Tambarikosy

In July I arrived in Ecuador to work for the Timburi Cocha Scientific Research Station, Payamino, for my year in industry. Fully prepared as I was to spend a year in the jungle, cut-off from civilisation, and living on rice and beans, I won't deny my delight in the fact the research station has flush-toilets, a cold shower (of sorts…), a satellite internet connection, and a kitchen. And the food has been far from your bog-standard rice and beans!

Unfortunately, my main research project while I'm in Ecuador does not concern bromeliads or involve climbing trees – that is a side project I'm doing as a way of continuing the work I started during the Tropical Biology field course this summer, out of personal interest. My principle project here is just about as interesting as well as probably providing information and materials more useful for conservation efforts, rather than simply sating my own curiousity. I'm studying the differences in mammal diversity between primary and secondary rainforests, using camera traps.

Every now and then, the community of San José de Payamino will get together to cut the grass of a communal area or the large dirt track that once was a road. Throughout a day of slashing grass and weeds with machetes, men, women, and youths down fresh and fermented  chicha  to give them strength. This communal work is what's known as a  minga  in Spanish, and it is not an activity unique to Payamino nor do they always consist in cutting grass. Throughout Latin America various forms of minga take place, although in Peru and Ecuador they do usually imply some kind of agricultural work, rather than any other communal labouring. In Ecuador a minga is almost inevitably followed by  chucheki  (Kichwa for hangover). Last Saturday, here at the Timburi Cocha Research Station we had a minga of our own, since the forest is apparently trying to reclaim our camp. We did hire three locals to come help us tend to the station's desperately overgrown state; however, in a traditionally P