Volunteering at DUPC

UPDATE: DUPC has created their own Volunteering information page!
The information contained here deals with the "ASSISTING PRIMATE TECHNICIANS" part of the program, since Maria and I wanted to work closer to the animals.

If you are reading this, I assume you are interested in volunteering at the Duke University Primate Center. Before you purchase that plane ticket to Durham, here is a little warning:

Volunteering at DUPC was a great experience, but it was also a lot of hard work. All of the work is very physical, and it usually involves Mulch. If you don't know what mulch is, it is decomposing organic matter (mainly wood and leaves) which is used for the flooring of the cages. It stinks quite a lot. Volunteers spend most of their time raking the dirty mulch out of the cages and into buckets. On our first day there, the weather was ridiculously hot (when a Rio de Janeiro native such as myself starts to complain about the unbearable heat, you know that it is ridiculously hot!), and we had to load several tons of stinky mulch onto wheel barrels, then take it over to the new cages, and spread it all over. On that day, I made several visits to the Vet's office, in order to put bandages on my hands to cover the blisters. At the end of each day, Maria and I could hardly move! Nearly all of the pictures you see on the Lemurcon 97 page, were taken during Lemurcon 96 itself. We did not have the time or energy to walk around the place taking pictures during our week of volunteering.

Although we worked on close proximity to the animals, we were not allowed to try to interact with them. Sort of like taking a crowded bus in New York. You know that all those people are there, but you should not make eye contact, and you damm well don't want to touch them! This avoids excessive human imprinting on the animals, and protects both the animals and volunteers from a possible physical confrontation. The only direct physical contact we had with the animals, was when they came over to mark us as their territory. They did this by peeing on us.

Volunteering at DUPC is NOT a vacation, and it should not be treated as such. As they say on those Peace Core ads: "It is the toughest job you will ever love"!

This page is maintained by João de Souza
Sifaka photograph by DUPC's David Haring