Demarcation Diaries
23 September 2001
Our second camp is close to point 26. It will be great to save the
Deni a 2 hour walk to work but unfortunately it is an hour away from the
nearest water. We arrived yesterday after a back-breaking walk of 3km.
That might sound easy but you have to imagine carrying the contents of the
camp, pushing through trees, wading through swamps and balancing on logs
over streams... all in hot and damp, damp air.
Sadly we said good bye to three members of our team before our move. Assunta is to
continue her work for CIMI and Ribomar and Vaisuvi went back to the
ship for medical reasons. Sending them back was a tough decision for
me to make as neither of them were seriously ill and they are both very
important members of the team. But
the deciding factor was that neither of them are fit to walk to the next
camp and as we can not leave them, it is best that they go back to the
Savio to rest. Hopefully they will join us soon. They seem disappointed to
be leaving but I'm sure they are secretly looking forward to a shower and
some time-out from the ever buzzing biting bugs.
In a very surreal outdoor carpentry experience Merel and I giggled
our way though our first table building. Although the Deni found this
highly amusing were quite proud by the end and there's no denying it
works. Still I'm glad we're moving on soon, I don't think it'll stand the
test of time.
Most exciting of all, today our dreams are answered in the arrival of
helicopter. We were all beginning to doubt it existed outside of Manuel's
(our logistics coordinator) imagination. Even as we all worked on a clearing
for a helipad, I didn't quite believe it was going to come. All
of the sudden there was an beautiful wind and a growl just too loud to be a
jaguar and there was our little red friend Tweetie with a whole cargo net
full of goodies for us. A beautiful end to the day with fresh fruit, fish,
biscuits and bread. Thank you very much to Phil the helicopter pilot.
Janine
Find out about the different
volunteers on the demarcation project.
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