Volunteering in the Amazon — Jake and Jesslyn's World Tour

It's weird to pay $400 to volunteer for a week at a place that doesn't appear to actually need volunteers, right? Maybe I just have a bad attitude. At breakfast this morning, I told Jake that I really didn’t like this blog post, because I don’t like how negative it is. He said that he likes to approach a negative post with a sense of humor, to which I replied, “I don’t have a sense of humor”. So take it for what it’s worth - below is about our experience volunteering in the Amazon.

When we researched places at which to volunteer we found that the common theme was that you had to pay to volunteer. It seemed kind of odd to us, we had expected that organizations would either a) want your money or b) want your time, but not both. Some places in Galapagos were over $1,000 a week per person to volunteer! Jake discovered an animal refuge center in Ecuador that sounded like a good spot to volunteer and we signed up through a website called Ecuador Eco Volunteer. We were told that we needed to bring all of our own groceries and water, we'd be rooming with other volunteers and there would be no internet (not a surprise as we were headed into the Amazon). We'd have electricity in the jungle this time though so that sounded like a nice perk after our time in the Amazon in Bolivia. We took a local bus to Puyo where we were to be picked up. We were a bit apprehensive about finding our ride with such little coordination, but we were happy when the owner of the refuge center, Medardo, found us. It wasn't hard for him as there were hardly any gringos at this tiny bus station in the middle of nowhere. We picked up two more volunteers from the other side of town and were surprised that they were fellow New Yorkers. I know, we aren’t really New Yorkers but I loved our time in Brooklyn so much that it is a part of me is now, and will be forever. Don’t worry Dad, I’m still a Patriots and Red Sox fan. Anyway, the other volunteers were Demian and Griffin, a father and son spending three weeks together in Ecuador. Demian shared with us that he plans on doing a special trip with each of this three kids when they turn 13. It’s a (wonderful) way to experience another part of the world, and other cultures with them. Since Griffin loves animals they chose Ecuador including this experience in the Amazon as well as Galapagos. Griffin was a really cool kid that provided a lot of humor and interesting points of view during the week. In some ways he reminded me of my brother who I miss terribly. Anyway, our next stop was the grocery store where we shopped for our food for the week. It’s kind of hard to do that when you know nothing about the kitchen to which you’ll be arriving, but we made our best effort. When we finally arrived at the refuge center, it reminded me of a building at a summer camp in New England. We were surprised to have our own room, complete with a mosquito net over the bed and not surprised, but disappointed with the lack of hot water. We were also disappointed that the communal kitchen didn't have anything left over from previous volunteers: no butter, sugar, cooking oil, the kinds of things that help make a week of cooking a bit easier, just some creepy crawlers lurking around. The shower reminded me of what you might see in a fraternity - a shower curtain you do everything not to touch because you are afraid you might catch a disease from the molding plastic. Another volunteer had already arrived, Valerian, a teacher from France on a eight month “Music Backpacking Tour”. He is traveling with a digital audio recorder hoping to meet people in various countries to share and record music together. He had just come from two weeks living with an Ecuadorian tribe where he recorded their music for the first time ever. He sang songs for us in Spanish, Quechua, French and Russian. Impressive guy.

When we arrived I expected that there would be some sort of briefing where we learned about the mission of the animal refuge, its animals and the expectations for the week. Makes sense, right? That didn’t happen, in fact, the entire week passed without us ever learning details about the center. It was only after we left that I looked it up on a website I had seen referred to on a sign. Ok, so shame on me for not asking while we were there - definitely - but I have two reasons. The first was the language barrier, the woman we worked with daily, Lucero, was super sweet and spoke a little English, but not very much. The second, and the real reason was because I had a bad attitude and was annoyed to be there given they clearly didn’t need our help, just our money. I guess there is a third reason, we didn’t really have down time together with the couple who manage the center, so limited opportunity to interact on that topic. It would have been nice if they had briefed us, or at least had information around the building that we could have read during the massive amount of downtime we had. However, with our without a bad attitude, language barrier or not, I should have asked. Lesson learned.

You are probably wondering about the animals, so let me explain. There are two parrots (a scarlet macaw and a green parrot) that live outside of the volunteer sleeping quarters on the porches. They don't appear to be able to fly and navigate around with the use of their two feet and their beak operating as a third foot. In the area, there is a troop of 30 squirrel monkeys and another troop of 13 tamarind monkeys. I had never heard of tamarind monkeys before and think that they are a much cooler animal partly because they are much more chill than the squirrel monkeys. The squirrel monkeys are absolutely crazy. Our lodging had a metal roof that the squirrel monkeys love to play on, sometimes at night which made it hard to sleep. If both sets of monkeys are around, the squirrel monkeys dominate the area and the tamarind monkeys can't be fed. Apparently where we were is at the edge of the Amazon and during some months there is not enough fruit in that part of the jungle for the monkeys to be sustained, that's why the center feeds them yellow plantains. We were told that sometimes the monkeys aren't around because they are further in the jungle and the time for which they are away from the center increases and increases until eventually they will live far into the jungle. These two kinds of monkeys are small and we broke off pieces of plantains to throw to them, or the impatient squirrel monkeys would just jump on top of you to get it. I didn’t care for that and shrieked when they jumped on me. The rest of the group didn’t seem to mind as much. On two occasions during the week we also saw woolly monkeys. These guys are significantly bigger, hang out in smaller groups (3-4) and stay way up in the tree tops. They would scamper down the tree trunks using their tail as an extra leg, grab a full plantain, and then scamper back up to eat it. We were told that the woolly monkeys don’t go by the refuge center often so it was special to see them.

The two parrots at the animal refuge. The red one humored us daily with saying, "Hola"!

The squirrel monkeys looking for more food from Demian.

The rest of the animals we interacted with at the center were caged or fenced in. Two cages had a male and female agouti, another cage had one paca, and the last cage had three baby turtles. Another fenced in area had 13 tortoises. Oh, there was also a swamp with several turtles and three caimans. Our daily duties consisted of feeding the animals twice a day, and maintenance around the jungle. Most of the animals eat a small combination of green and yellow plantains, maize, yucca and sometimes papaya. The tortoises eat leaves, the turtles eat banana peels, and one day we fed the caimans raw chicken. Agouti and pacas are part of the rodent family, and can be up to 8 and 13 lbs respectively. They are both similar to the guinea pig. Not necessarily the type of guinea pigs used as pets in the U.S. but more similar to the kind eaten as a delicacy known as "cuy" in Ecuador. On our last day in Ecuador Jake tried cuy for lunch and the sight of it alone kind of grossed me out. We were told that the agouti are very territorial and therefore can't be released back into the wild because they won't be accepted by the wild agouti. The offspring of the captive agouti can however be released into the wild as there is no problem with their acceptance, so that's nice. How did all of these animals end up at the refuge center? Unfortunately, I don’t know. That one I tried asking but didn’t really get an answer I understood.

Various manmade walkways connected the areas with animals and we spent our time weeding, digging trenches for the rainwater to drain, and replacing stairs. I don't understand why the center accepts volunteers as there is not much they need help with. Yes, I feel like we made a difference with the little we did, as it would have taken Lucero a very long time to improve the walkway without us. However, we all felt like we could have done so much more, if there had been anything to do. We asked many times for more work, but it just wasn’t there. Most of the time I was frustrated and/or absolutely bored out of my mind as there was much more downtime than I had expected there to be. I hate downtime. There was nowhere comfortable to sit and my back hurt every second that I was not lying down. I guess they really just want the cash? I don't know. I said as much to another volunteer, and he reminded me that often times places don't "need" volunteers, but having them allows extra projects to be completed and/or gives the usual workers time to focus on other things themselves. Either way, I just really, really wish that they had more for us to do. And if you don't, at least have somewhere comfortable for us to sit. I did read a wonderful historical fiction book that my friend Mo had recommended which is called "Fall of Marigolds". It takes place in NYC in both 1911 and 2011 and focuses on two tragic and slightly intertwined stories, one related to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the other related to 9/11. It was an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

The married couple that own the refuge center were very nice and always smiling. We also had great co-volunteers and good thing they were interesting people, because we had a lot of time to entertain ourselves. One day we went swimming in a nearby river while nearby one group of locals were doing laundry and another group was taking logs out of the river. Another positive was that because we were at a higher altitude and not as deep into the jungle as we were in Bolivia, it was cooler and there were far fewer mosquitoes.

During the week, Jake seemed to have a better attitude than I did. He thoroughly enjoyed digging trenches and carrying big stones to improve the walkways. So, I suggested to him that he also write a post about volunteering as I thought it might share a more positive outlook on our experience. However, when his response to that was, “The overall experience was a colossal disappointment. We made no difference, we took care of five giant rats!”, we decided that one post on the topic was enough. We are glad that we had this experience and I believe it helps us grow as individuals. I hope that the combination of our monetary donation and work to improve the walkways makes a larger impact than it feels like.

~ Jesslyn