Soraida encourages Motala, a 49-year old elephant landmine survivor, to put her weight on her prosthesis at FAE's Elephant Hospital.
Today the Prostheses Foundation returned with the new “tester” prosthesis for Motala. Initially it looked like the shank of the limb was too short because Motala was swinging her leg without putting any weight on it. After Soraida Salwala (FAE’s Founder) spoke to her, she began to relax her elbow and put some weight on the prosthesis. The leg was then long enough to reach the ground, so it appears she was avoiding it because it was uncomfortable.
As Dr. Preecha said, “If she was a person we could ask, ‘How does that feel?’ But she’s not, so we have to watch her behavior. If she was in pain, she wouldn’t move at all; but this shows us that the prosthesis is just uncomfortable”. Soraida believes that the leg could still be inflamed and the “tester” is too tight. So, the prosthesis is on its way back to Chiang Mai for more adjustments…
Dr. Kay cleans Boonmee's wound at FAE. Boonmee stepped on a landmine on September 11, 2010.
In other news, yesterday we saw a huge improvement in Boonmee. While her wound looked better, by the end of the day her trunk was too weak to pick up her bananas to feed herself. Soraida tearfully explained that she has seen this before and is very worried that Boonmee may simply give up and decide to pass away. Dr. Preecha explained that last month Mae Ka Pae’s leg looked as bad as Boonmee’s does now, so if she can stay alive, he’s optimistic her leg will heal, too. As we left for the evening, Soraida said, “I’m hoping for a miracle”.
I drove back to Chiang Mai with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Boonmee can decide whether she wants to fight and continue to live, or she can decide it’s too much and pass on. As humans, we like to think we have control over everything—the environment, other beings, our lives—but that argument is thrown out for me in light of these elephant landmine tragedies. They didn’t decide to step on a landmine. Boonmee, Motala, Mosha and Mae Ka Pae were in the forests because of human greed and the landmines were in the ground because of human fear and ego. They didn’t ask to be mutilated, we [humans] did this. So perhaps the most humane choice we can give them is whether they want to stay and fight or, as the Buddhist believe, leave and come back with a different life circumstance.
It will be interesting to see what Boonmee decides tonight…
-Windy Borman
Director/Producer, The Eyes of Thailand
A tear drips down Boonmee's cheek.
