Paddling with Tupperware (Gunung Palung, 2010)

Excerpts from an email I sent home after learning rather suddenly I had to leave Indonesia early on my current research visa, rather than extending my stay a final 6 months (for long, exhausting reasons that aren’t worth blogging about having to do with impossible amounts of red tape):

Greetings for one last time from Ketapang…I have no reasonable choice but to agree to leave Indonesia before April 5, so I will be allowed back in the country in the future. So I am heading back to the states next week…Hard to believe since this time I was only allowed two weeks in the forest (after over a month of trying to get permits from our project base in Ketapang) and must now leave for good. At least my last orangutan follow was with my favorite flanged male Prabu, but it was very hard to leave the forest on Friday and say goodbye to everyone. I had a really nice, albeit very sad goodbye party with everyone at the main camp the night before I left. The assistants/staff sang one of my favorite Iwan Fals songs, "Kemesraan", in addition to some songs that they made up for me. It was very sweet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeqA_FrXJ9M

on last morning at Gunung Palung, saying final goodbyes

Our trip back to Ketapang was more eventful than usual, although I am happy to say that it did not involve a python falling on my head (this time). Around hour three of the longboat trip, the engine died. I’ve seen the the engine smoke and even catch on fire on previous trips, but this time it could not be revived. For the next few hours we had to paddle the boat using a plastic plate, Tupperware, and a stick. Although we had a phone signal at one point, we couldn’t arrange for any help, since it was a Friday afternoon, so everyone was at the mosques praying. And they were all many, many hours away…

paddling with tupperware after the engine died...

We finally arranged a plan to get picked up at a small village several hours down river, but we eventually discovered that the truck sent to pick us up broke down and wouldn’t be fixed for days. Eventually we came across a fisherman who offered his paddle and said we could pick up a second one at his camp another hour down river. So eventually we made it to Semangjak. We caught part of our crazy boat trip on VIDEO: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W8EceQhQUo


The motorbike at the house where we waited at Semangjak was missing a wheel, so we ended up having to carry all of our bags through the mud for another two kilometers. But we did eventually make it back to Ketapang via a random pickup truck, terribly sunburned but otherwise in tact. And in just enough time to fly to Pontianak the next day, give a final presentation at Universitas Tanjungpura (during which the electricity went out about 10 times), and fly to Jakarta and finally home before the visa expired (just barely in time and the process of applying for an exit permit on such short notice was also quite the experience...) 

Attack of the Anacards (Gunung Palung, 2009)

Excerpts from email sent on May 19, 2009 titled “Attack of the Anacards, Back in Ketapang”: 

"Danger" tree on the Sg Lading pheno plot

I’m back in the city for the next few days, hoping to work on some papers and catch up on data entry while recovering from some nasty infections. I have been following a lot of orangutans recently who have either been eating various Anacardiaceae tree species (same species as mangos, but Gluta species give me a much more serious reaction) or are ranging in areas where they are flowering. And we have been collecting a lot of botanical samples for morphotyping, both during follows and at other times  with slingshots. When setting up Sungai Lading, one of my field assistants spray painted "Danger" on several Anacardiaceae trees on the phenology plot to help me learn which trees to stay away from. And somehow, no matter how far I try to stay away from the Anacards, they manage to get their oils on me.

The tree infections were always much worse when cutting through the forest with my machete during or just after big rains. It is also particularly difficult to identify the various tree species that I am allergic to when the trees are still small, which of course in a swamp forest (like my site at Sungai Lading, the Tuanan field site, and parts of Gunung Palung) accounts for most of the trees in the forest.

with friends at Sungai Lading soon after the short course

…and an especially memorable experience with an Anacard infection from 2005:

One day my advisor was visiting Sungai Lading, my field site…He arrived together with a group of Indonesian students and professors who came to do a “short course” like the one we did at Tuanan in 2003, doing gibbon triangulation and orangutan nest surveys to estimate population densities. I had assumed that by the time they arrived, the tree infection that had spread all over my body and had spread to my face would have disappeared. But their early arrival by boat (ten days early with a one hour warning) caught me by surprise. I participated in the last few days of the short course once the infection started to get significantly better, but then my advisor leaned up against an Anacard tree on my phenology plot, touched my arm, and I ended up getting an infection in my arm that lasted for the next month. Luckily this particular species only gave me a localized infection, but it left a scar on my arm. So I can officially say that graduate school scarred me J. 

with Wahyu Susanto (my long-time Indonesian counterpart and good
friend at Sungai Lading, who later worked with me  at Gunung Palung)

Flying the Friendly Skies with Arsenic-Laced Orange Juice (Ketapang, 2009)

Excerpts from an email sent on September 29, 2009 titled “News from Ketapang, Arsenic-Laced Orange Juice & Indonesian Peat Swamp Forest Fires”:

After being stuck in the Atlanta airport for a night and then San Francisco airport for two nights as the result of a delayed flight from Washington, I finally managed to fly to Taipei, Jakarta, Pontianak, and finally Ketapang. The flight to Ketapang was a little dicey, but after all, it was only recently that Garuda (the only Indonesian airline allowed to fly out of Indonesia), was given back their good status. Why was this status taken away? Apparently because a pilot and two cabin crew members were charged for murdering a rights activist passenger by lacing his in-flight orange juice with arsenic! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4133704.stm

…I fly back to Pontianak later this week to complete my visa extension, then back to Ketapang, hopefully only a few more days to wait for my new forestry permit to arrive from Jakarta…Pretty much the only news worth mentioning, besides the fact that our project will be moving to its own little house soon, is the interesting slogan on my friend's motorbike: "boys only dream, man really fly"...

with friends in Ketapang

...and the lack of water. When it rains in Indonesia, it pours, floods – it’s amazing…but when it does not rain, it is horrific. It has rained only 2x in the last two weeks, which finally brought a little water into the Ketapang river. At least we finally have running water, but no new water is coming into the tank, so the only way to mandi (bathe) is to use what is left of the accumulated rain water.

I have heard that there is little visibility up at camp, but I imagine that it isn’t nearly as dire as the situation back in Central Kalimantan (in Indonesian Borneo), where I used to work. Researchers were only recently allowed back in Tuanan and Sabangau, and I don’t even know if Sungai Lading (my old site) even has trees left. It is another El Niño year just like in 2006 when we nearly evacuated from Sungai Lading after fighting fires twice and lost several hectares of forest (about 20% of the site, which I learned was burned down in 2010). A Russian plane came with their “water bombs” as promised, flying over my site 7x, but only after it crashed in Sumatra and was delayed until the rainy season had already started…

This year as in 2006 the Palangkaraya airport was closed for several weeks and everyone has been wearing masks in both the city and in the forest...

at Sungai Lading after the first of two fires in 2006

On a happier note, those of you who know me well will be glad to hear that bananas are finally available again and I ate 35 of them (very small, put into a blender and then froze them) this morning! Nothing like lots of potassium to help my work productivity. I was also greeted on the street with a “hello misses”, rather than the typical “hello mister” (having nothing to do, by the way, with my short hair or tomboy appearance; all westerners are greeted this way in many rural areas in Indonesia), “hello boy” or “YOU – bule!” for the first time, which brightened my day considerably.

Close Encounters of the Python Kind (Gunung Palung, 2009)

From an email sent January 12, 2009 titled “Close Encounters of the Python Kind”:

a reticulated python

I had a fairly eventful boat trip back to Ketapang from the forest. Most of this boat trip is sort of like the 2km we went through from the Kapuas River to my site, where sometimes it was necessary to get out of the boat and haul it over fallen trees or shallow water, but it takes 8 hours or so on a good day... 

About three hours into the trip what I thought was a huge branch fell on my head, very painful. But then it slithered down my legs, I realized it was a not too long but very fat reticulated python, everyone in the boat except for me, Wahyu, and the python threw themselves overboard. Josie, the Kiwi and only other foreigner in the forest (well, not at the moment, she is currently being treated for a serious infection and is on IV antibiotics...), dove over me and our National Park counterpart Roni threw himself over the front. Roni is a big guy, so when he went over the boat nearly flipped over on my side, since my side had me and the python...

with Wahyu & Josie on the trip when a python fell on my head

I was still fairly stunned by having been hit in the head by a python  and was holding my laptop (in a dry bag, but those things always leak), so just sat there, unsure what to do. Luckily Wahyu has Cheryl-like reflexes (when she was here in October a pit viper fell onto the front of the boat and she managed to fling it away before it entered the boat) and when he realized that it was a python and not a viper (so not venomous, though they give a nasty bite and have been known to squeeze people to death in Borneo), he grabbed it in the middle and threw it overboard, causing the people overboard to jump quickly back in. It was quite amazing.

on the LONG (all day/evening) boat trip back to the forest and to camp

Orangutan Poetry (Sungai Lading, 2006)

Over the course of a few days while following animals at Sungai Lading in 2006, I jotted the following poems about some of my focal subjects down in my field notes (what can I say, living in the forest for lengthy periods of time without anyone to speak to in English can cause a person to write some pretty nutty things!):

RHOMA’S STORY

March 14, 2006

Rhoma has a big long beard

And watch out, he should be feared

He throws branches big and small

It helps not if you’re big or tall

Rhoma is lazy today

 My assistants say hooray!

Only five more hours of this

Then back to camp for sleeping bliss

I should not write on my data

But better than on the peta

I do not want to go crazy

Which I will if I am lazy

He kiss-squeaks now and will more later

I think he’s a human hater

Rhoma is so light in color

Only paler is my mother

But he’s red and she is not

Unless the sun is very hot

Well, I guess that’s always true

But to rhyme that’s what you do

Today with me are two local men

I feel like a mother hen

Here assistants call me “Mother”

It’s a place like no other

Other times they call me “Boss”

Which is better? It’s a toss

At least here they don’t call me “Mister”

Or ask me if I have a sister

I was bit by two big ants

Through the leg of my field pants

Then I sat on a big worm

My assistants sure did squirm

The worm was green

The guts were too

They’ll stick onto you like glue

Only one more page to go

Before jam golek, that I know

Rhoma just awoke from sleep

Before no not a single peep

Standing way too close to me

Is a very big dead tree

I hope that wind does not come round

And knock the tree onto the ground

Rhoma shook that tree, you see

He even tried to flatten me

He just wanted to snag crash

And after have himself a bash

Because we’re here he eats so little

He thinks we get in the middle

Of his plans to procreate

But he should just habituate

Two leaf monkeys came to eat

In Rhoma’s tree, that sure was neat

May this poem give you pleasure

Read it now or at your leisure

This is Rhoma’s only story

Hope it brings him lots of glory

Rhoma should get his due fame

And if he doesn’t I’m to blame

Studied for my dissertation

He gave me a laceration

But I am not really mad

He is really not so bad

But why not start to make a nest

So we can all go home and rest

We’ll follow him into the night

For late to golek is his right

It is we who follow him

So we must accept his every whim

He made not one nest but made two

What is it that we are to do?

First we must wait to be sure

Which nest he’ll choose to endure

If we must we’ll wait all night

We cannot put up a fight

Then he’ll start another day

By 4 AM, he won’t delay

   ELVIS’S COPACABANA

August, 2006

His name is Elvis

He sometimes long calls

But when he tries to be the star

Suni he is never far

Elvis can kiss-squeak

And throw epiphytes

But assistants they don’t run

For with Elvis all is fun

Across the flooded swamp

Elvis he sure can romp

He has missing teeth and a loud grumble

But branch missiles he does fumble

In the swamp, Sungai Lading swamp

The hottest spot north of Palangka

In the swamp

The deep peat swamp

Elvis’s yawning is always the fashion in the swamp…

 Elvis is not dead

  LALA’S FAMILY

August, 2006

Lala she has real big hair

But when we search she’s not there

She looks so much like Elvis

Lala’s family

Lala, well she is crazy

Snag riding! She’s not lazy

If she would party with Gula

A “Gulala” we’d have

VELVEETA IS A CHEESE

August, 2006

Velveeta is a cheese

She really likes to sneeze

When she enters thick rotan

You must have a good plan

Pregnant she may be

We have to wait and see

High ho the dairio

Velveeta is a cheese

Franklin knocked her up

Like me she does hiccup

High ho the dairio

Velveeta is a cheese

SUNI IS MADE FOR WALKING

August, 2006

Suni is made for walking

And that’s just what he’ll do

One of these days that Suni

Will just walk all over you

Assistants they do scramble

Underneath the bramble

When Suni leaves the trees

We all get right down on our knees

One day he came to camp

Without even a headlamp

Suni is made for walking

And for causing lots of gawking

And this bizarre little poem, written by whoever manufactures Snowman brand markers in Indonesia, is too amazingly odd not to share:

a similar caption appears on this box of Snowman markers and reads: This talk, truth was some the sad thing, Is the love and the geological features it is...FLY TO THE SKY...

SNOWMAN

6 Coloring Markers

Pencil Type

FLY TO THE SKY…

The tree

professional

everyday looks

the sky which

is the fairy

and it does

cluck cluck

and it cries

Held Hostage in Borneo by an Oral Presentation (Palangkaraya, 2005)

Excerpts from an email sent home December 30, 2005 titled "Held Hostage in Borneo by an Oral Presentation" and from an email sent on January 4, 2006 titled "Pacifying the Immigration Officers":

I arrived here in Palangkaraya yesterday and will be here until January 5th, when I must go to Jakarta for 5 days so I can give at least one presentation in order to satisfy the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). One day a few weeks ago Happy, one of our security guys at Tuanan, suddenly showed up at my camp to say that I had to go to Tuanan immediately to have urgent communication with one of our Indonesian counterparts in Jakarta. Of course communication with Jakarta is impossible from the forest, but after a series of radio communications we found out enough to know that LIPI would not grant me permission to go home or extend my visa for another 6 months unless I agreed to give a presentation at UNAS in Jakarta…

Nicole, getting into a typical kamar kecil (i.e. WC, toilet)
in Katunjung, the village across the big river from my site

It was weird to miss the holidays this year. Of course there is no Thanksgiving…and I worked over Christmas, best a person can who has a nearly-broken metatarsal. I was sure I had broken part of my foot, as I couldn’t feel anything or walk for about 5 days over Christmas, although now it is just black and blue and I was even able to follow orangutans just before returning to the city. We have 2 toilet rooms about 5 meters over the swamp at my site, and while I was in one of them the floor, which had apparently rotted, fell from under me. I was able to catch my fall enough that I didn’t end up in the swamp, but was positioned rather awkwardly, one half of my body still in the toilet room, the other half suspended from it, until my cook eventually heard my screams over the noise of the generator…


New Years Eve here in Palangkaraya. Licen and Happy (Indonesian friends), Anne and Fleur (Dutch friends) and I went “downtown”, where there were surprisingly good fireworks at midnight and people blew their noisemakers constantly for two days straight. We even got ourselves invited to a private party held in a Simpati store (where you buy handphone minutes). That was weird, yet fun, but not as weird as the lack of alcohol on New Years Eve…we had lots of really good avocado juice with chocolate…

After 3 days of going back and forth a total of about 25 times to the immigration office to fill out various paperwork, I am finally finished at immigration and got my passport back and all of the necessary permits so I can fly to Jakarta as scheduled tomorrow morning. This turned out to be a minor miracle [I will now summarize a very long explanation from my original email explaining the exhausting process of obtaining permission to leave the country] -  I first visited the immigration office on a Monday morning, but I was told that I should have come earlier and they wouldn’t be able to finish processing the paperwork until maybe Thursday or Friday. It actually wasn’t possible for me to have come any earlier, but I was told at Immigration that I would have to change my plane tickets to fly to Jakarta and then onto the states. I explained that this was impossible, since I had to give a presentation for LIPI (the Indonesian Institutes of Sciences) in Jakarta and the next 4 days before my scheduled ticket to the US are Indonesian holidays (when no one works).  I was basically told too bad for me, but the Immigration officer said he didn’t care…but I told him that I would run around and get all of the letters they had newly requested I obtain and the 6 red-background photos in different sizes that the immigration officer wanted all in that same day, to give him time to change his mind. 

I was told that if I got everything done that day and before their 2pm closing time, he would think about it and maybe I would be allowed to leave on time. Thankfully my friend helped – we had to interrupt a very important meeting being held at the MAWAS office 4 times just to change various words of their sponsor letter each time that Immigration fussed about something and the trip to the office took about 20 minutes each time…the most memorable excuse was that my signature was too long because it was supposed to smoosh into an impossibly small space. But unlike most Indonesians, who use just one typically short name, I have a comparatively long Welsh/German name. I did get the Immigration officer to smile after he told me that the “passport size” red-background photos I had were a few centimeters too large and I would have to get new ones that same day. He seemed to think this was pretty funny and smiled. And it was made clear to me that had I not spoken in Indonesian this process would have taken at least a week. A good thing I speak Indonesian!

When I did eventually get to Jakarta, on my way to the airport to fly home to the US I first met a Bluebird (the best/most reliable of the Indonesian taxi companies) taxi driver named Suparman. I actually ended up in a cab with the same driver a few years later (you don’t forget a name like that). 

A few videos from the field that didn't belong elsewhere...

Having a little fun with one my assistants in the forest on one of my last days at my field site:
Sungai Lading liana swingers

Morning aerobics at an office in Palangkaraya:
Office Aerobics

Rumah Pantai - My cabin at Gunung Palung during a flood:
Rumah Pantai

Appeasing the Forest Spirits (Sungai Lading, 2005)

Excerpts from field journal July, 2005:

filming the ritual to officially start research at Sungai Lading

Pak Ihing's father, talking to the spirits in ancient Dayak

After moving to the newly constructed Sungai Lading base camp on July 6, on July 8 we held the official ritual to ask the spirits of the forest for permission to live and work in their presence. Several friends came from Tuanan to witness this all-day ritual. Ibu Haji (my cook)  had some help from some Katunjung friends to cook the 4 chickens (2 red, 1 white, 1 black) and the cakes that would later be put into the 4 ritual houses that Pak Haji made, along with sugarcane and cigarettes. Ihing (one of my first field assistants)’s father performed the ceremony. He came dressed for the occasion, wearing a nice batik shirt and his mandau (a traditional Dayak weapon associated with headhunting).

To start the ceremony, Pak Haji (my security man) tapped each of us on the forehead with a cup filled with uncooked rice. Then Ihing’s father talked to the spirits in an old dayak dialect that only he could understand for at least 4 hours and until after the sun had set. Once it was dark, a light was put out at the edge of the forest by the ritual houses, so the spirits could find their way in the dark. It was explained to me that there are good spirits and bad spirits (the bad spirits can take the shape of dogs), and at least some of these spirits belong to the old people who enter the forest after they die…

The guests had a feast of some of the food from the ritual houses, and the rest was left for the spirits to consume. When the ritual was finally over, Pak Haji sprinkled some more uncooked rice over our heads, this time to officially end the ceremony, which I was told was necessary in order to bring the orangutans in the area to us. I think I got food poisoning from one of the cakes, but otherwise the ritual evening went over very well with everyone.

Additional notes: A few months later I made the mistake of admitting to having had a dream about meeting an Indonesian woman in the forest, who asked why we were living there. When I told her, she said that we were welcome to stay. Pak Haji had a similar dream and so decided that we ought to have another ritual. Only this one was much smaller scale and just involved some hard boiled eggs and a small ritual structure just off the boardwalk. Several years later while visiting the Tuanan field station during my post-doc, I was told that the night of the big ritual at Sungai Lading, all of the Indonesians saw “Mata Merah” (“The Red Eye”) in the sky, just above my camp. They didn’t tell me or any of my European visitors since apparently they didn’t want to alarm us, but the Red Eye is a bad omen that one person can send to another. I was told that the eye was most likely on its way down to Tuanan and was just temporarily hovering over Sungai Lading, but either way, I suppose I am glad that I was not told about this at the time of the ritual, just as I was starting research at Sungai Lading! 

Several friends came from Tuanan to attend the ritual

There was one part of the Sungai Lading forest in the southeast that the assistants would not enter when searching for orangutans because they were convinced it was evil. Although I take all of this with a very fine grain of salt, I will say that the forest in this area always seemed to get suddenly very dark and felt ominous whenever I ventured into it. I also always seemed to end up stuck for hours in deep swamp in this area and found myself at times very disoriented. However, at the time one of the few DVDs I had to watch were Seasons 1 and 2 of LOST, so there is a good chance that images from the series was coloring my imagination!