Chenda and the Elephants of Airavata: Ten Years Given to Ratanakiri's Last Giants

Recalled by Chenda in her speech at the Airavata Association's annual gala evening, on August 12.

My name is Chenda. For ten years now, my life has largely revolved around four grey shapes living in the forests of Ratanakiri province. It isn't a job I do. It's an attachment that has, over time, shaped who I am.

Chenda with her elephants. Photo supplied

We were nine, at the start. Nine people, French and Khmer, who shared nothing in common except a fascination with elephants and a shared fear of watching them disappear from Cambodia. That's how the Airavata Association was born — without much of a plan, almost by instinct: something had to be done for Ratanakiri's domestic elephants, before it was too late.

Four Elephants, a Daily Responsibility

Today, we care for four domestic elephants — two females, two males. I think about them every day. Not just their food, their care, their enclosure: I think about what they represent. There are only four domestic elephants left in the whole of Ratanakiri province. Four. That number alone tells you the urgency we're working under. Our simplest hope, and the hardest to achieve, is to see them breed, so this population doesn't disappear in front of us.

The Years We Carried It All, Alone

There's a period I don't talk about often, but it explains a lot: between 2015 and 2017, my husband and I funded every single expense of the association ourselves, including the purchase of our first elephants. We received no donations at all back then. It was a bet, taken together, with no certainty that anyone would follow. Only from 2018 did benefactors start joining us. I think back on those years often. They taught me that this cause would only hold together if we were willing to give it far more than good intentions.

A Kindness That Has Carried Us

What moves me most, looking back, is how steady the support from the royal family has been. In 2016, His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni granted Airavata his August Royal Patronage. I still remember what that meant to us: the certainty, finally, that our work mattered.

Since then, Her Majesty Norodom Monineath Sihanouk has never stopped supporting us — twenty thousand dollars in 2018, five thousand in 2023, ten thousand in 2025, and another ten thousand this year. Each gift is a reminder that we are not carrying this mission alone.

What I Still Want to Build

I can't accept that our elephants might be the last. What I want to build now are concrete means for them: a proper washing area, an enclosure where they can receive veterinary exams and care without stress, a fruit and vegetable farm to make up for what the forest can no longer fully provide.

And above all, if donations allow it, I'd like us to be able to acquire breeding elephants — from other associations, or from private owners who have neither the time nor the means to care for breeding themselves. It may be the only way to grow this population again, rather than simply keeping it alive.

We're a team of volunteers, at every level — no one on the board or among our honorary members draws a salary. What we give, we give because we believe in it. So when I see our partners, our sponsors, our benefactors keep trusting us, year after year, I feel a gratitude I don't always know how to put into the usual formal words. I'd rather say it simply: thank you for staying beside us, for these four elephants, and for all the ones who may come after them.