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By Elephant to Mae Sam Laep

The beginning is always now. A beginning by candlelight amid the throng of crickets and the distant cacophony of Burmese music. In the next house, a lamp throws light through slatted bamboo walls, spreading bronze rays fanlike across the dusty ground outside. The River Salween breathes and sighs between jagged rocks to the west. Through the night you can feel the powerful presence of the mountains.

Now people come to see the falang writing. Among them is Sisolay, the mahout who brought me here to Mae Sam Laep. He asks what I am writing, so I read it to him — in English. At first he seems puzzled; then the word ‘Salween’ strikes him and, as if it were the key to comprehension, his eyes light up and his brown face creases into a smile. That is good to see; at times he seems sad beyond belief, and none of my cheerfulness and wit will elicit a response. Sometimes he is even surly, and then he reminds me of his elephant.

Sisolay is a Karen. His people live in the hills of western Thailand and eastern Burma. They work elephants, grow tobacco, and smoke it incessantly. Rarely is a Karen without his pipe. He removes it to eat and possibly to sleep. He gives pipes to his children at a very early age and encourages them to smoke. “Ya” is good for them and makes them strong. “Ya soop” means, literally ‘smoking medicine’. Admittedly, their tobacco is of very good quality and free of the toxic substances that our more ‘refined’ tobacco contains. When I am with the Karen, I too smoke incessantly, primarily because it aids communication, but also because I have a very beautiful little Karen pipe. Sometimes I slip a little gancha into the ya.

My knowledge of Karen people is limited. In fact I have only stayed in one village, and for a total of only three days. The village, near Mae Sariang, is named Ban Houei Pho. I first went there by chance on a previous trip to Thailand. As it is only accessible by river from Mae Sariang, not many foreigners find their way there. The Karen, like most hilltribe people in this part of the world, are animists, believers in the spirits. They believe that all men were born out of the same bottle gourd, and that they were the first. Therefore, all outsiders are regarded as brothers… younger brothers. Thus it was, that I went to pay my respects to the elders, equipped with flute and harmonica and a smattering of khamuang (northern Thai language).

Even now, I know only a little of the Karen language: “T’bleu”, the all-purpose greeting, and a few phrases that Sisolay kept repeating to his elephant. “He!” Means “Go!”, and “Nor” means “None of that, you bastard!”, as far as I can tell from context. Sisolay’s relationship with his elephant seemed strained to say the least. It was a bit like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. At times, for no apparent reason, he would pour forth a torrent of abuse at the animal, probably, I guess, out of sheer boredom. On several occasions during the trek from Ban Houei Pho to the Burmese frontier, the elephant decided he needed a rest, and paused in his stride to pluck a bush or two. At this, the normally placid Sisolay would fly into a rage, cursing the beast and beating him with his stick, usually to no avail. Once he was so infuriated that, to my horror, he pulled out his machete and struck a blow with the flat of the blade on the broad top of the elephant’s skull. I winced, but the elephant did not flinch, merely snorting contemptuously and continuing on his way. Despite Sisolay’s rather rough manners, in practice he and his elephant seemed to get along fairly well. They certainly shared something in common — a bad temper. I felt that beyond the stresses of their relationship, they were deeply bound together. I could not imagine Sisolay grounded any more than I could imagine the elephant riderless and without that infernal bell clanging round his neck. They needed one another.

Elephants are such fascinating creatures. Watching them lumbering around your local zoo, you would not believe them capable of climbing mountains. During our trek, we followed narrow trails which wound tenuously along the walls of deep valleys, dropping suddenly to traverse rushing streams. Always, there was the fugitive sound of flowing water somewhere below. Where the trail wound its way upwards on a mountain ascent, the elephant would take the vertical, most direct route, clambering slowly up great steps hollowed out of the mountainside.

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