Gunung Gede

After arriving in Jakarta on my way home to the US, I had a couple of days to kill. Feeling oppressed by the Jakarta heat and smog, I high-tailed my way to Cibodas, a small village on Puncak Pass, in the Sunda region of Java. The main attraction here? Cold! On the side of a mountain (Gunung Gede, a volcano and national park) the temperature is chill enough to require long sleeves and blankets at night. I had forgotten what cold feels like.

After convincing a couple of Indonesians to give me a lift from Bogor to Cibodas, I found myself a hostel (I was the only guest - mid-week is slow in this tourist town) and walked the 2 km down the hill to a small town, where I wandered and finally found a nice restaurant to sip on some mango juice.

On the way back up the mountain (after an unfortunate incident with some monkeys who very aptly stole my sweet dessert as I was drinking juice) I started talking to a young Indonesian man on his way home after praying at a mosque. He kindly invited me to his home, where I got to meet his wife and younger brothers. After some small talk, he decided that since I had no religion this was a good opportunity to try and convert me to Islam. Suddenly, my shaky language skills became shakier - I haven't learned important religious words like "hell" and "salvation". I finally managed to politely excuse myself from the house, and crashed into bed.

The next morning I got up and started hiking up the mountain. The national park actually contains two peaks - Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango. I decided to hike Mount Gede (2,958 m asl). I walked past gorgeous waterfalls, ran into a random birder from France, enjoyed the steaming hot springs, and finally scaled a terribly eroded mountaintop to sit above the crater and enjoy myself, before practically jogging down in order to get home before dark (which didn't happen, but thankfully I ran into the birder on the way down and we walked back by the light of his headlamp.

Photos!

Water Quality Field Work

Neli and I picked up our newly-purchased motorbike in Ketapang (we had it shipped from Pontianak) and met our Gunung Palung counterpart Roni before almost immediately heading to the field to begin our 2 week field campaign. Our goals were twofold: 1) Install rainbuckets (for measuring rainfall) in all villages, and 2) Choose water quality sample sites, including taking preliminary water quality measurements.

Just so you don't die of nervousness (did they manage?) we suceeded in both tasks, but everyone was exhausted by the demanding travel schedule, rainy weather, and huge amounts of equipment we had to carry. This was Neli's first time driving a motorbike in the backwoods for any length of time, and I did lots of walking behind the bike, especially when we had to climb steep slopes in wet weather.

Highlights of this trip included:
1) A day in which I counted a total of 10 leech bites, one of which didn't stop bleeding for ~12 hours
2) Getting mad biceps due to holding myself on the back of a bucking motorbike for hours each day.
3) Bonding (awww...) with Neli and Roni and Tono (who joined the group after ~1 week travel)
4) Acting like a goofy monkey, climbing houses to install the rainfall catchers
5) Learning to make a mean Indomie (the Indonesian version of Ramen)
6) On my day off, learning to ride a motorbike by driving for 6 hours, but forgetting sunscreen, the result of which was a gorgeous farmers' tan for the next month.
7) Watching part of the national park being cut down and burned for shifting rice garden cultivation (yes, this was depressing).

To put words to my stories, I've posted some photos here. Enjoy!

Water Quality

I'm off to the field tomorrow to start water quality measurements - I'll be back to a computer in about 2 weeks.

Planet Fit

As you probably know, I keep myself sane in Pontianak by going to the gym on a daily basis. Since I'm there so often, I've made friends with a few of the students and instructors - a fabulous break from work and the world of science!

When I'm at the gym I either run or attend class. While running I try to watch whatever TV shows are available - I particularly like Chinese films, which tend to be smart, funny, and violent all at the same time. These films are subtitled in Indonesian, which I think helps my reading skills - although I have no idea what the actors are saying, since the shows are originally in Chinese! Yesterday I was watching TV at the gym and my favorite commercial yet in Indonesia came on.

Usually Indonesia commercials are very predictable - they are about anti-mosquito spray, or milk for children, or sugar-free additives for adults who don't want to get fat, or noodles, or face whitener. This commercial was advertising a website which proposed to help Indonesians get Green Cards in America. The text was fairly boring: "Live! Work! Play!". But the imagery was outstanding - a large-busted blonde woman in a bright red one-piece exiting a swimming pool...with the video panning to the woman's chest. It seemed so out-of-the-ordinary for Islamic Indonesia, I laughed so hard I had to stop running!

Buying a Motorbike

Today I bought a motorbike. A new, blue, Yamaha. Model Vega R. You can see a photo of a similar bike here. Price tag was about $1,300. I know this sounds a bit crazy, but it will be super-useful for field work - both because mobility is nice, and because transportation is very expensive if we hire villagers to drive us around. The shopping process was mildly entertaining - we checked out Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Kawasaki before deciding on the Yamaha (which is cheap, durable, and can be repaired easily because most people in Ketapang drive either Yamaha or Honda). Now I need to learn how to drive the bike...

Computer-bound

So I'm back in Pontianak for about a week after a whirlwind of field work. I'll try to post a few days' worth of experiences before I leave for the field again on tuesday.

Last Mapping Day

Today was our very last day mapping - as the thirteenth village (lucky number!) Merangin is also the final addition to our study sites.

We started at 7 am as usual, and by 8:30 had reached our destination: a 1500 meter peak. I agree that doesn't sound like much, but when you're starting from sea level 1500 meters in 1.5 hours is quite the workout. We then descended to a creek bottom with huge boulders that was to serve as our trail for the next hour. Boulder hopping in tropical countries is one of my favorite activities EVER. The worst that can happen is that you fall in the water - which is cool and refreshing. We stopped to have lunch on a few of the boulders - the small waterfalls nearby made talking near impossible - fish swarmed around the pools formed by the boulders - and for the first time in months I was really at peace. I don't know how many times in my life I've experienced this feeling - but they are few and far between, so it was truely a great day.

Unfortunately, the second half of our day didn't go very well. Our guide knew exactly how to get to our destinations but his plan for going home was, well, nonexistant. So we wacked our way through bushes for about 3 hours until we finally found a trail out of the forest.

All in all, this was a really excellent way to finish the mapping experience - a bit of guide error, some respectable mountains and streams, and sucessful data collection. Tomorrow the team goes home to Pontianak, and I head to Ketapang to talk with the national park director again.

Chopping down trees and losing

This village is obsessed with rubber. Everyone has a rubber garden, and it is hard to find guides because they are all harvesting rubber in the morning. You, too, could earn up to $20/day, working for only 4 hours, if you harvested rubber every day in Borneo! I realize this doesn’t seem like much of a deal, but here in West Kalimantan it is a really big deal – compare this wage to that of a daily worker in an oil palm plantation ($3/day) or how much we pay our guides ($5/day). Thus it is difficult to find guides in Merangin.

My day was spent wading through swamp forest. With two guides, Tono and I were supposed to take GPS points at three border points. We were doing fine until we came to a wide river. The bridge was broken, so our guides decided to chop down a tree to serve as a new bridge. The prospective bridge was growing at the edge of the river. All we had to do was cut it so that it fell across the stream. Using the ubiquitous machete, our guides chopped at the tree for about 10 minutes until it should have fallen – by all laws of gravity this tree should have already become our bridge! But it seemed reluctant to fall, so we began pushing it over by hand. Still unsuccessful, we cut down another, smaller tree to use a leverage. After a full half hour of encouraging the tree to fall with no luck, we gave up and decided to get wet. For once, a tree wins the war against the inhabitants of Kalimantan!

Not In My BackYard

One of the oddest things about doing this work is our dependence on the hospitality of the people we are studying. This morning we (7 people) showed up in a village where we knew no one, and asked to spend the night. Of course they said yes – because everyone recognizes that no hotels or guesthouses exist in this part of the world. We are staying with a VERY rich man. The house is complete with a living room full of furniture, adjacent shop, running water, indoor toilets, beds, and a kitchen table. Which is definitely the most surprising aspect of the house – even in the cities people don’t often use tables.

Our host made his money from logging, rubber, mining, and oil palm – all the usual suspects in Kalimantan. He is the most powerful man in the village. However, he is adamantly anti-oil palm. I think he has NIMBY syndrome – he recognizes the negative effects of oil palm development, but also wants to make money. So he has bought oil palm in nearby regions, but refuses to allow oil palm where he lives.

Moving again

Today was our last day in Sungai Daka – tomorrow we move to a village called Merangin. I spend the day on a motorbike again, surveying villages in the area. I overdosed on sweet coffee, tea, and other drinks offered during our survey work, and by the time I got home my hands were shaking from so much sugar and caffeine.

Drinking Games

We mapped durian gardens today, which was a nice break from time spent on a motorbike. In the evening, after showering and deciding on a plan for the last day of work in Sungai Daka, I joined Tono at a wedding taking place in the village common room. In many ways it reminded me of an American party – a band was playing on the stage, a group was dancing to the music, and there were drinking games in the middle of the room. The only massive difference? Everyone, except the dancers, was sitting down. And the men and women had to enter and exit from different doors. I did my best to play the drinking game – which involved seeing who could last the longest sipping tuak (fermented cassava root) via straw from a huge jug. I then tried dancing – which was far more fun than the drinking.

My overall impression of the night was one of control, however. Every five minutes or so, I and all the other dancers and men in the building was offered arak. I’d been told that turning down arak is impolite, so I took the smallest sips possible, but by the end of the night I wasn’t exactly sober…

Arrogance

Every village has a different character. Some are curious, some are boring. This village is arrogant and dominant. We are staying with the Kepala Desa (head of village) and he is excited about helping us do our work. However, his help mostly comes in the form of telling us what to do (and what we are capable of doing!). He outright informed the women in our team that they were not able to hike long distances, and that they didn’t have the speaking skills to conduct interviews. Um, what?? We’ve been doing this work for a year. But I can’t be mad in this place – or even show discomfort. Instead I smile and say “Yes Sir – that’s right, they are women. But – haha! – they’re all we have and they are very smart – they’re just quiet right now because they are trying to be polite. And yes they might have short legs but – hehe – its no problem for them to walk 15 kilometers per day. In fact – crazy girls – they LOVE to walk 15 kilometers per day!”

I was both lucky and unfortunate today in my work. My guide was the kepala dusun (head of subvillage) a relatively young man who perfectly resembles the character of this village. When we first met he spent 10 minutes trying to figure out why I wasn’t married, and then he bragged about his own long and productive (3 children) marriage.

Our assignment was to map the border of the village area. This work involved some hiking, but mostly consisted of driving on oil palm roads and taking GPS points. I think my guide wanted to impress the foreigner, because he took me on a tour of the oil palm processing plant (something I’ve been wanting to do for a year, but have not been able to receive permission to do); introduced me to his friends eating pork and forest birds, and drinking arak, in the middle of an oil palm garden; took me to the old logging camp and let me take photos to my heart’s content; and offered me coffee in his hut in the middle of the oil palm plantation. So for the price of listening to bragging all day, I got some great information.

Swimming

Today we moved to Sungai Daka in a truck, and are ready to start work tomorrow morning. This village is located on one of the biggest rivers in the region, which means….SWIMMING! Albeit with a sarong, and yeah there is a mining operation upstream that uses mercury to extract gold, but I’ll just avoid swallowing the water and everything will be fine.

Rice House!

Another long day on the motorbike. I was getting desperate to find our next study village so we set off in a heavy rain to a set of villages with the oldest oil palm in the region. Again the trip consisted of navigating motorbikes through oil palm. Perhaps the most shocking moment was during our drive along the border of Gunung Palung National Park. To the right of the road was national park (which has been logged to hell, but at least it still contains trees) and to the left was a moonscape of land cleared and newly planted with oil palm –continuing about 7 kilometers from the park, as far as the eye could see in the rainy weather.

Again the actual surveying of villages was fairly un-extraordinary – we were able to find our next village/destination (Sungai Daka) before heading home at around 7 pm at night. The best part of the day was seeing a traditional Dayak structure for storing rice. The building is elevated about 5 meters off the ground, on long poles. Inside a family can store about 6 months of unhusked rice – the building is watertight, and little hats around each of the poles keep rodents out. For the first time I wonder where everyone else in Ketapang keeps rice (since this is the first rice-storing building that I’ve seen?).

Night Hike

Instead of working in the village today, Dessy and I went looking for our next study site. So we headed off with two very cute 20-something young men to check out neighboring villages. Traveling by motorbike in Ketapang is a hate-love relationship for me – now that I’ve gotten over my fear of traveling far to fast up and down slippery dirt roads, I am more aware of the incredible discomfort that comes with gluing myself (and whatever bags I’m carrying) to the motorbike for hours at a time. This is particularly difficult as my legs are simply too long for riding on the back of most bikes here. Yet the travel is almost always exhilarating, and the landscape is often gorgeous – today’s trip is no exception. Baya contains a mountain called Batu Daya, which I saw from afar last year. The mountain consists of four peaks. Depending on the viewer’s location, Batu Daya appears to have either 1, 2, 3 or all 4 peaks. Unfortunately (or fortunately) all roads must be redirected around this massive landscape feature, and I’ve seen all four perspectives in our two days in Baya.

Of course our trip took us past the mountain, particularly stunning this morning, wrapped in clouds…but soon enough we entered the oil palm plantation again, and my thoughts ran away from mountains to the boredom of endless palm trees. Our trip was relatively uneventful (we got a flat tire, observed a pack of otters, took a break at a lake, and checked out a cave full of bats) – and were home by 3 pm. After a quick snack and drink, we put on our hiking sandals and started the 7 kilometer trek to the neighboring village – Kembera. We arrived at around 5 pm to see that almost everyone in the village was at – guess what? – a meeting about the wedding that had happened in Baya the night before.

At the invitation of the village head, we sat down in a house filled with men animatedly talking in a Dayak language that was totally incomprehensible to me. Half of the men were drunk, and I was immediately offered arak which I sipped as the customary leader of the village introduced himself. He asked me the following question:
“Should religion and culture be tied together, or should religion and culture be split?” He was seeking this answer because there was a problem regarding weddings in the village – apparently some of the villagers preferred good Christian weddings without all the customary Dayak traditions (e.g., beating live pigs with live chickens), while others felt that despite the fact that everyone in this area is Christian, the traditions of the culture should be observed as well as the traditions of the religion.

So this was a loaded question. I tried to explain that in my country religion and government are separate – yet religion is intertwined with culture. Religion and culture really can’t be entirely separate, no matter how hard one tries. I don’t think this satisfied the customary village leader, because about five minutes later he asked me the same question for the second time!

Before I had sipped too much arak, we finally left the meeting to get the data we had come for – village population, oil palm status and village facilities (water sources, etc). At around 7 pm we started the walk home in the dark, and I realized this was the first time I’d been outside in the Indonesian rainforest at night. Our path was lighted by an amazing full moon, and the sky was totally clear so that we didn’t have to use our headlamps except under the forest canopy. Marvelous! These moments are the times I most love working in Indonesia.

Endless Oil Palm

More than a year after beginning the first mapping in Cali, here I am again – armed with my GPS unit and yellow notebook – ready to commence mapping. We are adding three new villages because the 10 that we completed last year are mostly muslim/Melayu – I’m hoping to see some differences between Dayak and Melayu land use.

My assignment today is oil palm. This village has just a little bit of oil palm – less than 4% of the entire village area. I’m going to map the edges of planted oil palm, of cleared oil palm, and the area that is planned for clearing in the near future. Oil palm plantations are not particularly nice places to do field work – although they offer easy access (lots of roads) they are hot and boring. After 2 hours of work, the motorbike I was riding on broke, and I had to wait in the middle of the plantation for about an hour while my guide found another motorbike. The day ended at the canteen in the oil palm plantation, eating spicy noodles and trying to explain to the security guard why I was puttering around the plantation.

As we work, my guide tells me about previous researchers who have worked in Baya. One woman in particular worked in the region for about 5 years, and was fluent in the local language as well as Indonesian. Amazing! I enjoy the fact that people here are used to westerners, because they pay less attention to me and that at least gives me the illusion of having a bit of privacy.

Dancing and Drugs, oh my!

Last night I crashed into bed, and then tossed and turned all night to the sound of endless drumming and the shine of a lightbulb that had no off-switch. Why, you might ask? First the music – we arrived on the first night of a three-day wedding celebration, which requires constant music for the duration of the event. Second the light – although villagers in Baya don’t have electricity from the government, they use generators, and like to sleep with the lights on – so they run generators all night and see no need for an off switch for lights!

I awoke this morning to the sound of roosters crowing and a ten year old boy asking – “Do you want to go to the waterfall to bathe?”. How could I say no! So at 6:30 am I along with the rest of the team piled into the truck and traveled about a kilometer to a 10 meter tall waterfall. After scrambling down to the base of the falls, I splashed around in the for about ½ hour until I was thoroughly cold – but I’d made a couple friends from the village too. Physical activity builds strong bonds more quickly than simply talking with folks here – I’ve found that after a hard day of work, or after a game (volleyball), people are more willing to be friendly, instead of simply curious/staring. Of course swimming fully clothed in a waterfall is not much of a bath, so upon returning to the village I bathed again, this time in the river.

After this refreshing morning, we ate breakfast (my life of rice and fish three times a day has commenced again) and then checked out the wedding celebration. It was far from anything I had ever experienced. I suppose I should back up a bit here and inform those who don’t know – Dayak peoples are the “natives” of Borneo. They inhabited this place long before Indonesia was a country, and even before the Dutch arrived. Each village has its own customs and even it’s own language (totally different from the Indonesain language). Dayaks make up almost 50% of the population of Indonesian Borneo, and even the governor of West Kalimantan is Dayak. Native Dayaks were marginalized by the Suharto government, and they are still a minority in Indonesia, both ethnically and religiously – all Dayaks are Catholic, Protestant, or Animist. Somehow old Dayak customs manage to mix well with the new Christian religions (introduced in the mid-1900s) and the wedding incorporates both Christian and Dayak traditions.

When we arrived at the wedding, this is what I observed: A newly constructed platform as an extension of an existing house, build especially for the wedding. In the center of this platform was a structure made from banana fronds, bamboo, rattan, and batik cloth, in the center of which was a jar filled with arak, or rice wine. Around this structure was a group of men playing gongs and drum, and next to them were two men gyrating in a slow dance. Encircling the players were village residents, watching the festivities and drinking arak from a woman walking around and offering the drink to all guests. In addition to arak, many of the men and women were chewing betel nut.

The villagers graciously offered my arak, and then an old woman grabbed my hand and asked me if I’d like to chew betel nut. I’ve encountered this plant before – in Thailand. It stains the teeth red, and I figured it must have some addictive and or drug-like qualities, since those who chew it seem to chew it constantly, like chain-smokers. Here, old women and men make betel-nut packets – they use the nut itself, a couple of different leaves, and a paste made from river snails (yuumm….) and stick the whole thing in the mouth. They chew, and spit bright red juice. The concoction is never swallowed. Locals think the nut makes your teeth strong because the teeth eventually turn black – but from what I can see, everyone who chews betel nut has very few teeth left!

Anyway, I chewed some betel nut along with the leaf and snail paste. It was one of the most nasty, bitter, definitely-not-food things that I’ve ever put in my mouth, and the villagers had a good laugh as I ran to the railing and spit the stuff out. But almost at the same moment, I realized why people chew betel nut – for its narcotic properties. I began to feel unusually warm, and slightly light-headed, and giddy. Of course my new village friends realized this, so they goaded me into a dance around the banana leaf structure – dancing apparently consists of stamping your feet and clapping in time to the music. Nice, but certainly not lindy-hop!

After my dancing and drug experience (at 10 in the morning, no less) I took a nap for about an hour before one of the villagers told me to come watch the pig ceremony. We walked to a pig pen where the villagers were gathered around, nervously waiting for…a woman to throw water on the pig. When you throw water on a pig, it throws water – and feces from its pen – back at you. Somehow this fact got lost in translation and after the water-throwing event I was covered with stinky pig-poo. So I went to wash in the river before the next event of the day, a ceremony where a live pig is beaten with a live chicken. Yes, this falls in the category of animal abuse – but of course I can only watch and smile. Next, a large basket of uncooked rice is prepared. Villagers must fight to win the basket, and whoever wins is…THE WINNER! These events are like carnival games for children, and as far as I can see have very little to do with the actually marriage of two young people.

In the afternoon I decided to clear my head and take a walk to another village, about 2 kilometers away. I was happily walking down the road, enjoying the quiet and the heat, when a motorbike roared up with two men. The man in the back got off the motorbike and asked where I was going, and why I was alone – typical questions in Indonesia. Then he started walking with me – which was fine, except that he complained every step of the way! How hot it was, how far to the next village, the fact that he didn’t have shoes, the fact that he was embarrassed to be seen walking instead of riding a motorbike, how this trip was going to make his skin even blacker. My peaceful walk thus turned into a good story of a man who was willing to bear black skin to spend some quality time with a foreigner who just wanted a few moments alone.

Returning to the village that afternoon, we immediately began our mapping meeting. As we did last year, this year we are mapping villages – but just three of them, and all Dayak. Thus the work is more or less the same, but the place is different. Here, in Baya, a land use and border map already exist, hopefully making our job easy?!? Mapping meeting finished, we bathed in the river, washed our clothes, and ate dinner, then headed to the wedding. Because they’d been downing arak all day, everyone was drunk, and madly dancing around the banana structure. They pulled me in using physical force and I joined the craziness for about 10 minutes before retreating to the quiet of the dining room, where I ate my first pork in Kalimantan. Delicious! How glad I am that I’m not a vegetarian here…

Into the Jungle

This morning I woke up in a hotel room with room service, air conditioning, and running water. Tonight I’m going to bed in room with three other people, in a village in the middle of the rain forest with no electricity and where you must bathe in the river. The village is called Baya, and it has the strongest Dayak culture of any the places I’ve yet visited.

My day was dominated by traveling. After checking out of my hotel room, I hired an ojek to drive me by motorbike to the bus station. I’ve stared to use my foreign-ness as a bargaining chip – the 20-year old ojek driver agreed to knock down the price (from $2 to $1.50) for the chance to get a cellphone photo with me, the buleh. After arrive at the bus station ½ hour early for a bus that was leaving at 11 am, I then proceeded to wait two more hours until the bus finally left at about 1:30 pm. Indonesia! This is the first time I’ve taken the bus in Ketapang, and it was similar to an ojek, but instead of feeling like I was going to be squashed by every truck encountered along the way, I had the impression that the bus driver was trying to run down every small child, old person, vegetable salesperson, dog, and bicycle rider along the side of the road. To my near disbelief, we made the trip with zero deaths or accidents! In Telok Melano, I met the rest of the team and we quickly hired a boat to take us upriver, to a port from which we would then try to find ground transportation to our final destination, Baya.

A small digression. This year our team consists of six Indonesians, plus myself. This is the same group of people I worked with last year, and we have already developed a comfort in living and trust in work that I have rarely experienced in my life. Each of us has our strange quirks and moments, and each contributes to the team in essential ways. Dessy is our fearless leader, well-spoken and the oldest in the group. Yadi is a great interviewer, and is as hippy as a devout Indonesian Muslim man can be. Windi is the social heart and logistic coordinator of the group, and because she is married has broken more than a few hearts in Ketapang. Pita is small and adorable, but is infinitely competent and had this sarcastic sense of humor that I appreciate, because it is rarely found in Indonesia. Neli is quiet and tall, and has a calmness about her that keeps everyone in the group grounded. The baby and only Christian/Dayak of the group is Tono, a smart and goofy young man who is rain-forest-smart. I’m about to share two intense weeks with this team.

Back to my story: Finding ground transport was a bit of a shot in the dark – transportation is never guaranteed in Kalimantan, especially if it is 1) early evening, 2) not booked in advance and 3) you don’t know anyone in the village where you are going. Perhaps the rest of the team was worried about this sticky situation, but I was so blown away by being back in the jungle I successfully ignored the fact that we didn’t know where we would be sleeping in the evening. The boat ride was gorgeous. Packed in to a small speed boat with all our belongings, there was nothing to do but look for monkeys in the trees along the river. And the monkeys cooperated – I saw three species during our 1.5 hour boat ride. One of the biggest similarities between humans and monkeys is our shared love of making noise – like humans, monkeys here in Kalimantan seem to chatter constantly, and supplement this chatter by shaking branches and screaming. Thus it was not hard to locate the primates eating fruit from trees overhanging the river as we zipped by. I have been too long in cities – even the air smelled sweet as we entered the jungle.

Upon arrival in Matan, the final river port, we disembarked from the boat (I couldn’t feel my legs for approximately five minutes) and asked the locals if there was anyone willing to drive us to Baya. Amazingly enough, a truck was leaving to Baya at that very moment…so we quickly piled our belongings in the back and commenced the third leg of our trip, into the mountains. By this time it was getting dark outside, so we stood in the back of the truck (it was sort of a dump truck, but the back was filled with people and belongings) and appreciated the sun set over the mountains to the west. The reason that we could see the sun set (usually not possible in the middle of a rain forest) is that we were driving through endless oil palm plantation, newly cleared so that the trees were no taller than 2 meters. As with most transport in Kalimantan, we were going so fast that all bumps threw us (the passengers in the back) into the air. My feet spent much time flying during the giddy trip to Baya. After sunset, the trip became truly trippy/giddy – the sky was totally clear, a nearly full moon was rising, and we were ducking oil palm fronds and trees as the truck thundered into the older part of the plantation.

Finally arriving in Baya was a relief. Please realize that there are no hotels/guest house or cell phones in these villages – we could not sleep in a place especially reserved for guests, nor could we call ahead to inform the villagers that 7 people plus belongings would like to spend the night. Luckily people in Kalimantan are usually extremely welcoming to guests – we were immediately introduced to the village customary leader, fed noodles, and offered a couple rooms to sleep in.

Petai Udang

I’ve discovered my new favorite dish in Indonesia. Petai udang. Which means Shrimp Petai. A spicy shrimp-veggie dish served with rice. What, you ask, is petai? It is a quarter sized green leguminous seed that comes from rain forest trees. The consistency is like uncooked lima bean, and the taste is sort of like asparagus. Delicious! I know you are dubious, but don’t knock it until you try it. I ordered it for dinner last night by accident, and I am now in love.

Returning to more serious topics – I’m off to the field tomorrow, and will be back to a computer in about two weeks. Today was yet another day of getting letters – in the third city thus far – and I am now free (more or less) to continue research in this fine bureaucratic nation.

Things to Think About

Coming back to a place after being away for a while is always bittersweet. Pontianak is no exception.

I flew from Jakarta to Pontianak Saturday night, and arrived to see a couple of my good friends waiting eagerly at the gate. After greeting Indonesian style (no hugging, just double-cheek fake kisses for the girls, and handshakes for the guys), we loaded my three huge bags of equipment into the only taxi that would take us (the others all demanded that the bags be divided among two taxis). Driving to the office was like coming home - mostly because I could suddenly see the stars and hear the crickets again after far too long in airports and Jakarta, both bereft of natural life. Pontianak seems very welcoming - last year I was overwhelmed and more than a bit scared arriving in a place where I knew no one!

Bang Umar and Ka Tia, plus their two daughters, met me at the office. Living with them is kind of like living with an older sibling - they are too young to be my parents, but definitely older than I, both in responsibility and age. I dropped my bags in the spare room and we went to buy some food - mixed stir fried veggies - before I fell into bed, exhausted.

Somehow I'd forgotten the tiredness that comes with speaking a foreign language all day. This year is immeasurably (or perhaps very measurably - in hundreds of words) better than the past because I can speak and understand everyday conversations. However, far more effort is required to understand Indonesian than English. If I zone out, even for a moment, I lose the train of conversation and have to stop whoever is talking to me, saying "sorry, can you repeat what you just said?"

At the airport I was accosted by a number of people, who all wanted to speak with the white girl. The photo-takers mobbed me at one point, and I stood with a forced smile on my face while they all posed for photos. Photo-taking in Indonesia, as in the US, often comes with a snowball effect - one person wants a photos, and then her friend, and suddenly half the airport! So if you see random photos of a curly-haired buleh in the hands of someone from Sumatra, don't be surprised =)

More tomorrow - I start the Pontianak visa process in the morning, and will be playing with sulfuric acid in the afternoon. Fun times in the equator city!

Indonesia 2.0

The trip from Hartford to Jakarta was as painless as possible. I am hauling three gigantic duffel bags full of equipment (totaling around 180 pounds - far far overweight). These include 200 bottles for taking water samples, 12 buckets for catching and measuring rainfall, a water velocimeter in a case that looks like it was made for a gun, two laptops, and a 10 pound, $15,000 instrument for measuring water quality. Needless to say, I'm relived that everything arrived safe and sound! The flight was slightly amazing - we passed through the arctic circle from Chicago to Hong Kong, and we could see icebergs for much of the trip, and then an amazing Russian/Mongolian landscape. Unfortunately it was cloudy over China, so no great wall for me this time =)

Now, after slightly more than six months away from Indonesia, I'm back in Jakarta. The experience is slightly deja vous. The government offices still have way too many pleasant employees, who take far too long to prepare letters and documents given the difficulty of the task. However this time I'm prepared - I have a good book to read while I'm waiting!

Now I have to grab lunch and return to the immigration office (for the third time in two days) to get a letter. I'll try and update this blog regularly for all my admirers...thanks for reading!