Week 5: Challenges

It suddenly hit me this week how challenging this experience has been. The problem is, it's hard to walk into an NGO and expect them to have a job set aside for you. It hit me recently that every single week so far I have been nothing more than an observer. There has been no work I was actually needed for. The only exception was the class in El Cuyo I gave two weeks ago. Fortunately, the rest of this week actually does have an exciting plan involving a kid bird workshop in Las Coloradas and a flamingo festival in San Felipe, but the two remaining weeks thereafter are a complete mystery.


The idea of local conservation in one's own community is something that is starting to interest me a lot more. I won't lie, a good part of my interest in working in Latin America started with simple desire for adventure and exotic wildlife (don't get me wrong, there's a LOT if urgent conservation issues that I want to fix in Latin America). But one of the most important things I've learned from this experience abroad is the undeniable connection and advantage one has to working in one's own community. While my two homes, Wisconsin and New York, are certainly less exotic than places like the Yucatán Peninsula, they are places that I care deeply about and am much better connected to. Additionally, the conservation work there seems much more organized. Perhaps I over-estimated my ability to make a difference abroad at such a young age (20, in case that isn't clear). Perhaps it would be more productive at my age to be working where I am already somewhat established and connected. Later, if I am still interested in working abroad, I could apply the experience I would have gained at home to help me overcome the organizational challenges of working in 'Third World' countires. And there's nothing inferior about local work. Educating kids in the US may be even more important than in Mexcio because American kids are likely to consume much more resources than the poor kids in the villages I'm seeing. That's just a thought, but it's critical to recognize that US commercialization and globalization plays a huge role in driving and perpetuating the environmentally-degrading practices in Latin America. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I'm starting to realize that some of the most important conservation issues are found in my own homeland.

You're probably thinking that I should be focused more on how I can make the most out of my time while I am here in Yucatán. I am too. There are certainly possibilities, it's just a question of whether they can reasonably happen. I need to find out if certain people are available, if I'll have a place to stay, if there is a group of kids interested, etc. One idea I have would be to help a young woman named Wilma in Las Coloradas start a birding club after we give the workshop this week. So I guess my only choice is to head to San Felipe with NyC this afternoon, talk to Wilma and the NyC staff as soon as possible, and try to work out the details in the next couple days. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-E.B.