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Mr Paper and His Elephants

By Jim Goodman

 

When Oliver Bandmann first arrived in Luang Prabang in 1995, he at once felt that this was just the kind of place he was looking for. Though born in Bangkok to German parents, he had spent the last 20 years in Italy, immersed in its culture and lifestyle, familiar with every corner of the country, and he decided it was high time to explore a very different part of the world.

 

So he headed for Southeast Asia. After discovering Luang Prabang early in his journey, however, he quit exploring. Luang Prabang was so special, particularly the peninsula between the Mekong and Nam Kham rivers, that his search was already over. He rented an old house beside the Wat Khily compound, about halfway between

the old royal palace and Wat Xiengthong, and began studying-and adopting-traits of the local lifestyle.

 

He became accustomed to rising early each morning and, like so many of his neighbours, going down to the banks of the Mekong to check the water level and catch hints of its mood that day. He got used to the twice-daily ringing of temple bells – in early morning, to send the farmers off to their fields, and in late afternoon to summon them home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                First step in Elephant Dung Paper production

If the Hongsa elephants are savvy enough to comprehend what’s going on with their dung, they must be silently rooting for Mr Paper’s success

 

Some of these customers find interest in their own countries for the blankets and other Hmong made goods, and use Oliver’s services to make further orders and arrange the shipments. This job keeps him in touch with the area’s hill peoples, who are now an integral part of Luang Prabang society.

 

One might think that was enough involvement for one man. Yet none of these enterprises tax his physical strength much, and he has managed his business life in a way that doesn’t require his constant supervision. So he has always felt he had room for something else, immediately setting it into motion. Mr. Paper would now diversify into elephant dung paper.

 

They were discussing elephants-their traits as animals, their intelligence, their uses by man and, in particular, their plight, their dwindling numbers, diseases and lack of gainful employment. Then Oliver mentioned he’d stopped in South Africa on his way to Southeast Asia and learned that they made paper there from elephant dung, which is mostly a mass of fibrous plant material anyway. He stayed long enough to observe the whole process.

 

His friend suggested Oliver set up production here in Laos. There were still working elephants in nearby Sayaboury Province, so the whole idea got fleshed out in an evening. Oliver would handle marketing and

 

 promotion in Europe. They would set aside a portion of the profits to establish an elephant veterinarians from Thailand to make periodic visits to monitor the local elephants’ health and take care of the sick or injured.

 

Oliver soon recruited two Lao workers and took them to northern Thailand for training. The first stop was the elephant camp about 30 kilometers north of Lampang. There the recruits learned how to collect and clean the elephant dung. The next phase was a stint at the sa paper centre just north of Chiang Ri. Here the Lao workers learned how to treat the cleaned dung with hydrogen peroxide, bleaching the fibrous material and preparing it for pulping. The beauty of using hydrogen peroxide, the same stuff used to bleach hair blonde, in the process, is that its only byproduct is pure oxygen friendly.

 

Oliver took his new workers back to Luang Prabang, later dispatching one of them to Hongsa, in Sayaboury Province, to set up and handle the first part of the production-the collection and cleaning of  the dung. Logging is an important part of the economy of the district, so Hongsa has plenty of working elephants.

 

Sayaboury is one of the least visited provinces in Laos. Hongsa is at its western end, with better communication links to Thailand than to the rest of Laos. The fastest way of

 

Oliver’s latest brainstorm is to produce two kinds of greeting cards - one made from sa paper, and the other from elephant dung paper

 

Getting there from Luang Prabang is to take a speedboat upriver for about two hours to Tha Xuang, and from there a car or bus climbs through the heavily forested mountains for an hour before descending into the hidden valley of Hongsa District. Hongsa has no real downtown business district, and its suburbs merge into the countryside. The noise of the little traffic that exists fails to ruffle the quiet.  Several temples grace its neighbourhoods, a few of them brand new. Many of these feature colorful murals on their exterior walls, scenes from Buddhist mythology.

 

But it’s not the temple murals that draw the handful of visitors who make it to Hongsa. It’s the elephants. With logging banned in Thailand, this is the nearest place to watch elaphants at their traditional work. Arrangements can to ride them in a setting far more natural than that offered at various elephant riding venues in Thailand. Opposite the town’s only hotel lies a resort set up a few years ago to house groups that had made arrangements in Thailand to go elephant riding in Hongsa.

 

To start his business in Hongsa, Oliver simply offered the mahouts a new way to make money with their elephants-collect the dung and sell it to him. Workers in Hongsa then wash and boil it for 24 hours in a caustic soda solution and afterwards wash it and wring it twice in a flowing stream. They then send the result downriver to Luang Prabang to get the hydrogen peroxide treatment.

 

 

By itself, the pulp from elephant dung is too coarse to be of use for anything except perhaps packing boxes. Oliver blends it with 50 percent sa pulp. This makes it appropriate for notebook covers, stenciled posters and lanterns. He finally finished his first sheets of the paper this past May, and he at once began experimenting with natural dyes. The wood of the flame tree (maifang ), which blossoms all over northern Laos that month, produces an attractive shade of red. That encouraged him to start trying other dye plants such as indigo, cumin, catechu and onion skins.

Oliver's latest brainstorm is to produce two kinds of greeting cards - one made from sa paper, and the other from the elephant dung paper. The one on the relatively smooth sa paper  will be intended for notes of good news and happy sentiments. The one made from the rougher elephant dung paper will be for bad news - complaints, diatribes and the like.

Elephants are supposed to be fairly intelligent animals. If the Hongsa elephants are savvy enough to comprehend what's going on with their dung, they must be silently rooting  for Mr Paper's success. Eventually, Laos will have to halt or at least severely reduce logging in Sayaboury, and the herd will be out of regular employment. But if Oliver's business with their dung grows  big enough , they can look forward  to days of doing nothing much but frolicking and whatever else they like , so long as they process a whole lot of food at the same time. If there's an elephant version of heaven on earth, that has to be it.