Well, I've been here almost one month now, I can hardly believe it. At times, it feels like my second home!
Days go by so fast, the pace is set by the various tasks, and before you know it, another day has gone by. We get up so early in the morning and convene in the volunteer house before setting off on our duties for the day and very often the conversation you hear at 6:30 AM sounds like : » what are you on today? « « I'm on Bears 2, how about you? » « I'm on Primates 3 » and so on....
We are divided into teams of 2 to 4 people and we have a set protocole of things to do and the order in which to do them as well as the hour at which these tasks should be started and completed. And, as many of our duties depend on the duties of others, it is relatively important that we stick to the schedule.
It can be a little stressful at times, for example team Primates 1 needs to have 106 bowls of food prepared by 7:30 AM and the same by 3:30 PM. They have one hour in which to get the bowls prepared for teams Primates 1, 2 and 3 who all go off in different directions to feed the primates. In other words, if they are late preparing, then all three teams are late feeding, and so forth...
For the past couple of days, I have been leading team Bears 1 which is quite an easy one. What we need to do firstly is get the bears out of their enclosure and into their den, so that we in turn can go into their enclosure to clean it. It can be tricky at times as bears are either stupid or pretend to be stupid, in any case, they are stubborn, and sometimes we can waste 15 minutes trying to entice them into their den with food! The other day, I was doing Bears 2 and getting a bit frustrated because one of the bears just wouldn't move.....so I did exactly what you're not supposed to do which is throw food to them by putting my hand through the bars. Good thing I had my working gloves on! One of the bears tried to get a little taste of my hand....And as if that weren't enough and I had not yet learned my lesson, I put my hand through again (am I totally stupid or wreckless, or both??) and gave myself an electrochoc on the electric wires surrounding their enclosures....Apparently that had happened once to a volunteer who couldn't let go for a fraction of a second and her whole arm went blue, so I guess I was lucky, I only jumped back, very surprised...Oh well, no harm done, I'm still around to tell the story...
Anyway, to get back to the bears....we feed them fruit mostly which we scatter all around the enclosure, trying to hide it in a hole or up on high to get them to use their sense of smell and work a bit for their food. As most if not all of these bears have grown up in small cages with people hand feeding them chocolate, candy and other inappropriate foods, they have never had to use their natural instincts to search for their food, so we try to encourage that. It is really fun watching them eat, they absolutely love their food! And then they go take a nap, often lying on their backs with their hind legs sprawled out and one arm over their eyes to keep out the light.
I did get a day off a few days ago and went hiking a bit in a nearby national park. (see photos) It was a very beautiful setting, a tropical forest and the hike to the waterfall was quite challenging as it was mostly downhill all the way and then of course, all uphill on the way back. I hiked for about 3,5 hours, hoping to see wild animals but none were to be seen that day unfortunately. Was good exercise though.
Many volunteers have left this week, many new ones have arrived and the atmosphere changes constantly. The ones which were here the past 2 or 3 weeks have been quite young and I have found it a challenge to communicate with them or share anything with them in any significant way. This was quite unexpected for me. I didn't know what to expect really and I thought that by coming here, I would meet and communicate in a positive way with many like minded people. That has not been the case and in that respect only, the experience is disappointing. The crowd this week is a bit older so I am finding that easier to deal with, but basically I concentrate on my work and all the things I am learning which was really the reason I came in the first place, and I have indeed been learning lots...a whole new world is opening up for me.
I have been using some of that recently acquired knowledge to give tours to visiting tourists which is really fun and a welcome change to the work.
The week after next, there will be festivities at the temple in the village as they will be celebrating Chinese New Year. In Thailand they celebrate everyone's New Year, not only their own. For those of you who are interested, it is the year of the rat so up until recently, there has been a huge (and very tacky) paper maché rat in the centre of the village with blinking eyes, but I think they moved it to the temple area now in preparation for the festivities to begin soon.
I will sign off now and just to make you a tiny bit envious, I send you « warm » greetings from Thailand where the weather is above 30°C and we are sweating in the daytime. And to refresh ourselves, we go and jump in the nearby lake. Sleeveless Tshirts in the evening and flip flops on our feet at all times. Ahhhhhh, great stuff! What a life!
Rumour has it that it is freezing in Europe and the US. Sorry my friends. I don't miss it.
Cheers
Life at the centre...preparing enrichments for the bears...a mixture of papaya, banana and sunflower seeds, yummyy!!! (then we stick it inside rubber tubes or tyres and they go on a food hunt.....fun!!)
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