The Social Scene and Final Thoughts

Despite the extreme conditions and hard work or maybe because of them, we definitely made sure to have a good time in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is located about 20 miles away and was our refuge for electricity and alcohol. Getting there meant ensuring that we ate our dinner within 15 minutes so that we could catch the 7pmish bus there. I've tried hitching after that time with no luck. Getting back, we usually caught the 10pmish bus or hitched, or I would wake up a taxi guy to take us back.


Overall, I really enjoyed the people I met and the community we created. The long-term volunteers take on further responsibility in organizing the weekly and daily tasks for the other volunteers, monitoring the candy shop, and settling new volunteers in. I was even lucky enough to meet and dance with Juan Carlos, the founder of Inti Wara Yassi. Interestingly enough, he knows Dr. Patricia Blanco with whom I worked on the Bolivian diabetes education. They are both Ashooka Fellows, a prestigious non-profit award from the States. I especially enjoyed meeting the local Bolivian teenagers and they quite appreciated that I spoke Spanish to them since they didn't speak any English. I am amazed that at age 14 or so, they are able to care for these wild animals and appropriately train them.


My cabin, Cochabamba, was mainly for the short-timers. It was the biggest cabin fitting 10 people and the dirtiest especially since the chanchos lived beneath us. We always joked that we wanted to roast the chanchos and Alan 2 even tried to start a "death to chanchos" campaign. I'm not sure that ever fully took off, but it became the running joke of our cabin. At one point, we tried to board up all the undersides of the cabin to ensure that they wouldn't enter. We felt a little bad watching them trying to get back to their house. Somehow, they eventually outsmarted us and made their way back in. In Santa Maria, we danced to lively 80's music and often changed the words of songs to include the chanchos. My favorite was "i want to be a chancho, chancho man..." Yes, we were a little obsessed with these creatures. On my last day, I gathered the cabin and the chanchos up for a final photo below.

One Saturday, we even had a barbecue to raise money to buy new land. Everyone participated in either donating some service or in buying something. It became a night of drunken controversy. I became one of 3 winning bidders to spend a night sleeping with the 3 sister pumas that I work with. However, in the end, Naomi,the manager, who tends to be overly emotional, canceled the whole thing because she felt like no one was happy with the result. She failed to realize that everyone, but she, was happy with the final result. Oh well, Inti Wara Yassi lost out on what would have amounted to about $960, the amount we needed for the deposit on the new land. Instead, we continued the auction on another night and raised about $960 in total with all the other items that included Spanish lessons, a massage, volunteer slave for a day, breakfast for a week, peanut butter, no morning chores for a week, seeing a couple of the jaguars, etc. I ended up buying a jungle facial and spa experience from Laura, from Finland, and Lauren, from France for about $16. We had a great time with it too. They used oatmeal and cucumbers on me and acted extremely professional the entire time calling me "madam". We could not stop laughing throughout, which made it hard for the oatmeal and cucumbers to stay on my face. All in all, I enjoyed my time there, and am still hoping my scar on my cheek from when Inti dragged me through the jungle goes away.


In terms of final thoughts, Inti Wara Yassi provides a very unique experience to care for wild animals and no previous experience is required. I worry though about the psychological and physical damage that can occur when the wild animals decide to lash out on the volunteers. I don't think people realize just how easy this can happen. Given that the training is always done with whichever volunteer is working with the animal at the time, you are never sure if you are being properly trained. I found out the hard way after being yelled at by Naomi that I wasn't properly feeding the pios. Better training is much needed at this organization to ensure better safety for both the animals and the volunteers.

At the moment, it appears to me that Inti Wara Yassi is just collecting cats. There is no long term strategy for release and more efforts could be put forward towards prevention. A lot of work goes into caring for these animals and I think the animals should be used to show the public that buying wild animals from the black market only causes them harm. They are better left in the wild. I am told that the new park that we just raised money for will have more educational efforts. Still, there is no release program. The Bolivian government will not allow them to release a cat into the jungle and so these cats will now need to be cared for until they die, which is probably in about 15 years. How sustainable is this though? Will Inti Wara Yassi be able to buy enough jungle and have enough volunteers to care for these animals indefinitely? I guess time will tell. Overall, I really feel grateful, privileged and honored to have had the opportunity to engage in such an interesting experience with such gorgeous animals. At the same time, I think my time is better spent working with street kids and the poor probably because I put a higher value on people than animals and I don't think the kids will bite me or at least they haven't so far.