Eleven-year old Nga Sint prides himself on being a mahout, or ‘oozie’. He thinks he could be the youngest mahout in Burma.

There are about 5,000 elephants living in captivity in the country. Most of them work in the logging industry but many are used for ordination ceremonies and religious festivals.

In Asia, elephants hold symbolic importance and, in particular, the albino white elephant is a symbol of peace, power and prosperity.

But pachyderm numbers in the wild are dropping dramatically in Burma.

DVB spent a day with Nga Sint and his grandfather’s two Asian elephants and watched as he gathered enough bananas for their meals and had fun bathing and splashing the elephants in the water.