The Amazon Rain Forest

[Martin Hash]

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Frankly, when people ask me to donate to their charity, I feel they have abused my courtesy – I remain weakly smiling while feigned compassion is wrapped around my neck and tightened. I don’t try to make excuses, I just say no, but often “no” is not enough and the asker tightens the guilt-noose, ratcheting up my discomfort. Nothing satisfies a smug, self-interested charity-monger like perversely watching their victim squirm.

After analyzing the situation, I postulated a potent defense: I would answer that my full allegiance and support is behind another charity, one paramount in heart-rending importance - but what could that be? For several years now I’ve been rummaging around for an indignant–proof charity, for example, like “saving the indigenous Amazon Rainforest.” Enter Mona…

Mona is a 3-year old Wooly monkey. Her pastimes include taking the batteries out of cameras, swinging amongst hammocks, and flirting with boys. Mona’s future husband, Herman, is a resident of a wildlife refuge, but she has at least another half-decade of rambunctious ness before getting serious about repopulating the rainforest. Mona’s “dad” is Tom Larson.

Tom is a few years older than me, a native of Michigan that completed a Masters degree at Oregon State University (one of my alma maters) in Recreation. He then had a long career in the Peace Corps before buying 500 hectares deep in the Amazon Jungle, accessible only by traveling up-river in a canoe. Tom married locally, and his wife’s family helped him begin his grand ambition of restoring the native fauna and flora of the rain forest.

Tom’s many efforts include raising native yellow-spotted turtles, fish, and ducks for the villagers to farm. He is also reintroducing native medicinal plants and teaching endemic naturopathic remedies. He and his volunteers visit villages along the rivers educating the people about sustainable ecosystems, encouraging conservation, and establishing breeding pairs of the turtles, fish, and ducks. Like-minded people gravitate to Tom and his ideas: his best friend, Miguel, asks, “Why is the World more concerned about nuclear weapons in Iran than chain saws in the Amazon?”

Now that I am a fanatical “Save the Amazon Rain Forest” supporter (http://www.arajuno.com), the self-satisfied smile on my face the next time I say “no” to a charity supplicant will be real.