Elephant Conservation Surin, Thailand

I spent a month of my 2015 summer in the elephant conservation village in Surin, Thailand. It was a experience like no other and I highly recommend it to anybody who is willing to work in the heat. Most of the work we did were in one way shape or form in benefit of the elephants, but there were also a lot of communal tasks that I volunteered for, so I can feel as much immersion as possible on my trip. I wanted to feel like a part of the villager. One story in particular that I was honored to be apart of was a ritual to wish all of the bad spirits out of the house for a new family that moved into the neighborhood.

This was a spiritual experience like none I have ever experienced before. The ritual took place on the second floor of the house of the new owners and everybody who had a gift for the home owners and their family were invited to take part of the ritual on the second floor. A lady was kind enough to give me her gift to present to the home owners. Once on the second floor the first thing I noticed was a maybe a village monk sitting in the center of the room facing a pillar, on the other side of this pillar was the home owners and their family kneeling facing the monk. Everyone who had a welcoming gift laid them in the center of the room around the owners then went to the sit down so that we created a circle around the monk/priest and the home owners and their family.

Once everybody has seated each person received a pile of leaves in which were used to throw at one another about half way through the ritual. Before the ceremony began the monk enclosed the circle with twine that each person held onto with their hands pointed towards the center of the circle. After that the ceremony began. It was about twenty minutes in time total, and about half way through the monk began to throw holy water around the room making sure to wet everyone in the room and reach every corner of the room.

Once he began that we started to throw the leaves around the room and yelling in joy, we repeated this cycle about five times. Towards the end of the ceremony the monks wife passed around protection bracelets to everyone in the room in which we tied money to as a donation then created a line to tie to the new owners of the home. And that marked the end of the ceremony. Those who wished to stay, participated in a lunch in the same room with the home owners.