Unexpected things.

Thursday evening 23-4-2009 and I´m back in Mexico City , back in the City where I started 6 years ago my travelling in Latin America , it feels a bit like Déjà Vue. So the agency I work for doesn´t want to keep me in South America , but considering the economic situation, I guess I should be happy that at least I have a job.

 I do have to admit that I write this story with mixed feelings, but the reasons are different than anyone could have expected since my last story… For privacy reasons I can´t go all into details, but since it is important to me I will do my best to explain some of my experiences.

The past 3 months I was allowed to take care of Merazonia and I gave myself 2 goals, put a new roof on the bridge and build a complete outside of a 8.5m by 4.5m clinic. With help of Guido and some volunteers I accompliced this task, but as you could read in my last story, we did a lot more and a lot more things have happened. We got our first monkey, had to rescue volunteers from another animal rescue centre and we had this workshop from the environmental department (the second one is delayed with at least a month…). I dare to say that three months ago for every-one involved in these last two stories the future looked very different. For the volunteers of Flor the la Amazonia , who suddenly had to leave their refuge and animals and are now ‘homeless and jobless’, for the people directly involved with Merazonia, but also for me personal. Who would have expected that I helped Flor in their contact with the environmental department and that the environmental department asked me to help building their future animal refuge and these are only some small unexpected moments.

 To give you an impression about the more important ones I will write you this time a little story from the point of view from a volunteer. She is a vet and was suppose to stay for 6 weeks at Flor to take care of their animals:

  Because of the problems Flor has, I was asked to help Merazonia instead. They only have one little monkey, but it was a great challenge to help designing the interior of their new big bird cage and to make a new cage for the little Tamarin monkey. The nature of Merazonia is beautiful and the vibe between the volunteers is good. I never expected that it could be so much fun to dig a ditch and get dirty in the rain. Maybe the great communal dinners, the pies, cakes, campfires and Cuba libres also helped in keeping a good vibe, away from the political problems of Flor the la Amazonia .

 At one of the campfires, with a little help of two great Australian volunteers and maybe some Cuba Libres, I got to know a nice guy and at 6am we left the campfire and fell asleep next to each other.

 In the next few days we made an adventures jungle walk on the land of Merazonia , climbed some unknown waterfalls and got to know each other a bit better. I got offered to stay my last week at another animal refuge which does have animals, but decided that I like the nature and vibe of Merazonia and maybe want to learn more about this guy. I ended up staying even a bit longer than planned, before I left with another volunteer to explore more of Ecuador . I did agree in meeting this guy again in 10 days in Quito , before he would fly to Mexico to work as a tour leader.

However, after a week I got a phone call that he might not be able to come to Quito on this date, because he had to stay longer at Merazonia and maybe even give up his tour in Mexico . I told him that I wanted to help as much as I could and when it turned out that his agency couldn´t find another tour leader on such short notice and he couldn´t refund his ticket. I decided to come back to help out and luckily he could extend his ticket for another 3 days which gave us enough time… to leave me with enough jobs for the volunteers to do in the next few days. Now he´s in Mexico and I´m temporarily taking care of Merazonia until Frank comes back. I wasn´t suppose to go to Merazonia and if I hadn´t come back and he hadn´t stayed these 3 more days things probably would have looked a lot different. Now our different lives and future plans made ourselves promise not to make any promises yet, only plans and hope to meet each other again somewhere in the future…

Yep, it is amazing how little things, coincidences, emergencies and decisions all can come to certain unexpected results. Now I just arrived in Mexico, tomorrow starts my tour, I´m scheduled to get another one after, but that´s still not sure, like it is still not sure how many more tours and where I get this year? Or maybe I even have to start tour guiding for our own agency, because while I was very busy with everything that happened in and around Merazonia, two good friends, Rik and Melbin are working on our own travel agency. Thanks for your effort so far! And also thanks to Louisa for the good times and her help for Merazonia a unique animal refuge build on nightmares and dreams, build with the hearts and effort of many good people, who all together created the important special vibe that makes volunteers working in the rain, getting bitten by mosquitoes and still have a good time. Yep, it will be a hard choice if I will have to choose between working for Koning Aap, working for my own agency, choosing for Louisa and/or having to help Merazonia again. I like it all, but that will be even more difficult...

For now I have to finish this story and finish my preparations for my tour.

Saludos,

Martijn

P.S. I just heard that there seems to be a 'swine flu' epedemic here in Mexico, one that is supposely able to jump from human to human? I wonder what this is going to mean for our tour?