Reflections on change

One of the last things Elizabeth said to me as she and Wendy departed a few weeks ago was: “You won’t be the same after this experience.” Of course, her words seemed obvious at the time she said them; we’re all constantly changing in response to people we meet, places we visit, and lessons we learn. And ever since I received the news last April that I would be spending nine whole months of my life in Sri Lanka, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for major changes in my lifestyle. Though there were moments during my preparations that were more challenging than others, I wasn’t particularly worried about my ability to challenge myself. After all, one of my Fulbright application essays was centered around my ability to adapt to less-than-ideal situations (this was a necessary asset for any Fulbrighter in Sri Lanka, according to the original posting on Fulbright’s website). I’m a planner by nature, taking comfort in setting myself up for success by mapping out all possible contingencies. As long as I have a certain degree of control, I’ve found that I can press through just about anything I’ve committed to.

Still, close family and friends wouldn’t describe me as someone drawn to the sort of change that Elizabeth alluded to. My distaste for change has produced some funny anecdotes that my family will eagerly share with anyone who is unfamiliar. There’s my commitment to always getting my hair cut by the same person (see one of my last blog posts), and my insistence from a very young age to sticking with planned family dinner outings at the agreed-upon times (nothing annoyed me more than a surprise announcement that we were getting Italian food after I had spent hours preparing myself to eat Mexican food). And of course, there’s the fact that since the age of three, I’ve remained committed to thinking about and being around elephants as much as possible. Unsurprisingly, these childhood habits haven’t disappeared. In each city where I end up living for school, I slowly and methodically condition local restaurant workers to recognize my usual order and takeout schedules to discourage as many forced, awkward interactions as possible. During the first semester of my PhD, I ran a failed experiment of trying to plan out my weekly schedule down to 15-minute increments, posting the schedule above my desk, lest I forget. (That practice, by the way, ended up driving me crazy after two months, and I quickly abandoned it, even though it shortened the time that local restaurants became acquainted with my eating habits.) A trained therapist may disagree, but I don’t see these efforts as neurotic. I just feel comfortable being able to predict what’s going on around me.

And so in the days after Elizabeth and Wendy returned to the US and I got back to my “routine” that I’ve established in Sri Lanka, I’ve been reflecting a lot upon the ways in which I’ll be changed when I leave this little island in August. I’ve settled on the fact that these changes are inherently unpredictable, and they’ll occur so gradually that I probably won’t even notice them. Already, I’ve largely forgotten the isolation I used to feel a few months ago when I didn’t have a cellular signal or when I couldn’t understand the conversations in Sinhala that occur continuously around me. Work that’s worthwhile almost always requires change, and so I’m embracing the rest of the relatively short time I’m here in Sri Lanka.

Female elephant smells our car as she walks by. Wasgamuwa National Park, 20 January 2019.

One of a pair of golden jackals we followed through Wasgamuwa for a short bit one day. 26 January 2019.

While I’m in elephant land, I’ve already begun to cherish the few predictable moments that happen almost every day. At 5:00am every morning (and again at 7:00am, 12:00pm, and 6:30pm), the Buddhist monk at the temple across the street from our bungalow gets on a loud speaker to lead hour-long chants, even though I’m almost certain no local people join in. Okay, so maybe cherish is a strong word. But still, I enjoy sitting on the porch during afternoon rainstorms, and I like falling asleep underneath my mosquito net that makes my otherwise unremarkable mattress feel like a grand four-poster bed. And nothing makes he happier than seeing elephants every time we drive into the park that’s only two minutes away, a privilege I’ll surely miss almost as soon as I get on the plane back to the US.

I keep a watchful eye on two bull elephants in the distance as I collect a fecal sample left behind by one of them. Note: This work was conducted with the permission of Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation, and under the supervision of wildlife rangers at Wasgamuwa National Park. Photo: Sachintha Samaraweera.

A male calf nurses from his mother. Wasgamuwa National Park, 23 January 2019.

The other “routine” I’m getting use to is the barrage of challenges that fieldwork brings. I lovingly refer to these as “fieldwork fails.” With my project, the biggest challenge is managing the vehicles, drivers, and trackers that we need to observe elephants. During the first 13 days in the field, we got our vehicle stuck in the mud four or five times, and we completely broke a vehicle once (don’t worry, it’s fixed now…but if you want to read about the story, check it out here). During this last trip, consisting of 17 days of fieldwork, I thought we had broken the curse of vehicle problems, because we hadn’t even gotten stuck in the mud once. On the second-to-last day of fieldwork, while we were driving through the park, I even turned to Sachintha (my field assistant) and commented how lucky we had been. Big mistake. During the last hour of our last day in the park, we were driving along a dirt path through a field when our vehicle lurched forward. The four of us (the driver, tracker, Sachintha, and me) got out to assess the situation. We were stuck in the mud. No problem, we thought, we’ve dealt with this before. Then it started to pour. We hadn’t seen this sort of rain before. While we were out searching for sticks to prop under the rear tires, the four of us were drenched, and even worse, the downpour forced our vehicle even deeper in the mud. Our driver tried wedging a combination of logs and jacks under the rear of the vehicle, to no avail. After almost an hour of trying all our old tricks, we resigned to calling another vehicle for help. The only problem: it was a holiday weekend, and every local vehicle had been booked for tourist safaris. It took about another fifteen minutes, but we were lucky to flag down a pair of jeeps passing by. A familiar situation unfolded: chains came out and we were pulled from the mud, ironically by the same vehicle who towed us out the last time (and the same vehicle we got stuck in the mud the time before). Of course I felt stupid because our tow vehicle was filled with a bunch of Sri Lankan tourists. But I guess what would a last day in the park be without a good story?

Our stuck vehicle. The rain has just started. Our tracker (Nawa) is worried about his hair getting wet. The solution? Plastic bag on the head.

After the rain subsists, we tried stuffing sticks and even logs under the rear tires. No dice.

Waiting for our rescue vehicle to come. Not sure if Sachintha thinks he’s using some sort of force field to will the car out of the mud hole.

Our vehicle in the front is now chained to the tow vehicle, full of Sri Lankan tourists who think I’m the biggest idiot they’ve ever seen.

I’m back at Rajarata University this week, having just completed our 30th day in the field observing elephants. This last trip was a marathon 17-day, no-days-off effort. I’ve got a few things to take care of that require being back in “civilization,” or else we would’ve probably been there a bit longer. I’m lucky that Sachintha, drivers, and trackers steadfastly agree to being in the field that often for that long; it’s certainly a change from the three-hour safaris and one-night stays that most tourists spend in Wasgamuwa. But we’ve got less than two months in Wasgamuwa before we move onto other parks to observe elephants, and I want to make the most of our time. We’ve now sighted 1,184 elephants in 183 separate events over 30 days (most of these are repeated sightings, probably), and we’ve successfully identified 48 adult male elephants in the park; we’ve seen about half of these males at least twice. We’ve collected almost 20 fecal samples, and I’m proud that I’ve instilled the poop-collecting excitement in our drivers too, even though they probably have no idea why they’re cheering every time an elephant poops and walks away.

And our time at the bungalow just outside the park’s boundary is becoming routine. Sachintha and I hardly exchange words in the hour after we return from the field. We both know each other’s roles, and we’re familiar with how our own activities depend on the other person’s. And like two folks at a retirement home, we spend our off-time reading (why didn’t anyone tell me that Harry Potter was so good?), huddling in front of the television watching murder mysteries together, and engaging in an ongoing tournament of gin rummy (right now, I’m ahead ten games to Sachintha’s five). Early on during our last trip, the bungalow manager and our regular driver, Nimal, invited us to his house about fifteen minutes away. When we’re staying at the bungalow, Nimal’s family is almost always there with us too. Monica, his wife, cooks all of our meals, and his son, Nirosh, is often our driver. Nimal’s other two children are still young and in school, but they are often sitting near the kitchen trying to complete their homework as the nearby monk blares his chants over the loudspeaker nearby. Like many others near Wasgamuwa, Nimal built his own house that he and his family lives in. He was proud to show me around, and for good reason. His property is surrounded by trees on one side and an open field on the other. He says it’s great for wildlife watching, and elephants often graze nearby, leaving the safety of the park (the grass is always greener, right?). I rode a bicycle around his village, waving at wide-eyed people who had never seen someone like me around their homes. Nimal and Sachintha told me I was the first American to ever visit the village, and while I doubt that to be true, it’s nice to think that there are always new places to explore. A few neighbor children came by as we were sitting on Nimal’s porch, sheepishly holding their cell phones by their side as they clung shyly to door frames. “They want a selfie with you,” Sachintha told me. And so I agreed to take photos, experiencing my fifteen minutes of Sri Lankan fame.

I pose for a selfie with a girl from Nimal’s village. Nimal is also posing for the photo…he never passes up an opportunity for that. Note: Sachintha took this photo with the intent of posting it on social media to embarrass me. I figure that if I do it first, I take away his power to do that. Photo: Sachintha Samaraweera.

Over our 17 days this past trip, we’ve observed elephants we haven’t spotted since December, and of course we’ve seen new elephants too. But our sightings have decreased in frequency compared to when we started. During our visit to Nimal’s village, we were told that elephants from the park would soon be crossing the fence to start raiding the paddy fields. And based also on the increased amount firecrackers we’ve been hearing at night, the lack of elephants in the park indicates that this has happened. Nimal says this is temporary, and that this movement happens about the same time every year in the rainy season, and it will only last two weeks. I’m hopeful that our trip back to Wasgamuwa next week will be more fruitful in terms of elephant sightings. With the end of the rainy season looming, the elephants will begin to move out of the forests to find more food, making them easier for us to see. We’re also excited at the prospects of seeing other species, including leopards (I’m convinced I caught a fleeting glimpse of one running through the forest during an early morning drive last week) and sloth bears.

Sachinthat recording a musth male elephant (Bull 056) that approached our vehicle during our observation. Wasgamuwa National Park, 27 Jan 2019.

Today (February 4) is National Day in Sri Lanka, the equivalent to Independence Day in the US. It’s pouring outside as I write this update, and I’ll spend the rest of the day answering emails and attending to matters I’ve had the excuse to ignore while in elephant land without WiFi. Tomorrow at the university I’ll begin processing the fecal samples we collected before heading to Colombo on Wednesday. I’ll be going to India in a few weeks to attend the Fulbright South and Central Asia Conference, so I need to get my visa from the India High Commission and get presentable clothes to wear (even though they’re perfectly acceptable at the conferences I usually attend, jeans and a plaid shirt won’t fly at this event). The conference is an opportunity from Fulbright researchers from India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to share their work with each other. Plus, I get to add another new country to my list of places I’ve travelled (although I hope to visit India again in a few months to see more elephants and rhinos in the north). On Monday, the Executive Director of the US-SLFC will be visiting Rajarata to check in, and then I’m headed back to Wasgamuwa on Tuesday for a shorter trip this time just before leaving for India.

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Visit to Kandy and Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage

NOTE: I am currently in elephant land, where I don’t have access to internet to post an update. I’ll continue the story from my last post (16 January 2019).

We left Wasgamuwa after our morning of observing elephants and getting our replacement vehicle out of the mud. This was a short field visit, but since Elizabeth and Wendy were only in the country for about a week, I wanted them to have the chance to see other parts of Sri Lanka. Plus, I would be lying if I used their visit as an excuse to act like a tourist. I’m a self-proclaimed workaholic who wouldn’t have stopped fieldwork to take a bit of a break.

We drove to Kandy, one of Sri Lanka’s largest cities. Kandy is much less chaotic than Colombo, and it’s popular among tourists for its central location and the Temple of the Tooth (the site of a relic purported to be the canine tooth of the Buddha). It’s also where the famous Kandy Perahera is located, a festival lasting a few weeks during the summer; elephants play a central role in the perahera. I’ll be back with a friend later in the year to see huge bull elephants paraded through the streets. Sachintha lives in Kandy, so he rode with us and went back to his house after we got to our hotel. Elizabeth, Wendy, and I freshened up a bit (the drive to Kandy was quite nausea-inducing, going through the infamous 18 Bend Road and continuing along a winding route). Needless to say, we were happy to be out of a vehicle for the day, so we walked around downtown where our hotel was located. We passed the Temple of the Tooth on our walk, but we passed on the opportunity to enter. Sometimes there are live temple elephants on ground, and while I smelled one (and later we found fresh dung outside the temple’s exit) we didn’t want to take the chance. We shopped around some local stores instead (we all got batik panels with elephants on them). Rajnish also lives in Kandy, so we met up with him for dinner at a “pub.” The pub seemed to be very popular with western tourists, and I took the opportunity to eat some non-Sri Lankan food.

The real reason that the three of us chose to visit Kandy was that it is the biggest city on the way to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, Sri Lanka’s most prominent elephant attraction. It’s not a typical orphanage, in that the facility breeds some of the elephants it rescues or that it receives from private owners. Most famously, many elephants from the orphanage are taken from their enclosure across the road and down a street filled with shops to the Maha Oya River to bathe multiple times each day. We arrived early the next day to make the first bath session, and we purposely chose our hotel in Pinnawala because of its proximity to the bathing river (the balconies of our rooms overlooked the elephants…yeah, we may have a problem). Most tourists visiting Pinnawala only stay for one bath (either in the morning or afternoon), but because we stayed in the hotel for a night, we got to see five sessions. During the session with the most elephants, I counted 43 elephants. Pretty cool, to say the least. In between the baths, we shopped around at a few of the stores by the river, visited the local Pinnawala Zoo, and relaxed and reflected on our past week.

Over the course of the ~27 hours we were in Pinnawala, I took over 800 photos, and Wendy and Elizabeth took many themselves. I chose just some of the best ones to include below:

A bull elephant walking to the river to bathe. He’s carrying a log in his mouth to chew on later, and the chain around his neck is used to tether him in a safe location (this is for the safety of both the elephant himself and people). 14 January 2019.

Female elephants in the Maha Oya during a bathing session. 14 January 2019.

A group of elephants in the Maha Oya during a bathing session, taken from the balcony of our hotel. 14 January 2019.

Elephants from the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage following their mahout across the street to go bathing in the river. 14 January 2019.

A few younger elephants playing with each other in the river at Pinnawala. 14 January 2019.

A sparring match between two elephants at Pinnawala. 15 January 2019.

Portrait of an elephant at Pinnawala. 15 January 2019.

A young elephant rests its trunk on the rocky shore of the Maha Oya, Pinnawala. 15 January 2019.

Wendy and I discuss elephants while watching elephants at Pinnawala. Photo: Elizabeth Freeman.

Connecting with an elephant at Pinnawala. Photo: Elizabeth Freeman.

We couldn’t resist a selfie with the Pinnawala elephants.

The three of us stayed at the edge of the river up until the moment our taxi driver came to pick us up from our hotel. We had to drive to Colombo so that Elizabeth and Wendy could catch their flight back to the US, and I wanted to join them to make sure they made it without any problems. It was a national holiday (surprise, surprise…), but it still took over three hours to make it to Colombo. Once in the city, we stopped by Barefoot, a popular cafe and shop among westerners. I again indulged in some non-Sri Lankan cuisine (like I would pass up a quiche anyway), and Elizabeth and Wendy shopped for some last-minute souvenirs after lunch. We took the same taxi to our hotel closer to the airport (about an hour away), where I booked a room for the night and Elizabeth and Wendy took a shower before their long journey ahead. We discussed last-minute plans, and both Elizabeth and Wendy offered words of encouragement. It was sort of a surreal moment. In July 2017, the three of us were in the same hotel (in a nearly identical room), reflecting on a week-long trip to scout out potential field sites. Back then, we sat in a circle discussing strategies to fund our grand plans for the project. At this point, we hadn’t really begun our grant search, and I hadn’t even begun my application for a Fulbright fellowship. It is amazing that we’ve made it this far less than a year-and-a-half later, and I’m humbled with the support we’ve received to carry out our work. I couldn’t feel more fortunate to be in this position.

We said our goodbyes as the two of them got into their airport shuttle (I didn’t tear up, I promise), and I got a quick dinner at my own hotel. Because the Colombo airport isn’t actually in Colombo (like I mentioned earlier, it’s about an hour outside of downtown), I would have to wake up at 3:30am the next morning to get a ride to the Colombo train station on time. A 5:45am train ride sounded like such a good idea at the time…at least I was tired enough to nap a bit on the train. And this train was faster than the one I took earlier because it didn’t hit most of the more minor stops along the way from Colombo to Anuradhapura. There was even air conditioning! Still a bit groggy, I caught a tuk to run a few errands before doing laundry back at the Elephant Center. I caught lunch with Rajnish and another lecturer at our usual spot in Mihintale, then caught up on emails and work back at the university. I’m writing this update at the end of that day (16 January), as I’ll be heading to elephant land tomorrow morning for a few weeks.

More elephant stories ahead!

Sparking joy, surrounded by elephants

I’m writing this blog post during a short one-day break between trips to elephant land. This is my first update of 2019, and I’m happy to report that the new year has started off fantastically. These past two weeks have been a whirlwind, and the highlight has been the visit of both of my PhD advisors, Drs. Elizabeth Freeman and Wendy Kiso, over the last week. Still, there’s been a lot of other exciting news too. I finally bit the bullet and got my first Sri Lankan haircut here in Mihintale. My close family and friends know that I’m very particular about my haircuts. It’s not that I have any sort of special hairstyle, and I don’t obsess over the daily care of my hair or anything like that. But since college, I’ve been coordinating my trips home to Dallas with my need for regular haircuts (the barber is most often my first stop after landing at DFW airport). And Julie, my usual haircut person (she’s probably technically called a hair stylist…?), can always tell if I’ve cheated and gotten a cheaper haircut elsewhere. This haircut in Sri Lanka was a different experience: I accompanied a professor from Rajarata who also needed a haircut, and mine took about five minutes and cost less than $4.00. There were almost none of the pleasantries that I’m used to in Dallas. No HGTV playing in the corner on a TV. No discussions about the latest antics of #45 (okay, maybe I didn’t miss that). And definitely no swinging by Sonic for a slush afterward. But, it was a $4.00 haircut, and I’ll have a few more of them before I get to watch HGTV and gossip about politics with Julie again.

And even more exciting from a haircut, my advisors and I recently learned that our musth project has gained a new supporter in the International Elephant Foundation. I’m super proud to have IEF support because it’s my favorite elephant advocacy group (it also helps that all of my past graduate advisors are currently scientific advisors to IEF). What I like most about IEF is their unwavering commitment to saving elephants worldwide, both in wild and captive populations. Our partnership with IEF will allow us to share our work with even more people in the quest to more deeply understand elephants so that we can better manage them. I received this great news on the second or third day that Elizabeth and Wendy were here in Sri Lanka. It was great to be able to celebrate with them here.

But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the day that Elizabeth and Wendy got to Sri Lanka. I wanted to be in Colombo to welcome both of them as their flight landed, so I took Rajnish and travelled the way that locals do by train. I love trains, but I don’t get to use them often enough and that lack of experience combined with the foreign nature of Sri Lanka was sort of daunting. I did my research beforehand on the website The Man in Seat Sixty-One, a resource I highly recommend for traingoers while travelling abroad. Plus, I had Rajnish’s guidance to help me through. I splurged and got a first-class train ticket for less than $4.50, which let me have a reserved seat next to a window that I looked out of during the whole journey. The trip from Anuradhapura to Colombo took a little over five hours (our route was delayed a bit when we encountered rather persistent cows on the tracks at one point), and I arrived at the hotel in Colombo a few hours before Elizabeth and Wendy’s flight arrived at 10pm. I excitedly greeted them at the airport late that night, then we all got back to our hotel for a good night’s rest before our day of activity the next day.

A view from my seat on the train to Colombo. In one of the first-class cabins, there’s much more leg room than on a typical passenger plane. Fans above help cool down the space, but virtually every window was open on the journey.

Our first full day in Colombo started with a meeting at the US−Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission. The three of us had a discussion with Sandarshi Gunawardena (Executive Director of Fulbright Sri Lanka) about future collaboration possibilities between the US and Sri Lanka. Sandarshi is keen to have more projects that focus on wildlife conservation, and our team is excited to do more work in Sri Lanka. Hopefully this initial discussion will spark all of this. I had a few more errands in run in Colombo before we headed out of the city, but after those, we took a taxi from Colombo to Rajarata University in Mihintale. The trip took a bit over five hours, with a stop for lunch at the same restaurant where Buddhika took me on my first trip from Colombo in November. I helped Elizabeth and Wendy settle into their hotel in Mihintale (and as one of the only ones that is comfortable for western tourists, we’re lucky that it’s only a five-minute walk from my room at the Elephant Center). Later, we had dinner at the hotel with Rajnish, as Elizabeth and Wendy were still dealing with the repercussions of jet lag. The next day, I walked with Elizabeth and Wendy to Rajarata’s main campus to show them the lab space where I’ll be processing my elephant fecal samples. We also had an informal meeting with the vice chancellor of the university before going to lunch at our normal spot in Mihintale. After lunch, the three of us took a tuk to Anuradhapura so that I could run a few more errands before leaving for elephant land the next day. You can’t buy train tickets online, so you have to physically go to a station and talk to a clerk to purchase tickets in advance…this practice seems arcane to my milennial sensibilities, but I needed to make sure I had a seat from Colombo to Anuradhapura after I dropped off Elizabeth and Wendy at the airport for their departing flight the next week. That night, we had dinner with Rajnish in Anuradhapura at an Asian restaurant. The restaurant is curiously called Casserole, which we all agreed makes absolutely no sense…Asian cuisine isn’t exactly known for casseroles, and none appear on the menu.

Before leaving for elephant land the next day, I walked Elizabeth and Wendy to the Buddhist sites on the mountain in Mihintale (I described my first trip to the mountain in a previous blog post that can be found here). We all sweated on the hike up the mountain, making me feel better after having been surrounded by local Sri Lankans who don’t appear to have the physiological ability to sweat. We arrived early in the morning on a weekday, so for the first part of our trek, we had the whole mountain to ourselves. The weather was beautiful, and we enjoyed taking in the scenery for about an hour before heading back to town.

Wendy and I sit with a local macaque as we climb down the Aradhana Gala. Photo by Elizabeth Freeman, who walked inches past this monkey to get this shot.

Just before lunchtime, the three of us left Mihintale in a van headed toward elephant land in Wasgamuwa. We drove about an hour after stopping in the city of Dambulla to meet Sachintha for lunch and pick up more supplies. We stopped by a home goods shop to pick up towels for Elizabeth and Wendy, where we learned that pink towels cost more than green ones (Wendy was especially disturbed by this because she inadvertently ended up with a pink towel, a color she doesn’t like even when it’s cheaper). We drove the rest of the way to Wasgamuwa to arrive at the bungalow, where Elizabeth and Wendy got their first taste of my time in the field. We were pretty lucky with timing; most of the tourists on holiday were long-gone, the weather was mild, and there were few biting insects. They enjoyed meeting Jimi, the bungalow manager’s pet dog, who always seeks attention of visitors. We had dinner outside, watched an episode of Killing Eve (Sandra Oh just won a Golden Globe for best actress for her performance in the series, so if you haven’t seen it, go watch it…seriously, right now), and then headed to bed to get some rest before our full day in the field the next day.

Jimi, the resident dog at the bungalow in Wasgamuwa. Photo: Elizabeth Freeman.

We woke up early to head into the park and find elephants. We got pretty lucky and came upon a female group rather early, and we also encountered a bull elephant new to our study (I’ll introduce him in a later post). But our luck ran out just before lunch. Our vehicle had been making weird noises for a few hours, and as we were driving towards the front of our park, it just stopped in the middle of the road about ten minutes from the gate. We peeked our heads out of the vehicle to the sight of the drive shaft on the ground. Well, crap. Our driver, Nirosh, got down to inspect the damage and after quickly coming to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done there, he called his father (Nimal, the bungalow manager) to come rescue us. We were only stranded for about 30 or 40 minutes before Nimal and another vehicle with a new driver arrived. The driver and Nimal chained the broken vehicle to the back of the functioning vehicle, and then we rode along in the “tow truck” as we exited the park for lunch.

A photograph in the first female group we spotted in 2019 at Wasgamuwa National Park. 11 January 2019.

Nirosh inspecting the drive shaft resting on the ground during our vehicle breakdown in Wasgamuwa. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

I’m really good at “supervising” vehicle repairs, as long as that means no one asks me what we should do. From the cabin, Sachintha offers Nirosh advice that’s probably more helpful. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

We took this group photo after admitting defeat and getting in touch with our rescuers. Left to right: Chase, Nirosh, Elizabeth, Sachintha, and Wendy.

A shot from our “rescue vehicle” as we tow the broken vehicle behind us through Wasgamuwa. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

Despite our troubles, we went back out into the field in our replacement vehicle after lunch and had a rather successful day. We observed some more elephants and collected a few fecal samples without any real trouble. Vehicle breakdowns and repairs are just part of life in the field, and I’ve learned to roll with whatever punches fieldwork throws at me. It certainly helps to be surrounded by folks who are committed to the project; not everyone is lucky to be in such a safe, productive environment during field excursions. And I’m proud that we all kept our cool in the field, and even in the moment, we were able to laugh about what was happening to us and around us. When you’re lucky enough to spent any amount of time in a country filled with elephants, you take the bad with the good I guess.

Collecting (elephant) fecal samples in the field, donning a shirt from another of our generous supporters, Asian Elephant Support. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

We spotted Male 023 again in the field, so he’s officially been named “Mason” after my home university, George Mason University. Wasgamuwa National Park, 11 January 2019.

Elizabeth and me in the tower at Wasgamuwa, the best spot to get cellular signal to check emails from back home. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

Another successful fecal collection. Left to right: Sachintha, Chase, and DWC tracker Nawa. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

We spent the next few days in the field at Wasgamuwa finding and observing elephants. The purpose of Elizabeth and Wendy’s trip (funded by the Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Institute) was to check in the progress I have made since I arrived in Sri Lanka a few months ago (yes, it’s official…as of this post, I’ve spent more than two months in Sri Lanka). We had a bit more bad luck with some rain in the area, but nothing really debilitating. That is, until our last two hours in the field for the weekend. Surprisingly, the rain here drives the elephants to hide in the forest (this is surprising to me because almost all of the zoo elephants I’ve met seem to enjoy rainy weather). Because of this, our driver had to drive further and into deeper corners of the park to try and find elephants. With the rain, this also meant that muddy patches were more common. We had almost signed off on our last day of elephant observations when our vehicle got stuck in a particularly deep patch. In the past month, our vehicle has gotten stuck before, requiring some creative maneuvering and even some manual labor. But this patch was tough. It took about an hour of pushing, placing foliage on the road, and wishful thinking, but we finally got out with a few stains on our clothing. But like our first breakdown a few days earlier, we all kept our cool and worked as a team to make the best of a potentially bad situation. I just hope that I haven’t developed a reputation of ruining vehicles among the local drivers…

Our vehicle stuck in the mud during our last day in the field at Wasgamuwa. Yes, that’s the vehicle that rescued us a few days earlier.

This time we waited until our vehicle predicament was over before taking a celebratory group shot. If we’re all in the shot, how was the photo taken? A camera with a self-timer balanced on a poop cooler.

All of this hard work and a few hardships are ultimately worth it though. Not only are we collecting data that will be meaningful for elephant conservation, but I’m getting to spend time around the animals I love with people who truly care about helping me achieve my mission. Elizabeth and Wendy constantly reminded me of this during their time with me here, and their message really hit home during our last breakfast in the field (it may have helped that our stuck-in-the-mud incident happened after this). We sat together with Sachintha and our new tracker Nawa up in the same tower where I get a decent cellular signal, eating my favorite Sri Lankan dish of roti and coconut sambol. It was such a peaceful moment, and we were all looking at each other and out at the landscape with smiles. When conducting research, it’s easy to get caught up in the data and the logistics and the pressure to deliver meaningful results. But I was also reminded that these sorts of moments are the ones that will last, and more importantly, they’re the ones that inspire and motivate action (for those also obsessed with the new Netflix series “Tidying Up” with Marie Kondo, they’re the ones that “spark joy”). I miss the comforts of home in the US almost constantly here in Sri Lanka, but I know it’s all worth it to experience these moments surrounded by work I’m passionate about. One of the best lessons I’ve learned with my advisors is to enjoy these times while I’m still in them.

A great Sri Lankan breakfast in the tower at Wasgamuwa. Photo: Wendy Kiso.

These three days weren’t the last of Elizabeth and Wendy’s trip to Sri Lanka, though. I’ll write the next post about the rest of our week together, which will be automatically posted to this website sometime next week when I’m in elephant land. Spoiler alert: be prepared for even more photos of elephants.