Moral Courage
Today was our first full day in the community that we will work with for the next 3 days. Our service projects today involved fixing and painting the stands next to their soccer field, painting school buildings and painting their water tower. We worked alongside community members and (attempted) to have conversations and talk with the adults and kids. As we worked, it became clear that the community members really loved their community and were very proud of it. The mayor of the community worked alongside us and helped everyone with their tasks, which exemplified our theme of today, moral courage. His presence and involvement with our experience helped all of us feel supported by the leaders of the village. After our tasks were completed we ate lunch in the (somewhat) cool shade. It was a welcome break from the hot hot sun. Although there is never a break from the humidity (which is quite the adjustment for those of us from places with no humidity), the afternoon was filled with playing games with the people from the community, kids and adults alike. We played several games with hula hoops, soccer, tug of war and had sack races. Once we finished our games we headed back to the lodge and on the way enjoyed the lovely views of the rainforest and the river. Many people were gathered on the riverbank as we passed by who we waved to. Back at the lodge we were greeted by adorable squirrel monkeys who were feasting on bananas left out by the staff here. Before dinner we all enjoyed down time, some of us told stories in the hammocks while others rested. We had an amazing chicken dish for dinner and then headed to the boat for our night nature tour. The tour was watched by an almost full but still bright moon as well as many stars. Not many animals were visible to us but we did see several sleeping birds and a frog. The bugs, however, made themselves very well known to us; we saw several BIG spiders, a leaf katydid, several moths who were bigger than the hummingbirds we saw, sleeping butterflies, and of course, more spiders. We’re not spider fans here. We’re not large spider fans here. We’re also not swimming spider fans here. There’s nothing quite like looking to the side and seeing a spider doing a breaststroke towards you— I think we all would like to forget that bit. While trying to forget the the spiders we saw we headed to the showers to find ANOTHER very large spider, after seeing the spiders on the boat trip it was a spider overload. Aside from general heebie jeebies we all settled in for another night in the Amazon.
Authors: Lily H & Isa R-W