"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who pointsout how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Elephant Adventures


My new building-mate is an Australian anthropology PhD candidate studying human-elephant relationships in Northeast India. He is Paul and he is immediately easy to like. In order to create trusting relationships with the mahouts that he studies, he brings them pork and chicken and they drink rice beer together. He keeps them fat and happy so he can continue his research and they all drink rice beer and hang out with elephants. The day the elephants visited school he asked if I wanted to go hang out with his mahout buddies. YES! We drove his motorcycle just down the road to their camp – no electricity so by the light of a kerosene lamp we ate chilied potato wedges and smoked beedies and drank rice beer. Rice beer smells like rice (yup!) and it’s stronger than beer – they distill it a little from what I can tell – and it’s like 20 rupees a liter. It’s not great stuff but I didn’t care…I was drinking with mahouts! We watched a video that Paul took of two men, a mahout and a fungee (old-time wild elephant roper) singing songs about elephants, then we watched Justin Bieber and Shakira on Youtube and went home for dinner.

Fast forward to 3 nights ago. Spent all evening with chatty women, came home and unloaded on Paul which was great because he laughed sympathetically and said there were wild elephants in the Deepor Beel wetland that we might see, if I wanted to go with. YES! A guy who might own elephants picked us up – he says they’re his but Paul thinks otherwise. He had just called off his wedding so he brought some whiskey and coke. We met up with the neighborhood elephant watch, a group of men who ensure that wild elephants can cross roads and railway tracks back into the jungle safely. We sat at one of their houses and drank whiskey and rum, listening to what Paul and I found out later was a discussion of local reptile superstitions.

We walked through a backyard and up to the railroad embankment from which we could not see any elephants. At one point the guy told us not to run unless he says so - if an elephant charges you have to stand your ground. Jesus. But I felt safe searching for wild elephants with a bunch of half-drunk men. After minor shenaniganry we spotted about 10 elephants swimming across the beel, dark spots on dark water visible only by looking to the side. They swam slowly and in the meantime the guy’s friends arrived with whiskey and water which we drank sitting on the tracks. When they did make landfall we couldn’t see specific animals but we could hear lots of splashing and funny elephant noises. Soon enough they moved away from the water’s reflection and disappeared. Paul leaves for Thailand tomorrow to see his fiancĂ© but hopefully more adventures to come!

By popular demand, the second half of the our Tiwa dance

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