Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you well. Another month has passed, Happy New Year!

This month has been a long month, compared to how quickly the other 3 passed. A lot has happened here…

Macho, the woolly monkey I mentioned in my last letter, passed away a few days later. Now little Tortilla is all alone, but there are plans to move her in with the adults soon. Just look at that face!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Here, we had a “work Christmas party”, which was the least Christmassy party you could imagine. We had 16 baul bauls hung up on a string (supposed to be hide and seek advent baul bauls, but either someone forgot to hide them or nobody found them, so we were always a few days behind!) and one Christmas mug. But we had a few drinks and lots of laughs so that’s what was important.

Then on the 23rd, RAREC had organised a Christmas party for the local worker’s children and close family. This consisted of a “clown” dressed as an elf, who called Santa on a cell phone, to tell him to pay a visit. While Santa was on the way, the elf occupied the kids with dancing and games… Which, of course, the adults had to get involved in. Meaning me. I was responsible for filming the event, but when the kids were asked to pick an adult and the girls immediately ran up to me, I couldn’t really say no. So I passed the phone to a volunteer and this is what happened:

After this, I was also picked for another game that involved getting my hair enthusiastically ripped out while a little girl had to race to put different hats on my head. Such fun! The elf then did a quick costume change into the creepiest Santa, with a big fake head, you’ve ever seen and handed out the presents. All accompanied by extremely loud Latin American Christmas music (I think I had “Feliz Navidad” stuck in my head permanently for 2 weeks). All followed by hot chocolate and panatone. Delicious.

Peru celebrates Christmas on the 24th, where it’s obligatory you stay up until midnight, so we had dinner with the management and their family, played some games and all went to bed at 12.01. I may have been a bad vegetarian… The family had cooked a massive turkey, which I’m never normally fussed about missing out on. But this smelt and looked too good not to try (bare in mind I live on rice and boiled vegetables every day). It was the best turkey I’ve ever eaten, and not just because I live on rice and boiled vegetables everyday… Everyone agreed it was the best. Moist, juicy, mouth wateringly delicious. Then on Christmas day they cooked ANOTHER delicious turkey for lunch to go with the leftovers. Me and a colleague were in charge of cooking Christmas dinner, so I spent the day cooking roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, cauliflower cheese, honey glazed carrots and apple crumble. Which was joined with lentil and mushroom nut roast, stuffing and gravy, cooked by Natasha. The cooking was slightly scuppered by the lack of real butter and milk, so margarine was used, but inevitably, we ran out, and tinned milk was used for the cauliflower cheese. But actually every tasted great, even if the mash wasn’t as buttery and smooth as intended (I luckily had some real butter which I used for the crumble. Priorities!). I printed a little menu, made paper crowns for everyone, put the presents under the tree and set the table to make it as cute as possible. It was a lovely day. Boxing day, was back to normal and I had to go and pick someone up from the airport, but I came back and had the best boxing day sandwich! Everything tastes better when it’s not boiled rice.

Christmas over, it was back to work as normal. I took a few people to the local tribe and adjacent rescue centre, where I translated. And then before I knew it, Natasha (head caretaker) and Laura (vet) had left (after we spent a lovely last day in Iquitos in a hotel with hot water and a pool, eating good food and cake), all hell had broken loose at work….

WELCOME TO JURASSIC WORLD……

The day before Natasha left a very dangerous spider monkey escaped, through a hole in the fence, followed by 2 less dangerous females. I hear one of the Peruvian workers shouting and he runs past where I’m working, yelling “DIEGO ESTA FUERA” and runs off into the forest towards the enclosure. I pop my head out the study room, Natasha comes out the animal kitchen and Laura comes out the vet clinic and we’re all like “….” “Did we hear what we thought we heard?” Yes. So we go straight into code red emergency escape protocol and I shut myself back in the study room. A few minutes later, the head vet comes walking out of the forest soaking, dipping, wet. He had been chased by Diego, the spider monkey, and had only been 20cm from being attacked before he jumped in a swampy pond to escape. The workers, vet (still soaking) and Natasha, the monkey whisperer, work to get all the monkeys in and to their credit, they’re all in within the day. The funny thing is, we’d all been watching our way through the Jurassic Parks and World’s and only had the last Jurassic World left to watch that evening (in which someone jumps into a pond to escape a dinosaur. Brilliant.)

The Jurassic saga continues…. I come back from eating my dinosaur panatone and laughing about it with Natasha as I dropped her at the airport, to 10 minutes of peace before someone bursts through the door “THE MONKEYS HAVE ESCAPED AGAIN!”. Different monkeys though this time. One male, who can be dangerous and 2 females. Once again we’re in lockdown and code red emergency protocol is in place. However this time the spider monkeys that have escaped are extremely clever, and were put in a separate, brand new, enclosure to stop their regular escapes (and indeed it had worked, 4 months and no trouble). They know all the tricks in the book to avoid capture and last time they escaped they were out for months apparently. To make it more annoying, the females can open doors, locks and bottles. It’s only because we moved to a new dining area before Christmas that we still have food left and the fridges have been, so far, undiscovered. The 2 females made their base the old common area (where the fridges used to be), where all our bedrooms are. Luckily the females aren’t aggressive (although all wild animals are unpredictable), they’re just likely to climb on you… As I found out. Throughout the week I had to induct new volunteers, and each time, in order to protect them from being climbed on, I ended up sacrificing myself. Have you ever been smothered by a monkey? So the next week we live with the monkeys. They drink our water, break the washing line, pull a window out of the wall, chill out in hammocks, pose like a French girl while snacking on contraband crackers, and sit on my head 3 times, because I can’t escape in time. Yesterday, the 2 females were caught! But the male still roams free in the forest so some areas are still off limits for me while inducting new volunteers.

Not to mention 3 other minor escapes… So an interesting month. But here are some fun anecdotes, this one happened in November but I kept forgetting to tell you: I was going to the city to pick up a volunteer from hospital, taking another in for shopping and just as we are leaving there is a hitchhiker who asked for a lift. At the time, just down the road, there was a hippy convention, so I recognised him and let him hop in. Turned out he was from Galicia in Spain (where I lived for a year) and knew my town, and then said he’d lived in Honiton in Exeter (where I’d been born and lived, when little). What a small world. So we were chatting and it turned out he was a clown and was going into town to get his guitar fixed. Well about 3/4 of the way in he says thank you so much for the lift, we’d done him such a big favour and that he would pay us in music. He proceeded to play a wooden Peruvian style recorder/whistle and sing for us for the next 15 minutes. He wasn’t bad, but I did have to stifle the giggles.

Anecdote #2: I’m sitting in the study room, working, and out the window I see the Peruvian workers rubbing their backs with what looks like rope. I go outside and I think it’s a snake, then logic takes over and I’m like, no, it’s rope. Then I get closer and it is a snake! Two workers are holding the snake by the head and tip of the tail and rubbing it up and down their back like they’re drying themselves with a towel. “What are you doing?” I ask a bit puzzled. “It’s a treatment” “what for?” “It’s a secret” said with a sly smile and twinkle. The other worker takes pity and reveals it’s for back pain. The snakes were eventually chucked back in the forest. They turned out to be some kind of parrot snake (no known painkillers in skin).

This month has been challenging to say the least, and it’s probably not going to get easier as the head vet leaves in a month and the entire animal care team is run by newbies. I’ve been contemplating my future here and I have been having an inner battle with myself about how long I can realistically stay without feeling like I’m giving up and failing, and whether I made the right decision coming (it was the right decision, at the time, but hindsight…). Last night I was reading a Terry Pratchett book and came across this quote that I’d long since forgotten. It’s perfectly fitting and I think it will be a great support for me in the coming months.

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Sir Terry Pratchett

Miss you all.

Love,

Joss