Volunteering at Merazonia Animal Reserve — A Travel Tale — Description

After only a few days here, volunteering at Merazonia Animal Reserve, I now have grease monkey fingernails!

Wednesday, which was Day Two for me volunteering at Merazonia, was spent building scaffolding for the construction of the aviary.

More sawing, searching for wood, planting poles into the mud to brace our scaffold, climbing the scaffolding to secure the braces, hammering…

It felt like a less productive day because results weren’t immediate, but the scaffolding did get completed and it’s sturdy.

Enough, anyway.

We started building this aviary while I was volunteering at Merazonia.
Aviary

I was so much sorer Thursday than I was Wednesday!

Was I ever happy when I awoke to pouring rain. Yes, a day off!

Or so I thought.

Rain never lasts long around here, so we only left for Merazonia an hour later than usual.

Still, thankfully for my aching muscles, Jen and Frank asked us volunteers to “paint” the underside of the house with a mixture of tar and gasoline, which supposedly protects the wood against termites and which seems to have permanently sullied my fingernails.

Hacienda-style volunteer house at Merazonia Animal Reserve.
Volunteer house at Merazonia

I don’t know that I feel great about it all, can’t be good for the environment, that stuff seeping into the ground and getting into the waterways. Sigh.

It’s not that I like cutting down trees either, but how else are you supposed to build things? At least we use fallen trees as much as possible.