Braver Than You Think

by Maggie Downs

  Though I’m not tired, I blow out the candle and try to fall asleep; then I hear a small noise gradually growing louder. There’s a fiesta outside, a loud, raucous party with dancing and singing. The Taquileños must be drunk to be having such fun on a night that is so punishingly cold.

  I tried to sleep through a festival a few nights ago in Lima, my last moments with Jason. That sleep was fitful and achy, soaked with tears. The festivities only served as a cruel reminder that other people were happier than me. Tonight, however, I am lulled by the sound of pan flutes and drums as villagers march around the island’s winding paths, the slap of sandals against stone.

  I still miss Jason, of course. It’s the hollow situated just under my rib cage, a place of echoes and rustling leaves, but I’m starting to see how I can live with that feeling there. That ache is becoming a part of me.

  Don’t Let the Monkeys Get You Down

  MY NEXT DESTINATION IS VILLA TUNARI, AND I ARRIVE BY minibus, a twelve-hour journey from La Paz, Bolivia, crammed between a bulky man and an old woman who occasionally fondles my nose piercing and laughs. When we reach the tiny jungle town, the driver pauses on a bridge with no shoulder, ushers me out of the bus, and points up the road to a series of small, flat buildings.

  I am here to volunteer at a primate sanctuary. The gig is with a non-profit organization that runs a wildlife sanctuary in this remote community that is surrounded by rainforest and overgrown coca fields.

  My mother always had a soft heart for monkeys, filling my lunch box with sock-monkey stickers, and she dreamt of seeing one up close, so this feels right: sunshine, an exotic jungle locale, as many bananas as I can eat, and monkeys everywhere.

  The people who run the organization are laid-back and noncommittal. When I sent an email last week to ask if I needed to commit to a volunteer date, they responded with a terse message: “No.” When I pressed them for more details, they replied with a sheet of frequently asked questions, including a warning about the village’s only cash machine. If it is broken, and it often is, the closest ATM is eight hours away. They also recommended bringing enough packaged snacks, medicine, and hygiene products to last the entirety of my stay, since the village markets don’t sell much beyond fresh produce and watery beer. I am required to stay a minimum of fourteen days.

  I’m anxious, watching the minibus skitter away, and I don’t even know if this is the right town. By the time I reach the buildings, I’m sweaty and red-faced but relieved to find it’s the correct place. The volunteer coordinator, an Aussie named Noel, takes my passport and ATM cards to store them in a safe.

  “You won’t need those for a while,” she says with a wink.

  Noel then takes me to the sanctuary’s thrift store, where volunteers rent tattered clothing so our own gear won’t be ruined by the work. For just a few dollars, I pick up long-sleeve button-down shirts to keep me covered from the sun; khakis durable enough to resist jungle thorns; knee-high galoshes for hiking through mud and monkey feces.

  Wearing somebody else’s clothes is transformational, and I wish my mom could see me now. I am no longer the delicate flower who drank martinis in Palm Springs and wore high heels at galas and press events. In these borrowed clothes, I am a new Maggie—a wilder, fiercer version of myself, a rugged me I’ve never met before.

  My room is narrow and made of concrete bricks, painted that particular pink-yellow of cat vomit, topped by a roof ringed with moisture stains and mildew. There is only one door, and it is attached by just one hinge on its lower right side. The bottom of the door has rotted away, leaving a hole shaped like an upside-down U. When I close my door each night, I have to reach through the hole and pull an old tire close to block it, so wild animals won’t wander inside. Still, I wake up some mornings and find stray kittens with weepy eyes snuggled up in my piles of clothes. The window has a curtain made of shredded black plastic garbage bags.

  My bed has a frame, but the mattress is hard and dusty, stuffed full with some kind of grain. It is filthy enough that I roll out my sleeping bag on top and sleep inside. The combination, however, is surprisingly comfortable.

  Noel tells me the area surrounding the animal sanctuary is steeped in the narcotics trade, home to large fields of coca plants. Army helicopters, looking for crops, often circle overhead. It doesn’t feel dangerous, though. This is a battle waged on someone else’s land, and I have no reason to worry.

  I am assigned to work in Monkey Park, an area where about 400 abused and mistreated monkeys, most of them seized from the illegal exotic pet trade, are being reintroduced into the wild. Nearly all of them live in the jungle without cages, but they stick around because the sanctuary provides fresh produce and vitamin-laced porridge twice a day.

  My job includes washing fruit and chopping melons for the three daily feedings, filling buckets with bananas, shoveling enormous piles of monkey waste, and cleaning the cages of forty spider monkeys. (Those monkeys are particularly valuable to poachers and traders, so they are the only ones caged and locked away each night.)

  Every other day I am also on blanket duty, which means I have to clean the four-by-five-foot pieces of wool that line the cages of the quarantined monkeys. One by one, I scrape feces off each thick blanket and scrub away the stink and disease with a bar of lye and a brush. Then I dunk the sudsy blanket in a bucket of hot water before hanging it on a clothesline in the trees. It is hard work, but it’s satisfying. Sometimes I don’t even sing or think. I just appreciate the way a pile of dirty fabric transforms into 200 clean blankets, dripping and drying on the lines. The skin on my hands peels raw, and I don’t mind at all.

  Up until this point, my entire life has been separated from physical labor, other than helping around the house or weeding the occasional garden. My adult years have been spent in classrooms, newsrooms, or the mall, shelving books at a library, making espresso at a coffee shop, or writing at a computer. This work, however, is a revelation—my muscles are sore from shoveling and scrubbing, I pant and wheeze while carrying buckets into the jungle, and I grit my teeth as I chop and prepare food. There is pleasure in finishing each task.

  My mother has told me stories about growing up in Germany, where she worked in the fields to provide for her mother, sister, and grandparents, planting seeds, picking potatoes, plucking freshly slaughtered chickens. It makes me feel more connected to her, appreciating her hard work on a level I never experienced before. Her decades of labor meant that I was offered the privilege of avoiding it.

  When I finish each shift, I am covered in sweat, mud, and mosquito bites. My fingernails are broken. My cuticles are encrusted with too much dirt to wash away, even when I use a pocketknife to scrape around each crescent. Dinner feels earned.

  THERE ARE NO MIRRORS IN THE VOLUNTEER LIVING QUARTERS, but if there were, I probably wouldn’t recognize myself. In the humidity my curly hair quickly goes wild, all tangled and scraggly. There’s barely any running water either—the town has been suffering from a drought, so the rare and wonderful shower days are something to be celebrated.

  I have been at the sanctuary for one week, and a good portion of every glorious day is spent playing with monkeys. Romeo, a tiny capuchin, often curls around my neck like a living, breathing fur stole. Around ten inches tall, he is smaller than most of the other monkeys, so he fears them. When bigger capuchins come near, Romeo clings to me tightly. He chirps in my ear and tugs at my hair to groom me, as though I’m one of his own.

  Anita, a fat capuchin, likes to munch her food and stare at me with her hypnotic dark eyes until I look at her. As soon as I return her gaze, she leaps toward my face, sticks a finger up my nose, then scurries away.

  Martina, a barrel-shaped monkey with tufts of dark hair around her jawline like an Amish beard, brings me gifts of rocks. One day when I am sitting, Martina scrambles onto my lap and tugs on my fingers until my hand rests against her belly. I leave it there. A few seconds later, I’m surprised to feel a baby stirring inside her womb. I don’t know if this behavi
or is typical for monkeys, but to me it feels special.

  Monkey Park is one small sliver of the sprawling property, which houses more than 700 creatures of all shapes and sizes. Because it is Bolivia’s only animal sanctuary, nearly every abused, mistreated, or illegally traded exotic animal in the country is sent here, creating a Noah’s Ark–esque collection of pumas, leopards, coatis, bears, birds, and monkeys.

  The situation for the already crowded sanctuary is poised to grow even more strained. In July 2009, Bolivia passed a law that declared the use of animals in circuses constituted an act of cruelty, and they passed a ban throughout the country—the first ban on circus animals in the world.

  Circus operators were given a year to comply with the law, which meant that they had to get rid of their animals by July 2010. My work at the sanctuary began in August 2010. While I’m there, dozens of animals arrive every day, either turned over by owners or the police.

  One monkey, brought in on my second day in the park, had been raised to be a performer. His owner dressed him up in tiny clothes and forced the animal to dance on an electric hot plate. Another monkey had been nearly starved to death by owners who didn’t know how to care for him. They kept him in a small box until his howls for help grew too loud and irritating. One of the park’s pumas was nearly crippled after jumping through hoops of fire at an illegal circus. His paws were still crispy when he arrived.

  TODAY THE SUN IS BRILLIANT AND ONLY SLIGHTLY FILTERED by the trees. Green branches and knobby vines weave cathedral-like arches above my head. Tropical birds sing, and monkeys somersault through the air. Then the people with machetes arrive.

  The campesinos, or farmers, number more than 125 men, women, and even children, all wielding blades. They have been hired by the village government to build a road through the sanctuary, even though the animal refuge has been a part of the local community since 1996. They position themselves along the trail and chop rapidly and haphazardly.

  It seems like only seconds before the trees tumble. Every horrifying crackle creates a wide hole in the jungle skyline. It doesn’t take long before the tree-lined trails look more like mulch.

  An Australian volunteer and I push our way through the campesinos, grabbing monkeys from falling trees. The animals’ cries sound similar to those of frightened babies. The howls are haunting and unsettling.

  The workers swing their blades toward the monkeys, taunting them. When a mother and baby monkey become trapped in a cage of downed branches, one man steps toward them and brings his machete down like a guillotine, catching the baby on the foot. The older monkey howls as the baby screeches in pain. Another group of men shove a spider monkey into a metal garbage can, then spit on the animal while he cowers. I fight for the animals the best way I know how, by shepherding them to safety, but I sure wish I had a machete of my own.

  This new road is supposed to slice directly through the center of the park, displacing hundreds of animals, damaging the delicate jungle ecosystem and destroying the “monkey mirador” area, where violent monkeys are rehabilitated. An official from the village says heavy equipment will show up within a few days to flatten the lush area.

  The goal for this road is to create quick, easy access for the local coca farmers to bring their products to bigger communities. Part of this is good. Coca is an important crop in this region of South America, and there are many legitimate uses for it. It’s such an important crop that in the 1990s, one out of every eight Bolivians were cocaleros, making their living from coca cultivation.

  Of course, there are illegal uses for the plant as well. When the leaves are steeped in kerosene and processed with sulfuric acid, the natural crop is turned into cocaine. The government is looking to eradicate the larger farms that exceed what is needed for traditional uses of coca, the places where a plant becomes an illegal drug.

  The Bolivians who run the sanctuary gather all the volunteers in the food warehouse to give us an update. They claim the farmers need the road for an easy route to the highway. Trafficking cocaine and making money is the priority to the local village. Not the animals.

  Romeo clings to my neck as I pluck another spider monkey baby from a trash bin. More trees fall around us. I have never seen the monkeys so terrified.

  A previous attempt was made by the village government to construct a road through the park, but it washed out during a landslide in the rainy season. Managers at the sanctuary expect something similar to happen this time around. No plans have been made for better construction. There is nothing long-sighted about the people here now, chopping down trees.

  The distance between home and where I’m standing has never seemed greater. No one tells you this at the start of a journey—that the gap between places can widen so far, it’s possible you’ll never go back to the place you were.

  Three days after the campesinos ravage the jungle, the monkeys remain anxious and unsettled. I don’t blame them. The tree line now looks like a smile with several teeth knocked out. Large swaths are missing, and it’s more difficult for the monkeys to leap from bough to bough. The trails are obscured by broken branches.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” says an Australian volunteer.

  A young woman named Megan, a former police officer from England, sits on the ground, hugs her knees to her chest, and cries.

  “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” she says.

  Though the volunteers expected the bulldozers to show up already, they have not. We try to maintain our routine as best as possible, but it’s difficult when everyone is anxious. Every morning we expect to find another piece of jungle absent. We barely talk anymore during the daily chores.

  I am just about to leave for my own lunch after the mid-morning feeding when a stocky monkey named Reno jumps onto my lap. Reno is the approximate size and shape of a basketball. He’s all muscle, but his fur is as soft as a plush toy.

  When I stroke his back, he snuggles deep into the crease between my legs and hips. He’s not typically a cuddler, so this is a treat. I decide lunch can wait. The sun is shining, and the air smells like fresh rain and papaya. I am content here.

  Without warning, Reno hops up and urinates on my thighs. Before that has time to register, Reno hops to the ground, grabs my arms, and sinks his teeth into the flesh of my left hand. It is sudden and shocking, and I inhale sharply but don’t make a sound. This isn’t like Reno.

  The bites become increasingly vicious and quick, aggressive enough to make an audible sound as fang hits bone, and pain dawns on me. I yawp with fear, but I don’t know how to defend myself against the unpredictability of a creature I thought I knew. Reno’s eyes are wild as he looks up at me, and my thoughts are equally wild. I’m afraid that he might leap onto my face, claw my eyes, rip the hair from my head. He is small but strong.

  My long shirtsleeve falls down my arm and covers my skin, and Reno lifts the fabric away, exposing me again. When I try to pull away, he yanks my hand closer, biting down again, gnawing farther up my arm. When blood flows, Reno laps it up like melted ice cream on the side of a cone.

  My face is red and hot, and I can’t stop myself from screaming.

  “The fuck?” I yell.

  Just as he eyes my neck and leaps to my shoulder, another volunteer walks into Monkey Park. The sound scares Reno away. I am shaky, and the volunteer puts an arm around my waist and helps me walk down the rocky path toward the main road. He brings me a bottle of water, and then he must get back to work.

  I walk by myself from the sanctuary into the small town, about two miles away, the closest place to find help. My wounds are still open and bleeding. I am too stunned to panic.

  My first stop is the hospital, but I leave when a receptionist says they cannot promise me clean needles. “Is that okay?” he asks, but I am already walking away. I determine antibiotics are more important than stitches.

  On the main street I approach strangers for help, sounding out the word for “pharmacy” in hesitant Spanish.

  “Fa
r-mah-SEE-yah?” The blood runs down my hand in hot, slender rivers.

  One by one, each person casts a downward glance. Some shrug and walk away. They want nothing to do with the crazy, bleeding lady. Can’t say I blame them. The more people reject me, the more agitated I become. Finding a pharmacy is now my mission in life, and I pace the street, stopping everybody I see. I am like the loud and unrelenting beggar on a city sidewalk that can’t be avoided.

  “Far-mah-SEE-yah?” I say to an old man, who is sweeping the dirt from his dirt patio onto a dirt road. He shakes his head no.

  Sobbing, I cry out, “Far-mah-SEE-yah!”

  “Ah,” the old man says, then he changes the emphasis on the syllables ever so slightly: “Far-MAH-see-yah. Why not say so?”

  He ushers me into his unmarked store.

  A long glass counter runs the length of the room, crowded with untidy stacks of boxes. The shelves along the wall sag under heavy glass bottles and a rainbow assortment of pills. Near the window, several fat mason jars hold urine-colored fluids and pale spirals of snake bodies.

  The old man tosses a stained white coat over his clothes and looks at me expectantly over his half-rimmed spectacles. I hold out my hand, clearly Swiss-cheesed with fang holes.

  “Mono es loco!” I say in my best Spanish, which is poor Spanish. “Mono … uh, el bite-o my mano.” I bare my teeth, let out a monkey howl, and pantomime the tearing of flesh.

  “Sí,” the man agrees, looking me in the eye. “Loco.”

  His coat swirls as he turns, shimmying around the shelves, grabbing a wide variety of pharmaceuticals. He fans them out on the counter in front of me.

  “Which one?” he says.

  “No sé. Which one for monkey bite?”

  He shrugs. I shrug back and point to something with a lot of z’s in the name. It sounds important. “Antibiótico?” I say.

  He shrugs again, then pushes a long package of orange-and-red-striped pills across the counter. The foil is old, peeling from the back of the blister strip.