Vegan in Australia - Volunteering at Farm Animal Rescue

I still have a bunch of posts about China to finish and I'm right in the middle of putting together some great round ups of Melbourne's epic vegan scene but I was having a think yesterday morning and I really felt like writing about where I am and what I'm doing right now. I always feel weird when my blog stops being in chronological order so I did a little Twitter poll & it turns out that nobody else really cares about that - y'all just wanted to see where I'm at so here we are!

Just in case you haven't been following me on social media I'm in Australia, Queensland to be precise. Nick and I have wanted to visit Australia for ages, since the very beginning of our travels in fact, but making it affordable was a real sticking point. We also desperately wanted to get more experience volunteering with farmed animals (#lifegoals) and felt a little unsure about whether we should be travelling more right now or focussing on the future - thankfully I came up with a cunning plan to combine the two when I discovered Farm Animal Rescue in Dayboro, and here we are, exploring Australia and spending time with these beautiful animals, learning how to care for them, and getting an in depth look at how the sanctuary works. 

We arrived from Brisbane on Wednesday so I've only worked three full days so far but I'm loving it. My work day starts at dawn and ends at dusk and I really thought that I might struggle with the early starts (I set my alarm for 5:40am and am outside working by 6:15am) but it's a tiring job so I hit the hay pretty early and I'm waking up before my alarm most days. I love being more in touch with nature and dawn has always been one of my favourite times of day. I'm not usually awake for it but I have some wonderful dawn related travel memories - exploring NYC hunting for bagels, watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat, waking up with the birds and the call to prayer on my first morning in Thailand... the list goes on!

Volunteering with Help Refugees

I recently returned from a two week trip to Calais where I spent my time volunteering with Help Refugees. If you read my last post you'll remember that I was running a donation drive in Brighton to take food donations to Calais in my van and it was a huge success, so many people brought generous donations along to both Punktured and The Hope and Ruin, and Infinity Foods gave me a generous donation of dried and canned goods. As well as filling the van with lentils, tinned tomatoes, biscuits, rice, sugar, tea, and more I was also able to raise £1050 which covered a weeks worth of fresh food for Refugee Community Kitchen who currently feed over 2000 people a day.

The refugee crisis in Calais is actually worse than I understood it to be before I went over there, the most surprising thing to me was finding out that it's not an officially recognised refugee camp. There are no large aid agencies like Oxfam or Amnesty there on the ground distributing aid in fact the only organisations working in the jungle are small grassroots groups like Help Refugees. There are over 10,000 people living in the camp and numbers are growing every day, the majority or refugees come from Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan and Eritrea. These are people who risk (and often loose) their lives trying to get to the UK to claim asylum. Despite the Dubs amendment passing in May no unaccompanied refugee children have been settled in the UK under the new law. Just let that sink in for a moment. Over four months ago the UK government agreed that we need to resettle unaccompanied refugee children but since then we have done nothing about it. Nothing. The mental and physical health of vulnerable children (children as young as eight) is declining every day and we're over here planning to build a £1.7m wall to keep people away?! It's appalling.

Food Donation Drive for Help Refugees

This past week has been a whirlwind. Between getting my IUD replaced early last week (OMG that hurt so bad), to flying to Scotland and back today to investigate some exciting future plans I've met up with friends in London for delicious vegan eats, volunteered at FRIEND Sanctuary in Kent, hung out with my dad, spent time barbecueing and hanging in a hot tub with old friends, and even squeezed in a little dinner date with Nick's oldest friends and their new (to us, she's actually four months old already) baby. I've basically been all over the place!

In between all of this madness (don't worry I've scheduled a self care day for tomorrow!) I've been organising a food donation drive for Help Refugees. Nick and I will be driving our little camper van to Calais to volunteer at the refugee camp there. Did you read about my fun European road trip adventures last summer? Well whilst Nick and I were zig zagging across the continent in our silly tiny van with our British passports we passed numerous refugees who were unable to cross any borders. They were camping in city parks, being blocked from getting on trains, and arriving on Greek beaches with nothing after the most horrendous journeys. I think that it's bullshit that I can travel pretty much wherever I want because of some weird twist of birth whereas these people, not migrants as the British press are so fond of calling them, people, are what? Just meant to stay put whilst their countries are bombed? Where there are no opportunities for their children? Where they face persecution? Where members of their families are being killed? One of the first things I saw when we drove off of the ferry into France last summer was all of the fencing around not just the camp but all of the roads leading from the camp to the ferry and train terminals and I was both horrified and disgusted that my government was paying for this to keep refugees, people who by definition have been forced to leave their countries, away from the UK. Aside from feeling saddened by the state of the world I felt like I needed to at least try do something to help. 

Nick and I will be at the refugee camp for two weeks and I think we're mainly going to be volunteering in the warehouse sorting donations. It doesn't make sense to drive an empty van over there so we're going to try to fill the van with as many donations as possible. If you're in Brighton you can donate some food this Thursday 25th or Friday 26th at Punktured or The Hope and Ruin. I'll be at Punktured, located on Gardner Street close to Infinity Foods, between 11am and 6pm on both days and then at the Hope & Ruin, on Queen's Road, on Thursday night from 6pm - close. Don't ask how I'm going to be in both places at 6pm on Thursday, I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll run! If you drop donations off at The Hope & Ruin you get the added bonus of getting to order some delicious food from Beelzebab whose food I am totally obsessed with. The loaded fries are especially uh-mazing.

Help Refugees have to be quite strict with the donations that can be dropped off, there are only a small number of volunteers sorting through them and then an even smaller number manning the kitchen and cooking food for people. This is why everything has to be non perishable, donating some gorgeous veggies from your allotment would be a lovely idea but they wouldn't be good by the time our delivery slot rolls around on Sunday and they need a lot of each item to feed everybody.

If you'd like to donate here's your shopping list, screen shot it and grab a few things! 

• 1kg bags of sugar

• 1 litre bottle of oil (vegetable or olive)

• 1kg bags of rice

• 750g bags of salt

• Tinned pulses especially chickpeas and kidney beans (ring pull tops only)

• Tinned tomatoes (ring pull tops only)

• Dried red lentils

• Dried fruit and nuts

• Vegetable stock cubes

• Biscuits (good vegan biscuit options include Bourbons, HobNobs, McVities Fruit Shortcake and Lotus Biscoff)

• Tea

• Coffee

No one person needs to donate everything single thing on the list. A few small things will be really helpful, maybe your local shop will have an epic deal on canned pulses, or litre bottles of oil will be going cheap at the corner store you pass on the way to work. Every little helps!

Some of you super sweet people have let me know that you'd like to help from afar and I super appreciate it! Y'all are the best. Help Refugees need fresh fruit, veggies, herbs, onions, garlic, and potatoes so we'll be using any monetary donations to buy these things at a supermarket in Calais. The best way to donate is probably via Paypal to jojo.huxster@me.com with a note that it's for Calais but if you have any other ideas of how to get cash to me then just holler on that same e-mail.

Thanks for reading! See you soon!

Open Day at Friend Animal Rescue

It's no secret that I'm vegan primarily for animal rights reasons. I went vegan in 2005 after a short period of vegetarianism and I've never looked back. I've always loved animals, from the rabbit my parents finally let me get after years of begging, to the sheep that lived in the fields near where I grew up, I wanted to hug them all. I made the connection between the animals we see grazing in fields and the food on my plate at quite a young age but but my mum wouldn't let me go veggie and, as a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere with no idea where to even buy food, I just kept eating what was put on my plate. No lamb though, I just couldn't deal. Farmed animal sanctuaries like Friend, located near Tonbridge in Kent, are important for so many reasons. Firstly they're a refuge for the animals that make it out of the meat, dairy, and egg industries. Without sanctuaries these animals would have nowhere to go aside from the slaughterhouse.

Friend are currently caring for over 100 animals including cows, pigs, sheep, goats, cats, ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys. It's a really fun place to visit. One of the goats was so friendly, whenever I spotted him he was making friends with another group of visitors! As well as believing that farm sanctuaries are essential for the animals that live there I also see farm sanctuaries as an essential education tool.

Volunteering at Japan Cat Network

Oh Japan, it's only been a week but I miss you already. A little over a year ago when I was working out how to get back to my favourite place in the world I realised that my ideal volunteer gig would be in Japan (duh!) and would involve cats - a quick google search later and I discovered Japan Cat Network. I'd never heard of Inawashiro but I knew that I'd be able to live in Japan for free surrounded by cats - what could be better?

Japan Cat Network existed as an organisation prior to the Fukushima disaster but the Fukushima shelter itself was formed in 2011 after the Tohoku area of Japan was devastated by the Tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster. One of Japan Cat Network's founders began rescuing animals who were left behind in the area as well as fostering cats for evacuees who were unable to take their animals with them. Japan Cat Network are a true no-kill shelter and whilst they don't take in many new animals right now they do assist local people if they find that they need to re-home an animal.

Vegan in Inawashiro, Japan

Not a single person who I've mentioned Inawashiro to has known where it is so this probably isn't going to be my most searched for or most shared blog post but it'll be relevant for any vegans coming to volunteer at Japan Cat Network, ski on Mount Bandai or to take in a slice of rural Japan. If it can help even one person then I'll feel like I'm doing my travel blogging job right.

Before coming up here I had no idea whether eating vegan would be a challenge or plain sailing. I suspected it'd learn towards the tougher end of the spectrum so I arrived with two tote bags filled with snacks, burger mixes, vegan mayo, chocolate, and margarine collected from various health food stores in Tokyo. Despite there being no veg friendly restaurants in the vicinity eating here hasn't been difficult at all. Luckily the Japan Cat Network kitchen is tooled up with gas burners, a microwave, an oven and two kinds of blender as well as some more unusual items like a takoyaki pan, and Japanese supermarkets always, always, always have tofu, rice, and exciting veggies so I was never gonna starve.

There's actually a 7/Eleven just across the road from the shelter so I've been able to find inari sushi, plain onigiri, ume onigiri, ume and sakura onigiri, Chipstar crisps, plum crisps, sweet sugared sweet potatoes, edamame, and tofu very easily. If you're planning a trip to Japan check out my Pictorial Vegan Convenience Store Guide to find out what you can eat at 7/Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart stores all over the country. A couple of weeks ago these vegan Soy Joy bars appeared on the shelves of 7/Eleven which was pretty exciting. Despite the name the majority of Soy Joy products aren't vegan but these are and whilst I didn't love the pink wrapped bar, it tasted really artificial, I was very into the one in the white wrapper which reminded me a little of shortbread.

There are two supermarkets in Inawashiro and York Benimaru is the better of the two. It's always well stocked and has a great produce department as well as must have items like soy milk, Kewpie egg free mayo, nori, potato starch, pasta, noodles, and almond meal.

Viva Cats!

I left Tokyo exactly two weeks ago yesterday and as is usual for me I took a lil' blogging break whilst I was getting settled in my new space. Inawashiro feels like a different world compared to Tokyo, the pace of life is incredibly different as is the way I'm spending my days. Nick and I are volunteering at Japan Cat Network where we're managing a team of volunteers as well as their social media. On top of that I'm trying to work on fundraising ideas and community outreach but those have taken a back seat as I work on more pressing things; getting to know the cats, learning how to use Facebook and cleaning and tidying a mountain of things. This is the house we're currently sharing with five people, 23 cats and two dogs!

The house has three cat rooms filled with kitties with all sorts of different personalities, foibles, likes and dislikes and bonding with some of them is definitely a challenging process. Most of the cats here were rescued from the exclusion zone in Fukushima so we don't know most of their histories. It's clear that some had homes and families and we suspect that some did not. Nick and I have picked some of the most challenging kitties and are spending a little time each day trying to make friends with them.

My Month Volunteering at Lanta Animal Welfare

When Nick and I visited Koh Lanta back in January we fell in love with the island. We loved the food and the beaches but most of all we loved visiting Lanta Animal Welfare, Koh Lanta's cat and dog shelter. We came to walk dogs, we took a tour and we even ate at Time For Lime because we knew that the money from our meal there would go directly towards funding Lanta Animal Welfare. The information leaflets and tours sold us on Lanta Animal Welfare's great work not only with the animals living there but also on their work educating local communities about how to care for animals as well as their fantastic sounding spay and neuter programme. The long and short of it was that Lanta Animal Welfare gave us the warm and fuzzies, so much so that within a month of leaving we were desperate to come back and booked to return to live onsite and do a month's volunteering. That month just ended and the warm and fuzzy feeling I felt has been replaced with so many new feelings; despair, heartache, disappointment and confusion to name a few.

I knew going into the month that it was going to be challenging, that I was going to have to deal with seeing animals in tough situations and that yes, animals probably were going to die. As a sensitive human with a love for all of the world's animals, yes, even cockroaches, I knew that I'd spend a fair amount of time feeling sad but I thought that that would be evened out by how uplifted I'd feel being a part of such a cool project run by people who, like me, just want to help save animals. When a cat was killed by a dog within the first ten minutes of my first shift I felt sad but the outpouring of grief and obvious devastation of those around me made me feel like I was in a great place surrounded by great people and to a certain extent that was true

My Week as a Volunteer at Elephant Nature Park.

I was recently lucky enough to spend a week volunteering at Elephant Nature Park just north of Chiang Mai in Thailand and I can honestly say that it was one of the best weeks of my life. ENP is a sanctuary for elephants who have been abused, mistreated and oppressed at the hands of humans. I went into my week at the park knowing that I wholeheartedly disagreed with riding elephants, elephant painting, the circus, and using elephants for logging but I didn't comprehend the full extent of what these beautiful creatures go through to end up in these situations. The process of breaking an elephant, otherwise known as phajaan or crushing the elephant's spirit, is crueler than you could ever imagine and this is coming from someone who has watched many videos of how cows are treated in dairy farms and what happens to the baby chicks who are ground up whilst they're still alive just so that humans can consume eggs. Watching the videos, this one especially, was incredibly difficult and I have spent hours and hours trying to process my feelings of sadness. Rage came next and, in the long run, I hope to turn my feelings into productivity which I guess is what's happening right now! I am really glad that I was able to gain this insight into an area of animal rights that I wasn't previously well versed on and I hope to be a better ambassador for elephants from now on.

Days at ENP start at 7am with breakfast which means setting an alarm for 6:30 and there was no snoozing because the walls were so thin that I'd have felt like the rudest asshole alive if someone had been forced to listen to Radar more than once. I'd heard that breakfast was the most challenging meal for vegans at the sanctuary so I came well prepared with a stash of bars and crackers. The daily vegan fare at breakfast consisted of cornflakes (the bad D vit's haven't made it over here yet!), soya or rice milk, peanut butter and fruit. One day there were sausages too which I got pretty overexcited about.

The week's large group of volunteers were split into four teams and daily tasks included scooping poop, quite a big task when an elephant's involved; elephant food which meant unloading and washing truck after truck of watermelons, pumpkins and bananas; cutting grass and banana trees down at the roadside; helping to create a fire break and cleaning up the park. Fire break was by far the hardest task as it meant clearing a huge swathe of forest in the heat of the day with various tools, I think hoeing or raking were my favourite tasks but hacking down bushes with a machete was also kinda fun. Overall working in the ele' kitchen was my absolute favourite task, passing the fruit and veg down the line from the truck is the kind of repetitive task I can totally get down with and I liked that you got a real idea of just how much food it takes to feed an elephant. 

Human food wise everything at the park is vegetarian and if you can find a volunteer co-ordinator who gets your veganism they'll be able to tell you which things on the buffet to avoid. Pro-tips: the bread at ENP contains egg and dairy and you'll need to be on the look out for sneaky egg in both the pad thai and pad see ew, there are also some obvious yellow noodles that contain egg. Here are a few examples of the meals I ate from the amazing lunch buffet. The food would have definitely been more varied if I wasn't contending with a chilli allergy but the fact that even I could eat this well says a lot.

Once our work for the day was done we were lucky enough to be able to take part in fun activities like washing the elephants. We learnt a lot about how to go about this before we were let loose with buckets of water. Pouring water down the elephants' face is a huge no-no as is getting water into the ears... this makes so much sense. I certainly wouldn't enjoy someone throwing water at my face!

One afternoon after our chores were done a small group of volunteers were lucky enough to sit with ENP founder Lek and hear her speak about not only the process of breaking an elephant but also the hideousness of forced breeding programs. It didn't surprise me to hear that Lek is vegan herself as this process is not dissimilar to the the one dairy cows are forced to go through when their calves are ripped away from them and shoved into veal crates. Elephants and cows, just like humans, mourn the loss of their babies and it makes me so angry that humans are willing to put animals through this stuff for their own gratification. 

Hearing the elephant's stories was a definite highlight of my time there despite how harrowing the majority of them are, remember that almost every elephant here has been through the breaking process and much more in their pre-ENP lives. Jokia's story was one that hit me the hardest. Rescued from a heartbreaking and tortuous existence at an illegal logging operation in 1999 she came to ENP after being deliberately blinded in both eyes by her mahout for refusing to work after miscarrying whilst dragging a log uphill. On arrival at the park Mae Perm, the first elephant ever rescued by Lek, took her under her wing and became her best friend. They go everywhere together and Mae Perm acts as Jokia's eyes leading her to play and towards food.

We were also able to spend time sitting beneath an elephant to feed her which, Lek explained, she encouraged us to do to help to show people that elephants are gentle creatures who, when they aren't being abused and when they are in the sanctuary environment, see humans as friends - especially when we're accompanied by a bag of tamarind. Getting to sit underneath this beautiful lady was one of the most amazing moments of the week and, believe me, there were many!

One evening Lek spoke with us about her life and her journey to build ENP up to what it is today and wow, I have been around many inspiring feminists in my time but Lek kinda blew my mind. As well as selflessly working to make life better for all elephants with her brand of positive, patient and passionate activism she has also made a world of difference to the lives of women from local hill tribe villages by employing them in her kitchen, as massage therapists for the guests of ENP and much more. The amount of positive change one woman has created is truly inspiring. 

I loved being surrounded by all of the animals that call ENP their home. There are cats and dogs everywhere as well as elephants, water buffalo and cows. Cat Kingdom was a great place to chill and there was one kitty who came to our room to hang out (and to try to climb our mosquito net) daily. What a beauty.

One day when we were taking a fire break break a dog came to hang with us, (s)he seemed super thirsty so I offered up some water in the cap of my bottle and they lapped it up. I think I shared it 50/50 in the end and was rewarded with a lot of face licks from my new pup friend.

As well as loving being surrounded by animals and having a chance to connect with and understand elephants to a greater extent I also enjoyed the peace and beauty of the surrounding countryside and getting to meet wonderful like minded people. I even managed to tune out the people moaning about the lack of meat without shouting "it's for a week, shut up and deal with it" at them which I thought was rather restrained!

Elephants are a much loved part of Thai culture and Elephant Nature Park is the perfect place to connect with them without causing them any harm so whether you're vegan, vegetarian, or neither (yet!) I'd say volunteering here is a must during your time in Thailand.