Farewell Indonesia

I am now writing from Montreal Canada where I am staying at my newly married sister and her husband's apartment.

The blogging was certainly sporadic - I wish we had had the time to be more regular but there was just so much to experience and do. That along with the on and off internet connections made it a little difficult but I hope the stories we were able to publish were informative and entertaining.

We may get the opportunity to publish more of our experiences online but we have both left Indonesia for now. After meeting so many fascinating animals, human and non-human, and becoming involved in their lives the desire to return is only going to become stronger over time.

I am beginning to work my way through the footage and interviews I shot during my time in Indonesia, letting ideas ferment. I hope to have a rough cut in two months time in which a cohesive story is told.

I really would like to thank all of the people who allowed me to film their work and were so forthcoming in interviews. I hope that once this documentary has been completed I will be able to follow up on events and stories there in the future and that the friendships made there will continue.

Toothless and Happy

Last week my close friend Karina and her fiancé Jan came to visit us at the rescue center in Ciapus. They are on vacation and stopped by at the beginning of their 3 week trip through Indonesia. Luckily Karina is a dentist/orthodontist and Jan is a human doctor specializing in surgery. “Luckily” because we had a slow loris at the center, “Kim”, with a severe abscess between her left eye and the left upper jaw that was caused by an infected tooth. When slow lorises get caught from the wild to be sold on the pet markets the traders often clip their teeth so they cannot bite potential customers. The pulpa, especially of the canines often gets infected and can cause the animal to die. Even though this happens quite frequently there are not many people out there who know a lot about loris dentistry and there is very little to non literature about this matter. Especially when it comes to primates it can be very helpful to combine forces and consult human doctors and dentists. Karmele has treated this kind of infection before , but was happy to get a second and third opinion from Karina and Jan and so we did the procedure together. Karina pulled the infected tooth and Jan opened the abscess, drained it and used two stitches to keep the incision open until it starts to heal. The sad thing about this is that a loris with hardly any teeth left has little chance of being reintroduced into the wild. The good news is though that Kim is doing really well and has been introduced to a young loris male, “Chico”, who shares her fate and the two of them have fallen in love. They will be moved to a large enclosure at the center and will stay there – toothless but happy…