What La Moskitia Taught Me
- Samantha VanWingen
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
La Moskitia contains a beauty unlike any other. The mango trees fruit with a seemingly limitless number of my favourite snack. The guaras (macaws) gracefully pass between towering pines, showing off a collection of red and blue feathers so pigmented you question if they're artificial. The children of Brus Laguna spend their afternoons playing fútbol in the muddy street, motos slowing to weave around them. Dense mangroves stretch for kilometers and, if you watch carefully, you can usually spot a lineated woodpecker or an alligator passing by. In the local comedor, you can hear an abuela gently teaching her grandchild the craft of making tortillas. At night, the sound of biodiversity is overwhelmingly astounding. And in los Cayos Miskitos, I could watch the ocean's shimmering soft waves roll up against Silkey Key’s shoreline for hours, mesmerized by the mysteries of the water’s vastness. This region is special; it is ecologically and culturally rich, and I am eternally grateful to now understand this.
Fig. 1 A Scarlet Macaw, Mavita, La Moskitia, Honduras. / Fig. 2 Rio Twas, La Moskitia, Honduras
People often ask me, with puzzled and confused faces, why I am here in La Moskitia. I explain that I’m an intern for ilili, that I have spent the past two and a half months learning about and practicing wildlife biology, as preparation for my career. I’ve learned how to tag sharks with spaghetti tags, M-type dart tags, and rototags. I’ve learned how to identify different Atlantic shark and ray species based on anatomy. I’ve learned how to set and deploy baited remote underwater video cameras (BRUVs), and have spent hours upon hours inputting the data collected from these. I’ve learned how to set a scientific longline. I’ve learned how to collect genetic data from sharks without harming them. I’ve learned about Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) procedures, and I now better understand the current health of the reef surrounding los Cayos Miskitos. Overall, I have gained a multitude of knowledge from the incredible biologists on the Ilili team, and this was to be expected. However, the biggest lessons, the ones that irreversibly changed my perspective, were quite unpredictable. My responses to these puzzled faces, wondering what I’m doing here, is always that I am here to learn about wildlife biology. What I don’t include in this response is the plethora of lessons I’ve learned by simply being here - by listening to what locals have to say, by forming connections and relationships with the people around me, and by observing everyday life in La Moskitia.
I have learned about community. The community here is strong, and I am grateful to have been welcomed into it warmly. Community is how the woman I am staying with invites me to have coffee and coconut bread every day at 4 pm with her sisters, and how her 110-year-old blind father recognizes me by the sound my feet make walking into his house. Community is the way Zulema (ilili finance coordinator) wraps somebody else’s young boy in a towel and snuggles him into the space between her arm and body heat because we are riding in the back of a truck and it’s drizzling outside. Community is how they buy extra tomatoes for lunch at the market because they know I am vegetarian, and it is why my landlady takes my clothes off the clothesline before a rainstorm for me while I’m not home. The people in this community take care of each other; they watch after one another, family or not, and it is beautiful.
I deeply appreciate the way ilili conducts research because they have centered this aspect and sense of community in every one of their practices. Every good environmental biologist knows that conservation is ultimately about people, that environmental justice is inherently inseparable from social justice. Ilili prioritizes collaboration with Miskito fishermen and understands their values and needs, continuously reemphasizing that conservation will never be simply black and white, that it is absolutely crucial to focus on the gray in between. Over the past two and a half months, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about Miskito fishing culture directly from fishermen themselves. They have been good storytellers for me, painting pictures of their fathers teaching them the art of perfectly throwing a fishing net to catch as many shrimp as possible, and excitedly mentioning how they are now teaching their own children the same art. They have taught me about patience, how best to pass the 60 minutes we have to wait before taking in the scientific longline. In this time, we will sing songs about La Moskitia, try to escape the sun by hiding under the water’s surface, marvel over how silly the jellyfish look while they move, and we will laugh about how I can’t keep up with pronouncing the Miskito words in not even a single one of the songs we sing. They have also taught me about the water - about the way it breathes and the way it moves, about the way it not only provides life, but how it is life. Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my time working with ilili were unexpected because they didn’t come from the science behind the projects we are working on, but rather from the people who worked on them with me and who supported me during my time here.
I also deeply appreciate how ilili has taken note of my personal interests and has put in the effort to cater to them. Alongside wildlife biology and environmental conservation, I am passionate about photography and filmmaking. The ilili team has shown me that they are eager to help me build on and improve these skills, and has encouraged me to continue focusing on these passions throughout my internship. They gave me the opportunity to go out to the lagoon with fishermen so that I could capture the art of fishing shrimp with my camera. They introduced me to a filmmaker and to a photojournalist who both took me under their wings and mentored me. They even let me skip out on a tiring post-fieldwork day of rinsing and sorting and cleaning equipment so that I could spend the day as a production assistant observing and learning from said photojournalist. Ilili understands that there is no one cookie-cutter way to conserve the environment, that it takes an all-hands-on-deck approach - including people of all different skill sets - which is a strong indicator that this team of dedicated people is making a true difference in the world.
My time in Honduras is coming to an end now, so yesterday I went back to the vast field that I discovered during my first week exploring Brus Laguna. I reflected on my time here and on the way things have changed. I sat barefoot in the tall grass listening to the wind singing in my veins. Just me and the birds, the water and the grass, zapota trees and turtles, lily pads and cows. Field, in every direction for as long as you can see. Green and yellow against a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy specs of cloud. I will not pretend that everything over the past ten weeks was easy and perfect and beautiful all the time. There were days when all I could think about was how I missed the comforts of home - my bed, my warm shower, tofu and arugula and broccoli, people who speak my language, the cold climate of Canada, my biking route and favourite hiking spots. There were many slow days; those were the days when I questioned why I was here, organizing 500 shark fin samples, instead of at my cousin’s wedding, or instead of with my dad on Father’s Day. And there were many lonely days; those were the days when I missed being surrounded by people who understand me. I had to be independent, able to take initiative and figure things out on my own. I had to be resilient and flexible and able to adapt, because situations are uncontrollable and constantly changing, especially during the rainy season. And it is a must to be respectful and understanding; there is no way to form a community without it. And most importantly, I had to want to learn. I needed to ask questions, be eagerly curious at all times, and always searching for ways to learn.
All this is to say that it was not sunshine and rainbows all the time. However, reflecting on my internship with ilili, I believe I am now a better person. I am more understanding, more patient, more compassionate. I have learned how to learn, not in the way I learn from my professors in university, but in a different way where the lessons come without you really recognizing it. I have learned that it’s okay to brush my teeth alongside geckos and leaf bugs. I have grown to appreciate rain storms, to swim and dance and shower in the rain. I am a better biologist now, not only because I now know how to tag a shark and to create a polygon of randomly selected data points on a map using GIS, but because ilili has also taught me why we center people around conservation. They have taught me how to work simultaneously with sharks and the communities that depend on them, something that I will apply in every future project I work on. I am grateful to be taking these lessons and memories with me back to Canada, and next time I am stranded on an uninhabited island four hours from the nearest city with only rice and apples to eat, I will think of ilili.