I've been back in England a month now, and I've done 2 weeks at work, and this will be the final entry in my blog of my South American adventures. I was hoping that I could reflect on my trip with some sort of conclusion, some sort of epiphany to punctuate an amazing trip and bring meaning to my life (and yours, of course!) but it doesn't seem to be forthcoming.
When faced with the prospect of coming back to England, I was not filled with joy, to say the least. In fact I was filled with dread. And the first week I was back here, I was kind of horrified at the vulgarity of the everyday life of the English mundane existence... but now I've been here a month, I’m kind of used to it again.
Television is something that I did not miss one iota while I was away. I was away for six months, and just before I left England, I was all like “Oh no, I won’t get to find out what happens in...” but literally the first day I arrived in Costa Rica, I forgot all about telly, and didn’t give a shit about it all the time I was away. But now, I come in from work, give Barney a quick belly rub, and then I turn on the telly. Not because I care about the programmes, not because I actually am interested to see what events are happening in the world at the moment, but simply out of boredom and habit. I live alone, there is no one here but me; I have, over the past six months, become accustomed to living with 20 other people all day every day and now I am on my own again I don’t really like it, and so the telly solves part of the problem; it is someone chatting shit at me all the time!
My average day used to involve excessive sweatnig, insect bites, and seeing cool animals in the amazon rainforest... now my average day involves teaching teenagers about Marxist theory and discussing whether England is racist / sexist / homophobic. And you know what, when I was away, I really was not relishing the prospect of coming back to work, but now I am working again, I quite like it. To some extent, I feel that I do have a renewed sense of enthusiasm and wanting to be a cool, fun teacher who people will look back on fodly – as a teacher, we have that power to be amazing and memorable for all the right reasons, or to be the teacher who the kids take advantage of and we get locked in the cupboard and cry. I know I am not the latter, but I may be in danger of falling into the ‘average’ and ‘forgettable’ category but I don’t want that , I want to be the teacher that people look back and think about a really good teacher who helped them or changed them or opened their eyes to something important. I know I can be that person if I try hard enough, but then when I think back to the simple life of the jungle, I know I could quite easily choose that over teaching.
So... life in England is cold, the streets are grey, my car exhaust has broken since I've been back and my car sounds like a boy racer / formula 1 car, and will cost a good deal of money to sort it out, and petrol is expensive, and food is expensive, and I have to cook for myself all the time (I don’t like that!) and I have to do all the housework (I don’t like that either, so i don't do it) and it seems kinda pointless to cook for just one person... I can’t be arsed to do it, not without someone telling me it's my day to do camp duty.
A good proportion of life feels pointless... traffic, cooking, filing, photocopying, watching TV, walking the dog, sleeping, and it's the same every day... and the weather is cold, yeah I don’t like that... it’s like -5’C and that feels fucking freezing... although it has felt warmer this weeked and I hope spring is on the way.
The things I was looking forward to about England like Cadbury’s chocolate, warm showers, and having my own space really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I would be happy to go back to getting bitten by insects and taking cold showers every day. Other things like seeing my family, seeing my dog Barney, and having my own house and my own space, well I do enjoy those things, but that won’t keep me going for ever. Friends... boyfriends... well things didn’t turn out as I hoped and expected they would, so in that sense , there is less reason for me to stay in England than I expected. And now I find out that Ella, who I met in Ecuador, had got a job teachign English in Ecuador, I feel jealous, and that may be telling of something...
So now, my spare time is taken up with doing a photobook (I have like a gazillion photos!) of the stuff that happened while I was away – from Papa Noel, to abseiling down waterfalls; from counting turtle eggs, to listening to bird calls; from white water rafting, to Designated Fun Time... it was brilliant!
So in conclusion, what was my epiphany? I think, that I know I can be happy without many possessions, without television, and without the stress (and money) of a professional career. It is people, and not ‘things’ that bring fun and happiness to your life, and there are fun people the world over. I am getting older by the day, and I will inevitably one day look back on my life and evaluate it, and I’ll always feel glad that I went away on this trip, and met people like Sarah, Kyle, Marcus, Ella, Phil, Max and Grant (and lots of other cool people too). These are the people who made the trip the awesome experience that it was! People have said to me that this was a once in a lifetime chance, but I’m hoping and thinking (as ever) that it wasn’t.
Surely, the next adventure is just around the corner!
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Coming back from Narnia
My last couple of nights in Quito, Ecuador, were eventful... getting back to what they call “civilisation” was borderline traumatic. Seeing everyone in make-up and normal clothes all but disturbed me; why do people suddenly have personality transplants just because we are away from the jungle? I’m the same there as I always am, but some people are obviously a bit more Jeckyl and Hyde than I am... there were people getting stupidly drunk (thus proving that the unnecessarily condescending rules on alcohol at Yachana were in fact justified, as some idiotic teenagers are incapable of knowing when to stop – twats), other people were busy snorting coke and nearly getting arrested (Central America is not a nice place to be imprisoned, I imagine). And we were sat there in a bar, with drunken men hollering a football song at a widescreen match, loud rap music blaring from the place next door, tourists shouting in English at bar staff, and I was looking at the menu over overpriced junk food, holding my head in my hands, wishing myself away from the place. If a black hole could have gulped me up and away from that place, that would have been wonderful. Thankfully, we exited left and went to a sushi restaurant, and the night got better (although (call me racist, why not) it was weird to see Japanese people speaking Spanish). Still, all the worst things about that night continue to be all the worst things about “civilisation”.
I have often said that going abroad is like going to Narnia: you feel you have spent a lifetime away, but when you return, it is as if no time has passed. And once you are back into the mundanity of everyday life, your time away seems to condense as though it didn’t really last that long after all; in fact, it was almost as if it never happened – like it was a dream or something you imagined. It seems a world away.
* * *
I have been back in England for 8 days now, and I am readjusting to life in the slow lane. You probably don’t care about the minutia of my life... I know I didn’t much care for the minutia of other people’s lives while I was away in the exciting world of the jungle. People’s status updates on Facebook were things like “... is feeling a bit rough” or “... is having a cappuccino with marshmallows” and I remember thinking who gives a shit? It’s pointless, it means nothing, it is of no consequence whatsoever, so don’t tell me about it; I don’t care. People’s lives are dreadfully boring if that is the most interesting thing that is happening to them.
And now I am in that very same situation myself, so I won’t bore you details of what i've done since i got back.
Things in England are WEIRD. Television is pointless: it’s just people pretending, for the most part. People saying things that aren’t true... what is the point of that? Why would anyone want to watch that? And the news – well, it’s just more of the same as always. Murders; cold weather; I don’t think anyone would notice if they just replayed last year’s news again this year. TV is something I did not miss one little bit while I was away, but in spite of that, and in spite of what I've just said about the shitty futility of it, I have watched it every day since my return. Why? Boredom. There is nothing to DO here. Seriously, what do people DO all day? I can’t understand it any more... what did I used to do? What do other people DO with their time? Life in England seems dull. But in my time away, I was with 25 people all the time, and had activities to do each day, and indeed most evenings. Given the choice, I’d far rather spend my evenings like I used to, playing cards with friends (Yanif is way better than Shithead ever was, even though I don’t get to say “skippy-skip!”), lying in a hammock and reading, or just sitting around and talking and having fun (designated or otherwise). But it seems that that is not happening here. I have friends, sure, but I don’t get to see them every day like I did in the jungle, and it consequently feels lonely here.
I find that I've forgotten a lot of what I used to do, and my life before my trip (I guess that's the Narnia Factor); so, I’m being really absent-minded. For example, I noticed a new Tesco Metro had opened up, and I thought how that would be convenient for me... then a minute or so later I realised it wasn’t that convenient, because I don’t live on the road I was thinking I lived on any more; I moved house 2 years ago! ... And things in my house aren’t where I’d expect to find them. I thought Rich might have taken my back door keys, till he reminded me that they are where I always kept them, next to the sugar – I’d forgotten where I kept them. I've done the same with several other things. And I was in Tesco (the one NEAR to where i live!), looking at the hotpots and shepherds pies, then I realised they had meat in them and I needed to go to the vegetarian section! Jesus, it’s like I've got special needs or something! I need a Care Worker to come and help me in every aspect of my life. I was only away for six months, but it’s like I've forgotten how to function in this world.
I feel like I just don’t understand UK life any more. I feel lost. Nothing makes sense. It’s like coming out of prison or something. When your life has been so controlled, and so different, and with a totally different group of people, where food was provided, and it was hard work, but rewarding, and now all of a sudden, I’m on my own, cooking for one, no work to do (yet), so no reward, and everything feels a bit pointless. And some things have changed that I didn’t want to change... I suppose you can’t walk out of your life, then walk back into it six months later and act as if everything’s the same, can you? I think I wanted to have my cake and eat it; to leave and have an adventure, and then come back to my life as if nothing has happened, but evidently that is not to be.
Need I point out that the weather here in England is very cold? It’s fucking freezing: the coldest I can ever remember being, and I don’t think it’s just because I've come back from the equator... it’s about -5’C during the day time here at the moment, and about -10’C at night. That’s not just cold, that’s painfully, unspeakably cold. I’m sleeping in fleecy pyjamas, body-warmer, dressing gown, in a sleeping bag, under a 15 tog duvet, in a room with heating on. Hell, I have even worn a woollen hat two nights! I just can’t seem to get warm. I much preferred sleeping in 25’C, without a shadow of a doubt.
Just to lower the tone, I thought I’d let you know that when I got back to England, putting toilet paper in the toilet seemed weird at first (it’s been anathema, taboo, and borderline criminal for six months, the sewage systems in Central America being unable to cope with it) but I am now used to putting toilet paper in the toilet again. Phew! Neighbours might have thought I was weird if I was in the garden burning shitty toilet paper in Nottingham, England.
However, in its defence, England is beautiful. The hills are sweeping, the trees barren, and the skies the palest of grey, but with everything dusted under frosty white, even the ugliest council estate can look like a Christmas card scene, and the countryside is incredibly beautiful. And while your eyes are watering from the cold, you can almost believe that you are crying at the beauty of it all! In that sense, England is like inside the wardrobe of Narnia, and I am Lucy amazed by the elegance of the snow on every little twig of every tree. You don't get that in the rainforest.
So...
My time away was amazing... I have had marine turtles laying eggs into my hand; I have seen monkeys swinging through the trees; I have seen deadly venomous snakes; I have seen (and heard) the most beautiful birds – parrots, toucans, and a whole host of others... and it was wonderful. The people I met and the things I did went together to make a more wonderful experience than most people can ever hope to experience, and it’s still going on out there, with other people, while I am here typing this in my living room, with the TV droning on in the background, advertising stuff I don’t need in between programmes I don’t care about. It’s good spending time with family and friends, but beyond that, I don’t know whether I really want to be here. We shall see. :-/
I have often said that going abroad is like going to Narnia: you feel you have spent a lifetime away, but when you return, it is as if no time has passed. And once you are back into the mundanity of everyday life, your time away seems to condense as though it didn’t really last that long after all; in fact, it was almost as if it never happened – like it was a dream or something you imagined. It seems a world away.
* * *
I have been back in England for 8 days now, and I am readjusting to life in the slow lane. You probably don’t care about the minutia of my life... I know I didn’t much care for the minutia of other people’s lives while I was away in the exciting world of the jungle. People’s status updates on Facebook were things like “... is feeling a bit rough” or “... is having a cappuccino with marshmallows” and I remember thinking who gives a shit? It’s pointless, it means nothing, it is of no consequence whatsoever, so don’t tell me about it; I don’t care. People’s lives are dreadfully boring if that is the most interesting thing that is happening to them.
And now I am in that very same situation myself, so I won’t bore you details of what i've done since i got back.
Things in England are WEIRD. Television is pointless: it’s just people pretending, for the most part. People saying things that aren’t true... what is the point of that? Why would anyone want to watch that? And the news – well, it’s just more of the same as always. Murders; cold weather; I don’t think anyone would notice if they just replayed last year’s news again this year. TV is something I did not miss one little bit while I was away, but in spite of that, and in spite of what I've just said about the shitty futility of it, I have watched it every day since my return. Why? Boredom. There is nothing to DO here. Seriously, what do people DO all day? I can’t understand it any more... what did I used to do? What do other people DO with their time? Life in England seems dull. But in my time away, I was with 25 people all the time, and had activities to do each day, and indeed most evenings. Given the choice, I’d far rather spend my evenings like I used to, playing cards with friends (Yanif is way better than Shithead ever was, even though I don’t get to say “skippy-skip!”), lying in a hammock and reading, or just sitting around and talking and having fun (designated or otherwise). But it seems that that is not happening here. I have friends, sure, but I don’t get to see them every day like I did in the jungle, and it consequently feels lonely here.
I find that I've forgotten a lot of what I used to do, and my life before my trip (I guess that's the Narnia Factor); so, I’m being really absent-minded. For example, I noticed a new Tesco Metro had opened up, and I thought how that would be convenient for me... then a minute or so later I realised it wasn’t that convenient, because I don’t live on the road I was thinking I lived on any more; I moved house 2 years ago! ... And things in my house aren’t where I’d expect to find them. I thought Rich might have taken my back door keys, till he reminded me that they are where I always kept them, next to the sugar – I’d forgotten where I kept them. I've done the same with several other things. And I was in Tesco (the one NEAR to where i live!), looking at the hotpots and shepherds pies, then I realised they had meat in them and I needed to go to the vegetarian section! Jesus, it’s like I've got special needs or something! I need a Care Worker to come and help me in every aspect of my life. I was only away for six months, but it’s like I've forgotten how to function in this world.
I feel like I just don’t understand UK life any more. I feel lost. Nothing makes sense. It’s like coming out of prison or something. When your life has been so controlled, and so different, and with a totally different group of people, where food was provided, and it was hard work, but rewarding, and now all of a sudden, I’m on my own, cooking for one, no work to do (yet), so no reward, and everything feels a bit pointless. And some things have changed that I didn’t want to change... I suppose you can’t walk out of your life, then walk back into it six months later and act as if everything’s the same, can you? I think I wanted to have my cake and eat it; to leave and have an adventure, and then come back to my life as if nothing has happened, but evidently that is not to be.
Need I point out that the weather here in England is very cold? It’s fucking freezing: the coldest I can ever remember being, and I don’t think it’s just because I've come back from the equator... it’s about -5’C during the day time here at the moment, and about -10’C at night. That’s not just cold, that’s painfully, unspeakably cold. I’m sleeping in fleecy pyjamas, body-warmer, dressing gown, in a sleeping bag, under a 15 tog duvet, in a room with heating on. Hell, I have even worn a woollen hat two nights! I just can’t seem to get warm. I much preferred sleeping in 25’C, without a shadow of a doubt.
Just to lower the tone, I thought I’d let you know that when I got back to England, putting toilet paper in the toilet seemed weird at first (it’s been anathema, taboo, and borderline criminal for six months, the sewage systems in Central America being unable to cope with it) but I am now used to putting toilet paper in the toilet again. Phew! Neighbours might have thought I was weird if I was in the garden burning shitty toilet paper in Nottingham, England.
However, in its defence, England is beautiful. The hills are sweeping, the trees barren, and the skies the palest of grey, but with everything dusted under frosty white, even the ugliest council estate can look like a Christmas card scene, and the countryside is incredibly beautiful. And while your eyes are watering from the cold, you can almost believe that you are crying at the beauty of it all! In that sense, England is like inside the wardrobe of Narnia, and I am Lucy amazed by the elegance of the snow on every little twig of every tree. You don't get that in the rainforest.
So...
My time away was amazing... I have had marine turtles laying eggs into my hand; I have seen monkeys swinging through the trees; I have seen deadly venomous snakes; I have seen (and heard) the most beautiful birds – parrots, toucans, and a whole host of others... and it was wonderful. The people I met and the things I did went together to make a more wonderful experience than most people can ever hope to experience, and it’s still going on out there, with other people, while I am here typing this in my living room, with the TV droning on in the background, advertising stuff I don’t need in between programmes I don’t care about. It’s good spending time with family and friends, but beyond that, I don’t know whether I really want to be here. We shall see. :-/
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Top Tens
TOP 10 FAVOURITE MOMENTS
1. The Fun Day at the school in Puerto Rico, where we threw wellies, had a tug of war, a multi legged race, water balloons, and a slip 'n' slide - Brilliant!
2. Seeing the parrots at the clay lick in Yasuni - it was incredible
3. Seeing the monkeys at Hector's island
4. Going to Baños and abseiling down the waterfalls with Cat, Kristen and Phil
5. The Superheroes night, and doing stupid challenges and forfeits!
6. Going to the waterhole with Max, Phil and Grant, and having running races and falling over in the sand
7. Seeing the rainbow boa under the staff cabin
8. The Cultural Exchange day, where Cristain's community came over and did a dance for us and i cooked up a banquest for 35 people
9. Going to the waterfall with Max, Bells and Jas and getting covered in clay
10. When Olly said there was a snake in the stream, and me and Max rfeaked out and ran out!
TOP 10 FAVOURITE ANIMALS I'VE SEEN
1. Orange-cheeked parrots
2. Other parrots
3. Rainbow boa
4. Toucans / araçaris
5. Other snakes, including the anaconda (even though it was dead)
6. Woolly monkeys
7. Saki monkeys
8. Agoutis
9. Blunt-headed treesnakes
10. Frogs (various)
TOP 10 FAVOURITE BIRD CALLS (yes I am that sad!)
1. Green oropendola (R2D2 on speed)
2. Russet-backed oropendola (trill-plop)
3. Great potoo (serial killer roar)
4. Bright-rumped attila (orgasm bird)
5. White-throated toucan (incessant yapping that reminded me of my dog barney)
6. Yellow-rumped cacique (R2D2 being conversational)
7. Southern nightingale-wren (mournful scales)
8. Plumbeous pigeon ("suck my balls")
9. Screaming piha (wolf whistler of the tropics)
10. Undulated tinamou (a bit boring but we heard it every day!)
TOP 10 THINGS I LOVED AND WILL MISS
1. Having good friends to hang out with all the time and never feeling lonely
2. Going on trips to places like Hector's and Yasuni
3. Seeing cool animals like parrots, monkeys and snakes
4. Designated Fun Time
5. Doing sound scientific research
6. Playing Yanif / Yaneesh / Ganeshe / Ganic / Garlic...
7. Spanglishing
8. Hammock time
9. Point counts
10. Mist netting - a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
TOP 10 THINGS I HATED AND WON'T MISS
1. Getting bitten by sand flies, bullet ants, other ants, wasps, sweat bees, proboscis flies, ticks, and mosquitoes; feeling itchy from bites
2. Feeling patronised, e.g. being told every day to be careful on the road and watch out for cars!
3. Annoying people being annoying, e.g. singing Disney Songs
4. Walking really fast and feeling knackered
5. Freezing cold showers
6. Porridge being the only breakfast option
7. Eating beans twice a day, every day
8. Having rat(s) living in our room, and I saw it crawling along my bed while I was in it
9. Falling over on crazy terrain
10. Sweating madly on surveys so I had permanent drips from my eyelashes, nose and chin
TOP 10 THINGS I'M NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO ABOUT ENGLAND
1. Being alone - I haven`t been alone in 6 months
2. Cold weather - I hear it's below 25'C there - brrrrrrrr!!!
3. Christmas shopping in towns heaving with people
4. Being away from nature, animals, and beautiful jungle
5. Going back to work and having to do the things other than teaching like writing reports, parents evenings, admin, progress tutoring, marking... I better not give too much of a list because I'll be back there soon!
6. Forgetting all the stuff I've learnt, like Spanish, survey techniques, and being able to identify loads of species of animal
7. Annoying, ignorant people, like chavs
8. Traffic, rush hour, grim concrete cities where forest was hacked down and paved over a long, long time ago
9. People commenting that I don´t have a tan, as if that is the most important thing in the world, and the only reason to leave England
10. Boredom, and staring at crap TV programmes because there is nothing else to do
TOP 10 THINGS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO ABOUT ENGLAND
1. Seeing family and friends, especially my nephews Lewis and Joseph, who are too young for me to have been able to keep in touch with
2. Seeing Barney - hope he remembers me and doesn´t bite me!
3. Re-telling everyone stories I´ve already emailed them about, and re-showing them photos they've already seen on Facebook!
4. Eating Cadbury's chocolate, veggie burgers, and junk food
5. Christmas with my family
6. Electricity, including lights!
7. Having warm showers
8. Not having rats living in my bedroom
9. The Great British countryside, with beautiful snowy hills
10. Being able to drink alcohol whenever I want, go out whenever I want, to wherever I want, with whoever I want, whyever I want. (Whyever whould be a word!)
So there you go!
1. The Fun Day at the school in Puerto Rico, where we threw wellies, had a tug of war, a multi legged race, water balloons, and a slip 'n' slide - Brilliant!
2. Seeing the parrots at the clay lick in Yasuni - it was incredible
3. Seeing the monkeys at Hector's island
4. Going to Baños and abseiling down the waterfalls with Cat, Kristen and Phil
5. The Superheroes night, and doing stupid challenges and forfeits!
6. Going to the waterhole with Max, Phil and Grant, and having running races and falling over in the sand
7. Seeing the rainbow boa under the staff cabin
8. The Cultural Exchange day, where Cristain's community came over and did a dance for us and i cooked up a banquest for 35 people
9. Going to the waterfall with Max, Bells and Jas and getting covered in clay
10. When Olly said there was a snake in the stream, and me and Max rfeaked out and ran out!
TOP 10 FAVOURITE ANIMALS I'VE SEEN
1. Orange-cheeked parrots
2. Other parrots
3. Rainbow boa
4. Toucans / araçaris
5. Other snakes, including the anaconda (even though it was dead)
6. Woolly monkeys
7. Saki monkeys
8. Agoutis
9. Blunt-headed treesnakes
10. Frogs (various)
TOP 10 FAVOURITE BIRD CALLS (yes I am that sad!)
1. Green oropendola (R2D2 on speed)
2. Russet-backed oropendola (trill-plop)
3. Great potoo (serial killer roar)
4. Bright-rumped attila (orgasm bird)
5. White-throated toucan (incessant yapping that reminded me of my dog barney)
6. Yellow-rumped cacique (R2D2 being conversational)
7. Southern nightingale-wren (mournful scales)
8. Plumbeous pigeon ("suck my balls")
9. Screaming piha (wolf whistler of the tropics)
10. Undulated tinamou (a bit boring but we heard it every day!)
TOP 10 THINGS I LOVED AND WILL MISS
1. Having good friends to hang out with all the time and never feeling lonely
2. Going on trips to places like Hector's and Yasuni
3. Seeing cool animals like parrots, monkeys and snakes
4. Designated Fun Time
5. Doing sound scientific research
6. Playing Yanif / Yaneesh / Ganeshe / Ganic / Garlic...
7. Spanglishing
8. Hammock time
9. Point counts
10. Mist netting - a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
TOP 10 THINGS I HATED AND WON'T MISS
1. Getting bitten by sand flies, bullet ants, other ants, wasps, sweat bees, proboscis flies, ticks, and mosquitoes; feeling itchy from bites
2. Feeling patronised, e.g. being told every day to be careful on the road and watch out for cars!
3. Annoying people being annoying, e.g. singing Disney Songs
4. Walking really fast and feeling knackered
5. Freezing cold showers
6. Porridge being the only breakfast option
7. Eating beans twice a day, every day
8. Having rat(s) living in our room, and I saw it crawling along my bed while I was in it
9. Falling over on crazy terrain
10. Sweating madly on surveys so I had permanent drips from my eyelashes, nose and chin
TOP 10 THINGS I'M NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO ABOUT ENGLAND
1. Being alone - I haven`t been alone in 6 months
2. Cold weather - I hear it's below 25'C there - brrrrrrrr!!!
3. Christmas shopping in towns heaving with people
4. Being away from nature, animals, and beautiful jungle
5. Going back to work and having to do the things other than teaching like writing reports, parents evenings, admin, progress tutoring, marking... I better not give too much of a list because I'll be back there soon!
6. Forgetting all the stuff I've learnt, like Spanish, survey techniques, and being able to identify loads of species of animal
7. Annoying, ignorant people, like chavs
8. Traffic, rush hour, grim concrete cities where forest was hacked down and paved over a long, long time ago
9. People commenting that I don´t have a tan, as if that is the most important thing in the world, and the only reason to leave England
10. Boredom, and staring at crap TV programmes because there is nothing else to do
TOP 10 THINGS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO ABOUT ENGLAND
1. Seeing family and friends, especially my nephews Lewis and Joseph, who are too young for me to have been able to keep in touch with
2. Seeing Barney - hope he remembers me and doesn´t bite me!
3. Re-telling everyone stories I´ve already emailed them about, and re-showing them photos they've already seen on Facebook!
4. Eating Cadbury's chocolate, veggie burgers, and junk food
5. Christmas with my family
6. Electricity, including lights!
7. Having warm showers
8. Not having rats living in my bedroom
9. The Great British countryside, with beautiful snowy hills
10. Being able to drink alcohol whenever I want, go out whenever I want, to wherever I want, with whoever I want, whyever I want. (Whyever whould be a word!)
So there you go!
Nearing the end
Well i am now in Tena, and have thus left the jungle for good, and I am feeling rather sad. I have had a brilliant time here and will really miss it, when I´m sat at home on my own in my house, or when I´m stuck in a traffic jam in a concrete city, or when I´m fretting about writing reports and meeting deadlines and whether people will pass their exams.... it seems a world away, but it will all be real soon enough.
In this last week, there haven´t been any surveys; we just went on walks and had fun, chilled out, and tidied up the camp.
One thing that was really good was the Fun Day (ok, a Fun 2 Hours) which me, Lucy, Tim and Steve (and Jas) organised for the kids at the school we teach at in Puerto Rico (no, not the country, it´s a nearby village!) We organised and planned the games, then nearly all of the volunteers (12 of us) and 3 staff went down to the school, and we had a couple of hours of brilliant fun. we divided into 4 teams, each team having different coloured headbands made of coloured plastic flagging tape, and each team had 3 volunteers and about 5 kids (aged 4 to 10 ish) in it ... then for the events. the first event was the tug of war, when the entire team took hold of the rope and tried to pull it past the welly marker. it was great fun, and all the teams played against each other; my team came third but we dished out high fives nonetheless :D. Then was the welly throwing; we threw a welly, then the next team member had to pick it up from where it lay, and throw it, till everyone had had a go. We had the mischieviously overzealous Sebastian on our team though, and he grabbed it and threw it about 3 times when he wasn´t supposed to, so the scoring was probably way off! never mind. Then we made a big circle and threw water balloons between ourselves at ever-increasing distances till they´d all popped - that was fun! The multi-legged race was next where the entire team tied their legs to one another in a line, and then attempted to race another team to the finish line... we were thwarted by mud and had people falling all over the place, which was really funny. The last thing was the most fun (but not a competition) where we got a load of plastic sheeting about 6 metres long, covered in in shampoo and water, and then took turns running up to it, throwing ourselves onto our fronts, and skidding the entire distance along it - the kids loved it (and so did we!) and only about 3 of them wanted to play football instead - you know you´re onto a winner when they choose it over football! it was really good, and finished up in a big pile-up of everyone - adults and kids - throwing ourselves down it and rolling around! it was great fun, and a brilliant way to finish our time here. Unfortunately for the kids (and the teachers!) they had to carry on with normal lessons in the afternoon, despite their school uniform being drenched and soapy, and them being hyper! So the kids loved Fun Day, but the teachers maybe did not!
Other fun stuff we did this week was to go on a stream walk, where we waded in up to our waists, and kiwi Lucy was on top form, spotting snake after snake, and frog after frog... cool! we saw one that was little but venomous, and two others that were non-venomous, and while Maxine and I were in the water up to our knee level, Olly went "Snake!" and we said where, and he pointed in the water at our wellies, and we saw it there and freaked out and ran for the land in a 3-second mad panic, which was really funny. Olly said it´s a bad idea to splash around like that as they are attracted to the splashing, but sod that, a snake in the same water that i´m in is the stuff of nightmares for me (and Max!) and we panicked and ran for it - ha ha!
I also went on a walk down to the Waterfall (cascada) with Jas, Bells and Max, and we covered ourselves in clay,and they pretended to be cave people. The following day, I went to the waterhole, with Max, Phil and Grant. The waterfall is small, with cool water that is crystal clear, and it´s really beautiful. The waterhole is much bigger (it flows into the Rio Napo itself) and the water is warmer, but filthy brown in colour (from silt), and you can feel all the gooey muddy sandy silt underfoot. The four of us had running races, running along in the shallows, where the ground is so uneven that you fall over all the time... we also floated / walked / swam over to where it flows into the Napo, and you could feel the water get colder and the current get stronger. It´s really beutiful there, with massive trees and forest vines hanging down into the water, and caciques and oropendolas making noises you didn´t think it was possible for birds to make, and a few parrots flying overhead maybe - not close enough so you can see what species, but their noisy squawking and inelegant flight gives them away. It was a really good time, and something I´ll remember about the beauty of the place.
What else? umm... we spent ages tidying up and cleaning the camp. That was not fun though. Nor was packing. I've ditched as much stuff as i can - crappy Primark Tshirts i bought for this purpose, disposable clothes that are battered from six months of wear, or things that are useful in the jungle but probabaly not elsewhere... but a few of the interns wanted more stuff, as they are staying on for anoher 3 months - Nicki took a Tshirt and some socks; Ella took some bug spray, the staff took some string, hand sanitiser gel, and plant ties, and Phil (yes, he is a guy!) took my luminous pink crocs... no wonder people think he's gay sometimes!
Well that's about it for now. I am in Tena at the moment, which is a city between Camp and Quito. Tomorrow morning we get the bus to Quito. The journey takes five hours, but would probably take over six if you could convince the bus drivers to drive safely along mountainous switchbacks and potholed roads, but no, that is not going to happen. If you are asleep you are not so scared, but you miss all the beautiful misty mountains and rainforest scenery, which is gorgeous, and will be a lasting memory of the beauty of the country. I then have a spare day, during which a few of us are going to Ottovalo to go shopping (it's nice, they say) and then the day after that, I fly back to England. It´s all over now, and i won´t be back in the jungle again for a long time, and I´ll miss it, as i miss Costa Rica.
But the Christmas beckons, and it´ll be good to see family and friends again. I haven´t missed England or work at all. And I haven´t missed family, friends or Barney nearly as much as I thought I would, probably beacuse I've always been with friends. Except in Mexico, when I did feel quite lonely at times, and I missed them more then. But it's been good to keep in touch as often as I've managed to, and so hopefully others haven´t missed me too much either. In some ways it seems a very long time ago since i was in England, yet I'm sure once I'm back it'll feel like I never left, and all this was a strange dream, or like it didn´t really happen, or like it went by in a flash.
Love to you all.... I may write again from Quito, but if not, I´ll write another entry when I get back to England!
In this last week, there haven´t been any surveys; we just went on walks and had fun, chilled out, and tidied up the camp.
One thing that was really good was the Fun Day (ok, a Fun 2 Hours) which me, Lucy, Tim and Steve (and Jas) organised for the kids at the school we teach at in Puerto Rico (no, not the country, it´s a nearby village!) We organised and planned the games, then nearly all of the volunteers (12 of us) and 3 staff went down to the school, and we had a couple of hours of brilliant fun. we divided into 4 teams, each team having different coloured headbands made of coloured plastic flagging tape, and each team had 3 volunteers and about 5 kids (aged 4 to 10 ish) in it ... then for the events. the first event was the tug of war, when the entire team took hold of the rope and tried to pull it past the welly marker. it was great fun, and all the teams played against each other; my team came third but we dished out high fives nonetheless :D. Then was the welly throwing; we threw a welly, then the next team member had to pick it up from where it lay, and throw it, till everyone had had a go. We had the mischieviously overzealous Sebastian on our team though, and he grabbed it and threw it about 3 times when he wasn´t supposed to, so the scoring was probably way off! never mind. Then we made a big circle and threw water balloons between ourselves at ever-increasing distances till they´d all popped - that was fun! The multi-legged race was next where the entire team tied their legs to one another in a line, and then attempted to race another team to the finish line... we were thwarted by mud and had people falling all over the place, which was really funny. The last thing was the most fun (but not a competition) where we got a load of plastic sheeting about 6 metres long, covered in in shampoo and water, and then took turns running up to it, throwing ourselves onto our fronts, and skidding the entire distance along it - the kids loved it (and so did we!) and only about 3 of them wanted to play football instead - you know you´re onto a winner when they choose it over football! it was really good, and finished up in a big pile-up of everyone - adults and kids - throwing ourselves down it and rolling around! it was great fun, and a brilliant way to finish our time here. Unfortunately for the kids (and the teachers!) they had to carry on with normal lessons in the afternoon, despite their school uniform being drenched and soapy, and them being hyper! So the kids loved Fun Day, but the teachers maybe did not!
Other fun stuff we did this week was to go on a stream walk, where we waded in up to our waists, and kiwi Lucy was on top form, spotting snake after snake, and frog after frog... cool! we saw one that was little but venomous, and two others that were non-venomous, and while Maxine and I were in the water up to our knee level, Olly went "Snake!" and we said where, and he pointed in the water at our wellies, and we saw it there and freaked out and ran for the land in a 3-second mad panic, which was really funny. Olly said it´s a bad idea to splash around like that as they are attracted to the splashing, but sod that, a snake in the same water that i´m in is the stuff of nightmares for me (and Max!) and we panicked and ran for it - ha ha!
I also went on a walk down to the Waterfall (cascada) with Jas, Bells and Max, and we covered ourselves in clay,and they pretended to be cave people. The following day, I went to the waterhole, with Max, Phil and Grant. The waterfall is small, with cool water that is crystal clear, and it´s really beautiful. The waterhole is much bigger (it flows into the Rio Napo itself) and the water is warmer, but filthy brown in colour (from silt), and you can feel all the gooey muddy sandy silt underfoot. The four of us had running races, running along in the shallows, where the ground is so uneven that you fall over all the time... we also floated / walked / swam over to where it flows into the Napo, and you could feel the water get colder and the current get stronger. It´s really beutiful there, with massive trees and forest vines hanging down into the water, and caciques and oropendolas making noises you didn´t think it was possible for birds to make, and a few parrots flying overhead maybe - not close enough so you can see what species, but their noisy squawking and inelegant flight gives them away. It was a really good time, and something I´ll remember about the beauty of the place.
What else? umm... we spent ages tidying up and cleaning the camp. That was not fun though. Nor was packing. I've ditched as much stuff as i can - crappy Primark Tshirts i bought for this purpose, disposable clothes that are battered from six months of wear, or things that are useful in the jungle but probabaly not elsewhere... but a few of the interns wanted more stuff, as they are staying on for anoher 3 months - Nicki took a Tshirt and some socks; Ella took some bug spray, the staff took some string, hand sanitiser gel, and plant ties, and Phil (yes, he is a guy!) took my luminous pink crocs... no wonder people think he's gay sometimes!
Well that's about it for now. I am in Tena at the moment, which is a city between Camp and Quito. Tomorrow morning we get the bus to Quito. The journey takes five hours, but would probably take over six if you could convince the bus drivers to drive safely along mountainous switchbacks and potholed roads, but no, that is not going to happen. If you are asleep you are not so scared, but you miss all the beautiful misty mountains and rainforest scenery, which is gorgeous, and will be a lasting memory of the beauty of the country. I then have a spare day, during which a few of us are going to Ottovalo to go shopping (it's nice, they say) and then the day after that, I fly back to England. It´s all over now, and i won´t be back in the jungle again for a long time, and I´ll miss it, as i miss Costa Rica.
But the Christmas beckons, and it´ll be good to see family and friends again. I haven´t missed England or work at all. And I haven´t missed family, friends or Barney nearly as much as I thought I would, probably beacuse I've always been with friends. Except in Mexico, when I did feel quite lonely at times, and I missed them more then. But it's been good to keep in touch as often as I've managed to, and so hopefully others haven´t missed me too much either. In some ways it seems a very long time ago since i was in England, yet I'm sure once I'm back it'll feel like I never left, and all this was a strange dream, or like it didn´t really happen, or like it went by in a flash.
Love to you all.... I may write again from Quito, but if not, I´ll write another entry when I get back to England!
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Yasuni
I{m in Coca again, back from Yasuni national park, which has been great. the highlight of the trip to yasuni is one of the main highlights of my trip to Ecuador. we went to some clay licks, and we sat and waited in a bird hide, and after half an hour of patience, and hearing parrots in the skies overhead, the parrots began to descend to the clay lick, in fluttering rainbows of red and blue and yellow and green, dozens of them swarming the clay, and drinking in the nutrients, noisily squawking to each other, just ten metres or so away from us. it was increadible. most of the parrots are predominantly green when not in flight, although they may have blue heads or orange cheeks, but when they fly, their underwings reveal a beautiful array of colours, and if you can catch a photo of them in flight, their wings blur up and down like curved symmetraical rainbows as tehy fly towards you. it was utterly stunning and we all stayed quiet and watched them in awe. it was something i´ll remember for the rest of my life as an amazing wildlife moment.
we also went on watlks throug hthe forest, and frequently heard parrots overhead. our guide - Hector, who owns the island we visited 5 weeks ago - would poipnt out the parrots as they flew overhead "dusky headed parrots!" "scarlet macaws!" "yellow-winged parakeets!" but many of them were just dark silhouettes against the bright sky, so cannot compare in beauty to when we saw them at the clay licks. they are noisy, squawky birds who announce their presence frequently, and there are dozens of species in the Park.
Hecots also took us on forest walks where he expaoined differnt uses for the trees, folk tales, and got us doing things like weaving baskets out of leaves, and climbing trees with a vine rope around your feet. we also tore through the forest as we saw saki monkeys and another type of monkey in the trees overhead. the weatehr was cool (25´C) and a bit drizzly, but that can be preferable to the scorching heat of the day. i´m going to be mightily cold upon my return to england - brrr!
also on the walk, hector found a tree which contained grubs resembling a shrivelled penis - 3 inches long and nearly an inch wide, skin coloured, with a little black head, and they wriggle about from side to side in the most disgusting way. it´s a common jungle food, and you can see them in markets , skewered and wriggling about on barbecues which is enough to turn your stomach. imagine eating them raw... we didn´t have to imagine though, as he offered them out and several people (not me - i´m veggie, remember!!) took up the challenge. they bite you, so you have to crush their head before shoving the whole thing into yout mouth. puke-inducing stuff!! it{s pretty gross and maybe cruel to eat them like this, but it´s proabbly not as cruel as grilling them alive, although i imagine they taste better cooked.
what else? we went on a wander through the swamps near our camp, and i got a few great photos of frogs, and a snake which was apparently venomous, plus there was another big black snake which went under Mark´s tent at about 10pm, and everyone had to poke about nearby, trying to get it to come out so that he could go to bed in safetey. it was over a metre long, but that one, apparently, was not venomous.
we were sleeping in jungle hammocks, which are like hammocks with mozzie neta attached, and as we were setting them up and tying them to trees, Hecotr said we could set them up in the comedor (thatched hut) if we wanted. i weighed up the prospects of being jungle woman, versus the certainty of being dry during the wet season, and plumped for the latter. i was glad of this, because it pissed it down with rain, nad a load of people´s hammocks filled with water, and they migrated to the comedor floor during the night, so that when i woke up in the morning, the comedor looked like a refugee camp, with bags and bodies all over the floor. i was pleasantly dry and had slept well. prudence triumphs over jungliness!
the next day, we went to an "jungle interpretation centre" though quite why it needs interpreting rather than just understanding and appreciating, i never did find out. we found out about Quechua everyday life, and about some of the threateneed species that live underwater. we are on hte banks for the Napo river, a massive tributary half a mile wide, which feeds into the Amazon, but it´s easy to forget about fish, mammals and reptiles in the water that are threatened, vulnerable and endangered.
we also found out about how the evil oil companies are moving ever more into the heart of the area, drilling for oil, and felling forests, building roads, and displacing local communities in the process. it seems so wrong. but i want to power my car, and buy petrol at a reasonable price, and i want to be able to fly around the world and see othroug countires, and we have discussed whether we would be willing to give up petrol and electricity if it meant saving the Amazon, or whether we´d sacrifice the Amazon if it meant beaing able to power the world, and it´s a very difficult questions (you thgink about it). at least we can recognise that we are slightly hypocritical, beause we want the best of both worlds. i don{t know what the solution is. no one wants the rainforest to be cut down, but to do without the power we´ve come to expect and rely on doesn{t seem a tenable option either. it´s a tricky one, and it´s not goint to go away any time soon - it seems easy enough to think that maybe the decision is in the hands of world leaders ,or oil companies, but we are the ones demanding the oil, so maybe it´s in our hands too... but i´m not willing to give up my car... ugh! it gives me (and now you) a great deal to think about.
We are heading back to our usual camp now, where we will clean everything up, g oon a few walks for fun, and then we are heading for Quito (via Tena), then England. eek! it seems like a very long time ago that i was in England, but it will, in mayn ways, be good to be home, although i will miss this place and this life loads.
we also went on watlks throug hthe forest, and frequently heard parrots overhead. our guide - Hector, who owns the island we visited 5 weeks ago - would poipnt out the parrots as they flew overhead "dusky headed parrots!" "scarlet macaws!" "yellow-winged parakeets!" but many of them were just dark silhouettes against the bright sky, so cannot compare in beauty to when we saw them at the clay licks. they are noisy, squawky birds who announce their presence frequently, and there are dozens of species in the Park.
Hecots also took us on forest walks where he expaoined differnt uses for the trees, folk tales, and got us doing things like weaving baskets out of leaves, and climbing trees with a vine rope around your feet. we also tore through the forest as we saw saki monkeys and another type of monkey in the trees overhead. the weatehr was cool (25´C) and a bit drizzly, but that can be preferable to the scorching heat of the day. i´m going to be mightily cold upon my return to england - brrr!
also on the walk, hector found a tree which contained grubs resembling a shrivelled penis - 3 inches long and nearly an inch wide, skin coloured, with a little black head, and they wriggle about from side to side in the most disgusting way. it´s a common jungle food, and you can see them in markets , skewered and wriggling about on barbecues which is enough to turn your stomach. imagine eating them raw... we didn´t have to imagine though, as he offered them out and several people (not me - i´m veggie, remember!!) took up the challenge. they bite you, so you have to crush their head before shoving the whole thing into yout mouth. puke-inducing stuff!! it{s pretty gross and maybe cruel to eat them like this, but it´s proabbly not as cruel as grilling them alive, although i imagine they taste better cooked.
what else? we went on a wander through the swamps near our camp, and i got a few great photos of frogs, and a snake which was apparently venomous, plus there was another big black snake which went under Mark´s tent at about 10pm, and everyone had to poke about nearby, trying to get it to come out so that he could go to bed in safetey. it was over a metre long, but that one, apparently, was not venomous.
we were sleeping in jungle hammocks, which are like hammocks with mozzie neta attached, and as we were setting them up and tying them to trees, Hecotr said we could set them up in the comedor (thatched hut) if we wanted. i weighed up the prospects of being jungle woman, versus the certainty of being dry during the wet season, and plumped for the latter. i was glad of this, because it pissed it down with rain, nad a load of people´s hammocks filled with water, and they migrated to the comedor floor during the night, so that when i woke up in the morning, the comedor looked like a refugee camp, with bags and bodies all over the floor. i was pleasantly dry and had slept well. prudence triumphs over jungliness!
the next day, we went to an "jungle interpretation centre" though quite why it needs interpreting rather than just understanding and appreciating, i never did find out. we found out about Quechua everyday life, and about some of the threateneed species that live underwater. we are on hte banks for the Napo river, a massive tributary half a mile wide, which feeds into the Amazon, but it´s easy to forget about fish, mammals and reptiles in the water that are threatened, vulnerable and endangered.
we also found out about how the evil oil companies are moving ever more into the heart of the area, drilling for oil, and felling forests, building roads, and displacing local communities in the process. it seems so wrong. but i want to power my car, and buy petrol at a reasonable price, and i want to be able to fly around the world and see othroug countires, and we have discussed whether we would be willing to give up petrol and electricity if it meant saving the Amazon, or whether we´d sacrifice the Amazon if it meant beaing able to power the world, and it´s a very difficult questions (you thgink about it). at least we can recognise that we are slightly hypocritical, beause we want the best of both worlds. i don{t know what the solution is. no one wants the rainforest to be cut down, but to do without the power we´ve come to expect and rely on doesn{t seem a tenable option either. it´s a tricky one, and it´s not goint to go away any time soon - it seems easy enough to think that maybe the decision is in the hands of world leaders ,or oil companies, but we are the ones demanding the oil, so maybe it´s in our hands too... but i´m not willing to give up my car... ugh! it gives me (and now you) a great deal to think about.
We are heading back to our usual camp now, where we will clean everything up, g oon a few walks for fun, and then we are heading for Quito (via Tena), then England. eek! it seems like a very long time ago that i was in England, but it will, in mayn ways, be good to be home, although i will miss this place and this life loads.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Murders and injuries
it´s been a couple of weeks since i´ve been online, and everything here is still going great. it´s the rainy season now, and it rains nearly every day, but it´s still about 28•C so still a nice temperature. life on the reserve is continuing as normal: we go out on surveys to look at the effect of the road - doing point counts (listening to bird calls), mist netting (catching birds), pitfalls (catching amphibs and reptiles), butterflies, and mammals.... it´s all good, and i´ve explained what the surveys entail.
new people have arrived (well, they´re not new any more) and some of the previous people have left. i miss some of the people who have left, but i can´t do anything about that. travelling round and having great experiences is inevitably followed by sadness of being separated from people who, in all likelihoood, i will never see again. i my family and friends in england, of course, but it seems more poignant when you are in the place where the person used to be, but now without that person. i guess that´s how the people in England feel without me. but i know i will see all of them again so that´s good :D i am looking forward to seeing everyone again, to seeing how much my nephews have grown, and how much my sister has shrunk! and to eating fruit, cadburys, veggie burgers, and NOT BEANS!!!
this weekend we are off to Yasuni National Park, which is one pf the most bilogically diverse regions in the world. they say we should see parrots and all knids of exciting stuff there - cool. i think we´ll be stopping here (Coca) on the way home, so hopefully i´ll be in touch again then. then the next time after that i´ll be online will be when i´m in quito and en route home :S
my typing is a bit crap at the moment because i have injured one of my fingers - of all the crazy, dangerous things we do out here, from trekking over ridiculously muddy terrain, weidling machetes and chopping pathways, carrying heavy bags, being surrounded by dangerous animals, i went and cut a slice off my finger when chopping vegetables! ouch! i was also bitten on my hand by a bullet ant, which was really painful at the time, and even thoug h it is 5 days later now, i can still feel it. I also found my second tick of this trip, which hurts as well, but at least i didn´t have to extract it while in the departure lounge of an airport, like i did with th other one! we also continue to get mobbed by biting ants, mozzies (although not that much, maybe one a day?) and sweat bees. these - as the name suggests - are attracted to your swaet, and that is something which i have in abundance, so at times you spend your whole time waving your açrms around your head and spazzing out for lenthy periods to try and get rid of them. bug spray seems to attract more insects, although they don´t land on you, they just buzz round you ALL THE TIME. i definietly will not be sad to see the back of them.
exciting things that have ahappened in the past 3 weeks are that we saw a rainbow boa in camp - they are probably hte most beautiful snake i´ve ever seen, and are orangey purple, with big black circles, one of the girls saw it at about 9.30pm, when most of us are going to bed, and she yelled "SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!" (aas is the done thing) but a load of people thought she was trying to commit a murder (more on that in a minute) so didn´t go, but i went and took my camera and was the only one who managed to get a good photo of it before it went off into the undergrowth. so that was really cool.
so, murders... we have been playing a game of camp cluedo, where everyone fishes into a bag and pulls out a name, a place, and a weapon. they then have to ´kill´that person in the said way and place, and when you kill someone, then you take the person who they were going to kill, and it kweeps going till there´s only one person left. if you get yourself, you have to swap with someone else. mine was that i had to kill Ella in the library with a badminton racquet. lucky for me, ella is my best friend here, so when i suggested we go to look at some lizard photos in the library which we had to learn, it looked pretty innocent. then when çwe got there i said i´d forgotten my pen, so went out, cançme back with the badminton racquet, and said "Ella, i´m sorry - i do want to revise, but i also want to kill you!!" and then ´hit´her with the badminton racquet, and she was dead - ha ha ha!. i then had to take her missions which was to kill Jas at the smoking pit with a toilet roll. unfgortunately, Jas doesn´t smoke so it wouldn´t be easy to get her there. but alas, i was killed by steve on the bridge with the rubber rat before i´d had chance to kill jas. it´s a lo tof fun, and some people have used tactics such as shouting ´snake´to lure their intended victim into asn unlikely place!!
what else? we have organised ´´fun´on saturdqay nights, and we had one wherer we all dressed up as superheroes - a lot of underwear over trousers was worn. i wasn´t sure what to be, but i was making myself a mask out of duck tape, and thought i could put leters onto my tshirt in duck tape, and then other people wanted to use myduck tape, so i decided to be Duck Tape Girl - righting the world´s wrongs throug hthe clever use of duck tape! it was a fun night ,and we all had stupid challenges we had to do, like fising sweets out of a tub of flour using only yourm mouth, or standing on one foot for a long as possible, or eating a spoonful of butterfly bait (2 week old bananas!) i´m sure the pis will make it up onto facebook soon. i can´t rememebr what my challenge was, but we had more challenged the next week, wehn i had to puit a condom over my head and blow it up! i chose this instead of eating a tree tomato, which are truly disgusting vegetables. it´s all vey silly but grat fun. something i really haven´t missed about england is TV. i don´t miss it at all. in our frwee time, we read, write journals, play cards, and just hang out and chat, and i think i will miss that when i´m in enalgand on my own in my lounge in silence.
something else that was fun, was when one of the lads who was a student at our partner college (they go there to study ecotourism, and our money funds their education, and they stay with us to learn englinsh), one of the lads who´d stayed with us came back with a load of friends from his villege, and they came out on a walk, then in the evening we cooked up a mega feast - i was on camp duty that day, and with 5 peaople´s help, we cooked up a banquet of seven different dishes to feed 36 people. then they performed a tradiational shaman ritual, and a quechua dance, before we all went up to the camp fire, and they told us some traditional folk takes from the Quechua tradition. they then went out to sleep in jungle hammocks, and the following morning we all Spanglished - ie, we helped each other learn the language and culture of each other. i expliend to them about how in winter, we build snowmen and go sledging and have snowball fights ,as most of them have never seen snow. they thought it sounded like a lot of fun. and now i´ve been on facebook and seen some of your snow photos, i kind of miss it a bit... hopefully there´ll be some left when i get home. so that was a really good couple of days....
when i knew i was coming out on this trip, i really didn´t care about meeting the locals, not the chidlren, not the students at the college, and not the people living in the huts near to our reserve. but all of those things have been some of the major hirhglights of the trip, and i feel bad now that i had no interest in them before. it´s been great to have the ecuadorian students over, and they became some of my bestfriends. and the kids we teach, they are cheeky and playful, but it´s so reawarding to teach them and play with them, even though you make a total arse of yourself and act like a children´s TV presenter. i never thought i would stand at the front of a classroom wearing a coloured poncho and doing a dance, while singing "verde green, verde gree, azul blue, azul blue,..." with other volunteers doing the same thing. it was either a very low point in my life, or a high one.... at any rate it was memorable! and meeting the communites has pçbeen great. the people of ecuador are hospitable and freindly and they are the main reason i would woant to come back - and beaaxcuse the country is amazingly bearutiful. i need to try and find some things that are bad, so i want to leave...
ok, as we were on the way to the internet cafe, we saw a guy running down the street with a white dog under his arm, then we realised it had no head, and he ran into a butcher´s shop. upon reflection, and the piecuign togerther of information, we now believe that it was an agouti, not a dog, as it´s feet were longer and thinner than a dog. still, it was a horrible moment! and i saw fried guinea pigs in Baños, which was pretty gross. i have a photo. what else? umm... the streets are a bit dirty.
ok i´m running out of things to say now so i will sign off. hopefully i´ll be in touch again in 2-3 days, after Yasuni.
love yáll - happy christmas!
new people have arrived (well, they´re not new any more) and some of the previous people have left. i miss some of the people who have left, but i can´t do anything about that. travelling round and having great experiences is inevitably followed by sadness of being separated from people who, in all likelihoood, i will never see again. i my family and friends in england, of course, but it seems more poignant when you are in the place where the person used to be, but now without that person. i guess that´s how the people in England feel without me. but i know i will see all of them again so that´s good :D i am looking forward to seeing everyone again, to seeing how much my nephews have grown, and how much my sister has shrunk! and to eating fruit, cadburys, veggie burgers, and NOT BEANS!!!
this weekend we are off to Yasuni National Park, which is one pf the most bilogically diverse regions in the world. they say we should see parrots and all knids of exciting stuff there - cool. i think we´ll be stopping here (Coca) on the way home, so hopefully i´ll be in touch again then. then the next time after that i´ll be online will be when i´m in quito and en route home :S
my typing is a bit crap at the moment because i have injured one of my fingers - of all the crazy, dangerous things we do out here, from trekking over ridiculously muddy terrain, weidling machetes and chopping pathways, carrying heavy bags, being surrounded by dangerous animals, i went and cut a slice off my finger when chopping vegetables! ouch! i was also bitten on my hand by a bullet ant, which was really painful at the time, and even thoug h it is 5 days later now, i can still feel it. I also found my second tick of this trip, which hurts as well, but at least i didn´t have to extract it while in the departure lounge of an airport, like i did with th other one! we also continue to get mobbed by biting ants, mozzies (although not that much, maybe one a day?) and sweat bees. these - as the name suggests - are attracted to your swaet, and that is something which i have in abundance, so at times you spend your whole time waving your açrms around your head and spazzing out for lenthy periods to try and get rid of them. bug spray seems to attract more insects, although they don´t land on you, they just buzz round you ALL THE TIME. i definietly will not be sad to see the back of them.
exciting things that have ahappened in the past 3 weeks are that we saw a rainbow boa in camp - they are probably hte most beautiful snake i´ve ever seen, and are orangey purple, with big black circles, one of the girls saw it at about 9.30pm, when most of us are going to bed, and she yelled "SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!" (aas is the done thing) but a load of people thought she was trying to commit a murder (more on that in a minute) so didn´t go, but i went and took my camera and was the only one who managed to get a good photo of it before it went off into the undergrowth. so that was really cool.
so, murders... we have been playing a game of camp cluedo, where everyone fishes into a bag and pulls out a name, a place, and a weapon. they then have to ´kill´that person in the said way and place, and when you kill someone, then you take the person who they were going to kill, and it kweeps going till there´s only one person left. if you get yourself, you have to swap with someone else. mine was that i had to kill Ella in the library with a badminton racquet. lucky for me, ella is my best friend here, so when i suggested we go to look at some lizard photos in the library which we had to learn, it looked pretty innocent. then when çwe got there i said i´d forgotten my pen, so went out, cançme back with the badminton racquet, and said "Ella, i´m sorry - i do want to revise, but i also want to kill you!!" and then ´hit´her with the badminton racquet, and she was dead - ha ha ha!. i then had to take her missions which was to kill Jas at the smoking pit with a toilet roll. unfgortunately, Jas doesn´t smoke so it wouldn´t be easy to get her there. but alas, i was killed by steve on the bridge with the rubber rat before i´d had chance to kill jas. it´s a lo tof fun, and some people have used tactics such as shouting ´snake´to lure their intended victim into asn unlikely place!!
what else? we have organised ´´fun´on saturdqay nights, and we had one wherer we all dressed up as superheroes - a lot of underwear over trousers was worn. i wasn´t sure what to be, but i was making myself a mask out of duck tape, and thought i could put leters onto my tshirt in duck tape, and then other people wanted to use myduck tape, so i decided to be Duck Tape Girl - righting the world´s wrongs throug hthe clever use of duck tape! it was a fun night ,and we all had stupid challenges we had to do, like fising sweets out of a tub of flour using only yourm mouth, or standing on one foot for a long as possible, or eating a spoonful of butterfly bait (2 week old bananas!) i´m sure the pis will make it up onto facebook soon. i can´t rememebr what my challenge was, but we had more challenged the next week, wehn i had to puit a condom over my head and blow it up! i chose this instead of eating a tree tomato, which are truly disgusting vegetables. it´s all vey silly but grat fun. something i really haven´t missed about england is TV. i don´t miss it at all. in our frwee time, we read, write journals, play cards, and just hang out and chat, and i think i will miss that when i´m in enalgand on my own in my lounge in silence.
something else that was fun, was when one of the lads who was a student at our partner college (they go there to study ecotourism, and our money funds their education, and they stay with us to learn englinsh), one of the lads who´d stayed with us came back with a load of friends from his villege, and they came out on a walk, then in the evening we cooked up a mega feast - i was on camp duty that day, and with 5 peaople´s help, we cooked up a banquet of seven different dishes to feed 36 people. then they performed a tradiational shaman ritual, and a quechua dance, before we all went up to the camp fire, and they told us some traditional folk takes from the Quechua tradition. they then went out to sleep in jungle hammocks, and the following morning we all Spanglished - ie, we helped each other learn the language and culture of each other. i expliend to them about how in winter, we build snowmen and go sledging and have snowball fights ,as most of them have never seen snow. they thought it sounded like a lot of fun. and now i´ve been on facebook and seen some of your snow photos, i kind of miss it a bit... hopefully there´ll be some left when i get home. so that was a really good couple of days....
when i knew i was coming out on this trip, i really didn´t care about meeting the locals, not the chidlren, not the students at the college, and not the people living in the huts near to our reserve. but all of those things have been some of the major hirhglights of the trip, and i feel bad now that i had no interest in them before. it´s been great to have the ecuadorian students over, and they became some of my bestfriends. and the kids we teach, they are cheeky and playful, but it´s so reawarding to teach them and play with them, even though you make a total arse of yourself and act like a children´s TV presenter. i never thought i would stand at the front of a classroom wearing a coloured poncho and doing a dance, while singing "verde green, verde gree, azul blue, azul blue,..." with other volunteers doing the same thing. it was either a very low point in my life, or a high one.... at any rate it was memorable! and meeting the communites has pçbeen great. the people of ecuador are hospitable and freindly and they are the main reason i would woant to come back - and beaaxcuse the country is amazingly bearutiful. i need to try and find some things that are bad, so i want to leave...
ok, as we were on the way to the internet cafe, we saw a guy running down the street with a white dog under his arm, then we realised it had no head, and he ran into a butcher´s shop. upon reflection, and the piecuign togerther of information, we now believe that it was an agouti, not a dog, as it´s feet were longer and thinner than a dog. still, it was a horrible moment! and i saw fried guinea pigs in Baños, which was pretty gross. i have a photo. what else? umm... the streets are a bit dirty.
ok i´m running out of things to say now so i will sign off. hopefully i´ll be in touch again in 2-3 days, after Yasuni.
love yáll - happy christmas!
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Tena Lady
I am currently in Tena, jungle city between Quito and our reserve at Yachana. We are here because the five-weekers are going back to Quito tomorrow *sniff* so we´ll be saying goodbye to Laura, Sasha, Sherry, Rikard and Jamie, and Hells. The rest of us are here for at least another five weeks, and some people are here for six months in total.
The past few days have been really uneventful so I'm struggling to know what to write about. The projects (mammals, butterflies etc.) are really only running for 3 weeks at a time, because in the first week of phase, we are all training, and in the last week of phase, we are cleaning up after the trip to Hector's Island, and getting ready for the new five-weekers.
Anyway, my sister asked me why so many of the projects are centred around the effects of the road and why it matters, so I'll explain. Until 2006, the reserve was just normal, fairly untouched rainforest, then they built a dirty great road through the middle of it. there's not much traffic (one vehicle per half hour?) but it's important to know whether it is affecting the animals, because if it is, then our research here might help to stop other roads being built through the middle of untouched rainforest. if our research shows that animal populations are suffering, then it's important to try to stop other roads being built elsewhere and decimating more animal populations. On the other hand, if the road is having no effect on animal populations, then if another remote community want a road and animal rights people are saying no, it'll damage the environment, then our research will be able to show that in fact, having a road doesn't really affect the animals, so if the community wants the road they should be able to have it. It's early days yet, but the evidence so far seems to suggest that the road IS having a negative effect on the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and butterflies. This is a bad thing in itself for our animal populations, but also a bad thing becasue the chances are that more communities will want more roads built to connect them with the outside world.
The people of the communities around Yachana (our camp) seem phenomenally poor, living in one-room wooden huts on stilts, with a few chickens, the odd malnourished dog or two, and grubby children with bad teeth left to scratch around in the dirt while their parents are out working the land. the women have around 5 to 10 children, and carry their babies around strapped to their bodies with a sheet or piece of material, the babies being attached to a nipple or sleeping most of the time. But the kids really are delightful.... when i was doing TEFL and teaching them, they were crazy and wanted to run around all the time, and the boys loved shouting out answers, but didn't want to do any writing, and would do things like hide their pen and paper, and then when you give them another pen, they miraculously produce their original pen from under the table, then a minute later, revert back to saying "No hay pen!" and shrugging... the little menaces. the girls, on the other hand, didn't do much shouting out, but would say the answers quietly, and wrote what we wrote on the board perfectly and neatly and were miles ahead of the boys. That's the kids at Puerto Rico, which is our nearest village (like, 10 huts), about half an hour's walk away from our camp. We're also now teaching at Salazaar, which is an hour away, and when you get there, you see what poverty the kids are actually born into. Their clothes are absolutely filthy and full of holes, and lots of them had black teeth or suchlike, and they didn't seem to have any toys at all... but they are lovely and playful and would happily play frisbee, skipping etc. with us. we did some educational games like throwing a ball and saying "my name is Karen" and then throwing it to another GVI volunteer who would reply "My name is Ella", then throw it to another vcolunteer, and by the time we'd all thrown it to each other, the kids had picked up on it, so we throw it to a kid, and they´d say "my name is Anna" and throw it to their friend, who does the same... and you can teach them in this way without having to explain things to them. our instinct to copy one another is an amazing tool! we also taught them the names of some animals, by showing pictures and repeating the word, and then the kids did the same, and we did animal charades, and they were really good at shouting out the words.... i didn't want to have anything to do with the children, i didn't really want to teach them, and i didn't want to have to play with them, but now i'm really glad i did. it makes you realise that kids are kids the world over and it makes you hope that they can grow up wealthier than their parents... having said that, they seem pretty happy and unburdened with the materialism of the Western world. They are happy to just play football and skipping with some strangers like us.
Our other contact with the local communities is with the students who come over from Yachana, the partner college. Three lads (Galo, Cristian and David) came over to stay for a month, and they did what we did, and we had Spanglish in the evenings when there was a langauge exchange to help both parties improve their grasp of each other's language. For some people, that was their only contact with them, but I sat with the guys and Spanglished (if that can be a verb?!) every night, which was really good fun and I miss the guys now they're gone. It certainly gave me an incentive to learn more Spanish, but i'm already anticipating it being a shame that I'll forget most of my Spanish (not to mention all the bird calls and latin names of frogs!) when i get back to England. but hopefully stuff like that will always have been worthwhile, and no knowledge is wasted. The guys were hardworking and a good laugh and i'm not sure how similar their backgrounds are to the poor kids we've taught in the TEFL thing.
There has been a bit of a feeling of cabin fever around camp, with people wanting to escape and feeling hemmed in, but i don't really mind that too much. I'm happy to have a 'home' and do the same things several times. We don't really see the same volume of animals I saw in Costa Rica, but it's a totally different environment so maybe it's unfair to compare the two. however, we hear birds all the time - the yellow rumped caciques and russet-backed oropendolas are ever-present, and have amazing calls, which sound like R2D2 (star wars robot) or other weird out-of-this-world sounds which you would never think a bird could produce. it's really cool. i love the feeling of being in the wilderness, and things like bats flying around near the toilets - one flew into my chest the other day - i thought bats were supposed to have excellent echoloaction skills, but if my experience was anything to go by, the phrase "as blind as a bat" seems more appropriate. stupid things.
something fun we've done recently was sat camp - this is where you stay out in the jungle in hammocks (that zip up around you). it does feel a bit like being in a coffin, and i thought i'd struggle to sleep like that, but it was actually really comfy and i slept well. in the morning we got up at about 4.30 i think, and went off to do mist netting, and we caught 7 birds i think. the birds are then measured and everything. it's a nice way to get up close to birds, and i don't think they are too stressed out. at any rate, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Tonight we are going to have our first pizza in 5 weeks, and it's like the last supper, as it's the last time we'll all be together with the 5-weekers, so we say goodbye to them today. then loads of us are off to Baños, which should be fun for a couple of days, then back to camp for the next 5 weeks of rice and beans. Honestly, i have eaten enough beans to last me a lifetime! Please, family and friends, when I'm home, DO NOT COOK ME ANY BEANS!!!!! however, fried banana in sugar is definitely something i want to export back to the UK.
The past few days have been really uneventful so I'm struggling to know what to write about. The projects (mammals, butterflies etc.) are really only running for 3 weeks at a time, because in the first week of phase, we are all training, and in the last week of phase, we are cleaning up after the trip to Hector's Island, and getting ready for the new five-weekers.
Anyway, my sister asked me why so many of the projects are centred around the effects of the road and why it matters, so I'll explain. Until 2006, the reserve was just normal, fairly untouched rainforest, then they built a dirty great road through the middle of it. there's not much traffic (one vehicle per half hour?) but it's important to know whether it is affecting the animals, because if it is, then our research here might help to stop other roads being built through the middle of untouched rainforest. if our research shows that animal populations are suffering, then it's important to try to stop other roads being built elsewhere and decimating more animal populations. On the other hand, if the road is having no effect on animal populations, then if another remote community want a road and animal rights people are saying no, it'll damage the environment, then our research will be able to show that in fact, having a road doesn't really affect the animals, so if the community wants the road they should be able to have it. It's early days yet, but the evidence so far seems to suggest that the road IS having a negative effect on the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and butterflies. This is a bad thing in itself for our animal populations, but also a bad thing becasue the chances are that more communities will want more roads built to connect them with the outside world.
The people of the communities around Yachana (our camp) seem phenomenally poor, living in one-room wooden huts on stilts, with a few chickens, the odd malnourished dog or two, and grubby children with bad teeth left to scratch around in the dirt while their parents are out working the land. the women have around 5 to 10 children, and carry their babies around strapped to their bodies with a sheet or piece of material, the babies being attached to a nipple or sleeping most of the time. But the kids really are delightful.... when i was doing TEFL and teaching them, they were crazy and wanted to run around all the time, and the boys loved shouting out answers, but didn't want to do any writing, and would do things like hide their pen and paper, and then when you give them another pen, they miraculously produce their original pen from under the table, then a minute later, revert back to saying "No hay pen!" and shrugging... the little menaces. the girls, on the other hand, didn't do much shouting out, but would say the answers quietly, and wrote what we wrote on the board perfectly and neatly and were miles ahead of the boys. That's the kids at Puerto Rico, which is our nearest village (like, 10 huts), about half an hour's walk away from our camp. We're also now teaching at Salazaar, which is an hour away, and when you get there, you see what poverty the kids are actually born into. Their clothes are absolutely filthy and full of holes, and lots of them had black teeth or suchlike, and they didn't seem to have any toys at all... but they are lovely and playful and would happily play frisbee, skipping etc. with us. we did some educational games like throwing a ball and saying "my name is Karen" and then throwing it to another GVI volunteer who would reply "My name is Ella", then throw it to another vcolunteer, and by the time we'd all thrown it to each other, the kids had picked up on it, so we throw it to a kid, and they´d say "my name is Anna" and throw it to their friend, who does the same... and you can teach them in this way without having to explain things to them. our instinct to copy one another is an amazing tool! we also taught them the names of some animals, by showing pictures and repeating the word, and then the kids did the same, and we did animal charades, and they were really good at shouting out the words.... i didn't want to have anything to do with the children, i didn't really want to teach them, and i didn't want to have to play with them, but now i'm really glad i did. it makes you realise that kids are kids the world over and it makes you hope that they can grow up wealthier than their parents... having said that, they seem pretty happy and unburdened with the materialism of the Western world. They are happy to just play football and skipping with some strangers like us.
Our other contact with the local communities is with the students who come over from Yachana, the partner college. Three lads (Galo, Cristian and David) came over to stay for a month, and they did what we did, and we had Spanglish in the evenings when there was a langauge exchange to help both parties improve their grasp of each other's language. For some people, that was their only contact with them, but I sat with the guys and Spanglished (if that can be a verb?!) every night, which was really good fun and I miss the guys now they're gone. It certainly gave me an incentive to learn more Spanish, but i'm already anticipating it being a shame that I'll forget most of my Spanish (not to mention all the bird calls and latin names of frogs!) when i get back to England. but hopefully stuff like that will always have been worthwhile, and no knowledge is wasted. The guys were hardworking and a good laugh and i'm not sure how similar their backgrounds are to the poor kids we've taught in the TEFL thing.
There has been a bit of a feeling of cabin fever around camp, with people wanting to escape and feeling hemmed in, but i don't really mind that too much. I'm happy to have a 'home' and do the same things several times. We don't really see the same volume of animals I saw in Costa Rica, but it's a totally different environment so maybe it's unfair to compare the two. however, we hear birds all the time - the yellow rumped caciques and russet-backed oropendolas are ever-present, and have amazing calls, which sound like R2D2 (star wars robot) or other weird out-of-this-world sounds which you would never think a bird could produce. it's really cool. i love the feeling of being in the wilderness, and things like bats flying around near the toilets - one flew into my chest the other day - i thought bats were supposed to have excellent echoloaction skills, but if my experience was anything to go by, the phrase "as blind as a bat" seems more appropriate. stupid things.
something fun we've done recently was sat camp - this is where you stay out in the jungle in hammocks (that zip up around you). it does feel a bit like being in a coffin, and i thought i'd struggle to sleep like that, but it was actually really comfy and i slept well. in the morning we got up at about 4.30 i think, and went off to do mist netting, and we caught 7 birds i think. the birds are then measured and everything. it's a nice way to get up close to birds, and i don't think they are too stressed out. at any rate, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Tonight we are going to have our first pizza in 5 weeks, and it's like the last supper, as it's the last time we'll all be together with the 5-weekers, so we say goodbye to them today. then loads of us are off to Baños, which should be fun for a couple of days, then back to camp for the next 5 weeks of rice and beans. Honestly, i have eaten enough beans to last me a lifetime! Please, family and friends, when I'm home, DO NOT COOK ME ANY BEANS!!!!! however, fried banana in sugar is definitely something i want to export back to the UK.
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