A Day in the Life
Have you found yourself pondering of late what life might be like if you were volunteering at an animal rescue centre in the Ecuadorian Amazon? Well fret no longer, because I’m here doing just that, and am fully prepared to give you the lowdown.
Step 1: Wake up to various jungle sounds, such as the rain on a tin roof, monkeys running along the roof, or any number of animals and insects that live with us in the jungle.
Step 2: Open your eyes and move aside the mosquito net, then get up and head to the kitchen to make yourself some breakfast.
Step 3: Gather at 8 am to find out what your job for the morning will be. This includes whether you will be cleaning the house or preparing the food for the animals, which animals you will be feeding and with whom, and whether it is your turn to cook or do dishes.
Step 4: Now the party really starts. You head into the feed shed (careful to sidestep the wild monkeys that show up hoping for bananas), chose an animal to prepare for, pick up your knife or machete, and start cutting fruit, vegetables, sugar cane, or coconuts.
One of the wild monkeys was finally successful in his attempt to get the bananas we leave for them.
Step 5: Put on your rain boots! This is a very important step which may have dire consequences if skipped.
Step 6: Join your group and head off though the jungle to your animal’s cage. Be careful to not slip in the constantly slippery and extremely muddy ground as you climb up and down through the jungle. This is where the rain boots are necessary. No one wants to sink knee deep in mud in flip flops.
Step 7: Head in to the cage to clean and feed the animal. Depending on how aggressive the animal is, you may have to get them into the trap cage so you can go in. Otherwise be prepared to clean with a literal monkey on your back. Also as a fun fact, the monkeys like to take their food right out of the bucket, but are very specific about what they’re in the mood for.
Step 8: Repeat step 7 for each animal you were assigned that day. Always make sure the animals haven’t escaped their cage (I’m looking at you Houdini. Our newest monkey who escaped 3 times, and seemed to just want to be carried back by me).
Step 9: Revel in the fact that you are standing in the middle of the jungle playing with monkeys and various other animals. And never take your eyes off the turtles while you hand feed them, they tend to bite.
Step 10: Come back to the house and get out of your disgusting work clothes. If you’re lucky enough to not be cooking, you can just relax until lunch, maybe take a nap in the hammocks or play with the dogs. If you are the chef, you can head into the kitchen and figure out what to make that will satisfy 14 or so people, and doesn’t require any refrigerated ingredients (it’s hard to refrigerate when you have no electricity).
Step 11: Eat lunch. Eat lots and lots of lunch. The morning was a lot of work, and the afternoon is no easier.
Step 12: Relax again. It’s a hard life, I know.
Step 13: Get back into your disgusting (and slightly damp from sweat because nothing dries in a rainforest) work clothes. The afternoon task can consist of any number of things. Some such tasks include: catching grasshoppers, cutting sugar cane where it grows in the jungle with a machete, digging out the mud from a water pit in the jungle so the hoses flow better, trekking far into the jungle to machete leaves to build a natural house for the centre, then making rope out of other leaves so you can bundle it all and carry it back to the centre, all the while attempting to unstick your leg from the mud you’ve now sunk into up to your knees, fixing or building cages for the animals, or any other number of things.
Step 14: Hop into the shower before the sun goes down and it’s too dark (remember the lack of electricity). Brace yourself though, because there’s no hot water. Or warm water. Or even tepid water. Your options are ice, or ice. But ice water trumps mud almost every time.
Step 15: There’s more relaxing time, for those who don’t have to figure out what to cook for dinner. You can do things like head to the ‘pool’ to go for a swim (I’d call it more of a watering hole) or head into some trees to find the fruit the indigenous people use to make their face paint.
Step 16: Dinner! By this point you’re pretty intensely hungry, so any food is good food. Even if it’s pretty much the same thing you eat every day for every meal. At about 6 pm the generator goes on, so you can charge electronics and blow out the candles you’ve been using to cook by.
Step 17: Hanging out and relaxing time. Here you can pretty much do whatever you like. There are hammocks to be sat in, books to be read, Spanish to be learnt, cards to be played, and conversations to be had. There’s no real bed time, but by 9 or 10 pm were all usually fast asleep.
Step 18: Just like shampoo, rinse and repeat daily.
Well now your mind can rest at ease because you know what life at Sacha Yacu is like. There is also always a moment somewhere in the day the you just have to stop for a second and remind yourself that this is actually real, not just a fabulously realistic dream. And if you still can’t believe it’s real, just look at the permanent dirt under your nails, let the monkeys groom you, and hope the dream never ends.
