The elephant king [and the U.S president]

BEN DOHERTY
July 31, 2010
The Age, Australia

THEIR time in the Oval Office was up, and US President Barack Obama was already halfway out the door when Tuy Sereivathana took his chance.''Sorry, Mr President,'' he said, causing the leader of the free world to turn on his heel. ''You forget my name card,'' he said, politely proffering same.

Obama carefully read the card. And then he took it with him.

So somewhere in the White House lurks a business card for the man known in Cambodia as ''Uncle Elephant'', a man who has dedicated his life to saving the animals from extinction in his native country.

To call back a president shows rare poise, even more remarkable in a man who speaks English as his third language, who was schooled secretly reading illegal textbooks hidden from the Khmer Rouge, and who spends the best of his days in the jungles of Cambodia.

Retelling his Obama story to gentle laughter, Sereivathana is concerned. ''Is this a rude thing to do in a Western culture?''

No, he is assured, but not many would have the presence of mind to remind the President he may one day need to call.

''This is my style as a countryside man,'' he says. ''I do like this when I want to say something. I say 'sorry' and then I say what I need to. I talk to everybody the same.''

Vathana, as Sereivathana prefers to be called, has dedicated his life's work to saving the Cambodian elephants. For decades, the animals teetered on the brink of extinction as they were hunted for ivory, or attacked and killed when humans, seeking new farmlands, came into conflict with them over territory and food.

Today, their numbers are still perilously low; it's guessed no more than 500. But they are not being killed in Cambodia any more, and Vathana hopes their numbers might double in coming decades.

It was for his work with the elephants that Vathana was invited to the White House to meet the President, honoured as one of six Goldman Prize winners from around the world recognised for their grassroots environmental activism.

''My father, who is old now, was very happy. He said: 'From the struggle in your early life, now you can shake hands with the President of the United States. I am proud of you.' ''

Vathana's fascination with elephants began early. As a child he heard stories, made figurines from mud and nagged his mother with questions.

But he had never laid eyes on one until he was nine, when a pair of mahouts and their animals spent a night in a neighbouring village across a lake. With a couple of friends, he paddled a palm-tree raft across to stare at the giant animals, and talk late into the night with the mahouts, quizzing them relentlessly: What do your elephants eat? How strong are they? How are they trained?

He remembers being amazed by the understanding between the mahouts and their animals, and by a sense of partnership. ''I knew then I wanted to be an elephant protector.''

The encounter might never have happened were it not for the darkest period of Cambodia's history. Vathana was born a city boy in the then cosmopolitan Phnom Penh. His father worked for the finance ministry, and his family were part of the capital's emerging middle-class.

In 1974, the communist Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. Pol Pot's twisted philosophy envisaged a return to ''Year Zero'', with Cambodia reformed as an agrarian utopia, without religion, private property or money.

Education beyond the Khmer Rouge's basic principles was not needed, as everyone would subsist on the land. The regime was prepared to purge anybody who disagreed with it. The cities, hives of capitalism and intellectualism to the Khmer Rouge's thinking, were emptied.

Vathana's family was marched into the countryside, to his father's family's village, Sithor Kert, south-east of the capital. The five-year-old Vathana had to change everything about himself, and learned to live the life of a farmer's son.

Life was still dangerous. ''My father had education and the Khmer Rouge hate these people so much. The Khmer Rouge put all the members of my family on a list of people they would kill, but not now, they wanted to investigate us first.''

The Khmer Rouge watched his family intently. Every night, Vathana says, soldiers crawled underneath their raised thatched house, to listen to the family's conversations. ''They killed our dog, because the dog would bark when the soldiers came to our house.''

The regime did not hesitate to kill those it believed opposed its rule. Over four bloodstained years, 1.7 million Cambodians, a quarter of the country's population, were murdered by the Khmer Rouge or killed by overwork, starvation or illness.

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Vathana's family did not return to Phnom Penh, deciding to stay on the land. At nine, Vathana loved the outdoors. ''After this hard life, I became very strong. I could swim, I could run very fast, I could look after big water buffalo.''

He was also clever, and his parents had run great risks to give him some sort of education. ''The Khmer Rouge burned every book in the village. But my mum hid one book for me that I can read. She hid it between the walls. She was concerned I would not learn to read and write.''

Another relative had a university-level mathematics text, far beyond the young Vathana's capabilities. ''It was too difficult for me, but I practised with my cousin every day, until I understood.''

At 13, Vathana was sent to Khsach Kandal secondary school, several hours away. He had nowhere to live and his parents could not afford his board. With the headmaster's permission and help, he built a small house on the school grounds and learned to look after himself, growing vegetables and keeping animals.

At 14, Vathana was the only child in his province to solve a maths problem set for every student in the country. He posted his solution to the education ministry, which, astounded to find the right answer coming from a child so young, and so far from the capital, sent a bureaucrat on a motorbike to congratulate him in person.

''I became like a hero in my school. But it also inspired my parents to support me to keep me at school, even when they had not very much.''

Cambodia still had few links with the outside world. Most countries had broken off diplomatic ties during the Khmer Rouge years, save for those behind the iron curtain. With his secondary schooling complete, the only option for further study was through a scholarship program with the Soviet Union.

In 1989, Vathana won a place to study wood technology at the University of Belarus Technology. ''I did not know anywhere on the earth could be so cold.''

Studying in the dying empire of the USSR, as it struggled with perestroika and the rouble's plummeting value, Vathana found himself again short of money. He became his university house's unofficial cook, walking to the market in a World War II Soviet Army greatcoat to buy food.

During seven years in Belarus, completing first a bachelor's degree, then a master's, Vathana did not once go home. ''I never had the chance to visit my family. My parents cannot send money to buy the air ticket.''

When he did return, it was to find a Cambodia largely unchanged, save for scores of UN agencies and NGOs trying to pull the country away from its years of neglect. His ability to speak Russian soon found him work with the UN, but the environment remained his first love, and he moved at the first opportunity to work for the government's forestry department.

Cambodia had held some of the largest tracts of untouched forest in south-east Asia. But a corrupt government saw the quick dollars to be made felling them, and sold off nearly 40 per cent of the country to cronies and family members.

A leaky moratorium was imposed in 2002. Vathana fought constant battles before, after one too many arguments with a logging company, moving to the environment department.

An offer from Fauna and Flora International, a non-government organisation, gave him a chance to rekindle his fascination with elephants.

The animals have long been revered in Khmer culture. They are honoured in the Buddhist tradition, and rare white elephants are still regarded as auspicious symbols that bring glory upon the country. The temple of Angkor Wat was built in the 12th and 13th centuries largely with elephant muscle.

But in modern-day Cambodia, with human settlements expanding, conflicts between elephants and humans increased.

''People sometimes threw acid at the heads of elephants,'' Vathana says. ''They made bamboo spears to throw at them, or they put poison inside jackfruit and throw it to the elephant. Some villagers dug holes and put a sharp stone inside so the elephant will be injured.''

Fauna and Flora International recruited Vathana in 2003 to head a new taskforce and find a way to broker a peace. The person who hired him, Joe Heffernan, saw a man ''made for the job''. ''For the first couple of years, he blazed his own trail of work. He'd turn up from the field requesting $50 for some sandbags for dams or $25 for some seedlings, so I made sure it was there.''

Vathana's brief was to find ways that people could grow their crops, prevent elephants from raiding them, keep everybody safe, and do it cheaply. He read widely about the African experience, and adapted methods used there.

There was plenty of trial, and more than a little error, but he found many simple and creative ways to keep elephants and humans from hurting each other.

At Vathana's suggestion, scores of Cambodian villages have rows of hammocks, each with a sleeping, hat-wearing scarecrow ''farmer'' who has been sprayed with perfume to make him smell a little more human, as a first-line deterrent. Others have solar-powered electric fences, with enough charge to discourage an elephant without injuring it.

Vathana has helped villages build lookout posts, or rig loudspeaker systems through which they can play music or horns. He has marshalled volunteer guard groups, organising rosters of villagers to mind consolidated fields at night. Sometimes it is as simple as changing the crops, from watermelons and bananas, which elephants love, to crops they don't, such as eggplants. All around the country he goes, talking to villagers and to officials, many of whom, initially at least, don't want to hear what he's got to say.

It is Vathana's great strength. ''He is a communicator, that's what he does so well, he engages with people on any level,'' FFI's Matt Maltby says. ''He is able to present a problem to people in such a way that they can see it can be solved, and that he is trying to help. People trust him.''

It has not always been smooth. ''For months, Vathana would head to the villages, being shouted at, and sometimes threatened when elephants destroyed their homes and crops,'' Heffernan says. ''It was a pretty thankless task, but slowly he managed to bring these tough farmers round. I think Vathana's ideas and enthusiasm always won out.''

Maltby says Vathana knew it would take a long time to change attitudes. ''He's one of the few Cambodians I've come across who knows where he wants things to be in 10 years, 20 years. He's quite visionary.''

VATHANA is already planning for the next generation. His team has established four schools, with plans for more, in villages in forests that are known elephant habitats. FFI provides a wooden schoolhouse, a teacher's salary, and schoolbooks and a bag (unsubtly marked with a picture of an elephant) for each child.

''For four days a week, they do regular school lessons, then one day a week, they learn about elephant conservation. After a short time, the kids know a lot. They talk with their parents. Then the whole community looks after elephants, instead of killing or harming them.''

He takes great pride in the knowledge that since 2005, no elephants in Cambodia have been killed through conflict with humans.

Sporadic hunting continues but Vathana has turned more than a few elephant poachers to conservation. Challenges remain, particularly as Cambodia's lethargic rate of development inevitably quickens, but Vathana is confident that a balance can be struck between progress and conservation.

''I would like to see 1000 wild elephants in natural habitats in Cambodia. I want them to exist for many, many years. I don't want them gone from my country.''