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Published: April 13th 2010
Hello everyone,
I'm not going to even bothering apologising for being so useless at updating this blog; surely you've all noticed the pattern emerging by now! What I will do is try to write you a nice, long and meaty post to make up for it. Now, where to start...ah, yes.
Puerto Maldonado. Last time I wrote I was sitting in a hostel room enjoying the fan and TV with three bot flies growing in my head and feeling somewhat ill. I am currently sitting in a hostel room enjoying the fan and TV with three small lumps on my head where the bot flies had been growing in my head and feeling rather ill. Don't you love how history repeats itself. More on that later. After a few days in PM, Mini and Gideon managed to pick up the caller animal. We've called him Chiky as the man from the rehabilitation centre once referred to him in an email as a "Chiky Basterd Guy" and it sort of stuck. The plan was for us all to get the CICRA boat back with Chiky on the Thursday morning. Unfortunately my stomach had other plans and decided I should spend the rest of the day glued to the toilet rather than sitting on a boat. This meant I had to stay in the hostel on my own until early on Saturday morning when I managed to get myself and my stuff all the way to Laberinto and then onto the collectivo. It looked a bit dicey when the taxi the hostel owner had booked for me didn't turn up and then the mototaxi driver didn't have a clue where I wanted to go. Thankfully we did eventually end up singing from the same hymn sheet and I got to the taxi rank. The collectivo was also an interesting experience as it was the first time I've ever been hit on my a 10 year old Peruvian miner's son whilst simultaneously being climbed over by a 5 year old girl. When I got back to CICRA it was lovely to be greeted by everyone and feel like I was almost coming home.
I woke up early again the next morning to go out to follow FC with Erin and Karina but while we were standing around under their sleeping tree the whole world felt like it was spinning around. That didn’t strike me as a particularly good sign of things to come so I decided to head back for bed rather than stay out and inevitably faint somewhere off-trail that would be difficult for me to then get back to camp. This horrendous dizziness persisted for the next few days and made anything, other than lying very still, almost unbearable. I was still sneezing and blowing my nose like my life depended on it. I also noticed that a rather large lump had developed at the intersection of my neck and right shoulder. I was informed that this was probably an enlarged, wandering lymph node, which showed I was fitting off the cold type thing that was making me feel so miserable. During that time Gideon took charge of trying to get rid of my bot flies. After intensely coating each lump with nail varnish he was able to squeeze all of them out. One was particularly large and disgusting. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, have a look on my facebook picture - it is quite revolting!
When I was finally virus and parasite free I was able to get back out into the field. One day Karina and I went out to one of our trap sites with Chiky in his small travel cage so he could call and attract wild tamarins to the trap and the bananas we put around it. We sat under a mosquito net a few meters away so we could see everything but not be seen by the monkeys. Other people had been doing the same thing for the past 5 days and each time the group of 4 tamarins had come closer to the trap and the bananas (I went out one day with Gideon and when he quickly popped back to camp to get something the group appeared along with two Callimicos!). On this day we were lucky enough to see the group eat the bananas for the first time and eventually GO INSIDE THE TRAP! When we got back to camp and told Mini she looked like she was going to cry with joy. It was then decided that the next morning, all five of us (and Chiky) would go out and try to trap the group (Jean 4 - so named because they live off the trail called ‘Jean’).
Early the next morning we carried all our trapping equipment out into the field and began to set up the mosquito net on the trail by the trap where we could process the animals after trapping them. While we were waiting for the group to come to the trap we noticed that a swarm of army ants were heading towards to mosquito net! While Karina, Erin and I were taking it all down and moving everything to another spot further down the trail, Mini and Gideon managed to trap all 4 of the tamarins. All five of us and two of the four tamarins managed to fit under the mosquito net and the processing began. We took measurements of their body parts, hair, nail and blood samples, fitted them with bead necklaces and bleached their tails so we can identify them as individuals. After processing the first two we noticed that the army ants had reached our supposed sanctuary. That meant moving everything…yet again! After the third time of setting everything up, processing the last two monkeys went fairly smoothly. By about 3pm we called it a day and headed back to camp to start entering data, washing towels and re-filling bags with equipment for the next time we trapped.
For the next few days after trapping I went out on FC and helped with staking out another group at a different trap site. That group were rather less enthusiastic about Chiky and the bananas but we hope to try again later in the year when less food is naturally available, making the bananas more appealing. I was having a nice few days of work when illness stuck again! Another few days stuck in the Comedor with very frequent visits to the nearby loo. By this point it had become beyond a joke and I was feeling rather down. One thing that did lift my spirits during that time was the incident that inspired the name of this blog post.
Karina and I were heading to bed one night and as we were approaching the football field we saw three pairs of eyes, illuminated by my head torch, staring back at us. We couldn’t see what the eyes belonged too so, in typical fashion for the two of us, we freaked out. I had been walking slightly ahead of Karina so she shouted at me to move back. I turned around to start walking towards her when I saw her running back to camp. At this point I was reminded of evolutionary theory ‘joke’ that when being chased by a bear you don’t need to be the fastest, you just need to out-run the slowest person! I then began to run as well but running in wellie boots (we wear them at night to protect us from snakes) isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. While I’m still running I see Karina reach camp and start shouting, “There’s an OCELOT or something ON THE FIELD”. Funnily enough, this caught the attention of everyone who was still up and they all came rushing out to look. This meant that as soon as I reached camp I had to start running back to the football field along with everyone else. Karina was still going on about seeing an ocelot, which I didn’t think was right because ocelots are usually solitary. I chipped in with my comment of, “I saw three eyes”. I meant to say three
pairs of eyes but all that running had affected my ability to think/speak properly! When we got to the football field the additional light from everyone’s torches allowed us to identify the owners of the eyes; some deer! Everyone was rather disappointed that they didn’t get to see the three eyed ocelot!
A few days after that rather embarrassing incident, the majority of the researchers at CICRA including Erin, Karina and I were evacuated down to Puerto Maldonado due to a miners strike. The strike was in response to the Government passing a new law making it illegal for gold miners to mine on the Madre de Dios river. Understandably the miners did not like this law and decided to show their anger towards it by striking. In Peru, strikes consist of a large group of angry people intimidating local shop owners and market traders into closing down and the burning down of specific buildings. The reason we were evacuated from CICRA is because we had good reason to believe that angry local miners might try to burn it down as they believe that ACCA (the organisation that owns CICRA) told the Peruvian Government to evict the gold miners because the mercury they use to separate the gold from everything else is damaging the environment. We didn’t want to risk being at the station if this happened so headed down to Puerto where we stayed holed up in a hostel with a week’s supply of fruit, bread and dried noodles. Even thought Puerto was supposed to be the sight of a lot of violence we were perfectly safe in our hostel. Thankfully, after only 4 days of peaceful protesting, the Government stepped in and decided to withdraw the law for six months during which time negotiations can take place with the miners’ unions.
So that explains me being in Puerto Maldonado. Now for the feeling rather ill part. The first few days of being in Puerto were fine but it wasn’t long before illness reared its ugly head and I was yet again confined to the bathroom. This was now the third time in as many weeks that I had been really ill and it made everyone think this might be a little bit serious. Sarah Carbonel managed to buy some local antibiotics for me but they were only a 2 day course and they didn’t help an awful lot. The day before the CICRA boat was planned to head back up river, Sarah took me and Karina (who had gotten sick a couple of days after me) to the hospital I went to before when I had my kidney infection. This time I wasn’t considered an emergency so was subjected to an awful lot of queuing. The first queue was to obtain a numbered ticket to see an appropriate doctor, then we queued to pay so we could see the doctor, then we queued to open a medical file, then we queued to see the triage nurse who took our blood pressure, temperature and weighed us (I’ve lost at least 5kg since January!), then we waited for the doctor to call our number, we then queued to pay for the tests the doctor said we needed before finally queuing to get our blood samples taken! That was a very stressful and boring morning. When I saw the doctor I explained that this was the third time in three weeks I had been sick, which made him slightly concerned. He recommended that as well as giving a blood sample I should produce daily poo samples for the next three days to test for parasites. What fun! This meant that I wouldn’t be able to go back to CICRA the next day. I sent an email to Mini and Gideon, who had stayed at CICRA during the strike, to let them know what was going on. I worked out that I wouldn’t be able to get my results before the 12th April meaning that the first day I could come back on the collectivo would be 13th. Mini suggested that as My Mum is arriving at Puerto on 15th I should just stay in Puerto until then and come back with her on the CICRA boat on 16th.
In the end Karina didn’t end up getting the CICRA boat back on 10th either as she was too ill to spend 5 hours on a boat. The two of us have since been visiting the hospital every morning to drop off my samples(!). Yesterday (Sunday) the labs were closed so they wouldn’t take my sample. This means that we’ll be picking mine and Karina’s results up tomorrow. Rene, one of the Peruvian researchers from CICRA who lives in Puerto, will come with us to help with breaking down the language barrier. I’m a little worried to find out what I’ve actually got! Fingers crossed for some good news.
I’ll let you all know what happens tomorrow.
Lots of Love
Emma and the parasites (possibly)
xxxx
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Suzanne
non-member comment
Poor Emma, You really have had a rough time. I hope the monkeys are making up for it! Hope the parasite news is good and that you have a lovely time with your Mum!