As
a child my mother told me to never turn down a job. Work is work Dalia. You take what you can get, you don’t complain,
and you don’t let those smarts get the better of you. My mother’s voice rang
through my ears as the four-wheeler whipped past another set of dense vines.
The air of the Borneo rainforest saturated my lungs as if each breath I took
carried with it three gallons of water. Dr. Ortega, a slender dark haired woman
who organized the trip to these dense forests, desperately tried to communicate
with the driver of the truck.
“Do
you know where we’re going?” She focused hard on the man’s face; it was the
look she reserved for undergraduate students who forgot to leave their
sophomoric ideas of biology in their high school labs. “Dalia, give me the
backpack.” I turned toward the thirty-pound sack separating me from Jeremy,
another biology grad student who was wondering what he was doing on this tribal
escapade. I shifted in the seat, my skin slowly tearing from my pleather
cocoon. Heat made my limbs stiffen as I slid the canvas backpack to Dr. Ortega.
She plopped the sack on her lap and dug for the crinkled map. The paper wilted
as soon as it hit the wet air. She continued to fight with the driver pointing
to a series of red circles.
My
head dropped back, my eyes closed and I rested for an hour allowing the shadows
of the forest to overtake me.
***
I
saw Dr. Theodore Reynolds’ picture in Scientific
American when I was thirteen. I memorized his face telling myself that one
day I would join him in the wilds of Borneo. The photograph showed a man in his
late forties kneeling down beside a baby orangutan; his kaki shorts were frayed
and dirty yet his demeanor and stature showed signs of a professional
scientist, ready to get dirty only when the time required it. The man beside
Dr. Ortega was not the same man I memorized twelve years ago. His bright
Hawaiian shirt contrasted the dark green background of the rainforest, and
worst yet he let his hair grow out. No longer cut and coiffed, greasy strands
of dark brown hair hung in front of his face, the rest was sloppily tied back
by a yellow cord.
“Dr. Reynolds,” I approached him with my
hand out.
“Call me Teddy, you’ll be here for a
while so ya’ might as well get used to me now.” He said gripping my hand. As he
held my hand I realized a terrible stench rising from his clothes. He seemed to
emit a musty animal smell. I wanted him to let go.
“Yes. Well Dr. Reynolds, I just wanted to
tell you that I’m excited to start working with you for the next four years.”
“I’m glad, um Dalia right?” I nodded.
“Okay, Dalia here’s your kit: plastic sheet, test tubes, pH strips, you know
the normal things you’ll need when you collect orangutan urine.” I held the
plastic box in my hand, not sure exactly what I was supposed to do with it.
“Excuse me? Dr. Reynolds?” He began to
walk away from me leaving me with the box. “Dr. Reynolds? Teddy!” He quickly
turned around with an eager grin plastered on his face; a few extra hairs fell
from his makeshift tie. “Urine? As in pee? From the orangutans?”
“Yes.” He began to turn around away from
me again.
“But, I’m supposed to study reproductive
hormones in female orangutans.”
“Yes, and how can you do that without
fresh samples?”
***
Work is work Dalia.
Jeremy
folded the plastic sheet taut as I held an oversized test tube at one end.
You take what
you can get.
We
both watched as fresh yellow liquid dribbled down the clear plastic lining.
You don’t complain.
Lucy,
an adolescent orangutan who was recently discovered to be fertile, observed us
with a smirk on her face as we hairless apes collected our data.
And you don’t let those smarts get the better of you.
Jeremy continued to fold up the plastic
sheet. I set the tubes into the test tube rack and closed the plastic box Teddy
handed me three years ago. Jeremy leaned over and kissed the top of my head,
our stench of orangutan urine mixed together. We breathed in the stink of our
work, and headed back to camp, with Lucy laughing at us as we left.
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