phra, to visit Malai, “the banana lady”. Pharanee has been buying bananas from her for years, and makes the trip 2-3 times a week to get somewhere around 500 bananas at a time. With close to 100 primates eating two bananas daily, we go through A LOT of bananas. After filling up the bed of the truck, we usually stay and chat with her and her husband while having an ice cream or sharing a pamelo. Their English is minimal, and my Thai even more so, but we use what we have and Pharanee happily translates more complex questions and answers. Seeing her a couple times a week is always a joy because she is always so happy and we all seem to enjoy each other’s company. The half an hour drive to Prop Phra is absolutely beautiful as well. With the Burmese mountains in the distance behind hills of flowers is breathtaking. Sometimes I ride in the back of the truck with the bananas and enjoy the scenery from outside of the cabin.
A lot of my day, when my free time is actually “free time”, is taken up by trying to work on improvements for the sanctuary. Pharanee reminded me a few days ago to remember to focus some time on myself and enjoy my relationships with the animals. Because days get hectic and I’m still trying to accomplish new tasks in addition to the daily grind, I forget to spend quality time with the animals. This might come from my work experience in zoos, knowing that any down time is time that should be used productively. But with only three months of time here at the sanctuary, and not worrying about being a paid staff member, I’m trying to commit more time to interacting with the animals instead of just feeding, cleaning, and observing behaviors. Social interaction, especially social grooming, is a huge part of primate life, and something that I engage in every chance I get. Gibbons like Christy, Annie, and Charlie or macaques like Durian and Sompis are some of the animals that I spend time with daily. Sometimes I lose track of time and find that I have been grooming (or have been being groomed) for 20, 30, or 40 minutes. But bonding with these animals and gaining their trust is a huge part of the job, and something that I’m fortunate enough to spend time doing.
With experiences like this, I wish there was more time in the day. I’ve found that my goals are not meeting reality as I don’t have nearly enough time to complete everything that my supervisor and I have talked about. Implementing enrichment and training is time consuming enough, but my list of improvements doesn’t stop there. A husbandry protocol quickly turned into a complete Volunteer Handbook, teaching a couple of English words to the staff turned into daily English lessons, and plus daily chores and surprise tour groups make their way into my busy schedule as well. By the end of the day, I’m beat. I draft out some emails while I watch an episode of whatever I can download quickly from Netflix. I had very high expectations of completing many tasks once I arrived here, but am learning that it’s more important to be flexible and remember that quality is much more important than quantity.
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