We all arrived in Iquitos the weekend of the 11th and 12th. We used our time in the city to explore a bit, try some local food, purchase equipment for our project and supplies for the station, and say our last online goodbyes before going downriver.
Our first days in Madre Selva, Devon, our supervisor from Project Amazonas, gave us a tour of the research station where we’ll be living for the next 6 weeks, and introduced us to the local community of Santo Tomas, where the clinic is. We went on several jungle treks, looking for monkeys and parrots, but mostly running into bullet ants and various caterpillars. Nevertheless, we were blown away by the magnificence of the nature around us – particularly the giant fig trees. We walked around the clinic area with Devon and he showed us different local plants, what work had already been done on the clinic, and outlined Project Amazonas’s future plans for the structure. We also went into the school and met the local teachers and said hi to the kids.
Over the next few days we spoke with some local members of the community as well as another group of 3 McGill students doing research in Madre Selva to gather information about what plants should go in the clinic’s medicinal garden, and to get an idea of what the people in the community wanted and visualized for the garden. We used this information to draft maps and outlines and compile the tools and resources we would need to start our work.
We underestimated how many different factors would go into plotting our garden and constantly had to redraw maps and change plans on the fly as we got new and at times differing information about things like plant types (ie bush vs. tree), plant sizes, and ideal growing conditions. This was a little frustrating at times, but through the process we learned a lot about what, where, and whom we’re working with, and at the end of the week we were able to start digging plant beds. Our efforts to gather more information about the local medicinal plants and their uses were rewarded by meeting and talking with local people who were involved in the community. We were welcomed with smiles and it was comforting to know that the people of Santo Tomas truly cared about the work that we were doing there. It felt exciting and rewarding to break soil and officially start. It felt really sweaty too.
The mosquito bites, ants, and humidity have definitely been an adjustment for us as a group coming from Montreal, and in this first week alone we’ve shared some high highs and low lows. (More details here?) We’ve been bonding a lot as a group hanging out together, sharing meals, and watching the Bachelor and Broad City and sharing various movies and books that we brought along. We are big fans of Dona Eloisa’s banana sauce, fresh papaya and bananas, and daily freshly squeezed fruit juices. The daily schedule here is more or less dictated by sunlight, so some broken sleep schedules left over from the spring semester are getting fixed. It was Gen’s birthday the other day and we made a jungle cake and wrote her a card and all spent the evening together; was a 10/10 bday party. Lots of work left to do, so many exciting new opportunities, so many people in the community we still haven’t met, one more very notable birthday coming up. Lots of exciting stuff on the horizon. We will try to develop an official recipe for the Jungle Cake, as it was entirely improvised, but beyond delicious.