TO BE AN "OOZIE". Who among us can deny that, as a child - especially when the circus was in town - we - each of us in turn - wanted to be the lithe young man or girl who rode high atop the ponderous elephant and controlled the mighty beast with just a tiny, wand-like stick?
The word is little more than slang today in Myanmar. There, in Old Burma,elephants are still in use commercially and good elephant drivers are in demand. The usual word is "mahout". But the name "oozie",especially in a family-oriented business,a son in the family is often assigned to be in charge of a specific elephant. The partnership forms early. Very often they team up more or less or life.
The common means of control in driving an elephant is goad and it, too, has a variety of names depending on its having been trained for military or commercial use. Instructors usually rely on ancient texts detailing thee specific phases of training. The guidelines are in Sanskrit language and have age-old precedent behind each of them. The first say for you to love our animal and to use that love to control its actions. The second phase demands that you use your ingenuity in outsmarting the elephants and the unquestioned third rule -called "Balwan" teaches one to control elephants with with cruelty.
It is at this point that young modern elephant driver loose much of their desire to even try it. The goad used for training is about with an iron rod extended from the lower end which is sharpened On the inner side the flat rod a a large metal hook is mounted. A downward thrust,flattened against the elephants shoulder, back, side, or neck would be enough to cause any animal to turn away from such pain. Love takes over the next day when we see the trainer rubbing soothing oils into damaged hide areas.
The next time you feel any urge to drive any elephants which happen be in our area give some thought to elephant training methods and be content with your old jalopy for a while longer.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 10-20-06 [c371wds]
