Community fills auditorium for screening of A HERD OF ORPHANS documentary

By Brian Varela
Courtesy of the Petersburg Pilot

Petersburg residents filled about two-thirds of the Wright Auditorium on Thursday to view the screening of A HERD OF ORPHANS, a documentary by local filmmaker Kelly Bakos about the lives of young elephants living in an orphanage.

After poachers in the ivory trade killed the adult elephants in their various herds, the film follows a group of elephant calves as they go about their day-to-day lives and learn skills that would otherwise be taught by their herds, before being reintroduced to the wild.

“It was interesting,” said Cindi Lakoudakis, who was at the screening on Thursday. “It really tugs at the heart strings to see all those little elephants and how they interact with each other.”

In one scene, the only female elephant in the herd, Chamilandu, stumbles upon a zebra skull and becomes visibly upset; as a result, she sought comfort from one of the elephant keepers.

A crowd favorite was a young elephant named Rufunsa. When the herd would come into the enclosure for the evening, he would squeeze in between the gaps in the tree-truck fencing.

At the beginning of the movie, Rufunsa and another young elephant named Mosi shared a stable. Mosi was eventually moved into another stable after an older elephant, Chodoba, started sleeping outside of the enclosure. In the morning after his first night in the new stable, Mosi ran to his old stable and chased out Rufunsa. A few days later, Rufunsa pushed Mosi into a river as revenge.

“I enjoyed it,” said 7-year-old Camden Johnson about the film. “I liked when the little elephant charged the other elephant to get out of his stable.”

The elephant calves are under the careful watch of elephant keepers who feed them, take them out into the fields of Zambia, bring them back to their stables in the evenings and look after them at night. The keepers are away from their families for three weeks at a time caring for the elephant calves.

The elephant orphanage is run by Game Rangers International, a non-profit organization that has rescued dozens of elephant calves and tackles ivory poaching head-on.

“I was really impressed with the dedication of the people who kept the place going,” said Chelsey Tremblay after the film. “The around the clock care and having to be alert to things like that.”

Moving forward, Bakos is shortening the 90-minute documentary down to one hour to be broadcast overseas. She wants to target countries where the demand for ivory originates, particularly in the Far East. While residents can order a copy of the film directly from Bakos, she plans on the film being available on the internet sometime later this year.

Bakos was selling film “swag” after the screening that included shirts, hats and fleece with the film’s logo on it, as well as cards, paper and stickers made from elephant droppings. Additionally, she collected approximately $1,000 in donations for the elephant orphanage in Zambia.

“I’m excited to send that donation in,” said Bakos. “We’re going to be sending a nice big donation from the community of Petersburg to the elephant orphanage. I know they’ll be very excited. It’ll be a very good day for the elephants. It’ll help a lot.”