I decided to spend my first week in Cambodia volunteering at the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) just outside of Siem Reap.

I found information on the sanctuary when looking into volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary is one of the other projects that ENP has available on their website and was more in line with the amount of time I personally wanted to spend volunteering.

Finding CWS through ENP also allowed me to trust that I would be helping out at a park with an ethical practice.

CWS is a newly opened park (founded in 2004) that aims to provide a safe spot for rescued wildlife, from dogs to monkeys to elephants, while rehabilitating the jungle and habitat of the one-million acres of land that it is on.

Every day of volunteering at the park was scheduled by the current project manager, while executed by our team leader, a wonderful and hard-working young Cambodian lady named Chan. I truly enjoyed my time spent at CWS and being in such close proximity to the park’s elephants was a dream come true for me.

One of the most fantastic things about CWS was how much information they provide the volunteers about elephants. From their genetic makeup to issues surrounding the mistreatment of elephants, I was constantly learning at the sanctuary.

Every day though, I had my heart broken as I learned more about these beautiful intelligent creatures and how much abuse they suffer in a lifetime. I had no idea that mama elephants will try and kill their babies, knowing what terrible future awaits them. Or that, when an elephant is being trained, mahouts tie up their trunks – not as a torture method, because the nails and whips are torturous enough, but to prevent them from committing suicide by standing on their own trunks.

Nor did I know that you can approximate the age of an elephant by the depth of their temples, or that elephants squeak like chipmunks when they are happy, or that they can feel the vibrations of the earth with their feet to sense where the closest source of water is. This incredible feat is also a curse though for those who are forced to be in city centres as the sounds and vibrations of cars confuses them.

The park has four elephants that have been rescued from the logging industry. My favourite girl was 75 year-old Kham-Lin. Being so old, she has digestive issues so we prepared a special, soft meal for her daily that included fibre pellets to help her poop. The poor thing was blind in both eyes, a milky film secreting from them constantly, and it is believed by the full time volunteers that her mahout blinded her to create dependance on him when walking through the jungle during her logging days. Kham-Lin was such a beautiful majestic creature and seeing her blind eyes made me want to cry.

It’s a tragic shame that, after elephants spend their lives being tortured for tourism or forced to use their strength and power in the logging industry, they have to be taught that freedom is okay. They have to learn that they will not be harmed if they do not have chains around their legs. They do not know they are now safe from abuse and they end up needing constant care and protection once their freedom is bought from places like CWS.

It pains me to think that another living creature can be treated so terribly and abused so much in a lifetime… Especially one that is my favourite animal.