After the 30 minutes evening broadcast, during which local NGOs (non-government organisations) get a chance to outline the whole project, they come to us and shake our hands. And they start asking more specific questions about the project and about our role. It is as if they now start to grasp the fact that this is a global project – that people in Europe and around the world are interested in their lives. Their homes, habits and culture.

When we wake up the next morning, the landowners cook us bananas for breakfast and set off to work with double their usual motivation. The result is, we can hardly do anything now, but it is good to see their enthusiasm! Besides, it is great to bask in such hospitality.

And we do, until the workers at the front of the forest inventory scream out: “A snake!” I grab my camera and hurry to the place where, by now, a good number of team members are gathered. It’s a beautiful viper. I admire it from a respectful distance, because this animal is deadly poisonous.

Garex, one of the fathers, tells me it is called a “death adder” and is a different type of snake to the one we saw yesterday. “This one can jump!” he says.

I take a few more steps backwards! The boys are trying to poke the snake with sticks and I wonder why. "Kill it!" says one, and the others enthusiastically agree. I start to protest, saying the snake is also a part of the forest we want to protect, but halfway through I realize, once more, that it is different for me –I have never lost a relative or a friend (or even a distant acquaintance) to a snake bite.

"Let it go," demands Garex, who understands my reasoning but sees the disturbed look on my face. Relieved, I take a deep breath and the boys wander off, a little bit agitated. "It was a dangerous one, you see," one of them tries to explain to me when as we walk back. I wonder what I would do if I had to walk this same stretch of forest again tomorrow, barefoot and all ...

On the way we meet Bart and Merel, two Greenpeace activists from the Netherlands who are here to take over from us. They miss the snake debacle, but the screen of my digital camera shows them that it was real – and not some little harmless snake, either.
I sincerely hope they don’t step on one or are confronted with one at all.

We have only more day in the Global Forest Rescue Station and then we’re heading home. What a pity. We are going to miss this.

--- Florian and Klaas