The table almost bends due to the weight of ten filled photo albums. In every book photos of elephants. Large, small, playing, drinking, giving birth, it can all be seen in it. Pieter van der Valk pushes a photo forward. He sits on the back of an elephant, eyes tight forward, hands firmly on a stick.
“This was my first working week,” he says with a smile. “I was hired as a jack of alles, but ended up with the elephants. And I never left.”
It is 1988 as Pieter, then cow caretaker on a farm in the Flevopolder, a newspaper clipping from his sister. Noorderdierenpark is looking for employees. He quickly writes a letter of application by hand.
“There were 300 letters and ten people were invited. In the end, only two people were hired and I was one of them.”
On one of his first working days he is face to face with six young elephants, just arrived from Burma. “They said,” They are still young, you can go there. ” I had no experience with elephants I had a rabbit at home and I had to deal with big animals, cows. “
Fortunately there was help, three Burmese supervisors who trained the carers in Emmen for three weeks. “The elephants did not know the terrain, but I did not. We actually learned together.”
The elephants learned commands, just like dogs. “Only we used a hook and we were sitting on the backs with the animals,” says Pieter. “A little on the left, a little right. Vooruit, backwards, lying down, standing.”
The text continues under the photo