Daily Life and Colombo

I apparently don't have as much time as I thought I would for updating the blog. They have been keeping us pretty busy here with elephant work and eco garden related work. A sample of our daily schedule looks like this:

7:15am-7:45am- Bring the elephants down and clean their beds of poo and coconut leaves
8:00am-8:30am- Help wash and scrub the elephants in the river and make vitamin balls
8:30am-9:30am- Breakfast (usually toast, fruit and really good tea)
9:30am-10:30am- Vet checks (checking for foot rot, administering medicine and vitamins)
10:30am-11:30am- Work in the eco garden
11:30am-1:30pm- Volunteer at the spay and neuter clinic with Dogstar
1:30pm-2:00pm- Lunch (rice and curry without fail)
2:00pm-3:00pm- Treating Sumina's side wound and foot rot
3:00pm-3:45pm- Cutting grass for the elephants to eat
3:45pm-5:00pm- Teaching English at the local schools
5:00pm-6:30pm- Down time or go into Kegalle
6:30pm-7:30pm- Dinner
9:00pm/9:30pm- Bedtime

Our schedule has been a bit different the last couple of days because we have been volunteering with the mobile vet unit. On Monday we went with Dr. D to two different elephant vet visits, one nearby and one in Colombo which is 3 hours driving from here. The first elephant had a case of foot rot. For the second elephant we drove to the middle of Colombo city to a very ornate Buddist temple because the temple elephant had been badly ill for about a year. While Dr. D spoke with the caretakers we were taken to the temple museum and given some of the best tea I have ever tried! The diagnosis on the elephant was that it had congestive heart failure which was getting worse because of it's lack of exercise. It was so bad that the elephant was too weak to lie down and get back up. It was a massive tusker about 65 years old. Dr. D suggested to cut off the tusks which can each weigh more than 100 pounds to lighten the head weight, but I think the temple monks would rather let the elephant die than go down that road. I knew elephants were sacred here but I didn't realize the extent of it. For example, it is illegal to put down an elephant even if it is very sick. It has to die on it's own. The visit was very cool and informative, since Dr. D is somewhat of a specialist, but we didn't get back until 1am which made getting up at 6:30 difficult.

On a brighter note, we had some downtime Sunday afternoon, so one of the other volunteers and I took a bus to Colombo city to visit for a bit. We took the local bus to get there which only cost us 85 rupees, or about 80 cents. Crazy cheap! We got stared at quite a bit in the bus because we were the only white people and most tourists don't take the local bus. We got to the city and spent a while trying to find food because the outdated Lonely Planet guide that we had listed restaurants that didn't exist. We ended up getting some cheap rolls stuffed with spices and vegetables. We then walked around a bit and saw the ocean by the port. Colombo is a fairly smoggy city and there is not that much to see so an afternoon was plenty. It's amazing how badly they try to overcharge tourists here. Fortunately we have a good idea of how much basic things like food and transportation cost, but I can imagine I'm going to get ripped off at least a couple times while I am here.