sit on a bus for eighteen hours down the world’s most dangerous road, boat across a river, hitch 25km along a bumpy dirt track. you will find yourself at jacj cuisi, the newest inti wara yassi wildlife refuge. welcome to the jungle.
work at the park began in november 2008. the land was purchased from the father of a volunteer. he paid millions of bolivianos to have the land burned so it could be developed, but the professional burning company accidentally burned down the house. jacj cuisi means land of dreams in the local indigenous language. when andres, the director, arrived last november, everything was still on fire.
now we have a casa with three walls, hole-in-the-ground toilets, the foundations of a kitchen, a health clinic. two pumas arrived in may and another is on the way as soon as the new cage has been constructed.
we took turns cooking and carrying water up from the river. we laundered by jumping in the river wearing our work clothes and did dished by putting dirty pots in the creek for the fish to clean. in the evenings, we ate by candlelight and watched the stars and sat around campfires strumming a guitar. we baked cakes by steaming them over bamboo and collected papayas and bananas in the jungle.
i slept on a mattress stuffed with hay. i found out i am allergic to hay. i slept in a hammock, on the thatched roof of the garage, in a tent. once i found a tarantula in my mosquito net.
since the cats like to lick and the creek is everything and the kitchen sink, no chemicals allowed. no soap, no insect repellent, no deodorant or lotion or sunscreen. i didn’t wash my hair for three weeks. as tim said, we’re all dirty jungle people here.
most of my time was spent volunteering with a jungle puma named simba. his mother was killed and he was captured when he was just a few months old, so simba never learned how to hunt, how to identify the poisonous plants, or how to protect himself in the wild. as a result, he’ll never be able to be released back into the wild. even without his mum and jungle puma instincts, he managed to grow into 55kg of muscles and teeth. his human family decided that he was no longer a suitable pet, and simba came to inti wara yassi.
simba and i spent all day long in the jungle with another cat volunteer. he strolled along forest trails, splashed through rivers, ran down ravines, slept for hours, licked until he drew blood. i scrambled up cliffs, tripped over vines, fell on my arse. a lot.
simba liked to hide rotten meat in his bed and have private blankie time before we left for our walks. in addition to the jungle running, daily tasks included burying leftover dinner in a hole surrounded by bones and swatting bugs away from all bodily orifices. bees swarmed, ants crawled, little black flies liked to fly into your eyes and hair and ears and up your nose. if you smushed them, they released a chemical that attracted a billion more. how counter-evolutionary of them.
one day, simba was playing in the river and i was on his rope. andres threw simba’s fave toy, a plaid oxford attached to a string. simba ran. andres said i flew just like superman. but then i landed, and joder, was there a lot of blood. when the vet assistant patched me up, he said he could see the bone and that my knee was so massively destroyed he didn’t feel confident to do the stitches. by the time i emerged from the jungle, hitchhiking into town on a tractor, my knee was infected and inflamed and too far gone for stitches.
and that is how my time at jacj cuisi came to an end. i spent a few days playing house mommy, cleaning and painting and sawing. but the jungle is no place for a cripple.
more than two weeks later, my knee keeps changing a spectacular array of colors. red, green, yellow, orange, brown. i can’t really walk up stairs or down hills. i have spent more than $1.71 on hospital visits. i had prescriptions for antibiotics, anti-inflamatories, and a mysterious and magical bolivian pain killer. a google search for the drug brings up several unsuccessful inquiries by foreign doctors trying to ascertain its ingredients.
when my gash heals, it will be a perfect crescent moon and i will win every cool scar contest ever. but i’d rather be back in the jungle.
WHAT THE FUCK.
HOW ARE YOU?
i miss you so much!!!