It’s wonderful to be back in Iquitos to volunteer with charity Amazon Cares & to help the abandoned cats & dogs. Iquitos is the kind of city I love to live in. It’s bursting at the seams with people – 400,000 more or less – many of whom spend most of their lives outside in the streets, be it selling something, socializing, or taking an evening stroll. Abuelas (grandmothers) with a grandchild in arms sit in rocking chairs enjoying the nightly river breeze in front of their houses. Street kids offer to polish your shoes (but I’m wearing sandals!). Want to buy handmade textiles, jewellery, cigarettes, gum? Everything is for sale on the streets.
What a vibrant & social city it its. At 10 o’clock at night the central Plaze de Armas is full of families enjoying icecreams & watching buskers perform…..fire twirlers, jugglers, indian dancers draped with anacondas, magicians, a monkey pushing a wheelbarrow, comedians. Any performance to earn a sole or two to buy the next meal, or perhaps for the foreign performers to stretch that travel budget just a bit further.
And to & fro roam the army of street dogs that I’m here to help. They all have their territories & favoured locations, be it sitting out the front of the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas’ restaurant scrounging for a crumb, or cruising the Boulevard along the Amazon river searching for a generous soul who tonight might just feel like adopting man’s best friend.
Of course, the shopkeepers growl, clap their hands & throw water to make the dogs move on to the next restaurant. But when it comes down to it the street dogs are an integral part of this chaotic society just like the street kids, beggars, venders & everyone one else that calls the streets of Iquitos ‘home’.
For more information about charity Amazon Cares please see: www.amazoncares.org
