Today, we took a quick day trip to George by plane from Cape Town, rented a car, and drove along the famous Garden Route of South Africa. We didn’t really plan much, but we ended up packing the day pretty quickly with some stunning stops at beaches, ocean heads, and the very special Knysna Elephant Park, which is an elephant sanctuary that takes in orphaned and abused elephants. They were the first facility in South Africa to care for orphaned elephants and continue to employ a research unit dedicated to increasing the welfare of captive elephants in the country.

I’ve always loved animals since I was young, but I never really thought much of elephants. I knew they were large, supposed “gentle giants.” I knew that they were getting wrongly killed in great numbers across Africa for their smooth ivory tusks. I also was aware that there was controversy over elephants in countries like Thailand, and so I was never intrigued by the idea of riding on an elephant. But I never really thought they were beautiful creatures until I got up closer to several of them today. Part of our visit included feeding and petting elephants in the park, and so I got to feed an elephant a bucket of assorted vegetables and pet them. For the first time, I discovered what it was like to feel an elephant trunk enclose my hand to grab food (warm, rough, wrinkly, pebbly, and a bit damp). And as I pet Shungu, the ten-year-old teen male elephant we were assigned to, I immediately developed an affection for him. I stroked the side of his body — much softer and smoother than I imagined, and very unlike the feeling of the inside of the elephant trunk. The texture of his ears was buttery and leathery, and quite dry. I noticed his teeny little eyes (elephants have poor eyesight, which they make up for with their powerful hearing, hence their extremely large ears) and the long and unruly eyelashes that framed them. I felt his ivory tusk — cool and completely smooth. As we pet him, one of the assistants, stood by, and to be silly as elephants can be, Shungu ripped out some grass from the ground and sprayed it all over him. The assistant smiled and laughed. “He’s just playing,” he told us. “They love to play with us.” The relationship that the park workers have with these sweet, gentle creatures was so heart-warming.

I realized the meaning of the “gentle giants” label for elephants today. They can certainly be violent and deadly, but almost only when they are provoked. They are all domesticated at this sanctuary, so they understand and respond to instructions from the park workers. And as I continued to admire Shungu and his sweet face, I felt viscerally angry about all the terrible men hunting elephants solely for their tusks — these sweet, gentle creatures who mean no harm to the world are getting killed just for their ivory? It’s a lost life for a well-meaning animal that just wants to eat 18 hours a day and throw mud over his body to keep cool. Elephants’ only genuine predator is man, and man so far has been only pure evil to them… just to have and sell ivory that will merely sit on a shelf or in a cabinet. The desire for “things” has never seemed more stupid or senseless to me.