Ecuador: Monkeying Around In The Jungle (cont.)

It’s almost lunch time, and thank god because I am starving.  All the volunteers swarm to the kitchen at noon to receive a well earned meal.  Along with our everyday rice and soup, this is the only time of day we get to eat meat.  I am hoping for crispy chicken today although most of the time what animal we are consuming is not abundantly clear to us.  Our lunch is prepared by three local Kichwa women.  They live at Amazoonico also and are paid a wage for being here.  Angela, the owner of Amazoonico, tries to help the indigenous community any way she can.  She gives them jobs, has a school located here, and buys all of the fruits and vegetables from them. 

As I walk into the kitchen, I think I hear someone yell frutas.  I peer out the window and see two young Kichwa girls standing at the base of the stairs with a list in their hand.  I head outside to see what they have brought: forty-four papayas, five bunches of plantains, and five bunches of horitos.  They bring it across the river in a canoe that is so overloaded with fruit it looks like it might sink.  I grab two bunches of the plantains that I throw over my shoulder and head back up those ninety-five stairs to the bodega.  The process of fruit delivery goes on periodically throughout the whole day.

After our lunch we focus on preparing lunch for the primates, and I go back to chopping up fruit in the bodega.  In addition, there is more cleaning, feeding, and tour leading until five when the center closes to tourists.  As “Uspa mom” my last task of the day is to fill up a hot water bottle wrapped in a t-shirt for her to lie next to during the night.

The only thing I can think about when I head back down to the volunteer house after work is taking a shower.  We have eleven people in one house sharing a bathroom, which usually equates to long waits for cold showers, but today it's all too much, and I decide to change into my swim suit and go to the waterfall.  I walk down to the river and follow the path over a rickety board that is resting above a stream of fast flowing water.  It leads to a pile of boulders that require some climbing and eventually opens to a loud rushing cascade that pours over the rocks and into the river below.  This is a perfect end to the day; the falling water massages my shoulders as I look out past the trees to see the sun turn to a deep orange as is sinks below the horizon. The trees across the river are becoming silhouettes as the occasional bat swoops down near the water in front of me. However, there are drawbacks to taking a shower outside; serenity is more elusive than you'd think as I constantly need to keep an eye on my stuff, since monkeys are thieves!

After I clean myself up, it's time to relax.  I grab a book and head to the living room which is full of hammocks.  I get in my favorite one which faces the screened window where I indulge in some reading and occasionally look out the window to and see monkeys swinging through the trees.  The sun slowly continues to set.  When you live on the equator, the sun is very predictable.  It’s up at 6 a.m. and down at 6 p.m.  Afterwards we have to rely on flashlights and candles.

Eventually it’s dinner time, and I head over to the kitchen.   Every night two of the volunteers cook for everyone else.  It is challenging cooking here, and even more so at night.  Everything, including bread, is made from scratch.  Our food supplies are restocked once a week, and our choices get limited as the week progresses.  Needless to say, we eat a lot of pasta.  With a giant picnic table in the middle, the kitchen also serves as the center of our social lives.  We eat, play cards, tell stories, and drink warm Pilsners here until our eyelids become heavy or most of the table has been covered with candle wax. Tonight the former occurs first.

With my flashlight pointed at the ground to avoid snakes and giant spiders, I head back up to my room.  After applying itch relief cream to my body, I crawl under my mosquito net, into my dank sleeping bag, onto my moldy mattress, and close my eyes.  The din of buzzing mosquitoes is eventually overpowered by heavy rainfall on the tin roof.  I listen to all the sounds the jungle as I drift off to sleep.

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