“Working in the Caribbean, Oh that’s just a holiday”. How many times have I heard that? For sure I have a fab job and I love it. Working with parrots is the best, but it is not all sundown cocktails on sandy beaches. In this post I’d like to share a bit of the turmoil that ending this field season brought.
I was determined not to leave Bonaire in a whirlwind this year and I started packing, cleaning and organising several days early. The project seems to have accumulated so much stuff and try as I might to be brutal there’s not a lot to throw away because we do use it all. So despite my efforts my last few days on the island inevitably became a manic blur and I still ended up rushing around until the very last moment. In fact I arrived at the airport with only minutes to spare before the check in closed. In the waiting lounge I was busy with raw data input on the computer and it was only when I got on the plane did I realise I hadn’t had time to prepare myself for what was about to happen.
This might seem a bit melodramatic but consider that every 6 months you have to leave the place you’ve been calling home, move house and leave your close friends. I was about to leave my Caribbean home and return to Britain. I was about to leave one lifestyle that I like very much and return to a lifestyle I know well but like less. Not only do you have to leave, but when you get to the next place you have to find somewhere to live (scrounging off friends until you do) and then you have to re establish the friendships you left 6 months previously. I wasn’t ready for all this hassle again, nor the grey sky, and I was very depressed.
Another unpleasant shock was to not be around Rowan (Fellow Lora researcher). On Bonaire we work together, share a house, and even occasionally get to party or play together. It’s more intense than many marriages and if Caroline (Ro’s girlfriend) wasn’t so lovely she’d probably be withered from jealousy! Rowan is easiest person in the world to get on with and a top bloke by all accounts! To suddenly not be doing stuff together was altogether odd.
It was when I got back to Britain that I realised how completely exhausted I was. The 2007 field season turned out to be incredibly intense and draining. Field work tends to become your life and this year was no exception. I think it’s the same for everyone who works with endangered species. You just can’t help but get extremely involved with the lives of these animals. Even before I left Bonaire I knew I needed some time off, to step away from my computer, the data and even the birds (a new feeling for me!). What I hadn’t accepted was the state of deep physical exhaustion my body was in and once I’d finally slowed down that hit me hard.
Within days of landing in England I took off on my motorbike for continental Europe. My plan had been an adventure packed trip to the mountains but instead for the first time in my life I found I was content to simply relax. There was a relaxed day of eating delicious food in Paris, another spent lounging on a beach in the south of France with friends, and then a week enjoying the views of the Pyrenees. Self doubt was growing but then I got a text from Rowan which I found reassuring and hilarious. He was in Berlin and enjoying what he’d seen of the city but it wasn’t all that much though as he’d also found he was worn out and had been sleeping over 12 hours every night for the last week!
Winter entries to my blog will sadly not involve fun tales of hands on parroty experiences but I shall endeavor to keep you informed with the less mundane aspects of my office-parrot-work and perhaps even share some findings…
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