But an elephant in a refugee camp is a rare sight. Elephants are generally too valuable to be used there. As you can see this elephant has gathered a small group of children around him to watch in appreciation of his great strength. Because elephants are so valuable, and because their working life is generally longer than that of a man, elephants are frequently jointly owned and used by a father and son team. This picture shows the construction of a large bamboo structure such as would be used for a school, a monastery, or a boarding house for students.
Many workers cooperate on such building projects.
Here we see workers putting on a roof. Roofs of these buildings are made from leaves of a special tree. They are picked at a certain time to insure that they are flexible enough so they won't crack or tear. Then they are tied to a long bamboo strip to form roof bats about four feet long. You can see some bats in the hand of a worker in the center part of the picture and many more tied together in packages on the floor of the building.