Travel report 21: (animal) Stories from Inti Wara Yassi.

This story I finally started to write at the moment that I was suppose to sit in an airplane back home, 23 June 2004, a magic day for 11 months...

Yes, it´s true, I´m still in Villa Tunari working for the volunteer project Inti Wara Yassi. Why? Read this story:

After I came here at the 16th of April to do some volunteer work for 2 weeks, I got so sucked into the way of living here, that it´s become difficult for me to leave this place.

The mix of doing good work with and for the animals during the day in combination with the kind of student life, with young travellers who are doing the same job, in the evening and a lot of times also the night, is special and makes me respite the day I leave again and again......

Big cocktail and costume-parties every once and a while. It´s a nice way to raise some more money for the park and a good excuse to get drunk for the welfare of the animals ;-)

Or just an evening when someone is playing a guitar and most of us singing known and unknown songs with him or her in front of a small fire. All of this makes you almost feeling at home and is, together with the special animal jobs, a big reason for previous volunteers to come back.

Now I´ve been here for so long I get to know more and more about the park, its inhabitants (animals and people) and the way things go around here. I found out that Nena and the other Bolivian volunteers have a very big heart for the park and their animals. They really did a very good thing to start this project out of nothing;

Inti Wara Yassi unique and very special in a country as Bolivia, where most people and unfortunately also children never really learned how to love animals and how to take care of them. Butt this small group of Bolivian volunteers who started I.W.Y. seem to try to make up for all those other people in there country.

However now it seems that the organisation became a bit too big for them to handle smoothly. They can use all the help and money they can get, but need to know sometimes how to appreciate that help.

The Bolivian volunteers are very good with the monkeys, but they still need to learn a lot about the other animals in the park and they also need to learn how to manage people. But can you blame them for that? I still think that they do a great job, knowing their background and the environmental education system (that hardly exist) in Bolivia. I only hope that in the future they will become a little more realistic and that they´re more willing to listen to even foreign volunteers.

Something else I´ve noticed in the past 2 months and that me surprised; is that it seems that when you keep wild animals (too) long in captivity and treat them well, they will ask for more affection and start to like their interaction with humans more and more. Especially for the cats it´s strange, because in wild they´re non-social?! I always thought that the best way to keep a wild animal, in captivity happy, is to treat it as much as a wild animal as possible. But now I changed my mind. It sounds perhaps a little contradictory, especially because I.W.Y is saving animals from having a life as the pet of a family, but now I think that wild cats in captivity prefer to be treated as a pet more than as a wild animal. A good example is Tigre, one of the ocelots who was supposed to be released. They tried to avoid human contact with her as much as possible, but the longer she stays here, the more she´s asking for affection.

There´s only one problem about giving to much affection to your cat (animal) and get to best friends, is that it will not only become more difficult for you to leave him, but also for him to see your leaving, the start to like you to much...

Some other stories about the present inhabitants of I.W.Y:

Last time I told you the very sad history of Boudecia, the ocelot who was captured for 4 years in a cage of 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5m. When she came out of there everyone thought that she was to aggressive and lazy to walk with. It´s only since two months that one of the volunteers put a little more effort in her working with Boudecia, that she´s now finally starts to walk more and more :-)    I even had to cut a new trail for he, so she can walk more...

Two weeks ago something very special happened in the spider monkey area, as one of the monkeys ( got pregnant and gave birth to a healthy daughter :-)  The mother Quilla  came a few years ago, together with her sister (Panca) in the park, after their mother died when they  were sitting in the top of a tree that had to be cut down.

However, not long after they came into the park, they both escaped. They stayed away for more than 6 weeks, until only Quilla came back to the park. They never found here sister but now Quilla is very happy with her own daughter and in memory hey even gave her daughter the name of Quillas sister, Panca.

Alright, now then 2 short stories about the many special people who work in this park (the names have been changed for privacy reasons):

The first is almost literally an inhabitant of the park, his name is V.. V. is one of the old Bolivian kids who helped to start up I.W.Y. At this moment he´s almost always between "his" monkeys and most of the time he will even spend the night between them (...), sleeping in a hammock under a shelter. To me it seems like he belongs there and sometimes he almost starts to look like a monkey, only with les hair and more scars from other monkeys...

The second story is about a volunteer who came here a few years ago for the first time. He´s from Israel and his name is T. He´s more an animal lover and can work with al of the animals in the park. Unfortunately his skills with people are not that good, what makes it more special that this time he tried to manage the volunteer project of I.W.Y. for more than 10 months! He also tried to spend as much time as possible with Sama the jaguar, because he´s the only one who can really get close to Sama...

I admire the way he tries to survive here with eating the same basic food most of the time; spending and as less money as possible, so he can stay as long as possible to try  to make the improvements he wants.

It does make me sad sometimes that it doesn´t always seems to be Appreciated by Nena. Perhaps it´s the difference in culture, perhaps they´re both to obstinate. I hope that Nena knows what T. did and does for this park.

And what am I doing at this moment in this park? Since I never knew how long I would stay here it was more pair to Roy to find and train a new volunteer to replace me. I was happy that we found one and that I can basically leave whenever I want. But then Simba, the other puma really needed another person to walk with him. I spend a few days walking with him, before I started to make a map of this area with a person who knows how to make maps, interesting.

Now I´m "finally" in construction and do my best to build 2 new cages for the cats. The first one, is for Rico the ocelot; we just finished and the next one will be for a puma we will start the concrete tomorrow.

So why am I still here? Do you really have to ask that question after reading my story? I think this place is addictive to me, because of all the previous reasons but also because I will probable never come back to this place, if I think realistic.

Sometimes I would like to read how it will go in the future with the park?  But if it´s bad news, than I prefer to keep these nice memories about this park......

Martijn