Spiders, wild horses and long drops

It is half seven on a Sunday night, and along with the rest of the staff in Turrialba, I have been released from Fieldbase for a couple of hours to make contact with the rest of the world. My first 5 days on Raleigh have been exhausting. Arriving at camp with a few others who I had met up with in San Jose, we were shown our 9-man army tents dripping with humidity and spiders. Wooden crates for the floor and black bin liners on top to cover the many holes. No matter how pretty we told each other we had made it with mosquito nets strung from makeshift ropes, it just didnt cut it as home. But, home it has been for us since we have been there. It has been quite an intense social and learning experience so far. We get up at half 5 and get to bed at half nine or ten. Every hour of every day is filled with lectures or practical workshops. I can now string up and tune a radio, I can recite the phonetic alphabet, I can sort out a casualty witha broken femur, carry a stretcher half a kilometer up a jungle track, cross a river with a 20kg pack on, build a basher which wont collapse half way through the night (I was nervous) and dig a long drop for 8 people which wont impact the environment. I can also survive on rice and beans 3 times a day, 5 hours sleep and no time at all to myself. It is amazing how quickly you get used to living so squalidly. 5 days ago, fieldbase seemed run down, dirty, uncomfortable and bleak. Now it feels like a 5 star hotel, having spent the last couple of days living in the mud in the jungle.

Tomorrow I am off to Conte Buricka, (sp?) on the Panamaian boader. It will take a couple of days to get there, and I go with a medic and a translator as we are going to be working within an indiginous reserve with people whose first language isnt Spanish but a language all to themselves, maybe filled with clicks and mad eye rolls, who knows. Once we get dropped off in Panama, we are met by someone whose name begins with Don...and then taken 8 or 9 hours trekking along the coast between tides, before we can climb the hill - mountain up to the reserve. Having just survived jungle camp I do feel quite prepared for this, which is great as 5 days ago I was quite keen to trip over and accidentaly cut myself on a machete, and get Casivak´ed back to the UK (Casivac is our term for Casualty Evacuation). My resolve held and I am glad. I am pretty excited about getting there and having this experience and I am getting increasingly excited about the venturers getting here and getting started.

Next update: Panama