This morning I awoke to a bleeding Mark Spencer. Supposedly he woke up at 3 am to go use the bathroom (aka mother nature) and fell off his ladder and cut his arm. Somehow, I slept through both that and a night filled with loud thunder and lightning.
Today was our first day volunteering. The morning began with a breakfast of bread with jam, butter, and a pudding-like chocolate sauce. We then broke up into small groups for a tour of the Panthera jungle. We started in the secondary forest which has lower canopies with more sparse trees. We learned about the trees surrounding us, common wildlife, and some hazards in the forest. Surprisingly, even with the venomous snakes and jaguars that are in the forest, the most likely cause of death is tree branches falling. We then made our way to the primary forest where we had the chance to use a machete to clear off some trees across the path. This part of the forest had much higher canopies with densely packed trees. Although it was pouring rain, we could barely feel it because of the canopies. Unfortunately, we returned to the secondary forest after and got completely drenched.
After the tour of the forest, we had lunch consisting of lentils and rice. In the afternoon session, we broke up into groups for different activities. There was one group that climbed up trees to observe mammals, another that explored the agro-forest, and the last got dirty with construction work. I was part of this last group and was (unsurprisingly) awful at any construction work. I failed at hammering in nails and spent roughly 10 minutes sawing off a tiny piece of wood. I think I set a new record for the number of nails bent while hammering. It’s surprising how someone as strong as me struggled so much with this heavy lifting construction work. There was one part of this work that really stood out to me though – no matter how rusted or worn out a piece looked, the workers at Panthera never threw it out. I was clearing off a shelf that looked like it was filled with unusable equipment, but the Panthera workers insisted that it could all be used for something. In areas where these resources are plentiful, this sort of resourcefulness can be easily overlooked.
We finished the night with a sausage and potatoes dinner and played cards for roughly 3 hours (I feel like this will be a nightly theme). Overall, this was a great first day volunteering and I am excited for the next few days!
-Rahul Hingorani
EGL Family Abroad 