Common sence is different.

About six weeks ago I finished my story by writing that I was alone in the modern jungle of Merazonia and that for the next 3 months I would try to take care of the refuge and build a clinic. It was expected that I would be most of the time alone, or with just a few volunteers, because it is low season.  However things turned out a bit different…

 Six weeks later and I´m back on my own in the jungle, but this is just recent and temporary. In the last 6 weeks there was even a day that we had 9 volunteers! How come?

 First of all Frank managed to change the date of his flight so he could personally receive the permit from the environmental department which allows Merazonia to keep and take care of wild animals. This permit arrived on the 27^th of January, just 2 days after Merazonia received its first animal to take care of. It is a young Tamarin monkey which only weight 65 gram when it arrived and according to its behavior it was probably used to drink soft drinks and eat chocolates . Now it weights more than 140 grams , drinks baby pouder milk and water and eats grasshoppers and grapes.

 The next residents Merazonia received just a day after, however these ones don´t need cages. It were the volunteers of Flor the la Amazonia , another volunteer project started by Jonny from Santa Martha, not very long after he got out of Merazonia. The volunteers of this project also continued without Jonny, only after they already got animals. They started to pay a 1000 US$ a month to the family who owns the land. This money was for rent and officially to have about 5 family members ones in a while helping them with construction work. This help became less and less and then the family started to ask for more money, saying that if they would make the cages half the size, they could have twice as many animals and would receive more volunteers, so more money. Of course this isn´t the goal of an animal refuge so Flor the la Amazonia had to leave the place. They still wanted to take care of the animals, but they now got threatened by the family who wanted more money. Sounds familiar… Unfortunately the family has no idea in how to take care of the animals. Because Jonny has very goof contacts with the environmental department of Quito they asked him to take care of this refuge again. Jonny then sent a volunteer coordinator with only 6 weeks experience as a volunteer in his Santa Martha to manage the place. Unfortunately this was already enough for the environmental department to drop the case. About the conditions of the animals I heard different stories, but it can never be as good as before, because the new volunteers first have to get to know the animals and the family and Jonny don´t want them to talk with the volunteers of Flor the la Amazonia

 Flor the la Amazonia needed a place for it´s volunteers and asked Merazonia to help out. They use our place so their volunteers have some other place to go to and we used their experience in finishing our huge bird cage. Which now looks very nice!

  But isn´t it amazing that trafficked animals which are stolen from the jungle to earn money with and wild pets, are getting rescued from their often terrible live conditions, only to end up suffering again because of money and politics... Yes it is a shame to know how much money goes around in the bushiness of ‘animal refuges’. First you have the animal refuges who ask far to much money from their volunteers (like with many other volunteer projects) and second you also have organizations who are specialized in attracting volunteers to send them to animal refuges, but not seldom after they first received a lot of money themselves.

 So what is the Ecuadorian government doing about all this? Well they weren´t doing very much, because for them there is no money in it, except from costs. They even make it more difficult to take care of the confiscated animals by putting huge taxes on medicine for the animals which isn’t available in Ecuador and having a woman who says that butterflies like concrete because some people pie in it (yes she really said this) in charge of deciding which animals are allowed to be released again.

  But there is hope. A few weeks ago the environmental department organized a two day workshop for all places which take care of wild animals. The goal was to learn from each other. A very good start I would say.

  Because Jennifer had left already and Frank also had to leave before this workshop, they asked me to represent Merazonia. Let me tell you about 4 different days out of the live of a temporary manager of an animal refuge, to start with the first day of this workshop from the environmental department.

 There were 23 places out of 3 provinces invited to give a Power point presentation about their project. I had never worked with Power point before, don´t have much experience in working with animals and my Spanish still isn´t very good either, so this could be an interesting presentation. Strangely I wasn´t very nervous, probably because I had decided to try to speak as much as possible about the things I do know, like our environmental friendly water systems, how to build cages and our plan to make a special clinic.

 The workshop would start at 8:00am in the morning at the office of the Ministry of Environment in Tena. I arrived just one minute before due to some taxi problems, but when I arrived I didn´t see anyone? Am I at the right place? Yes I was, but every one was late(r) and no-one surprised. In the end we started at 9:00am, ‘hora latina ’…

 If I was any a bit nervous, this disappeared after the first presentations. I was expecting to be confronted with a lot of people who have many years of experience in working with wild animals and know a lot about them, but I was wrong. Not all 23 places were present and unfortunately there were almost no real animal refuges present. Most of the people in the room knew just as less about keeping wild animals as I do.

 I have to admit that I didn´t expect any result from this meeting between all these places with different interests. But we managed to agree in working on a list of seven points which places that keep wild animals have to accomplice. It is a bit strange that not the Ministry of Environment, but we as places who keep the wild animals, have to work together in filling in the (new) rules on these seven points; 1 Enclosures, 2 diet, 3 data base, 4 protocols, 5 rehabilitation/releasing/re-introduction, 6 information network and 7 well being of the animal, but at least they are interested.

 The second day I want to write about was about 2 weeks after this workshop. I wanted to meet up with one of the people from this meeting, because he has good politic contacts and knows people who can do a survey on the land of Merazonia . We agreed to meet late afternoon in Baños, so in the morning I could work with the volunteers and explain them some jobs for the afternoon. Around midday I left east to Puyo to pay some bills from the little house we now rent in Mera. After that I left west to Baños to meet this contact. He turned out to be quite smart and interesting to listen to. After we talked for about 2 hours I went back to my hostel in Baños. There I met the daughter of the owner. She told me that she studies to become a vet and that she knows Leonardo and Diego, which are both very good vets with experiences in working with wildlife. The girl tells me that she would like to visit and maybe help Merazonia. That sounds nice J

 The third day I want to write about also started nice, but turned out not so well. We had prepared materials so Guido could work on the cement floor of the future clinic. He had said that it would take him less than a day to finish half of this floor, so in the morning we first prepared some big logs from the river, to become the ‘legs’ of the new monkey house for the little Tamarin. One of the two volunteer who had been working on this cage would leave today, so it would be nice it the cage could be on finished and on location before she would go. They made overtime and I tried to help them and Guido at the same moment.

 The cage got finished, the ‘legs’ were put into the ground, but then the cage turned out to be to heavy to move to it´s new location and we were only with 4 to carry it L Guido also told me that we had far to less sand and stones to finish the floor. He had done about one fourth of the floor and used almost all the sand we had brought up.

 Just before dinner I also broke our gas lamp which we use to have light when we are eating… We decided to finish this day with a drink at the new campfire-place.

 Day four was much better. I had worked in the weekend to gather more materials and because some volunteers helped in the morning with gathering more stones, we now managed to finish the whole concrete floor of the clinic.

We even finished a bit earlier, which gave Guido and I time to use a special system in moving and putting up the Tamarin cage. Two volunteers came back today, after they were suppose to start working at an animal refuge which does have animals. They told me that the liked Merazonia better J I had bought a new light for the communal room and even cached the big grasshopper which escaped me e few days ago (for the monkey).

  I hope these four days give you a bit of an impression of the work for an animal refuge. One of the most difficult things for me is not the construction work, or the work with people in general, no two of the most difficult things for me are working in a different culture and to trying to understand that common sense is different. I know that in Bolivia we wrote on the wall in the office of Inti Wara Yassi that ‘common sense isn´t always common’ and I still agree with that, but I also found out that there are differences in common sense. Like for me and Guido it is logical how to use a hammer and a saw, but some volunteers have never hold these things before. This is something I often forget. For example I asked 2 volunteers to build a bed, something which would take me 2 hours most. I had prepared everything well (I thought), I explained everything well (I thought), but still it took me an hour to explain and explain and explain again and the two volunteers more than I day to make this bed. I can´t blame them, because I had forgotten to explain them the very basic of using some of the basic tools… Guido also had a different common sense than I have and he often expects me to know what he needs before he asks for it. Besides that I often expect that he can calculate what he needs before he starts, but this doesn´t work either. With Guido and lots of Ecuadorians (Latinos) there is also the culture difference. They don´t like to admit their mistakes and don’t like to talk about them, so I´ve learned that it´s mostly best not to confront them with it, solve the problem and just forget about.

 All these things together with the very unpredictable weather make that I need to try to think ahead for as much as possible, prepare and explain things as good as possible and be prepared to be flexible and drop most plans again when needed.

 After writing all this down, I do feel a little proud that we accompliced the following things within the last 6 weeks: The full decoration of the big bird cage; a volunteer rain shelter and fire place; a dog enclosure; a Tamarin cage; a new bed ;-) new signs, almost a new quarantine cage; part of the broken bridge; part of the food storage and some other little things. But the most proud I am in telling that we managed to finish the whole concrete floor of a 8.5 by 4.2m clinic, transported 550 concrete blocks over 1.4km and managed to get most of the other materials need for building the clinic up to the land. We have already one fourth of the wall standing and we are finally back on my building schedule J

  This could have been a great end of my story, unfortunately I just received an e-mail from my travel agency that they want to send me to Mexico for my next tour in April L I had hoped and planned that I would be able to stay around in South America, so I could help with Merazonia when needed. But now it seems that my effort in trying to improve our tours in South America unfortunately isn´t really appreciated. My critics are taken as an attack instead of as a way to try to improve our service, so they prefer to send me to ‘calmer places’. I guess I´m too direct and tried too hard to help, the story of my live…

  I used to have a good relation with my agency, so I asked for another solution to be able to stay in South America and hope for some understanding.

  Saludos,

Martijn

P.s. sorry, I finished this story at 3am in the morning and had no more electricity to read it over. Hope there are not to many mistakes in ;-)