Volunteer comments
I worked as a volunteer at the Maquipucuna Reserve for 5 weeks in the summer of 2001. It was one of the best experiences in my life.
When I first came to the reserve I had kind of a hard time to adapt to the new environment and the way of life. During my stay, I did many different things. From the beginning on I had taken over a project from another volunteer, namely the “guadua project” where you went out in the wood to cut bamboo trees at four special times a day. So I worked on this project 2 or 3 times a week and the other days I helped repairing some steps and at the end taught some English to the guides or the staff children.
Now, after I have been back for quite a while I realize what great impact the stay at Maquipucuna had on me. It changed a lot in the way of my thoughts and my person. One of the best memories I have about the reserve is the people. All the staff members, whether guides or kitchen workers or others, were always friendly and in a good mood. Not only did I improve my Spanish a lot by talking to them, but also I got to know a totally different world. To get into close contact with the people from the communities was a very interesting experience. I often went there on the weekends, to play soccer or just hang around.
After the first days of my stay at Maquipucuna, where I had to get used to the nature, the insects and the darkness at night, I started to love all this and actually had one of the most interesting, crazy and happy weeks in my life there.
Iris Gronau, Germany
My name is Rik Quint and I have been working in the Maquipucuna Reserve from December 2000 until July 2001 as an English teacher on a voluntary base. During that period I gave English classes to the staff of the lodge. There were approximately ten people that I have been teaching. I divided them in two groups: beginners and advanced, although the advanced group was not really advanced, they were just a bit better and seemed a bit more motivated then the beginners group. Apart from those two groups I gave one to one classes to one guy and I taught a couple of kids English in the lodge. All classes took place in the lodge and took one hour each day.
Also I worked every week two mornings in the school of Sta. Marianitas as an English teacher. Here I taught the kids of the elementary school and the teachers.
The teaching was always a lot of fun. I had a good time with my students and although not everybody seemed to learn English as quickly as I hoped, I think I contributed to their needs. Not being a native English speaker I had my doubts about my capability of teaching English when I started. But I didn’t have a lot of problems in my classes because the level of English of the students is rather low. I had taken some study-books and other material from home, made some copies every know and then in the Maquipucuna office in Quito and used my imagination and creativity. The people of Maquipucuna were all very helpful and friendly, I got all the co-operation I needed.
It’s fantastic to live in a small community, working with local people and getting to know everybody really well. The time I spent in Maquipucuna/Sta. Marianitas was a wonderful time and I still think about it often. I lived between the village Sta. Marianitas and the Maquipucuna-lodge. Every day I walked or cycled to the place I was about to start my classes and every day I felt privileged to be able to just be there and do my thing. I can recommend this experience to everybody!
Rik Quint, The Netherlands
•back to top
I have spent almost 6 months at Maquipucuna in two visits to Ecuador, one at the end of 2001 and one mid-2002. I am currently taking a year out between attending school and starting university, where I am reading biology, as is often done in England, and came out to Maquipucuna to help the communities they work with and to experience the rainforest firsthand.
The work I have done with the reserve has been extremely varied, and as a volunteer Maquipucuna have really involved me, helped me develop my skills and made me feel a useful and beneficial part of the foundation’s efforts in conservation of Ecuador’s beautiful, diverse cloud rainforest. There have been two areas that I have worked most heavily in. Teaching English in Sta. Marianitas, the closest village to the reserve, has been greatly rewarding and I have taught classes to the children and teachers at the school there throughout my time in Ecuador, where I established some wonderful relationships I didn’t dream possible across a language barrier that I still have my fair share of problems bridging. I have done a large amount of artwork for the reserve too. This has involved constructing and painting signs, producing shirt designs, painting murals in various towns around the reserve, building papier maché models and much, much more. My work has not been limited to these two areas though, during the months I was at the reserve I have also been seen wielding a machete, building with bamboo, dressed up as a butterfly and working in the organic garden. Despite all the things to do, I have still found time to enjoy the afternoon game of football with the locals in Sta. Marianitas, take some of the many hikes through the forest at the reserve and go swim in the river that runs past the lodge.
I am leaving Ecuador tomorrow to return to England, but I don’t feel I am leaving Maquipucuna. I am involving myself so I can keep helping from home, and the friends that I have made out here in Maquipucuna’s Quito office, at the reserve, in the village and with fellow volunteers are friendships that I will not forget or leave behind. Everything I came out here to help with has, in more ways than I imagined, helped me develop as a person. I leave with the real meaning of ‘Save the Rainforest’, which is something that I hope Maquipucuna, along with others’ help, can continue to successfully do in the future.
Richard Sherrington, England
•back to top
In July of 2001 I came to Ecuador as a volunteer for Foudation Maquipucuna. I committed to six months with the foundation, as through email with the directors I established a number of projects to work on in my field of Natural Resource Interpretation, in which I had graduated from University earlier that year, after a few months I committed to a year, and we worked out a volunteer visa to extend my stay.
My first project was a rewrite of the self-guided trail that the Maquipucuna Reserve has, as the original brochure was over ten years old and in need of revision. After walks on the trail, interviews with guides, and discussion with others in the reserve, I decided on changing a few of the stops and redesign the brochure to accompany the trail. Writing things in two languages presents new difficulties, especially since I began my stay here with such a basic level Spanish, and was basically unable to read or write in Spanish. Through coordination with two other volunteers who were artists, the pictures were redrawn, and I searched for new information. The layout and formatting took a long time, and the revisions were many.
Next I began to work with the foundation and people from the United States to create specialized curriculum for Environmental Education. This is a long-term project to have field trips and classroom activities in both English and Spanish to teach children about the natural world and specifically the cloud forest. It has been such a pleasure working with, through both email and visits to the reserve, educators from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and the University of Georgia. I have learned a mountain of things from this group, in the design of Environmental Education materials, and cooperative work across different cultures. From this experience I now want to return to my home town and begin a
non-profit organization teaching Environmental Education and providing Environmental Interpretation Services.
My third and most rewarding project has been to teach introductory courses in Environmental Interpretation. This involves the techniques that guides use when leading guided walks and groups in the forest. Since I have worked as a park ranger in the United States, and my degree is in this field, I felt qualified to provide these introductory courses. I first had a course in the community of Yunguilla, with their guides. Then taught a course with two individuals from another foundation in the community of Pacto. Following this I helped with a certification course through the foundation Ecociencia. From these experiences I then wrote a course manual for the foundation in Environmental Interpretation. This manual formed the backbone of a two-day course I instructed in Sta. Marianitas for over twenty-five people from around the pilot area where the foundation is working. This proved to be a very rewarding experience, introducing people to the techniques I have learned are vital when connecting visitors to a natural or cultural setting.
In conclusion, unfortunately I have not completed all of the goals I have set out for myself. Yet what I have accomplished, in my work and personal growth, is really important to me.
The life long friendships I have created both in the small community I lived in, and the dedicated staff in the Quito office, are incredible.
Just as so many volunteers I have worked with and spoken to over the past year have expressed. Volunteering for Maquipucuna has been one of the most rewarding and positive experiences of my life. I will leave Ecuador teary eyed and smiling, knowing that I am leaving behind a culture that I
have grown to love, and taking with me a new perspective on life that will
shape my future in a positive way.
Willie Richerson, United States
•back to top
The summer (June – August 2001) I spent at Maquipucuna was the best summer I've ever had. In large part because it was wonderful to be in a small community where everyone knew everyone else but nonetheless welcomed strangers. At Maqui, I started out
sometimes feeling kind of like a tourist. I didn't know the place or the people that well, etc. By the time I left I felt almost like one more of the people working there. The position "volunteer" was really ambiguous, but that also made it flexible, and I liked that a lot. I guess the best friends I made were other volunteers. But I also made plenty friends from other places.
I got to Maqui thinking I was going to just work on the organic
farm they were setting up (the FASE Umachaca). And I did some of
that, about as much as I could. I also worked on a project to determine the
best phase of the moon and the best time of day to cut bamboo for
construction and other projects. It was a really, really interesting
topic and I definitely liked it.
On top of those two projects, I had time for some other ones. So I
started an organic garden at the school in Sta. Marianitas. It got an extremely
slow start; we just planted a few things the day before I left. A few
times I helped other volunteers a bit with their projects, writing names
of medicinal plants, painting murals and after-school games for the kids
in Sta. Marianitas and trying to help teach people about keeping streams clean.
All of the projects were really interesting and I loved working on them.improvement in anything, which has been a big, gradual disappointment.
One day I took a long hike--four or five hours walking in the old pre-Inca trails and got into primary forest and had a great time. Towards the end of my stay free time really blended into project time. I hung out with the little kids a lot,playing and trying to get them to help in the garden, and put together a list of people's ideas about why mingas have become a lot less common in Sta. Marianitas and another list of unusual forage plants. All the way through my stay, I'd chat with night guards and cooks, play cards, etc, in the evenings. And when I had a few free minutes and nothing pressing, I
helped out in the kitchen.
Irena Hollowell, United States
•back to top
|
|
 |
|
