Comunicazione di servizio

It is amazing how one (or I) adjusts to different living conditions. I sometimes realize that some aspects of life in the field station are very different from, say, life in NJ or Italy. So I feel I should describe some of them to prepare people planning on visiting. I really don’t want to discourage anybody, but if one is seriously arachnophobic, for example, it would be an unpleasant surprise to find that we sleep in bed made of spiders.. (kidding)

So, here is a list:
- Mice: there are many mice. Even some you could call rats. But they are forest mice, not the nasty, disease-ridden city ones. Still, there is no way to keep them out of your room (unless you wage a full-scale war). Sometimes they run around while you sleep, fight, eat things you wouldn’t expect (like half of my bar of soap). When we finish eating and leave the plates aside, animals are attracted to it. Mice, squirrels, and tree-shrews, which are a cool and taxonomically very interesting animal (they are related to primates, sort of. Squirrels with a fire red tail, for those who don’t care about phylogeny), fight for the leftovers.
- Fighting for food, too, but on the ground, are large monitor lizards. They are usually afraid of people, so no problem with them (they may startle you when they run away noisily).
- There are some big and fast spiders, not many, and they disappear when they see you.
- There are some snakes, sometimes. Mainly pythons. The others usually go away when you approach.
- Sometimes there are invasions of flying termites, which are attracted by the light.
- We usually wash in the river. When the water is too murky due to heavy rain and currents, there is a well, from which we take out water and we shower in the bathrooms. Of course, no hot water and no proper shower, little pans to grab water and throw it on yourself. The water is not always crystal clear. We agree that after going through that we will consider ourselves clean.
- There are two bathrooms for about 15 people. But we are all in the forest for most of the day, so I never had any problem with it. We had peaks of 34 people, but they usually camp in the forest and use the river.
- Mattresses and pillows have conducted a long and exciting life in the forest, which leaves traces on them (a little bit musty, not the best examples of fluffiness).
- Electricity only about 3 hrs per day.
- It may rain a little bit inside the room.
- To get to the station, after leaving the roads, there is a 1-hour (+- 1hr, depending on the trail condition and speed of the party) walk in the forest. If you thought of bringing a TV set (which wouldn’t have been a good idea), you would have to carry it by yourself (actually there are porters who will carry your luggage if you want). The bright side of this, is that once you are there, you are really into the forest. One siamang group sleeps right above my room. Which is very romantic, until you learn that the first thing siamangs do in the morning is poo, and they are large animals, and a heavy “object” falling from 40m high into a corrugated iron roof makes an awful lot of noise. Especially at 4.30am.
- WCS, the organization running the station charges 10US$/day to stay there. This includes accommodation and food. It is expensive, but they have to carry everything on foot, and have cooks to pay. And the place is “aaawesome”.
- After a long and delicate bargaining with the Park officers, here is the deal I managed to obtain. Visitors may stay a maximum of 7 days in the forest without going though the nightmarish procedure of obtaining a permit, and without being followed by a ranger (which is great, since they are expensive and annoying). The only thing you will be asked to pay is a tourist entrance fee, which amounts to $1.5, so that is feasible.
- Diet consists of a lot of rice. Really a lot. Then fish, many vegetables (not much fresh), chicken (if the monitors don’t kill them before the cooks do). The base is not very spicy, you then can increase it by adding sambal, a hot seasoning.

If more comes to mind, I will add them. Again, I don’t want to discourage but give a clear picture of what to expect (the negative parts).