I´m afraid this one is not going to be the
most didactic text I will write. It´s not even going to be about elephants,
chimps or animal welfare actions. In fact, this is about passion, friendship,
fellowship, self-confidence and finding my own way.
It was only five years ago when I received
a link telling: “hey, this might be something for you 😉 “. It was Ingo from Africa sending me a link from the PanAf team
asking for help to code videos recorded by camera traps located all over the chimpanzee
natural range in Africa - sounds familiar?
Right at that time I was experiencing quite
a frustrating professional moment in Germany, you know, when you feel like “I
love being a mother, I love my kids, I know I do a great job…but I need to feel
professionally complete”. So this was the right moment…the big moment! I still
remember when I got the videos to be coded and a short letter from Mimi saying:
“Dear Nuria, thank you so much for your
help coding videos for our project! Welcome to the PanAf team!”.
Welcome! PanAf team!!!! YAY!!!! Can you believe it? I had no idea what I had to do or even if I was qualified to do it, but I knew that I wanted to do it and that I was going to do all my best, about that I was absolutely sure!!
I´m going to tell you a secret: ever since
I was a child I wanted to be like Dian Fossey. Remember the film “Gorillas in
the mist” when she introduces herself to the professor who searches for
volunteers to do gorilla censuses in Africa? after he asks her what she knew
about Gorillas she replies: nothing, but I can count”. Isn´t it great? That´s
exactly what I believe it´s all about: it´s about wanting to, about having
passion for what you do…and if you work with all your heart and put all your
dedication and trust in what you do, the knowledge will come easy.
I´m not going to lie, this wasn´t always an
easy pathway. In fact, I felt very unsure, overwhelmed and scared at times,
which I think made me a stronger woman now. But you know what? When you have
the best working team of the entire world, what can go wrong? Even though I have
been working remotely, my team/friends have always made me feel that I belonged
to the group, and that they considered me as a part of the project. Now I´ve
grown as a person and as a professional, and they incredibly helped me with this.
I already had had my experience as an ecologist, but never in my whole years of University and later jobs had I learnt so much about wildlife, ecology, conservation…and of course working remotely helped
me catch up on computer things, from writing to reading formal emails properly (oh God, I didn´t even know what ASAP in an
email meant!!)…and have a look at me now, I am a blogger!💪
Then came C&S. C&S…I owe you guys
soooo much! You won´t believe it. From each and every of you I have learnt how
to coordinate a team, how to work tidily, how to be patient and rigorous. And
how to be humble and always bear in mind that it´s absolutely fine if I make
mistakes. And this specially I owe to Mimi, who has been so empathic and encouraging
even when I did crap. These last five years have been the greatest, most
rewarding professional years in my life, and at that point of my life I wasn´t
expecting that; what a beautiful surprise, my job, my love, my passion…my life.
Although I think of all the possibilities
that will for sure come now for me and that I´m ready for a new and exciting phase in
my life, I feel tremendously sad for leaving and can´t help my tears from
falling while I write this. I´m going to
miss you guys, all of you! I and the PanAf team have so much to thank you all volunteers! You have been doing an awesome job. We can never thank you guys enough
in the name of conservation. In this crazy world with so many ecological challenges
in sight, what we did for species protection has no price, really, and I am f…
proud of us!
I hope our paths will cross again, at some
point, at some place…
Hey, we did a great job together 😊
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| Germany, 2016 |
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| Spain, 2019 |
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