Week One – first three days

Before I start, I still have no mobile phone signal and won't for a while. I think I'll have to get my phone unblocked or buy a temporary one. Email is my only method of contact at the moment. 

I got a bus to La Hesperia at 11.30 and it took almost 3 hours to arrive. I saw the stone arch entrance that I had been told about in the office by Carmen and left my rucksack in the house there as it was a long walk uphill. It took about half an hour and I was sweating a lot by the time I reached the top.

I met Walter, an Ecuadorian worker, here who showed me to the others in the kitchen area which was separate from the dormitory house. I met the other volunteers who were making coffee by grinding and roasting the beans. At this time, I became the seventh volunteer here and there was only one other male. L showed me around the reserve and I saw the vegetable garden, medicinal garden, farm, lagoon, school and part of the forest. I went back to the kitchen and chatted to the others and helped out with grinding the coffee after being given some lunch by the resident chef.

After everyone had finished work for the day at 5pm, they got ready for dinner which is served at 6.

The food was quite good, it is often based on rice and plantains, which is a type of banana. Afterwards, the others went to bed! At 7pm! This seemed a bit strange but they had been working hard today and were all tired. I didn't think I could sleep yet but there was nothing else to do and it was dark with lots of insects flying around so I lay in bed and read my book a bit but by half past 8, I resigned myself to going to sleep.

This was quite a good idea because I woke up naturally at 6, due to the light coming into the room. There are no curtains and part of the wall is a fabric mesh which lets the light in as well as all the insects. I put a mosquito net over my bed which gave protection anyway.

It felt normal getting up at this time and I went down to hand-wash some of my clothes. There is no hot water here so the clothes will never get properly clean and having a shower requires a special technique so you won't freeze.

We went over for breakfast and to find out what the tasks were for the day. A section of the garden needed weeding so I was allocated that with three others. It wasn't too hard but took us the full two and a half hours we had but we cleared it. It was to be used to plant peanuts.

After that we had been enlisted to take part in the school parade. The Hesperia school was part of this foundation and had 13 children aged 3 and 4. They were doing a parade on Saturday and we had to sing the first verse of 'We are the world' as well as dance and clap the children as they danced and so on. I joked that this is what I had just left doing but here I was straight away working with young children. But I enjoyed it of course, although maybe I should have carried Miguel on my shoulders and swung them round after the morning's work...

We had a lot of food for lunch which is necessary with this work and it was good. In the afternoon, J and I had to go and harvest oranges. Walter led us through the trees with a large stick with a hook and we were required to fill a big sack. We struggled to get oranges down and then to pick them up in the undergrowth was a challenge. When we had exhausted one tree, we tried to find our way to two others that he had shown us. It was not easy but we carried on pulling some down. We thought we would never fill the bag but after some time, we had collected enough. J found it hard to carry the bag so I took it most of the way which put even more strain on my arms. I ended up doing more physical work than anyone else and in the evening, my arms were still shaking as I chatted to the others at the house. Now I could see why they go to bed so early...

The next morning, I was aching. My mattress was also sunken which didn't help so my back was hurting the most. Today was going to be planting trees which they said is the most physically demanding job. I really wasn't in the mood for this so managed to secure the job of taking the mule down the road to deliver the milk from the farm. This was a relief but Mula, as he is called, was hard work to get down the hill. To be fair, the stony ground was difficult for him to traverse and he kept stopping to eat the plants. It took an hour and a half to get him all the way down and I found that it was better to stay behind him and hit him with a stick if he stopped. It didn't hurt him as he didn't flinch at all. When we arrived, the villagers were waiting for us and I was bombarded with questions about me and my family and all our ages. They have a book which they get all the volunteers to write in. I even had to write down the prime minister's and queen's names for them as well as making up their ages! They also took some photos of me and the donkey and they were simple but friendly people. It was very pleasant to be with them.

I got back at 11.15 and waited for the others to come back. The tree planting had been hard but we all had to go straight back to the school to rehearse. It went the same as yesterday but I just couldn't pick up the children today. I kept telling them I'd do it tomorrow.

After lunch we had to paint flags on t-shirts, make sweets and signs for the parade. I was given the country of Australia and painted that flag on mine. I helped J with hers as she had trouble painting the UK flag. At least it was better to be able to sit down and not work too hard. I was also due to work in the plant nursery with N but I didn't know where it was. I was going to look for it when I saw N in the kitchen with J and H who were making sweets. We managed to stay in there and take it easy so I was glad to be able to rest today.

After dinner, J, H, C and I played cards in the common room which is actually an open corner of the house. As it was the evening it meant that we had to duck the countless moths that were going crazy around the light. The night before, I went there to read but to avoid insect bites, I wore my rain jacket with the hood up and my trousers tucked into my socks, as N had suggested. I might have looked silly but I didn't get bitten.

I have still been getting mosquito bites in bed. They can find their way through gaps in the net but I just have to learn to live with it here. I've already had loads of bites from things in the garden, too.