Today we woke up to our first full day at the Millennium Elephant Foundation. We all woke up around 7 ready for a tour of the foundation at 8, the tour was conducted by Tamsin an old Weydon student. She showed us many of the elephants and gave us a brief background story of each elephant we saw and the foundation. Once the tour was finished we all went for a delicious breakfast at 9, after which we all mucked in cleaning the elephants night beds, this involved counting how many poo’s each elephant did and throwing them over a large pile of poo and leaves. When we had all gotten dirty enough throwing poo we were taken on another tour of the foundation gardens, we were shown many different plants and fruits that all smelt and tasted amazing, after which we had lunch, which was yet again another delicious meal. In our free time after lunch many of us visited the foundation shop and bought some lovely elephant themed clothes. Later we all started our projects, we were split into two teams half of which started by removing leaves and a large mound of poo where we are intending to build an Eco-bin, and the other half started clearing items in an office ready to re-paint and design a pattern for two benches that are going to be painted.
After we had all gotten very messy we were taken to the river by Tamsin and a Mahout to help give an elephant a bath which was an amazing experience for everyone, then we were taken to clear out the elephants day beds but this time we didn’t have to throw any elephant poo. After the beds had been fully cleaned we all had some free time which most of us used to show, rest and play cards.
