Going Away Party (Sungai Lading, 2006)

Here are few photos I uncovered from the going away party that was held for me at my site on the Christmas before I left Indonesia to write up my dissertation (before returning the following year for a post-doc in a different part of Indonesian Borneo). The head of the nearby village of Katunjung came, along with pretty much everyone else from the village. Several brothers of my assistants and their father and some of my friends from Tuanan also came. We ate rotan soup and had a wonderful time:

Everything is Bigger in Borneo (Sungai Lading, 2005)

People in Texas say that everything is bigger in Texas. But really, everything is bigger and more extreme in Borneo.

This is one big spider:

This is one big grasshopper:

Here is the Bornean version of a stick insect:

And we didn't just have insects, we had LOTS of insects, all of the time. Borneo's version of a stink bug actually shoots acidic black ink out of its butt and the Indonesian name for a stink bug actually translates loosely to "a little boy who farts a lot". And here are a few moths, hanging out one night at camp:

Insects are also brighter in Borneo. Here is a grasshopper:

 And a praying mantis:

Field Friends (2003-2005)

The bond you have with friends who you have lived with in the field is like none other. Here are a few fun photos I uncovered from my earlier years in the field while sorting few a few hundred photos from Indonesia on my hard drive recently:

With friends at Cafe Boy on NewYears.  

With friends at Camp Sungai Lading

                            

With friends and my visiting father at PPS in Jakarta

                             

   

 With friends at a wedding in Katunjung

Friends from Tuanan surprise me at Sungai Lading on my Birthday 

With Licen at the Mess on Jl. Cenderawasih in Palangkaraya

For a short time we had a satellite phone at Tuanan

Getting my hair cut at Sungai Lading at the Salon Erin

Friends from Tuanan visit Sungai Lading when I started research there

Funny Field Drawings (Tuanan, 2003)

Recently I uncovered some rather peculiar drawings I made of a few of the first orangutans we found at Tuanan back in 2003:

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.