Testimonial by Chrissy Elia:
It was amazing!! I would seriously advise anybody thinking of going to go as it was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

The only advise i’d give someone thinking of going is to find out how many volunteers are going to be at the project at the same time as they are, as the elephants have to be shared out and it can end up with up to four people on one elephant, and in all fairness there isn’t really that much to do with the elephant that can be shared out among four people!

Lucy and I were lucky in that we shared one elephant, Sumana who was the most gentle natured of the elephants and was the only one that didn’t have to be tied up when her mahout wasn’t around.

At 68 she was also the oldest of the elephants. Tilanka her mahout was also amazing, he couldn’t speak a word of English but made every attempt to communicate with us, and it became quite comical at times with our sign language attempts!

Ruwan the onsite vet was very helpful as he would translate to Tilanka what we wanted to say if we could get it across ourselves.


We soon got used to waking up at seven am to go count Sumana’s dung and it was an experience to say the least and then go to wash her in the river which i loved doing!

As she had bad sores on her side it meant that she was unable to give tourist rides but it did mean that Lucy and i were able to spend more time with her than other volunteers did with their elephants as we were responsible for her vet checks every morning and afternoon.

Gardening with Mr Karoo, which came to be known as Karooing was also an experience and a half as he doesn’t half work you hard!


It was really interesting though as Mr Karoo is amazingly knowledgeable and likes to teach the volunteers about the different plants and what they can do and if you’re lucky he even gives you things to eat out of his garden.

We were also as volunteers given the chance to go work in the local school and temples teaching English which was amazing as the children are so sweet and eager to learn and were fascinated by us.

In the first week we had about 20 children collectively, well i say children but they aged from about 3 to 20.

By the final week we had to split the class in two as we had over 50 people coming which was incredible!

Going to the orphanage was also another option available to us where we usually just played cricket with the kids who would run to find stumps and bats as soon as we arrived as they were so happy just to let us join in and play with them.

One Saturday we even got the opportunity to go to the orphanage and watch the men chop down the coconuts from the trees which was unbelievable!

While we were there Lucy and I as well as other volunteers were able to travel to the tea plantations for the day which was an experience and a half as the bus journey down the hills in the pitch black was worse than being on a roller coaster!

We also had our surprise trip organised by Leo which was really good as they were more than happy to accommodate other people from the foundation who wanted to come.

Luckily for us the Pera Hera Kandy festival was on at the same time that we there and as volunteers at the foundation we were given the opportunity to go and watch it sat with the vets with an amazing view for free and i’ve never seen anything like it! It was incredible!

As you can probably tell i loved everything about Sri Lanka and my time there and definitely would love to go back as soon as i get the opportunity and would like to thank everyone at Leo for making the trip what it was!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Volunteer stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.