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We've been at Matang Wildlife Centre for 6 days and today is our first day off. Emma really loves it, Lucynda describes it as 'interesting'.
The people from London Zoo, Keith and Caroline, are really nice, informative and fun to work with. The other volunteers are nice too, though they're all much younger than us.
The centre is more 'zooy' than we'd expected and the conditions that some of the animals are kept in are very distressing, but we are all working towards improving things to make life more bearable for them. Most of the animals are not candidates for release, for numerous reasons, which we have had to come to terms with.
Ways in which we are helping the animals include making platforms, rope ladders and other things for them to play on in their enclosures. Two Australian bear and primate experts are devising 'enrichment programs' to keep the animals occupied and stimulated. Things like scattering and hiding food, puzzle boxes, ice blocks of food etc make their days more interesting.
The accomodation has the potential to be really quite nice but its pretty dirty and very basic, though we're getting used to it. Me and Lucynda have our own chalet, which is nice foir the privacy, and the others are opposite us. We get filthy dirty and sweaty everyday and the showers are cold. We have to scrape out poo and hose down the cages twice a day. We are trying our hands at carpentry and enjoying using the power tools! Lots of heavy work, which we enjoy, but also time to watch and play with the animals.
Highlight so far was discovering a rare, soft shelled turlte and then releasing it back into the wild, followed imediately by the lowpoint which was carrying the poor, scrawny chickens to their death - the hungry crocodiles. Both events were tear jerking.
In our spare time we do endless washing of work clothes, cooking our own food (yummy!), shooing off the wild cats, and bonding with our fellow volunteers, which usually involves beer and word games and a swim in the river.
Thankyou for all your emails we love to get them, sorry there are no individual responses as yet but we dont have much time and everything is very slow here.
Enjoy the pics. Lots of love Emma and Lucynda. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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