The Money Talks

Now that I drive a motorbike, my Indonesian friends decided that I desperately needed a drivers' license, called a "SIM" (Surat Izin Mengemudi = Driving Permission Letter). Apparently, policemen in Indonesia like to stop drivers for no reason but to check and see if they have a SIM. From an unofficial poll with a very small sample size (asking folks at our office) the majority of people who drive motorbikes in Pontianak have not bothered to get a SIM despite the fact that the permit costs less than $10, and is good for five years. For example, my friend Yadi has been driving for 7 years with no license, and thus refuses to drive past policemen - he takes roundabout routes that avoid police hangouts all-together.

Given that I stand out - even with a helmet on and the visor down and long sleeves - my friends suggested it was simply a matter of time before I was stopped by a policeman and asked for documentation. Plus, my motorbikes skills aren't stellar yet, so there could be reasons to stop me other than my extraordinary tallness and whiteness. So on Friday morning I headed to the police station to try and secure a SIM.

Just as in the US, a new driver must take both a written and practical test to qualify for the motorbike driving permit. But unlike the US, in Indonesia if a person does not want to take the test, a bribe is usually enough to get the license. The written test worried me since I can't read formal Indonesian, and there were bound to be words (e.g., pedestrian) on the test that are not in my vocabulary. The practical test didn't seem so bad until I watched a couple of Indonesians at the police station try - and fail. The driving test consists of navigating the motorbike in a very small figure-8 without using your feet to help the bike around. Given these two relatively steep barriers to getting my license (but really, I'm qualified to drive!) I decided to try bribery. My friend Neli, a sweet-looking young woman who is wily and always gets what she wants, accompanied me to the police station. Upon arrival, the policemen joked around with us for about 10 minutes before sending us through the inevitable bureaucracy.

The most disturbing part of the whole process - besides the fact that you don't actually have to take a test to get a SIM - was that although they checked my blood pressure, no one tested my eyesight! On the whole, Indonesian eyesight seems to be better than American eyesight. This fact is perhaps connected to the lack of book-reading that goes on here, but I'm open to suggestions explaining this phenomenon. However, some Indonesians probably have bad eyesight, don't wear glasses or contacts, and also drive motorbikes, which is a bit disturbing.

After about a half hour of filling out forms and making photocopies, I was finally ready to meet the boss and offer my bribe. The boss chatted me up for about ten minutes, including endless questions about Obama. Then he ushered in three other policemen, they took my photo, printed my SIM, and that was it! We paid $15 to the boss' assistant in the room next door, and shook hands with everyone before heading home. For once, I am glad that Indonesia is still dominated by corruption - money talks here.

Eat Until Stupid

Or, in Indonesian, "makan sampai bodoh." That was the theme of the reunion dinner with my field team (and a few extra friends) last night. We all met at a restaurant called "Italian Restaurant" in the old part of Pontianak. In this case, "italian food" must be taken very loosley to mean "shabu-shabu" (see Wikipedia on this subject). After everyone, except over-Americanized and on-time me, arrived about 45 minutes late, we loaded our plates and stuffed ourselves with self-cooked vegetatbles, shrimp, random pieces of meat, mushrooms, and rice. For the field teams, this was a reward - they have been in Ketapang for almost three weeks, mapping landholdings in some of our study villages, and they returned to Pontianak on Friday for rest and data entry. We have two new team members, and have (sadly) lost a couple of my longtime teammates to other pursuits. Windi is pregnant, and due to have a little girl next week. Tono got a job with the Department of Forestry, and will start work in April. Even in Indonesia, where the constant weather makes life feel unchanging, life shifts unexpectedly!

Blog Revived!

Here I am in Singapore, waiting for my 6 pm flight to Jakarta and then off to West Kalimantan a 6-month field campaign. I'll do my best to post regularly! Please poke me if I forget.

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.