Coming out of the Jungle

I'm back from the jungle!  I'll admit right up front that it wasn't exactly what I had anticipated.  It was challenging on so many different levels but we decided to stick it out instead of leaving early.  We are now in Brazil but I really need to catch everyone up on the jungle adveture first:
We were originally going to go to Parque Machia which is another one of the parks that is operated by the same group.  We had chosen it because it was the less rugged of the parks.  It was in a town, had electricity and hot showers.  We thought it would be a good compromise: jungle living without all of the hardships.  We arrived in the town very late at night and decided to stay in a hostel until the morning.  When we finally arrived, I felt immediately unwelcome.  The volunteer coordinator wasn't very friendly and told us that they didn't really need our help at that park.  After some discussion Caitlin and I decided to head to Parque Ambue Ari (the truly jungle oriented park).  I'm not sure why we weren't more turned off immediately but I guess we figured we got these expensive rabies shots for a reason.

Ambue Ari is located 45 minutes from a major town and about 10 minutes (by bus) from a much smaller town called Santa Maria.  Even though Santa Maria is fairly close, the park does seem very removed from civilization.  We began to crave soda (or anything cold) almost immediately and loved weekend trips into town.  The experience is so hard to characterize because it was such a multi faceted one and no explanation will ever truly sum up what happened out there in the jungle.  I'll try anyway:

Ambue Ari, unlike Machia, is almost exclusively a cat park.  This means that almost all of the volunteers will be assigned to work with either a puma, a jaguar or an ocelot.  At the time that we arrived many people were leaving and we were actually able to choose which cat we wanted to work with.  I chose to work with Niko, a two year old girl Puma.  I chose to work with her because she sounded like a troubled little kitty which seemed right up my alley.  She had been injured a lot as a baby and now is extremely afraid of almost everything because of this trauma earlier in her life.  I also was looking forward to working solo.  It has been a long time since I have had to spend so much time with myself and I wanted to challenge myself to be alone with my thoughts.  Needless to say it was one of the most frustrating months of my life.  In part, because Niko never really warmed up to meand in part because I hate spending 7 hours a day by myself. 

I would spend my days on my stomach crawling towards Niko until she got too scared.  She would then hiss and run to the opposite side of the cage.  I tried talking to her but soon became very bored by my own voice.  I tried to play with her but she was too intimidated to relax around me.  I started to become frustrated when I would come back to camp and hear that Caitlin's cat had come right up to her and licked her straight away.  I suppose it is more normal for cats to be afraid of people but I admit that I just felt jealous and frustrated.  I wasn't able to get her to trust me enough to try to take her out of her cage, which was the ultimate goal. Oh well!

It wasn't totally awful though!  I had a lot of time to think about what I want to do next.  Fall has always been an important time for me, a time of new beginnings.  I sat in the jungle and wondered what I wanted to start this year.  Looking back at the past seven years, I can see a lot has changed for me since I was living in Utah but there is still a lot left to be done.  Of course, that is life isn't it?  Being in the jungle reminded me a lot of living in treatment actually.  Specifically, jungle life and treatment life are very isolated.  It's the only time where I have had the luxury to remove myself from everything.  No cell phones, no internet, no news.  Just you and the people you are living with.  I love it.  If I didn't hate bugs I would consider living a truly rural life in a commune somwhere.  Then again, I hate communal living.  The point is, everything seems more in perspective when there is less to worry about.  You can just exist and see what happens next.  I think I mentioned earlier in this blog that learning to live in the moment is my goal for this trip (hopefully it will translate to my acting work as well!).

Personal struggles aside, I found the community to be a difficult one.  The group of long term volunteers generally weren't very nice and the permanent staff weren't much better.  This was what bothered me more than the bugs or the dirt.  I had committed myself to spending a month with the least personable people I have met in a long time.  As some of the long term volunteers started to leave the experience became much more pleasant.  New, nicer people started to arrive, making the camp a more friendly place.  I hope to be able to go visit them in their home countries someday. 




I'm on my way to Brasilia today which will be a long bus ride.  I'll try to write something more descriptive about the park.  There was a fire after all, I'm sure that would make a lovely story!