13/01/2013 - Listing My Life Away
A month
without volunteers at Curieuse has been very productive – if a little quiet.
The down time has allowed staff to regroup and organize the many components of
our terrestrial projects as well as give our base a little TLC. When we haven’t
been cracking on with surveys or sweating through some fix-it projects, we’ve
been spending a lot(probably an embarrassing amount) of time creating lists –
To Do, favorite bird species, favorite cheese joke, and a re-organized to do
list: urgent vs not completely urgent.
Now,
with new volunteers arriving and the recent appearance of
two new scholars, camp is abuzz with excitement because whether we’ve been here
for one week or two months, all of us are absolutely head over heels in love
with this island and we can’t wait to show it off.
So
here’s one more list: the things we’ve done in the past month and why we can’t
wait for the volunteers to arrive.
- Sat in awe • This wasn’t really on
our to do list but we keep catching ourselves and each other staring at our
surroundings and the views are always better when shared.
- Painting • The dorms, volunteer chill
out area and other exposed wood around camp have been re-stained. The place
looks super spiffy (if we say so ourselves) and now we need our new vollies to
use those areas to make it all worthwhile.
- Bird watching, sea turtle
hatchlings and mangrove transects • We’re starting up some really cool new
field work, including bird watching and now that everything is organized, we
need manpower and buddies to help us collect our data.
- Recipe Book • Jaime, one of our
scholars, recently revamped the recipe book and we can’t wait to have some
guinea pigs to try some of our food ideas out on – for carrot cake, we can just
stick a whole carrot in the middle of the cake batter, right?
- Read Scientific Journals • We’ve
read up on some of the plants and animals that can be found on Curieuse and now
we’re eager to share those facts with a brand new audience. Those annoying
palms that have spikes under their leaves developed them as protection from the
giant land tortoises. Cool, huh?
- New water tank • Thanks to
volunteer feedback, we were able to replace the rain water collection tank by
the kitchens. It’s made a big difference and today’s stormy weather has started
to fill it up. Tea anyone?
- Drains • This one probably won’t
make it on the base tour, but my co-workers have spent a lot of sweat and
energy on something that I and probably most volunteers rarely think about. So
here’s a shout out to them for making camp life better for all of us.
- Screamed • Being alone in an
abandoned leper colony is a little scary but when there are a bunch of people
around it’s ridiculously cool. So really, volunteers
can’t get here quick enough.
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