Bayangan – The Last One

Our last village was perhaps the most simple of all the places we’ve been to. Named Bayangan, it is in the mountains above the Pawan river. Only one road runs through the village, and it is perhaps the worst road that I’ve seen thus far in Kalimantan: slippery, narrow, steep, and rocky, sometimes all at the same time. Cars cannot navigate this road, so motorbikes or walking are the only ways to get to Bayangan. Thus the village is relatively isolated and very small, with only about 150 residents. Of course there is no power. The school does have an elementary school, but doesn’t have a health clinic – villagers must travel for a couple hours to reach a clinic or nurse.

We arrived in Bayangan at about 4 pm, and were warmly welcomed by the Kepala Dusun to stay in his house and survey the village. Amazingly, he was able to gather a group of villagers together to draw a village map the night we arrived, so we were able to begin field work the following day. Dessy and I chose to survey the cutway that the oil palm company created around the village, which marks the border between oil palm land and village land. Because the cutway was created about six months ago, and because this is the tropics where plants grow ridiculously fast, we had to do our own cutting to remove the new vegetation from the “path”. Our guide was the Kepala Dusun himself. The day, though long and hard, was one of the more fun field days I’ve had. We stopped at a hut and ate roasted corn, found wild tomato-like fruits, and picked peppers for dinner that evening. The final GPS point was located in the middle of a grassy swamp – we were all wet up to our armpits by the time we finished the day!

Happily, because of the small population size and small land use footprint in Bayangan, we finished mapping Bayangan within a single day. Which means….drum roll please…that the mapping component of the field work is finished!!! Woohoo!!! The best birthday present I could ask for. I’m exhausted, but happy and amazed that we’ve been able to collect so much data. Tomorrow we start the three day process of going home.