When I came to live in the Amazon Rainforest of French Guiana, I knew I would need to do “something” for a living. A daily commute to the city — either to Cayenne or Kourou — would be an absolute no-go for me. Not only would it take too much time and money, but it would also defeat my purpose to actually live in the forest.
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So, my idea was to offer Thai massage sessions and Thai massage training courses. The latter would be especially great, because those could be offered as a “jungle retreat” of five days or so. I mean, students could stay here during the course days and enjoy the forest, and take a real timeout from city life.
Hence, I prepared a special hut for Thai Massage, that is, for the training courses and for individual treatment sessions. It wasn’t a large cabin, but it could accommodate about six students. And in the evening, after the daily training sessions, they could sleep there in hammocks.
I advertised on the Internet for massage sessions and training, and in the first six months of my stay, I got a few clients for Thai massage sessions. Nevertheless, I didn’t earn nearly enough, and it came to a point that I decided to go to Suriname (French Guiana’s neighbor and the country I grew up in) to look for a job. Basically, after six months living in the forest it looked like I had to leave.
In the first days of my stay in Suriname, I already thought it to be a big mistake because I really didn’t want to work and live in the capital city Paramaribo (or elsewhere in Suriname, for that matter). But, I was lucky, because while in Suriname I saw on my email that a few people had registered for my Thai massage course, so I immediately decided to go back to French Guiana.
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From that time forward, things started to work out moderately well. I had plenty of people coming to me in the forest to have a massage session, even if they would need to drive about an hour to get there, either from Kourou or Cayenne. And I was able to regularly organize Thai massage training course retreats.
I also found another job that earned me some money, which was cutting the grass and bushes of the community terrain consisting of about five hectares, and parts of it needed to be kept in check. By the way, this was excluding the terrain I lived on, which was not really part of the community, but rather “squatted” forest, being allowed in French Guiana at the time if it was unused state property and not designated as a protected area.
Anyhow, as vegetation grows fast in the tropics, groundskeeping (or lawn care services, if you like) is almost like a regular job, because you need to do it every three weeks or so, or else things quickly get out of hand. So, I bought myself a brush cutter (which operated on gasoline), charged ten euros per hour (French Guiana’s currency is the Euro, like in France, and in most European Union countries), and I earned about three hundred euros per month with it. A welcome addition to my income.
Bit by bit, I had managed to earn myself a living and I could even save some money, which would become particularly needed after two years when I left the country to go to La Palma (Spain). But that’s another story.
