Wednesday volunteers have the opportunity to help with community work. That’s why I decided to help the community and experience more of the beautiful jungle.

I was picked up around 8 o’clock outside our house, by Pedro and Sandra that are the parents of 4 of the children I teach in the school of km35. Both of them are Quichua that are living in this area. We walked down the hills and deeper into the jungle for at least one and a half hour until we got to Pedro’s territory. In this area he has all kinds of trees (banana trees, coffee trees, papaya trees, chicha trees). First we started to use our machetes to cut down all the vegetation around the trees, which he wants to let grow and become bigger. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, mostly because there are a lot of different trees that look pretty much the same. So the first hour it was quite difficult to know which one I should cut down or leave.

As we are in the middle of the rainforest, there is a lot of vegetation that needs to be cut down, so there was enough work to do! At around 1 o’clock it started to rain (we’re in the rainforest!) Its feels like someone is standing over you with a big bucket of water and pouring it over you. But when you have been working hard in the hot jungle, the rain is very comfortable. After the rain stopped, we were finished with our work, packed our stuff together and started walking to one of the small rivers they have around in the jungle. When we got there, we walked it up and down to catch freshwater crabs that are on the size of a normal hand. The crabs are very quick and bite really hard if they get the chance to. After they get caught, you boil them and have them for dinner later. Around 3 o’clock we had caught enough crabs, which is why we started to walk home, as I had to be back in time to teach adults at evening class at the school of km35.

The locals where really friendly and happy to show and explain me everything that can be done and found in the jungle. I was lucky to get the possibility to experience the jungle while I was working with the locals. This was really an amazing day here at the Arajuno Road Project.

By Edvard Daniel Overland, 13 of December 2009