Jungle Living
Trip Start
Sep 16, 2007
1
49
87
Trip End
Ongoing
Pakal Na,
Mexico
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
I´ve been working as a volunteer on this farm to learn a little about organic farming and to experience life in the rainforest. There are 8 of us working on the land here, mainly young folk from the US, Canada, France and Britain. So far my duties have involved digging irrigation ditches, transplanting seedlings, building a roof out of bamboo, cleaning water tanks and putting up a barbed wire fence.
I´m sleeping in my hammock and am lulled to sleep by the sweet sounds of howler monkeys roaring their prehistoric guttural belches and shitting on my tarp. I am woken up by the world´s most irritating parrot, whose species has been perfecting the alarm-clock squawk since time began.
It is a beautiful place, and the jungle is full of life. I am learning a lot about the area and am spending good times with the other volunteers.
There is a railway line that runs through Pakal Na. The freight train that stops in town every few days comes in loaded with modern-day boxcar riders, mainly Honduran, Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan migrants on their way to a "better" life in the US. I stopped to talk to some of these people and share my sticky buns with them. It is a hard road they´re travelling, facing violent policemen, going several days without food and riding open top wagons in the blazing heat and torrential rain. Many were just kids, 14 or 15 years old. Others were whole families. All were positive about their future and laughed and joked while they could. I have more respect for these people than anybody else I have met in recent months. I wished them luck.
