ONE MORE DAY IN THE JUNGLE

The night falls and it dawns another time in the forest. The time seems detained here, beside the Ucayali river in a town a day from Iquitos. The first school that I came to build is almost finishedand we have begun a new one not far from here.
Some months have passed since I began to work here and I have not still stopped to wonder if we are right in sowing cement where before alone there were trees and animals, but that is a big and different topic from what I want to relate.
What I want to relate is that the earth here has another color, the heat is so strong that sometimes one wonders why we are here. That the forest sometimes squashes us with its constant sample of life. That the insects are unbearable alone between the 6 and 7.30 in the night.
What i want to relate is that the children still go barefoot to the old wooden school. That they still play in the torrential rains as if these were a blessing, that an indescribable innocence exists in their eyes. That innocence that we have lost in the big cities. That trying not to get their attention - always impossible - I observe them every morning wondering to myself if some of them imagine thatother world of which we come. but the probable thing is that it does not even interest them although some of them will finish working driving a taxi for the streets of some great city.
15 men have come with me to build this first school. 15 men that make their work very well between laughs and jokes. 15 both young and old people that have become as siblings after a time. But only 14 have returned. One of them, my friend Henrry, the nearest to me, the one that followed me in range, one that the same as to my he liked the fishing, he died while he was transported to our camp bitten by a snake. Him and four more of them went to cut the wood that we needed for the construction in a place amid the forest 8 hours from our camp. One week they had to finish their work and to return with the wood, but they returned on the third day with my friend dead.Although I have wanted a lot, I have not been able to leave the jungle to go to his funeral, neither have I met his family - he had two daughters and a woman waiting for him .
I know that theinsurance for accidents or death of the organization with which I work will give to his family enough money so that they can live calm and that they will send us a new antidote easier for transporting and of oral administration, the previous one was via veins and given by the male nurse that travels with us. The new antidote is not as efficient as the other one but it slows the action of the poison enough time to arrive to the camp.
Some days ago in the blog of a friend I read about the necessity of the search of the truth, of the love and of oneself and remembering my first months here, i thought that it is true that we all are looking for something although some people do not even know that they are doing it. I also remembered to Henrry and I thought that we always look for ephemeral things. That the truth is what we look for things or feelings or states of spirit that the only thing that it does is to exalt our ego.
One afternoon, talking about the poverty, after a moment of silence, my friend - a bit sad - said to me: "for me, to be poor, just can be to see die of hunger to my children" This one, was my friend's truth, this one it is an universal truth.



Felipe.