As most of you know did I only come to this organisation with the idea of doing volunteer work for 2 weeks. However, when I arrived in the park there were already 65 volunteers and there were no places left for volunteers who wanted to work with animals and only stayed for 2 weeks. The only available work was in construction. For some people this was a reason to leave, for me it sounded ok. You get to work in and see a lot of, the locations, of the different animals.

But at this moment I`m very happy that a guy called N. convinced me to stay longer to walk with Roy the Puma.

After a month of walking with Roy there was still nobody who could take it over from me. I stayed 2 weeks longer until we found someone for Roy.

At that moment however they really needed someone who could walk with Simba, the other Puma. I Told N. and T. that I would stay longer to help out with Simba. At that moment I heard that N. wanted to stay here for half a year to take over the management and coordination of the foreign volunteers. At that moment it was done by T., who did it for almost a year but would leave at the 4th of August. to start his study for veterinary.

N. had big plans to reorganize the park to make the work more efficient and the live of the animals even better and he asked me to stay longer and help him.

I have also different ideas about the things that need to be done in the park, but I couldn`t say goodbye to the park and the way of living, so I decided to take the challenge of staying longer, without getting frustrated and doing things I can`t do with my heart.

I found out that there´re so many cages in bad condition, not only cat-cages, that slowly started to grow the idea of forming a small "construction-team" to build and rebuild cages. Some people had already spoken to me that if I could guarantee that I would build a cage for their animal(s) that they would try to find sponsoring. So what if I would stay for halve a year longer? If I´ve the money to do that, that should be enough to make the cages I´ve on the list to make. If I stay that long than it will be nice to help in the organisation as well. But how will that go with Nena? We didn´t have a very good start and I would like to work together. Will she trust me enough?

I spoke first with some other volunteers about my plans and chances. When they were positive I asked Nena...

I told her that I wanted to stay longer to do construction work and asked her if she would like me to help in the organisation when T. leaves. She told me that it was good that I would stay longer, but that I didn´t had to worry about T. leaving, if necessary, someone will turn up.

All right, what now? Only staying to make those cages? But if Nena doesn´t like/trust me now it will be more difficult to build those cages to?

I still don´t want to leave this place and I don`t like to give up, so I will extend my staying until the wedding of my sister and than I will see how the situation is and if I want to come back. At least this will give me some time to finish and make some of the cages I promised to build and maybe I can convince Nena that I can try to work in some Bolivian way...

This last part was a little more than a month ago, a month in which happened a lot;

In our western eyes there´re some things in this park that go wrong, but if you look from a different point of view and you think about the live the animals had before they came here, than you´ve to admit that their live improved a lot! Already knowing this is enough for me to stay longer and try to help in any way I can to improve the lives of the animals even more.

I still have different ideas about the working in the park than the Bolivians do, but I try to work together with them, try to learn something from them and let them learn from me. One of the things I found out very soon was that you can´t criticise them. It works the opposite, it´s not really fair and we both learn nothing from it. If I don´t like a decision from them, I ask why the decision is made, then I tell them why I don´t like it and give another solution. This last part is very important.

But I never expected to earn this trust so fast. Not even a week after the emotional meeting, there was an official meeting in which Juan Carlos and Nena announced that they would go to La Paz for about a week and that they wanted to leave the daily management and coordination of the park in the hands of one Bolivian and one foreign volunteer. The Bolivian volunteer would be V. and the foreign, Martijn. Me!?

Wow! This is unexpected, but I´m very happy with it, it will be a big challenge to work with foreign and Bolivian volunteers on a Bolivian way of working.

On the moment that I started to write this it is 15:10h on 16-8-2004. I`m almost a week coordinator of the volunteers and the challenge is even bigger than I expected, because we don´t have that much volunteers anymore. When I started to work here there were 65 volunteers and almost every new volunteer had to work in construction. Now we´ve only 34 volunteers and I even had to convince 2 volunteers to work with animals.

Not enough volunteers to work and walk with all the animals, one of the problems all volunteers could see coming, It´s something the Bolivians don´t want to think about when they bring in new animals. They say that if you always go for security you don´t get anywhere and this park wouldn`t have been so big. They´ve a point, but take a big risk for the other animals, I think...

I´m now walking with Rico, a ocelot, because we couldn`t find any new volunteer to walk with him. But if nothing changes in the next 2 days I´ve to walk with Roy and Simba too. This will be a big problem. For the making of new cages is at this moment unfortunately far not enough people, but I will build them any moment I have time and even just enough people...... The only thing we can now do is keeping a good mood and hope for a better future, like the Bolivians do...

19-9-2004 A little more than a month later (again) I´m on my way home and in between I still couldn´t find time to put this story on the internet. The last month almost seemed to be a month of 24/7 working. No, that´s not really true, but usually I didn´t finish working until 19:30u and after you want to take a shower, eat something and socialise with the other volunteers. Socialising seems for me even more important than getting enough sleep or vacation. Vacation, what is that? The last month we worked on an average of 28 volunteers with a minimum of 24! While the park official needs 40 volunteers to fill in every available job....... I can tell you that it took me some mind-breakers to fill in all the places where volunteers are most needed, but it gave me every morning a good feeling if the park was running again :-) Unfortunately the hard work and stress did take some victims. Some volunteers had to leave earlier, but still I´m proud on all of us that we do everything we can to give the animals a better live, that we even pay to work so hard, incredible!

3  Lessons I learned in the last month are:

1. Working with volunteers is a little more delicate than in a real company and sometimes you can better not tell them the whole truth, it can be to hard or to difficult for them to understand and if it´s not necessary for them to know, it can be easier not to tell and avoid problems.

2. The harder you work the more likely it is that others will follow you in working harder...

3. The final and most important lesson is that people can work very hard and do a lot of things they never expected from themselves that they could do them, when they feel comfortable, are in a good mood or even happy. Keep everyone in a good mood and people survive longer. This depends of course on a lot of things but you can always help with some small things like compliments, small attentions and the feeling that they´re as important as yourself :-)