Thursday 31 May 2012

And Breathe.

I normally don’t start these blogs with pictures because I want to introduce you to the narrative before I show the stills. Danau Centarum National Park in West Kalimantan, also known as “the lakes”, requires no such introduction, so I’m going to throw you straight into it.


A couple of weeks ago, the film crew, some investors and the Eco Warriors travelled Danau Sentarum  to survey it as a potential eco-tourism project in the future, as well as get some breathing time together before we all disperse out across the world. This was our view at the end of a boardwalk out the back of the tourist centre we were staying at. This national park is made up of around 132 thousand hectares of peat swamp forest, with wild orang-utans, proboscis monkeys, macaques, estuarine crocodiles, monitor lizards and huge insect, reptile, bird and fish biodiversity.


This time of year is the end of the wet season, so the water level of the lakes is relatively high, and in some places can be up to 30 feet deep.  These trees grow out of the water when the level is this high. It looks like a mix between a scene from The Lord of the Rings and The Woman in Black - eerie yet insanely stunning. This incredible photo was taken by Eco Warrior Paul Daley.


We got our first sighting of wild orang-utans! Well, their nests anyway. They build their nests high up in the canopy, normally in fruit trees, so that they can literally reach for their lunch. At this time of year, fruit is harder to come by, meaning the orang-utans must move locations more often, making it harder to keep track of where they are. We were walking in a group of maybe 15 people, so the chances of seeing them were pretty slim anyway.


Making our way into the wilderness. This was on our journey to the village with wild orang-utans. The river is so shallow and windy an inaccessible that you must take these little boats, a couple of people in each one, to get there.


Trying my hand at vertical canopy climbing. We were staying with some of the local firemen, who were kind enough to bring along their climbing gear which they use for rigging up equipment to put out forest fires. A huge amount of the forest is lost every year to these fires, and so the fire department play a crucial role in protecting this place and its flora and fauna.


Fellow Eco Warriors Kodi Twiner, Paul Daley and Fa Empel stand at the dockside soaking in the sunset on the water. Here’s a great fact– “Mada Hari” means sun, or directly translates to “eye of the day”. “Mata air” translates to water spring in English, or directly translates to “eye of the water".


All the Eco Warriors chugging along in a local longboat. It’s slow, but it really gives you time to soak in the scenery. The journey from Sintang by river takes about 7 hours on a longboat, and on our way to the lakes, most of the journey was spent in the dark with nothing to do but lie back under a spectacular night sky.


Eco Warrior Kodi Twiner spells out her name for a placard alongside the species name of the tree she was planting. “Shorea Belangaran”, or local name “Kawi”, is a critically endangered climax species indiginous to Indonesia. The timber that it produces is very hard, so it is a good building material.  Cameraman Ezther catches it all for the film.


Local produce - Fish provide the main income for most of the locals in the National Park. Over 80% of the freshwater fish consumed in the Kapuas region of Borneo is caught sustainably from this area. For many generations, the locals have been developing their sustainable practises, and because they depend on the fish, they have to. One of the fundamental ways they do this is by banning any fishing in certain lakes.
Eco Warrior Ben Dessen beams after catching a wild reticular python, the longest snake species in the world, after it wandered up to a rubbish dump just outside our house in search of a snack.

This lady was 3.4 metres long, but can reach up to 12 metres. Practically a baby. Can you imagine 12 metres?

We leave Borneo in the next few days, and Paul Daley and I will be heading to Bali for a language course. Paul, my girlfriend Nina and I will be returning to the lakes in dry season in a few months to carry out some biodiversity studies on the area, discuss the implementation of an eco-tourism package, rescue crocodiles and learn now to rig up and climb high into the canopy with the local fire department. The landscape will totally transform as the lakes dry up, and fruiting season will be upon us, which greatly increases our chances of finally spotting some wild orang-utans. I cannot wait.

So it's goodbye for now, Borneo. Sampai jumpa lagi.

Friday 25 May 2012

Nice to get to know you, Tembak.

It’s remarkable how much a month in someone else’s world can affect your perspective. I recently returned from a month stint in the village of Tembak, right in the heart of Borneo, and I feel like my brain had a little bit of a rewiring.
 I guess the first thing I should comment on is that I have had the world of internet at my fingertips pretty much every day since I was 13 years old. I have spent a good chunk of the last 10 years sat in front of a computer, browsing, gaming, communicating and researching (and other things which I won’t go into…). On top of that, I am in constant communication with friends and family by phone, and it’s expected of me to be available to chat. To be thrown for over a month into a world where many of the older generation have never even heard of the internet and where getting good phone signal requires a 40 minute trek up telephone hill (no joke) was a new experience.  It was OK at first, but after a few weeks, it felt so strange to know that the world was going on behind closed doors. Emails, phone calls, Facebook comments were all building up. The world could be falling to its knees and we wouldn’t have a clue. To add to this, time started melt into itself. I find it almost impossible to order the experiences that I had there. With a similar agenda every day, and with no input from the outside world, there were no milestones to mark intervals of time. Days of the week and times of the day became less and less relevant. It was either dark or light, rainy or dry, too hot for work or not. Eventually, though, like every new experience, you get used to it, and it becomes normal.

So I guess the key skill I learnt on my time in Tembak was letting go of time. In the culture I grew up in, we are constantly harassed by deadlines, distractions and data. We have diaries, agendas and timetables which must be adhered to in order to make life run smoothly. We always have tasks at the back of our head and people breathing over our shoulders. There is very little space for just sitting back and looking at the present, and instead many of us complain about boredom when we have nothing to do. My time in Tembak helped me to relieve this feeling and to realise that if I have time to sit back and clear my mind, that’s OK, and even healthy.

I‘m sure being surrounded by nature is a huge catalyst for this in Tembak. We all have an inbuilt love of the natural world and it can spellbound us. That’s clear from the popularity of shows like Planet Earth. I spent a lot of time during my stay on my own, just staring at the world around me, whether that was in the rainforest or in the village on the veranda watching the Gods piss from the skies. It feels so natural to be in nature, especially in Borneo. Nature is so raw and complex here that even the most hardened, city dwelling Eco-Warriors in the group have been entranced by it at some point in this trip. It can squeeze all thoughts out of you like toothpaste.

In addition, nature has its own set of deadlines and cycles of time. There are periods of the year that you must plant your crops, and parts of the year when you must harvest them. There are sustainable methods you must use in order to maintain a quality environment, including not chopping down all the trees good for timber without replacing them. But at the same time, when you live in nature, there are often times when weather or the environment does not permit you to work. For example, Tembak villagers do not work in the rain, because generations of experience have told them that working in the rain for an hour or two increases your chances of making you sick for days. For this reason, the locals can often be found relaxing, and the pace of life is much slower. Their concept of time is much more founded in the present. Even their language reflects this, with the word “sudah” representing any time in the past and “akan” representing any time in the future, unless a certain time is specified (which more often than not it isn’t).  “Mungkin nanti” or “maybe later” is a phrase used often (frustratingly so) in Indonesia and especially in Tembak.

This is a refreshing way to live, but it provides a problem if you have a task to fulfil and only a limited time to achieve it. We have had 80 days to come up and implement a sustainable reforestation, eco-tourism and animal rehabilitation programme for Tembak, get to know the culture and language, and do all of this whilst living and breathing this snail-paced life. To make it even more complicated, locals are so brilliantly polite that they will often tell you that something is fine to do just so as to be rude and tell you that it’s not. We hit this wall over and over again, and it had some frustrating consequences. For example, one of our key aims for our time in Borneo was to set up a community seedling nursery for the village – somewhere where locals can come to buy or swap useful timber, fruit and medicinal seedlings to enrich their land and forests. We started 4 community nurseries. Four bloody nurseries. Each time we would think we had found the perfect spot, and confirmed the spot with the locals, another local would tell us about a fundamental problem with it that the original locals knew but didn’t want to tell us about out of politeness. It was a long process, but eventually, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, we settled on a spot.

So now, one month down the line, we have a community nursery ready for seedlings over the coming years. It may not seem much, but our presence in Tembak and our enthusiasm for reforestation has certainly got locals interested in getting involved, especially those locals who were passionate about reforestation before we came. I can see exciting things developing.

During our time in Tembak, we were joined by half a dozen Action Agents from around the world – individuals who have raised $5000 for the project in the last year and so were invited to join the Eco-Warriors in Borneo. They were a fantastic bunch, and really brought a new energy to the group dynamic. They have been so passionate about the project since it started and getting to know them was really a privilege. I can’t wait to work with them all in the future of the DeforestACTION project.

We will be returning to Tembak at the end of this week for 5 days, and we have plans to line the main street with fruit trees with the help of the locals. It’s going to be incredibly sad to say goodbye. It has been such a unique honour to get to know Tembak and its people and culture, but I do have plans to return some time over the next few months, and hopefully one day I will return for an even longer stint. After having my camera and photos stolen, I need to go and recapture as much as I can! For now, Eco-Warrior Paul Daley has kindly leant me some of the photos he took over the trip. Enjoy!

Agung, a local 21-year-old Dayak, has a smoking break next to some polybags we have prepared for seedlings in the nursery. I hope to get some snaps of the finished nursery when I return tomorrow.

Mixing the magic potion – in order to make the soil for the seedlings more “fluffy”, so that the plants’ roots can grow uniformly, we mix in some rice husk into the soil, which would otherwise be wasted. Along with this, we chucked in some charcoal to provide some nutrients for the plants as they grow.

Shaving jungle style, with blunt scissors and a tiny mirror, and listening to a spot of Bon Iver. It was all fine till the power went out, and then it was all about taking it slowly and cautiously.
Pak Tomo, the father of the house we stayed at, chilling whilst wearing one of the best t-shirts I've ever seen. He of course has no idea what it means.

A community vegetable garden in Tembak – all the locals are involved, each with their own allotment. They cleared the land and built the garden all within about 4 days. When they want things to happen quickly, it’s quite remarkable.

Penari perempuaan, or traditional female dancers, celebrate the arrival of the action agents to Tembak. The guy in the back represents a traditional warrior with a simple machete and handcrafted shield. The dance is enchanting, and the male dance and the female dance really emphasises gender differences.

Action agents and Eco Warriors bonding for the first time in the river. The fresh energy brought by the new arrivals was welcomed.

Pak Apui, a local Dayak, standing at the top of his hydroelectric plant just 10 minutes walk out of the village. He was the first person ever to build one of these plants in Borneo, after reading about them from his adopted son from Germany. He built the entire plant himself in 3 months and the local villages said it would never work. The plant provides free electricity for 7 houses, and now sits alongside 5 more plants in Tembak which power the whole village. Other villages are naturally jumping on the band wagon now.


Sticking my head through the jet of water coming out of the bottom of the hydroelectric plant. The water is carried down a tube and shoots out against the waterwheel, turning the wheel and generating electricity.
Holding a local kid called Gusto. He has an incredible energy, probably partly provided by the copious amounts of sugar that he and the other local children consume on an almost hourly basis. Wherever you go in Tembak, you can always expect to be greeted by this cheeky smile, and he’ll probably demand that you swing him over your shoulder and throw him into the air.
Snails up inside ya, finding an entrance where they can. These delicious titbits can be found on most of the logs floating around the river, and make a delicious garlic snack, especially alongside a bowl of ant soup (yes, ant soup. They taste just like beans.)

The oldest lady in the area, supposedly 135, though from the age of her kids, that might be debated (can women have children when they are 79?). The tale goes that if you look at her teeth, she will steal a year from your life and use it herself.

A beautiful honey tree in the heat of the day. As in my last blog, these trees are used for nests by bees because their smooth trunks prevent honey bears and other scavengers from climbing and stealing the honey. Somtimes I swear the world plays up to the camera. Sexy nature.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Fancy seeing you here, internet.

So I have just spent the longest time away from the internet since I was maybe 13. A few days ago, I returned from the second trip to Tembak, which lasted for a month, and it has felt like a lifetime. I thought I would just write you all a little note to say I’m still alive, and that I’m working on my biggest blog post yet. It’s just that I had a little hiccup and had my camera stolen a few days ago, along with all the stuff I had written during my time in Tembak, so I’m going to have to find new pictures and recall everything from memory. Bugger.

It’s going to be a great blog post though, so keep your eyes peeled. I have so much to tell you, world.