Demarcation Diaries
21 September 2001
Camp 1 early afternoon...
Yesterday was exhausting, moving our gear and setting up our new
home. We have carried enough food and equipment for 5 days, but
we could stretch it to a week if necessary.
I fell asleep under a beautiful new moon listening to the sound of
the Greenpeace volunteers joking, talking and swinging.
Our shelter is quite small so every time you move you swing your
hammock into someone else's, setting up a chain reaction of hot
and sweaty swinging bodies.
I awoke to the Deni, up at the crack of
dawn as always.
This morning the Deni together with our GPS/demarcation experts
and 2 Greenpeace volunteers set off to find point 26. This is the first point on
our demarcation of this area. Kontau, Asunter, Ribomar and I stay at the camp
to prepare food and tidy up. I have a bath in a stream with some tropical
fish. I spend about 20 minutes trying to get the tangles out of my hair and
then I help Riba build a table for our radio equipment. By 1 p.m. the camp is
looking great, the ground dries out from last night's rain... and the ants
invade! Soon they are everywhere, inside my socks, in the food, in
hammocks. They march through our camp in well organized lines and if you
are unlucky enough to get in their way, they bite.
After lunch we have
some Deni visitors. We're very close to their village, Morada Nova, which
we visited earlier in the week. They take us for a short walk and one of
them zooms up a tree and cuts down branches full of berries. Zuha is the
Deni name for them. The Deni climb trees barefoot with their feet inside a
loop of bark. They make it look far too easy to be true. I'd really like
to try but I'm too shy to ask today, maybe another time. The berries are
great, the guy cutting gets totally carried away and soon there are fallen
branches everywhere. We all stuff ourselves, no time for talking,
just standing round sucking juice and spitting out seeds like we might
never see fruit again. Before we leave we collect two full bags to make
juice for the workers when they return. It feels great to be out here and
eating so well on the first day, that has to be a good sign.
Janine
(Team A)
Find out about the different
volunteers on the demarcation project.
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