The Extra Mile Adventure

January, 14th 2009-
Winding our way down a narrow, dark, country Oaxacan road we arrived at Divertingranja Zoo well past sunset last night. Getting a full nights rest after a days bout of sickness, I woke up feeling better and with a beautifully rich, pink sunrise to greet the new day. As is often the case, Blitz and I were the only two awake to appreciate the warming sky and after the sun was well above the silhouette of the mountains we started preparing breakfast. With peacocks roaming in front of the campstove, I had one of the most relaxing and fulfilling meal preparations of the trip so far. Cooking in a rickety, open-air wooden shack with animals roaming at your feet and birdsongs chiming in the new day is a feeling hard to explain unless you are present. Everyone slowly woke up, ate a hearty breakfast and we started a long days work. I had been itching to break a sweat. It had been a week or so since we have worked on a project that required physical labor and since we are here to build animal cages, dig trenches and construct fences- plenty of sweat will be shed. We started the workday with an orientation where some of us were put in wheelchairs and some of us were blindfolded to simulate the everyday experience of the community that Divertingranja Zoo reaches out to. I was one of the blind and guiding myself by feel and voice was a beautiful reminder to be ever grateful for my sight. It was an amazing sensation and lesson in the trust of others as well as one’s own self-reliance. After the exercise, a group of us grabbed shovels, pickaxes and rakes and started clearing the ground of bamboo and digging trenches for foundations and poles. After 4 days of cloud cover we had apparently brought the sunshine because it was rising high in the sky and everyone’s skin was getting darker by the minute. Sam and David (whom we had picked up the day before in Oaxaca City) worked with Ruben, the local hand who has answers to everything around here, to dig holes and set poles for the volunteer structure. After Amanda, Alison, Liz, Katie, Sam and I cleared the ground of debris, Blitz, Tony, Ulisses and I spent a solid two hours digging trenches, feeling the muscles in our backs and shoulders get worked with each swing of the pickaxe. Morgan and Shelley handled the machete and cut down bamboo for the walls and then the heat of the day justified a siesta. It was lunchtime and some people ventured into the sleepy town for food which proved to be hard to find during siesta hour but we all ate well nonetheless. When Amanda and I returned from town we found Blitz and Sam still working like madmen. All the poles had been set in cement for the volunteer hut and half of the trenches had been dug for the rabbit enclosure. I was on my way to help them finish up when Amanda called me into the bus with a wary voice…I found thousands of flies lining the walls of Patricia buzzing in intimidating force. Little black, pesky flies covering our bed and our belongings- oddly enough everything but our food. So much for helping Blitz and Sam finish up in the dirt, we ended up spending the next hour with a handkerchief over our faces and a broom in the air swatting them out into the open and trying to secure the bus from further attack. Apparently this wasn’t the first time for someone or something to be attacked by flies here at Divertingranja. Even with the attack of the flies, a lot of progress had been made for one day and after the clearing of fly carcasses from the bus people started to wind down their workday. The sun set and the air temperature was dropping with each passing hour, people were tired from a hard days work and full from a delicious meal prepared by Ulisses. Bedtime approached and we will wake up and do it all over again. I love a hard days work and it’s so fulfilling to be doing something that gets your hands dirty for the betterment of a community in need.
For the animals at Divertingranja…..
Peace and gratitude.
Hannah