Birthdays, bun-fights & beneficiaries

By John Roberts 17 August 2008 01:19:00

At the risk of speaking the blindingly obvious, this being the wet season, it has been raining a lot recently - not your normal wet-season sunny days with a couple of hours of randomly storming rain - this has been something extraordinary, days and days of constant rain, the wettest they say since '66.

    On the day that the river reached the staff compound, though, the rain stopped the elephant camp turned overnight from a 4WD only mudpit into our usual cheerful selves - once I looked at the webcam and almost called our tech guys until I worked out there was no problem, it only looked different because the sun was shining.

    Our coming out of the shelters and taking off our wellies coincided with a few other causes for celebration; celebration undertaken with the extra recklessness of a team emerging from under a dark cloud.

    First came a special, secret request from the many-time commentators for this blog, in the Two-Trees household - through covert e-mails, smoke signals and a hearty dose of sign language we managed to surprise and celebrate Phil Two-Trees' birthday over the ether and the webcam.



...all the eles got dressed up, as did Moskva's little sister Na Lak.

    On the day the waters came up we were all a little tired, up all night moving staff, floating shoes and accountants' five-year-old tax receipts to high ground, the day of the 14th of August passed without too much reflection - we knew it was special but had no energy to celebrate the 1st birthday of our next smallest elephant.

    A year ago Nam Khong was born into a smaller camp, fewer elephants, far fewer babies and perhaps a simpler time, she celebrated her birthday with a buffet of fruit for everyone and some new sponsoring parents in Kristin Feeny and Pat Donahue.  True to form, she also celebrated by chasing me around the camp - not sure what she has against me, but it does seem to be just me; never mind, keeps me on my toes.



...seen here playing with her Mum's tail, at least, I guess, I can take comfort from the fact she seems to attack the ones she loves the most (yeah right - as they say).



...everyone got to join in, even Lynchee took a break from cleaning the camp to cause a mess.

    Finally for our trifecta of reasons to be cheerful we had a visit from a film crew and a first chance for the members of Raimon Land's management team to meet their new charge Nong Raimon as, within a couple of days of Khong's anniversary, she celebrated her first month.

    Raimon Land have adopted her and will make her the lynch-pin of a corporate social responsibility package, supported by a great number of staff who we hope will all be able to come and visit.



    Raimon herself didn't say very much but there were interviews for K. Au, Henri from the company and myself as Nong Raimon was officially welcomed into the Raimon Land family.

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