After a few days following Che to his final
resting place on a mortuary slab in a Hospital in the small town of Vallagrande we took a bus to Villa Tunari a small town on
route Cochabamba.
Our plan was to check out the Animal sanctuary Inti Yara Wassi and then pop to Cochabamba for a couple
of days before returning to volunteer. However after waiting five hours in the cafeteria
to be shown round and discuss possible jobs, whilst current volunteers covered
in insect bites and some times animal bites drifted in and out, we some how got
persuaded to stay for a month by the long term volunteer Wendy?
So our time at Inti Yara Wassi began,
before I new it I was getting up at seven working through to six with no days
off. My days consisted of carry heavy bags of food along poor wet tracks
through the jungle to the Mirador, where I would spend a lot of the day
cleaning the dirt and monkey crap from cages whilst constantly being bittern by
hundreds of sand flies and mosquitoes. I had hoped to be walking a Puma but as
the only one available was Rory a fast and powerful cat who a caused various
injuries too many volunteers I had decided against this and instead was
assigned the Mirador Monkeys.
This consisted of a group of caged monkeys
which may be released into the wild in the future; various monkeys on ropes,
which also could be released; a group of free Monkeys who permanently stayed
around the mirador to protect the caged monkeys at night and were fed as a
reward; and my favorites, a few certainly temperamental and some what viscous
monkeys who could never be released.
The monkeys in the Mirador were all
capuchins and due to their dislike of women mostly men worked there. However
whilst I did my time, the mirador was managed by a tough long term lady
volunteer from New Zealand called Pee who seemed to have a way with Monkeys and
even had a look of a Capuchin. The other volunteers consisted of two cocky young lads
from Belgium who had spent
three weeks running pumas and a rather annoying dread locked hippy from New Zealand who
was fortunately reassigned the next day to construction. I found that I not
only had to find my place within the monkey groups but also the human groups who
were a little weary of a 37 year old long haired, bearded, It manager from
England, who arrived with a bicycle and chosen not to run a puma!
For the first week I certainly found Inti Yara
Wassi strange and awkward and I felt maybe I had made a mistake. When the big
man in charge asked us all to hold hands and chant " Inti Yara Wassi, Inti
Yara Wassi " at the first volunteer meeting I certainly wondered if I had
walked into some sort of cult. Also the craziness of working everyday with no
days off and drinking every night made it seem I had volunteered into some sort
of war zone rather than a tranquil reserve, in a peaceful jungle, in the heart of
Bolivia.
Certainly to some of the eco warriors at the reserve animal welfare was and is
a war!
After a couple of weeks my feelings were to
alter and my tales of adventures in the mountains on a
bicycle meeting rebels with machine guns in Northern
Laos, chasing my tent down the Andes mountains in Northern Peru
were to win over the Belgium boys and even
dedicated Pee. I also found the job was not all
cleaning shit and carrying food; you also had the opportunity to get close to
the monkeys. I was able to play with the free monkeys, take the roped monkeys
for walks so they could get used to the jungle and my favorite dig for worms
with the viscous guys. Unfortunately to my peril I found I was a little good at
using a stick to dig for worms and made the Congo, a large hairy temperamental brown
capuchin, rather jealous which resulted in him nastily sticking his teeth into
my left hand. The pain reminding me that I was working with wild and not
domestic animals!
The hand was to recover along with my
opinion of the reserve which although a little disorganized, relying heavily on
over tired long term volunteers, was doing a service not often found any where
else in the world let alone the developing world. I also began to understand
and find respect for the long term volunteers whose arrogance and lack of
person skills had at first shocked me. How
could I judge people who were willing to offer some times a couple of years of
their short lives to such a worthy cause? Also where else would an ageing IT
Manager in between jobs with no previous experience get such an amazing opportunity
to work so closely with such beautiful animals?
I would certainly recommend, if you have a few weeks to spare
and are in Bolivia, you volunteer at Inti Yara
Wassi. The people may be strange but the animals are worth all the effort. Don’t always believe what you read in the papers
and if that the Internet!
I recently heard that the park was to close and
the owners were hunting for land to relocate the animals to. I really hope especially
for the animals and also possible future volunteers, who will miss out on such
an amazing experience, that the hunt, as I’m sure will be, is a total success.
