Into the jungle

International Animal Rescue Indonesia is located in Bogor, in the village of Curug Nangka in the foothills of Salak Mountain. Today we hiked up into the mountain national park with the guide Senin, Karmele, Marlene and Kim. We saw a lizard and two eagles but none of the wild Macaques which live there. I suppose it's not too surprising since there were so many of us and we weren't being that quiet.

On Kim's back you see a bag full of trash which we found littering the trail. The jungle is deep, wet and lush and everything grows and decays at an astonishing rate; if a landslide opens up some raw soil or a tree is uprooted moss and ferns grow over it in no time. Maybe this is why it seems like a little garbage is harmless. In a place where natural forces like volcanoes, tsunami, typhoons, earthquakes and landslides are so much more common and have such immediate consequences for peoples' lives a little litter may seem insignificant. Of course plastic wrappers, rubber, alluminum, glass etc. will not decay but accumulate and pollute.

This is another situation where it's easy coming from a rich
industrial country to condescend. I wonder how much of our own pollution is either exported or swept under the landfill carpet, to still have almost as much negative long term effect on the environment as open sewers and burning garbage. I try to keep that in mind and be as sensitive to my own state of hypocrisy as possible. Still it's easy
to be frustrated when people spraypaint grafitti on the rocks next to the jungle waterfall, toss plastic bags of waste by the wayside and burn batteries and styrofoam in the gutters.

Getting busy

Sitting cross legged in bed under the mosquito canopy while Kim takes a cold shower. Yesterday I rummaged around in a bag of bug repellent which Kim had accumulated over various trips to the tropics. I picked one out and sprayed it on my hands, neck and the back of my head before dinner. Then after dinner Kim held up a spray bottle and asked me if it was the one I’d used. Sure was. This is to impregnate clothing, she told me. It should never be applied to bare skin, never even applied indoors but only to the outer surface of clothing. Great. So I plunged under the cold shower. It was actually really pleasant.

Today Gunowan did a presentation on Raptors which seemed to please the kids immensely. He smiles and jokes a lot and very easily with them which really seems to hold their attention. I filmed again. I think now I have about 3 hours of footage of the presentations. That may be useful for IAR’s own promotional and educational work here if it can be put into a useful package.
Today we went into Bogor mostly to pick up a cel phone. It was a rather long and not so well-used day as my efforts to pick up another external hard drive for backup proved fruitless. We were at the big, American style mall again today. It’s an air conditioned behemoth with very friendly service.

On the way back we let the others drive on and stopped at an internet café to check emails. Then we had our first experience with an Angkot – the little blue and green mini-buses which are the local transportation. We gave our destination to the driver and climbed in. An older fellow in the passenger seat turned around, gave us a huge smile and asked us where we were from. He seemed quite tickled to hear Germany and Canada and asked us more which we unfortunately didn’t understand. As is often the case he apologized for not speaking English at which we apologized for not speaking Indonesian. I have a great deal of respect for people who put in the effort to learn the local language and I think it’s the real way to connect.

Back at the guest quarters a thunderstorm rolled in and the dogs who had barked accusingly at us before came and cowered at our feet.

Tuesday May 27th

First day rather more collected. Trying to figure out my place here, who I can film, talk to. Kim had some success with Enrichment building little challenges for Macaques with nuts, honey and egg inside.

Sometimes the first day or two arriving in a new place I have this increased focus and energy with which to analyze and describe new experiences. The time directly following is so full of learning it becomes overwhelming to describe it all, I get caught up in the action and it becomes more difficult sitting down to express it.

I’ve been filming a lot in the last two days: three presentations with school children followed by planting trees, some shots of the general area and a little footage with the Macaques as they react to enrichment items placed in their cages. Filming in the cages is particularly difficult because two of three roofs are translucent green or blue which reflects onto the subjects. Not only that but the wires must be

It’s 7:10 pm here. Chants are ringing from the Mosques. The mosquitoes are making themselves felt. Geckoes, crickets and frogs fill the background with a chattering, chirping, burping buzz. During the evenings, after the first few hours of sleep I awake and my mind is spinning from question to idea back to question. I catalogue burning smells: sometimes I smell burning rubber or wood, sometimes plastic. They burn garbage here as there is no public disposal. Even outside the President’s palace there was a driveway with piles of refuse.

While piles of rotting waste and the burning stench are disgusting at least there is no avoiding the consequences of creating so much of it. Unlike the endless neatly tied bags we fill the bins with at home which disappear from sight and mind within a day or two.

The educational programs at I.A.R. Indonesia aim to increase the awareness school children have for the environment and their co inhabitants on the planet. It’s definitely moving in the right direction. The challenge is, however, a vast one.

Today Karmele and Marlene went to meet some captive Gibbons to see if they might find a suitable companion for Saar. I may be able to go to the shelter where they are sometime soon, something I really look forward to. I don’t know much about Gibbons except that they are amazing climbers. I remember watching them in awe at the Berliner Tierpark and of course Saar is a climbing prodigy.

It would be a great pleasure to be able film Saar meeting his new companion for the first time.

Since meeting Kim I had begun visiting zoos for the first since I was a very young child. I remember going with the whole family to the Seattle zoo and my parents’ disapproval at the shabby condition of the wolves there. Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf was amongst my family’s book collection and they pointed out that these animals had all been taken from their natural habitat to live in small cages or enclosures. From that time I had avoided zoos on principle. Since Kim has a professional interest in animal health and a personal interest in their welfare I felt I would lift my ban to serve my own education.

One of the things I’ve learned about is “stereotypical behavior”, repetitive motion like pacing, head swinging, nail biting, continuous scratching. It’s the same kind of behavior associated with psychologically disturbed humans and comes from the same kind of alienating experience, such as being abused, locked in a very small space, isolated etc. Stereotypical behavior is not exhibited by healthy animals in the wild. Watching the Macaques at I.A.R. who often come from homes where they were abused as pets, you can still see signs of stereotypical behavior.

Hazy jet-lagged catch up day

I.A.R.’s guest house is a bamboo thatched paradise bungalow with a covered eating area. We are guarded by a friendly pack of extremely clean, healthy looking ex-street dogs. They take a little time to get friendly but they will become very loyal we are told.

We made it out of bed and up to the IAR headquarters around 9a.m. The baby Gibbon Saar, whose name means ‘Lost’, is learning how to climb and is incredibly cute. It’s pretty easy to see why baby apes are so popular as pets. They’re hardier and more interactive than human babies of the same age, running, climbing, making faces, shy and very sociable, they react differently to different individuals and integrate you in their play. Of course they are wild animals and when they are older they become impossible to handle, sometimes aggressive, difficult to predict and impossible to provide a good home for and that is one of the reasons for the cages full of unwanted adult Macaques.

A spicy breakfast of Nasi Goreng and sweet coffee helps get my blood out of stasis. Karmele arrives with a pack of happy dogs and she takes us on a tour of the facility. There is a lot to see and keep track of.

One main focus at the moment is enrichment for the Macaques. Enrichment means improving the quality of life of the animals by providing them with stimulation in the form of challenges and an interactive environment. It is a growing trend in zoos to put more resources into enrichment and it is essential to help prepare the animals for reintroduction to the wild. Asman and others are constructing objects out of wood, burlap and rubber from tires and straps, which are hung from the ceiling of the cages. They swing freely and provide a robust, organic form with an interior to practice their natural instinct to hide.

Other forms of enrichment are puzzles with an edible prize inside – something which provides a challenge suitable to the perseverance and intelligence of the animal, in other words not so difficult that he gives up but not so hard that he gets it right away. A piece of bamboo, stopped at both ends and containing some choice nuts is an example.

Enrichment takes many forms I am told but that is a quick introduction for people like myself who aren’t in the know.

The Slow Lorises are nocturnal and so we just catch sight of their bushy bottoms sticking out of a sheltered box nestled in a shady tree.

A group of elementary school students arrived around 10a.m. to get some animal welfare and environmental awareness education which includes some information on endemic species. Afterwards they planted some trees. Indonesian school children are quite well-behaved. At the gates of the complex some poor children who weren’t in school were peering through the fence while the school children had a soft drink. Karmele asked that they also be invited in.

We head down to the guest quarters for lunch and then Endang and Iing took us into Bogor to register with the police, go to the bank and hit the shopping mall for some essentials we didn’t pack.

One police station wasn’t enough – we had to go from the local to the regional station but we just ended up waiting in the car. After a confusing mix-up at the till where I was charged three times for batteries, refunded once and received one pack and then finally received cash back we decided to hit Starbucks. The prices are as European as the flavours.

The drive back is long. Since I don’t speak Indonesian and Endang doesn’t speak a lot of English our communication was a bit stilted but in the end we talked about football – he plays in goal and his hero is Olli Kahn or King Kahn, keeper for Bayern Muenchen.

In the evening we are serenaded by the frogs and geckoes again and chat with Marlene, a Danish biologist building the education program.

What’s better than a free rock concert?

24^th. of May wake up with a thousand things to do, one of them, pack for Indonesia. Others include sell my car or give it away, apply for health insurance. I know some of these things won’t get done.

Kim has her own similar list. She may manage to finish hers.

Kim’s friend Mark kindly stores some of our boxes and drives us to the airport where we miraculously check in and send off the last mail. Then it’s into the machine that is modern travel. If we’re lucky it’ll spit us out alive on the other end.

Munich is crisp, clean and there is little activity. Frankfurt is where we board the long haul flight with a stop-over in Singapore. Crossing from one terminal to the next via sci-fi blue lit transit tunnel.

We board the 747-400 on time. Shiny, sleek, modern aluminum-skinned hi-tech transport taking us from the sterile, cool, silver grey, steel and glass halls of rainy Frankfurt, belching kerosene exhaust the entire way to land in dirty, noisy, chaotic, colorful, humid and hot Jakarta. This is not the time or place to explore the symbolism of taking such a polluting form of transportation in such a clean elegant package from western Europe to subtropical Asia but it lingers in my mind.

I manage to sleep most of the way which is rare. Singapore is a half hour stop and then it’s one more thundering take-off, over the sea to Jakarta. The terminal is low-ceilinged, decorated with Indonesian art. The cleaner in the toilets turns on the tap and hands me a paper towel before asking for a tip. All I have is change from Singapore. He doesn’t look impressed.

The line for Immigration is long but we are quickly processed. All of our luggage is already on the baggage belt and we throw it onto carts. We get through security with a cursory check of the laptop.

In the letter from Karmele did it say go to the left or the right? I think it must have been right. To the right there is a huge crowd of people, some with signs for passengers expecting pick-up. I glance to the left. A just as big a crowd there. I’m pretty sure it was right so we go right. Right was wrong. No one there. I walk back through and take a look at the crowd to the left. I don’t see any International Animal Rescue signs or anything with Kim or my name on it. We go upstairs to go to an internet café to find Karmele’s number. She says there are people waiting to pick us up and they’ll meet us at McDonald’s.

Gunowan, Asman and one other are smiling at the entrance and we take off through the airport crowd. People are smiling, frowning, reacting. Children are especially curious, grinning and waving. It’s noisy, chaotic, though not so chaotic as it might be. I film for a minute or two but it’s dark as we enter the parking lot and I think it’ll be better to film once I know people a little better. The sun goes down around 5:30 in the evening here.

The drive through darkened Jakarta is surreal. The city is huge. Skyscrapers with company names glowing, gigantic billboards, hotels and high rises in the smoky distance, insane drivers and crawling traffic all make for a numbing impression. After a little friendly chat we sit in silence for a while and then it’s hard to keep my head up.

It takes a long time to leave Jakarta and there seems to be little gap between the city of Jakarta and the city of Bogor. To the left Gunowan points out the botanical garden and the president’s palace, which is full of deer, apparently a non-indigenous kind.

We climb up in to the mountains. First we drive through twisting roads which narrow and then it’s onto a small, single lane paved track and then we arrive at the gates of the I.A.R. Indonesia guest quarters. The cook, Ibu Oti has left some great food for us which we wake up long enough to eat. Then we spread the mosquito netting and surrender to jet-lag, with a tree frog concert for a lullaby.

So what’s better than a free rock concert?

A tree frog concert!

24 hours...

It's the breakfast blog! It's been incredibly hectic and not everything will get done! Kim has applications to get out. We haven't packed! It's Friday! But other than that everything is fine...

Fine, fine, fine. We have anti-malaria drugs, we have an extra battery pack, we have, shit, we just don't know what we don't have and won't till we get there but surely you can get everything you need there. Probably at half the price. We'll see.

It's now the evening blog. Just did a quick interview with Kim. I'm going to go see how much of what I've learned I've been able to integrate by doing a quick video capture and looking at the footage.

Blog almost ready

All we need is some more content!

Information about the animals that I.A.R. works with and their projects at the rescue center in Indonesia can be found here.

The last week before departure: Munich

Last week I took a 6 hour crash course from Michael Frank, managing director of M.Project, who stuffed my head full of information. We then flew to London and took a bus and train down to Uckfield, headquarters of International Animal Rescue (IAR) to meet with Alan Knight and Interview him.

The interview turned out surprisingly well despite my making several technical mistakes. The composition was good, the sound was clear. Alan does a good interview speaking concisely and forcefully. It was a great start. Pictures and other film footage from I.A.R.'s projects in India and Indonesia gave me some ideas of how I could proceed there.

We then spent the night in London with our friends Radford and Nicole. The following day I followed memories from 10 years ago through the streets of the City where I'd worked for two months as a motorcycle courier, walking from London Bridge, over Tower Bridge, past the tower of London, up Holborn to Covent Gardens. On Monmouth street I found the coffee shop which I remembered serving the best coffee in London. Then it was down to Trafalger Square to the Texas Embassy Cantina where I'd worked as a bartender, through Queen's Park to Victoria station where we caught a bus back to Stanstead and a Ryanair flight to Duesseldorf - total time from Germany to the U.K. and back: 40 hours.

We're doing a lot of air travel. Since there are direct connections between pollution, habitat destruction, decline of biodiversity etc. it seems counterproductive to travel so much but networking requires human contact across the globe. There are levels of communication that are difficult to achieve via email.

We spent the night in Bochum and took a car Cologne where Michael took a look at the footage I'd shot in Uckfield, filled my aching head with still more information and then we took off for Munich.

Just came home from the Tropical Disease Institute where we took a Tuberculoses Test. We've gone through a battery of immunizations, required by International Animal Rescue mostly to insure the safety of the animals we'll be working with.

I'm gathering all the extra equipment I might need during filming, extra battery pack, portable hard drive, separate camera level to replace the one on the tripod which broke etc.

I've purchased the book 'Shut up and Shoot' by Anthony G. Artis and am looking forward to doing a little reading. It seems to have some good tips and tricks. It also has a picture of the Panasonic DVX100 on the cover - my camera. That gives me a good feeling.

Beginnings...

Flying to London tomorrow to meet Alan Knight of International Animal Rescue. Brainstorming questions to ask and trying to learn to say please and thank you in Indonesian.