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.