The Geek Of The Wild

The eye of the beholder

Geeking Out

'Holy shit!'

The very first words that Jack Highwood - conservationist, elephant expert, geek  - ever said to me, while I was holding four dollars' worth of bananas. To be honest, he wasn't exactly what I expected of him either: this savior of elephants is about as tall as I am, a little skinnier around the shoulders, balding but with plenty of facial hair, has somewhat of a beer belly and bright twinkling blue eyes you'd rather attribute to, I don't know, someone else...

He drove me and about 7 other people to his Elephant Valley Project, gave us a brief explanation on what was going to happen in the following hours and shared his dream of building a gigantic reception building. Two days and a lot of geekisms later, he informed me that he would want it in the shape of the Jurassic Park gate, with the torches and everything.

Down we went, sliding our way down the muddy path to Elephant Heaven, which is ironically pretty much the lowest point in the sanctuary. There we were greeted by four elephants and their mahouts, who were throwing buckets of water at them.A few minutes later the bananas I brought came in handy, as we offered them to the elephants, their trunks inquisitively sniffing and curling around our arms and hands. Needless to say this is something I had never done before, and probably will never do again, unless I go back there.

Mister Highwood

We followed the elephants to another part of the sanctuary, with Jack carrying around a eight and a half year old girl named Logan.

'I feel like Hodor, Game Of Thrones, anyone?'

Jaw, meet jungle dirt.

The biggest shock was yet to come though and came by way of him asking me if I played any MMO's. 'Sure' I said, 'I've played World Of Warcraft for four years.'

'But' said he, 'World of Warcraft is for babies... Eve Online, now that's for geeks.'

Eve, for the unknowing, is a Massive Mulitplayer Online RolePlaying  Space Game (MMORPSG, if you will), which has about 600,000 subscribers, where you conquer the universe by forming alliances, betraying some people and getting shot at all the time . I had never played it and had never even met anyone that played it, but there, somewhere between me and four full grown female elephants in the middle of Cambodian jungle, stood the first Eve Online player I had ever seen and he convinced me to give it a shot when I went back home. And we yet had to bring Wing Commander memories to the table. ('They just don't make games like that anymore...')

'Clever girl'

More On The Quadrupeds, Please

There are twelve elephants at the sanctuary and one of them is male. His name is Bob and he is somewhat of an angry elephant. In comes Union, a girl elephant that can't seem to get enough of Bob. Hopes are that they make the first Elephant Valley baby and that Jack gets to call it Shotgun.

The rest are females, ranging from young ones to old ones (over 60 years old!), nice ones to troubled ones and skinny ones to fat ones.

'Move it or lose it'

During my stay, I went to Elephant Heaven twice, went to a washing station and washed elephants with a hose, hosing water in their trunks so they could spray their mouths full. I've walked next to them, got out of their way, stood in their dung and patted some of them on the forehead. I jinxed a generator and carried pieces of banana tree up a hill so that elephants could stand on them and eat the good parts. I've helped planting mango and avocado trees, got blisters on my hands and walked around the place smelling like a million bucks. I met very interesting people, some irritating ones as well, and had a very good time staying there. If you haven't figured it out just yet: this place is a must-see, must-do and a must-experience kind of place.


Thank you Jack, for making me feel old, young, useful, useless, hopeful, excited and smelly all at the same time.

Someone get this guy a medal and a blank cheque.

They are there as well