A Day in the Life of Alpha 2

Hot on the heels of A Day in the Life of Alpha 3, we bring you A Day in the Life of Alpha 2:

- Up at 7am in the comfortable but smelly surrounding of the goat shed, a bit sore from sleeping on the hard floor.

- After a quick bowl of porridge, we're off to the MESCOT building [the project partners] to catch a boat down the flooded river to our work site. This invariably takes longer than planned. We're laden with three bowls [for washing, rinsing and bleaching mess tins etc] and the various parts of our work site cracker lunch, and usually grumpy from the early morning drizzle.

- Wildlife on the journey consists of anything from hornbills and storks to red leaf monkeys and colobus monkeys in the trees on the banks.

- After our radio check with Field Base we get cracking on the day's work. More recently this has involved filling vast numbers of sandbags with sand and wheelbarrowing them half a km to the far side of the eco lodge. However, in that past we've also shovelled ankle deep mud and fished sandbags out of a waist-deep pool full of leeches, where some rampaging elephants had knocked them in.

- Lunch is a relaxed affair, with lots of snoozing in wheelbarrows and drying of socks, accompanied by copious quantities of crackers and peanut butter.

- Afternoon work is much the same: lots of carrying and grunt work. It's quite a big step up for most of us as it's really hard work, but immensely satisfying at the end of the day when you see what you've accomplished.

- After work is always nice and relaxed as we have a couple of hours free. The options are: having a wash on the jetty; strolling over the bridge into town to have some roti susu and a diary writing session; or just relaxing at the goat shed.

- There's always something different going on for dinner as well. The most basic is staying at the goat shed, cooking and eating outside at the side of the road, much to the annoyance of the occasional passing pick-up truck. There's also a riverside cafe next to the MESCOT building, which serves a sumptuous dish of chicken and noodles with a fried egg on top. We've also had cooking lessons at MESCOT and homestays during our time here.

- Finally, after dinner there's usually some kind of entertainment being put on by the MESCOT guys for the tourists - e.g. martial arts lessons or cultural dancing and music shows - which we're welcome to crash. Otherwise, Mafia is always a great game to fall back on...

- Everyone's generally tucked up in bed by 11 o'clock, reading, diary writing or just getting some much needed sleep for the day ahead.