KC grad heads to Southeast Asia to work with elephants
Old college ties propelled Maria Pezzuti, 28, a 2007 Karns City High School graduate, to Thailand this summer to work with elephants.
Pezzuti, the daughter of Vincenzo and Debra Pezzuti of Chicora, spent a month in the Southeast Asian nation working at a center for rescued elephants part of the time and going on adventure tourism the rest of the time.
Pezzuti, who works as a fifth-grade teacher in Reston, Va., said, “I got involved because of the professor at Slippery Rock University, Dr. Robert Snyder, that I had when I was an undergrad.
“He's on Facebook,” she said. “Actually, he was an adviser of the group I was in when I was an undergraduate, and because of that we kind of stayed in touch after graduation.”
Snyder, an elementary education professor, organized the trip through International Student Volunteers, a volunteer-tourism not-for-profit organization based in Yorba Linda, Calif. It provides educational volunteer and travel adventure programs to university students.
Pezzuti said, “There were 12 of us. He (Snyder) opened it up, asking first, education majors, then all Slippery Rock students and then using his connections at other universities to get other people involved.”
She said there were students from Edinboro and Bloomsburg in their group.
She said of her group “I met all the people for the first time, that was the case for everyone, meeting just before the trip.”
She flew out of Pittsburgh July 13,
Pezzuti's flight went from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Taiwan, Taiwan to Bangkok and then Bangkok to Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand.
Pezzuti said, “We volunteered at the Ran-Tong Elephant Save and Rescue Elephant Center, north of Chiang Mai, which is about as detailed a location as I can get. It was in the jungle, in the countryside.”
She said, “There were two different sites. All together, they had 29 elephants.”“They are rehabilitating the elephants. The whole center is dedicated to the rehabilitation of elephants,” she said.Pezzuti said, “What they are doing is saving them from begging on the streets, the logging industry, from the circus industry.“The people running the center are buying them one at a time and taking them to the shelter, back into a more natural state of life,” she said.“Most of the elephants will stay at the center for life now. They won't be released into the wild because they have never been in the wild,” she said.Pezzuti said her group didn't care for the elephants directly, there were mahouts, or elephant keepers, assigned to each animal.The Americans stayed in cabins between the nonriding camp and the riding camp.Pezzuti said the rescue center sells rides to visitors “purely to help the center to make money.”Ran-Tong was run by Thais, she said.“The Thais were super friendly and very willing and very gracious about having us there helping them,” she said.“They spoke fairly good English, enough to have a conversation. They were very appreciative, they were very welcoming,” she said.She said the Thai food was good, if a little heavy on the rice and noodles.“It was good. It wasn't cheeseburgers or french fries. The meals were a lot of chicken, eggs, rice, noodles and vegetables.“We were there to make the center better. We built a fence, we dug a waterway. We were able to feed them (the elephants) and interact with them a little,” she said.“We were carrying buckets to mix cement and we were digging holes for posts,” she said.
Doing manual labor in the jungle presented some unexpected complications.“The heat wasn't that bad, but the humidity was out of control. It was super humid and rainy because it was the rainy season,” she said.But, she added, the women had to be mindful of local mores concerning female dress. Showing a lot of skin was considered immodest.“We had to be careful of what we wore. We wore a lot of capris and T-shirts, Pezzuti said.During her time at the refuge, she learned a surprising fact.“Elephants don't respect women. There's something about our bodies and the elephants sense it. They don't react to women very well,” she said.But, she said, in every other way, elephants were inoffensive.Pezzuti said, “They are ginormous, but they are not aggressive animals. They will knock you out of the way if you get between them and their food, but they are not aggressive animals in any way.”“It was enjoyable despite some of the culturally different eating and sleeping situations,” she said. “For instance, the beds are just mattresses on the floor. There are no box springs. And you eat outside every day picnic style.”After her group spent two weeks working at the elephant shelter, its members got to spend the remaining two weeks enjoying themselves.“This was also set up by the same company. It was like a reward,” she said.“We explored the city of Chiang Mai,” she said. “We explored the sacred temples in the area. We traveled south to the rain forest, went ziplining and whitewater rafting.“We visited islands and beaches and went snorkeling. We visited Railay Beach and Khao Sok National Park,” she said.“As far as my favorite activity, it was definitely not the ziplining,” she said. “I'm afraid of heights. I did it because I was in Thailand.“I don't know if I can pick one, the whole trip was absolutely amazing,” Pezzuti said.What wasn't absolutely amazing was the return trip which saw her spending 36 hours on airplanes and she reversed the route from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Taiwan to Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. She returned to Butler County Aug. 15.Asked if she would recommend the elephant center stay to other tourists, Pezzuti said she would “if they were looking to be super adventurous but work hard as well.”
