Fruit Craving

Today three team members, the kepala dusun, the village secretary, and I went to the oil palm plantation requesting to interview the plantation manager. Unfortunately, we were quickly told that we could not come to the plantation unless we had a letter from the company office in Ketapang. It was a disappointing day, but we made the best of it and instead of staying on the plantation for the remainder of the day, road-tripped (with three motorbikes and six people) to the nearby villages of Engkadin and Nanga Tayap. After three weeks in the boonies it was shocking to arrive in Nanga Tayap, where there are restaurants, cell phone reception, and even fruit for sale!

The lack of fruit and vegetables in this incredibly lush and productive landscape is very disappointing. In Thailand I was accustomed to an amazing variety of fruits and vegetables for sale in even the smallest towns. Here in Indonesia, because they don’t use fertilizer, there is very little fruit or vegetable available except during certain seasons of the year. Our field food usually consists of rice, dried fish (or sometimes fresh fish, if a trader comes by with fish for sale), a vegetable such as green beans, cabbage, or cassava leaves, and sometimes chili paste. Breakfast is fried rice, and snack is boiled or fried cassava root. Surprisingly, I feel quite healthy with this diet but am craving fruit. Sometimes a trader will come through town with watermelon, fried bananas, and oranges for sale – if we see him, we buy ALL of his fruit for ourselves and teammates. One day there was a man selling ice cream – despite the fact that I am supposed to avoid ice at all costs (they don’t generally boil the water used for ice) I couldn’t resist, and happily chowed down on home-made chocolate ice on a stick.