a couple of minutes, the bear’s keeper scurried away, and Tom turned to me and Jon.
“This bear has been here since baby. Some other bears,” he said, pointing to cages nearby, “brought here by people who keep for pet, like dog, until they grow too big. They ask park to take care of them, and people pay money to see them. Man who take care of bear likes bear very much but say, never enough food for them.”
As Tom talked, the keeper returned with a bucket of fresh water. He poured it into the green water, only serving to stir the algae. He looked at me and smiled, clearly hoping for praise. I wanted to thank him but held back. The least he could do was to give the animals fresh water, and he hadn’t. Not today and clearly not before.
“What about his paw?” I asked the keeper, pointing to the blisters.
We may not have spoken the same language, but he knew what I was asking. He answered and Tom cringed.
“This is where people burn bear with cigarettes,” Tom said, mimicking the way a person would crush a cigarette butt in an ashtray.
My throat swelled and my eyes welled with tears. I turned to the bear and our eyes locked. With a despair that permeated my being, I physically felt his suffering.
Jon’s voice interrupted. “Let’s go, Jenny. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t save every mistreated animal in the world.”
“No,” I whispered, my eyes still connected with the bear. “But I can help the ones I come across.”
In that moment, locking eyes with the bear, I experienced an epiphany, a profound spiritual realization that not only could I do something, but that I must. Fate had brought me here for a reason. I turned back to the bear. Wordlessly, I promised I’d help and asked him not to give up.
As I walked toward the exit, I stopped at each cage, took a photograph, and gave each bear my promise. When I looked back, the keeper was pushing a wheelbarrow, half-filled with vegetables, in the direction of the bears, and I experienced a moment of satisfaction. Yet I knew the gesture was meant to appease me; it wasn’t based on any lasting compassion for the imprisoned animals.
As we walked toward the car, Tom suggested the bears were probably poached as cubs — victims of the illegal wildlife trade — and had been “saved” by the park. I didn’t buy his story. The way the cages had been positioned around the Buddha statue was intentional; these animals were an attraction.
“Why does the government run the cultural park?” I asked.
“Government runs everything,” Tom said. “But there is no money. We try to get tourists here because they bring money. I hope you might write story to bring people here and maybe that money help bears.”
With those words, the path forward became clear, and I resolved to follow it. The key to unlocking the cages was to convince the communist government that there was a financial incentive in treating their native animals with compassion.
“Will you help me talk to the government about this situation with the bears? Will you work with me?” I asked.
Tom placed his hands together in prayer and bowed. When he lifted his head, he was smiling. “Yes. We work together. Thank you, Miss Jenny.”
Before leaving Laos, I presented Tom with a handwritten letter of introduction to Nousay Phoummachanh, a minister secretary for the government and deputy director of the National Ethnic Cultural Park. It extended my gratitude for inviting me to visit. It included my credentials, a description of what I’d witnessed at the park, and a personal offer to provide advice on how to build the country’s tourism trade.
Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA
I returned from Laos with a redirected purpose. Back home in Maine, I tacked a photo of the first bear I met on my office wall. His cries were embedded in my memory, and I decided to call him Fri, the Lao translation of “free.” His rescue was now my priority.
Within days, a fax arrived from the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism in Laos, a response to the letter Tom had delivered. It justified the condition in which the bears were found by stating that there were costs associated with the care of the animals but that money to feed them would be welcome. It also said the government would welcome help to increase tourism to Laos.
My thoughts raced. How could I help increase tourism to a communist country and also free the bears? Laos is naturally beautiful; it has a warm climate and is home to wild elephants, bears, and exotic birds. Those qualities attract tourists. Caged and tortured animals do not. Ultimately, I wanted the bears rehabilitated and released into the wild, but I knew that wasn’t possible. There were no rehabilitation centers for large animals in Laos. There was only one solution.
That night I called Tom, whose role with me had changed from minder to government liaison. I told him that when people travel, they want to leave a country with a positive impression, yet the poor treatment of the bears went against everything Laos, and Buddhist culture, stood for. I suggested the creation of a sanctuary where the bears from the cultural park could live on several acres and where tourists could view them from a distance. Then I offered to build it.
Tom seemed excited by the idea and suggested the Laotian Ministry of Defense might be the correct office to grant land for a sanctuary, not the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism. He offered to meet with representatives of both departments.
Two weeks later I received a fax from the Ministry of Defense. It read:
Dear Miss Skiff,
The Department of Defense will make land available if you will build a sanctuary for bears. Thank you for your interest in Lao tourism.
Lao PDR
It was almost too good to be true, too easy. I was skeptical and excited all at once. I had easily cleared what I’d thought would be a major hurdle. The next step was to find the person to build it.
Through research, I discovered Victor Watkins. In 1992, while working for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA; today known as World Animal Protection), he’d initiated the first international crusade to help captive bears. The campaign, called Libearty, worked in conjunction with other animal welfare groups to end the practice of dancing bears in Europe and Asia, bear bile farming in Asia, and bear baiting in Pakistan. The campaign’s goal was to expose the exploitation of bears in an effort to get public and government support to end these cruel practices.
Victor had also helped design and build the first bear sanctuary in the world, which had enabled the Greek and Turkish governments to eradicate the use of dancing bears in their countries by providing a home for confiscated bears. Victor Watkins was my man. I picked up the phone and called him in London.
Victor was sympathetic to the cause, but I didn’t have him at “hello.” I explained my intentions to liberate the bears in Laos. When I finished, Victor peppered me with questions: Who would build the sanctuary? Who would pay for staff costs and ongoing food and medical supplies in a third-world country where many people didn’t have those amenities? I had no answers, but I was sure of one thing: I was talking to the single person who could help.
As he politely wrapped up our conversation by wishing me well, I panicked.
“Please,
