One week left in Sulawesi, I can’t believe that my time here is almost over!
This last week I have been taking it quite easy. I was wiped after La Pago and so have decided to take a few days out of the monkey world to see what else is out there, as well as helping the students with their stats and data entry every night. I joined up with a few other projects for a day at a time this week to see more – Bat harp-trapping, Small Mammals trapping and a bird walk. The night of bats was really great-although it had rained (again) in the evening, and although there were only 2 bats trapped, they were both quite rare and really interesting! They were both insect bats, the first was called the big eared horse shoe bat, and the second was the leaf-nose bat (the second largest insect bat). They were amazing! I got to help with the processing of it (well mostly writing down the measurements) but got to help in holding the wings down for tissue samples to be taken, and then I got to “pet” them! And if they weren’t nasty biting bats, I imagine a bat would be so wonderful to cuddle. The first bird walk I did was short and sweet, as I needed to get back early for another project, but my list of birds I’ve seen rose from 7 to about 15 in 45 minutes (including a couple of birds that I have been wanting to see this whole time but hadn’t yet!)! It was just me and one of the bird scientists, so he was TRYING to teach me the bird calls to indentify, but I obviously was failing at that because I kept asking him what one certain call was and it always ended up being squirrels! The second bird walk the next day lasted for 3 hours and a part from a student who joined who thought he knew everything about birds, it was still a lovely walk. It was so sunny in the morning (rained the rest of the day though!) and I was able to identify birds that I had learned the day before and saw many many more species of birds and my first boars of the season! And I also joined the small mammal project for a day. My roommate here, Helene, is the scientist for it, and so I went with her to check her traps – she has 100 traps set up throughout the forest in the hopes of catching rats, mice, shrews, etc (sometimes civets!). She then takes morphological measurements and tries to identify the species. But again, it was heavy rain last night (doesn’t sound much like the dry season to me), so nothing was in her traps today which was sad – first time in a month that she hasn’t caught anything and of course it’s on the one day I can go out!
Oh! And my quarter of a century birthday was great! It happened to follow on our day off, which was great! So I went climbing with the canopy access team – Vicky, James and Gordon – climbed a huge strangler fig and got to lay in a hammock 30-35 m up, which was amazingly relaxing, and if it hadn’t rained earlier (again) and the hammock wasn’t soaking, it would’ve made it definitely nap worthy! My dissertation students also gave me a cute card that they made with funny monkey drawings all over it and chocolate! And I received more cute handmade cards and absolutely lovely sarongs from my boss and one from Becca, who is doing her PhD on the macaques here. And more chocolate from others which has been serving a very important role the last few days of helping me get through the in between meal period! And at dinner, the staff came out with a beautiful cake for me that was delicious! But what was funny is that to keep the shape of this 2 level fancy cake, there was a plastic cup and lid in the center of the cake! Hehe!
Next time I get online, I’ll be in Malaysia!! I fly to Kuala Lumpur on the 4th of August and then will be in Sandakan (Borneo) on the 5th, so I’ll be in touch again very soon (and more regularly!)!
Lots of love!
Danica
Kinabatangan River, Borneo - July 2009
28 July 2010
Funky Monkey Foot (9-21 July)
Since I last was able to update, I have basically been wet. Soooo much rain. I think I had mentioned it in my last post, but the rain continued – and kept continuing! And the major topic of conversation were the state of ones feet and guess the fungus. Being wet for days on end results in some pretty nasty feet – some call it trench foot, or foot rot, but what I like to call funky monkey feet. I didn’t get it as bad as many people but I did need to take a day off to let my feet dry out and then spent a week on paracetamol so that I could walk without being in pain! My feet are almost healed now, and as I THINK the wet season has finallllllly ended (about a month late!), I think they should be fine by the time I leave here! But unfortunately, my purple wellies have seen the end of their life – the coral/limestone in the forest has completely destroyed them and now they are for “style” only as they have holes all in the bottom so as soon as I step in water I get wet and I will be retiring them when I leave Sulawesi!
I spent 2 weeks in the forest, at the camp called La Pago, where the “wild” monkeys live. It was a beautiful camp, and was the first time I felt like I was actually in a true rain forest. It took us about 2 hours to walk to the camp on the Friday and we stayed there until the following Wednesday, then went back on the Friday again until Wednesday. There were so many things to see in the forest here, so no matter if you were just sitting around waiting for the monkeys to re-emerge, or running to find shelter in the heavy downpour, you would always see something crawling or flying around, or flailing about trying to grab hold of you. I have been leeched now more times than I would like to count, and have developed a quite effective way of removal – by rolling them up into balls and flicking them quite far! Among the other creepy crawlies, there were mock vipers (mildly venomous – but will probably just make you fall asleep for an hour or so), froggies and toads of all different colours and sizes, and spiders, which are not all that big here (although there are a few big ones!), but amazing colours like neon blue or neon orange. But the most exciting so far has been a pit viper. Quite dangerous, but not fatal. Just sitting on a tree buttress along a path and one of my students and guides had already stepped over it when I noticed it! It was a juvenile so it was an amazing bright green colour! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of all the fun things I saw in La Pago as my camera batteries died as soon as I got there, so picture-less for the entire last week.
I’ve also learned how to make the local style of jewellery here, out of rattan stems. So after the first week of getting bracelets and rings made for me by my guides and other Indonesians at the camp, I spent my evenings of my last week in La Pago making bracelets and rings for my guides and others! It was a good way to keep busy as there really wasn’t anything else going on.
Nights in the hammock were so nice, I really enjoyed it a lot. Decided to go sans-mosquito net and so it was so nice to be able to wake up and see all the trees straight away, and not be tucked away in a claustrophobic little coffin. And being out in the middle of nowhere also meant it was quiet – oh so quiet, which made waking up at 5 quite a challenge, since in the village roosters and dogs and cats and trucks are at full volume by that time.
Back to the village for party night and birthday!!!!
I spent 2 weeks in the forest, at the camp called La Pago, where the “wild” monkeys live. It was a beautiful camp, and was the first time I felt like I was actually in a true rain forest. It took us about 2 hours to walk to the camp on the Friday and we stayed there until the following Wednesday, then went back on the Friday again until Wednesday. There were so many things to see in the forest here, so no matter if you were just sitting around waiting for the monkeys to re-emerge, or running to find shelter in the heavy downpour, you would always see something crawling or flying around, or flailing about trying to grab hold of you. I have been leeched now more times than I would like to count, and have developed a quite effective way of removal – by rolling them up into balls and flicking them quite far! Among the other creepy crawlies, there were mock vipers (mildly venomous – but will probably just make you fall asleep for an hour or so), froggies and toads of all different colours and sizes, and spiders, which are not all that big here (although there are a few big ones!), but amazing colours like neon blue or neon orange. But the most exciting so far has been a pit viper. Quite dangerous, but not fatal. Just sitting on a tree buttress along a path and one of my students and guides had already stepped over it when I noticed it! It was a juvenile so it was an amazing bright green colour! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of all the fun things I saw in La Pago as my camera batteries died as soon as I got there, so picture-less for the entire last week.
I’ve also learned how to make the local style of jewellery here, out of rattan stems. So after the first week of getting bracelets and rings made for me by my guides and other Indonesians at the camp, I spent my evenings of my last week in La Pago making bracelets and rings for my guides and others! It was a good way to keep busy as there really wasn’t anything else going on.
Nights in the hammock were so nice, I really enjoyed it a lot. Decided to go sans-mosquito net and so it was so nice to be able to wake up and see all the trees straight away, and not be tucked away in a claustrophobic little coffin. And being out in the middle of nowhere also meant it was quiet – oh so quiet, which made waking up at 5 quite a challenge, since in the village roosters and dogs and cats and trucks are at full volume by that time.
Back to the village for party night and birthday!!!!
07 July 2010
Dry Season….I don’t think so….
Sorry I haven’t been in touch since arriving – it’s a three hour trek to get to internet on a TERRIBLE road in kind of sketchy vans, so I’m not going to be coming in every week any more. It’s a bit too tiring to spend my only day off a week 6 hours in a hot scary van. Sorrry!!! I’ll probably come back one more time before I leave Buton, and I’m just going to try to type up things as they happen every week so that I can still keep you all informed, so read the next 2 entries as well (if you want to know how my previous weeks have been)! I also apologize for the long-windedness that I said I did NOT want to do in my blog, but writing this as I go along tends to remove the fluidity and preciseness completely. But I just found out that one of the places where I’ll be doing some monkey stuff has mobile reception, so I’ll bring my phone with me whenever I go there, which might be once or twice a week (no reception in the village I’m at). If you want my indonesian number, maybe just email one my parents (or even Richard I guess!) as they have it, I don’t really want to publically post it and I won’t be online for another 2 or 3 weeks in order to respond to your email to give you my number!…
Anywho, just started with the dissertation students this week. There are 5 of them, but one is doing something totally different where he just waits in a farm until the monkeys arrive, or until its time to go home, whichever may come first, so I’m not dealing with that at all. The 4 students I am going out with are doing behavioural studies comparing 2 of the 3 macaque troops (which I explain in the post before this). I have been going out one day with 2 students in the forest, then 2 in the farms and alternating between the two in case they need any help or have any questions with their project methods. So far, its been quite long days, that I think I have been realllly lucky in avoiding up til now. Somehow I’ve managed to find sites where it usually is only a half day, or you go back for lunch (or you sit in a boat for a couple hours a day), so the 10 hour days are an adjustment. First group to leave the village and normally last ones to get back. But it’s been an interesting adventure thus far! Tomorrow I head out to La Pago – to the forest camp, where it looks like I’ll only be there for one week instead of the 2 I was expecting. Hopefully when I’m out there I’ll get the chance to join other projects going on occasionally, as I believe I will only be with the dissertation students for the first few days since having 3 people with the monkeys at that site is actually (probably) a bit too much.
The interesting thing of the week for the macaques: the same troop at the farm site is observed every year for the summer period, but in the last few days we have had observation of another troop that is entering the fields as well. So there has been some fighting and chasing and its been all very entertaining to watch. So it will be interesting to see how this unfolds!
Really not a lot more has been happening here. I am so tired by 7 that I make my way to bed and am asleep normally around 8ish. But I am still working very hard on my bahasa Indonesian and I think I have gotten pretty good considering I’ve only been here about 2 weeks, but I feel like I’ve reached my threshold already with how much more I can learn, so I am just going to focus on my long list of things I am still learning and then hopefully I can speed up the learning process once again!
Anywho, just started with the dissertation students this week. There are 5 of them, but one is doing something totally different where he just waits in a farm until the monkeys arrive, or until its time to go home, whichever may come first, so I’m not dealing with that at all. The 4 students I am going out with are doing behavioural studies comparing 2 of the 3 macaque troops (which I explain in the post before this). I have been going out one day with 2 students in the forest, then 2 in the farms and alternating between the two in case they need any help or have any questions with their project methods. So far, its been quite long days, that I think I have been realllly lucky in avoiding up til now. Somehow I’ve managed to find sites where it usually is only a half day, or you go back for lunch (or you sit in a boat for a couple hours a day), so the 10 hour days are an adjustment. First group to leave the village and normally last ones to get back. But it’s been an interesting adventure thus far! Tomorrow I head out to La Pago – to the forest camp, where it looks like I’ll only be there for one week instead of the 2 I was expecting. Hopefully when I’m out there I’ll get the chance to join other projects going on occasionally, as I believe I will only be with the dissertation students for the first few days since having 3 people with the monkeys at that site is actually (probably) a bit too much.
The interesting thing of the week for the macaques: the same troop at the farm site is observed every year for the summer period, but in the last few days we have had observation of another troop that is entering the fields as well. So there has been some fighting and chasing and its been all very entertaining to watch. So it will be interesting to see how this unfolds!
Really not a lot more has been happening here. I am so tired by 7 that I make my way to bed and am asleep normally around 8ish. But I am still working very hard on my bahasa Indonesian and I think I have gotten pretty good considering I’ve only been here about 2 weeks, but I feel like I’ve reached my threshold already with how much more I can learn, so I am just going to focus on my long list of things I am still learning and then hopefully I can speed up the learning process once again!
La Bundo Bundo – And the binocular tan begins… (24-30 June)
We finally arrived in Buton Island after our plane was delayed for over an hour and I met up with a couple other OpWall Staff in BauBau (capital of this particular region on Buton Island), and got into a van to get to the site. We arrived around 2200 and there was a science staff meeting going on which I joined in on but I missed most of it since we arrived so late.
The village I am living in is called Labundo bundo, and it is by the Lambusango Forest. I am staying in the house of mama eva, who thankfully lives right across from the dining area. The way it works here is that we stay in the house of someone in the village, but then there is a big dining hall that all the school groups/students/volunteers/staff for operation wallacea eat in. I am sharing a room with the small mammal scientist (Helen), but also in the house is the herpetology scientist (Inga) and the tree climbing expert/leader (Vickie). There are approx. 80 people here right now for OpWall, and about 70-90 people who actually live in the village (I think there are 45 houses or so here), so basically each house has someone from opwall living with them! Each week there will be new school groups that come (16-17 year old kids), and more dissertation students will be arriving again in July. The volunteers here just basically go around helping all the science projects going on: bats, birds, small mammals, large mammals, primates, herpetology (snakes, lizards, frogs, etc), civets and tree climbing.
I am going to have 6 dissertation students. As of right now (first week here, but by the time I post this, it will be old news), the dissertation students are doing jungle training and a bunch of introduction type courses/projects around the site, so I won’t start working with them until probably the 2nd of July, once they are done all this other stuff. So as of right now (my first 4 days), I’ve been going out myself just to get acquainted with the forest and the primates and try to familiarise myself before I need to start training others. I have been going out with the guides, who have already been following the monkeys for about 4 weeks now, to re-habituate the groups after 8 months of not being studied.
There are 3 monkey troops that are followed here- the first is called La Pago, which are a completely forest group and when I’m going to work with them, I’ll be camping out of the village in a node camp for a week or 2 (looks like it will be for 2 weeks). The following group is called Kakenauwe, which lives in a forest, but come out occasionally to go into farmers fields. And the final group is called Kewelli, and they live in a really small forest patch which is surrounded by crops so spend most of their time in farmers fields. I have spent 2 days with Kakenauwe and 2 days in the farms with Kewelli. The monkeys in these 2 forests are very different in their behaviour- I think because the one that lives mostly in the fields have such easy access to high energy foods, they can spend more time just “monkey-ing” around and seem to be a lot more social and interactive within the group that they forest group, who need to spend more time during their day actually looking for food. So in my last two days in the farms, I’ve seen some pretty cool and close up behaviours!
People who have been living/working in this area for the last 18-20 years said that the rain we are having now is the worst rain they have ever seen. There have been 2 days so far that have been consistently torrential downpour all day/night, which is quite unusual. Normally the heavy heavy rains only last a few hours at the most (from my experience at least), but not allll day. I just heard this morning, that the other day it rained 900ml! Oi! I think it will be more today actually – it has been raining non-stop since about 11pm last night (it is now 9am), and doesn’t show any signs of letting up or slowing down. I honestly don’t know how the clouds are holding all this water in them! Apparently many of the crops have been destroyed already by all this rain, including rice! And you know there needs to be A LOT of rain to drown rice fields! And rain like this makes most jungle-y activities much more difficult and dangerous so most people can’t even go out, but if they have set traps out then they have to go out regardless. The forest ground here is limestone, and basically looks like coral reefs throughout the forest (dead/white coral of course). It is quite hilly, so taking a wrong step in the forest and slipping is can be quite dangerous. I’ve already cut my hand here, and now I need to take really good care of this cut so it doesn’t get infected, as infections can happen quite quickly and be quite severe in this humid environment. But just to set the record straight – when it is nice here – it is NICE here. I am going to try to remember to bring my little thermometer out with me next time but I think its probably getting to about 40 during the days (when it’s not raining).
Sorry this is so long winded – just wanted to give a bit of background as to what exactly is going on here!! Tomorrow is the official day off, even though today has turned out to be one as well due to the rain, and then starting with the students on Friday (2 July).
Miss you all!
The village I am living in is called Labundo bundo, and it is by the Lambusango Forest. I am staying in the house of mama eva, who thankfully lives right across from the dining area. The way it works here is that we stay in the house of someone in the village, but then there is a big dining hall that all the school groups/students/volunteers/staff for operation wallacea eat in. I am sharing a room with the small mammal scientist (Helen), but also in the house is the herpetology scientist (Inga) and the tree climbing expert/leader (Vickie). There are approx. 80 people here right now for OpWall, and about 70-90 people who actually live in the village (I think there are 45 houses or so here), so basically each house has someone from opwall living with them! Each week there will be new school groups that come (16-17 year old kids), and more dissertation students will be arriving again in July. The volunteers here just basically go around helping all the science projects going on: bats, birds, small mammals, large mammals, primates, herpetology (snakes, lizards, frogs, etc), civets and tree climbing.
I am going to have 6 dissertation students. As of right now (first week here, but by the time I post this, it will be old news), the dissertation students are doing jungle training and a bunch of introduction type courses/projects around the site, so I won’t start working with them until probably the 2nd of July, once they are done all this other stuff. So as of right now (my first 4 days), I’ve been going out myself just to get acquainted with the forest and the primates and try to familiarise myself before I need to start training others. I have been going out with the guides, who have already been following the monkeys for about 4 weeks now, to re-habituate the groups after 8 months of not being studied.
There are 3 monkey troops that are followed here- the first is called La Pago, which are a completely forest group and when I’m going to work with them, I’ll be camping out of the village in a node camp for a week or 2 (looks like it will be for 2 weeks). The following group is called Kakenauwe, which lives in a forest, but come out occasionally to go into farmers fields. And the final group is called Kewelli, and they live in a really small forest patch which is surrounded by crops so spend most of their time in farmers fields. I have spent 2 days with Kakenauwe and 2 days in the farms with Kewelli. The monkeys in these 2 forests are very different in their behaviour- I think because the one that lives mostly in the fields have such easy access to high energy foods, they can spend more time just “monkey-ing” around and seem to be a lot more social and interactive within the group that they forest group, who need to spend more time during their day actually looking for food. So in my last two days in the farms, I’ve seen some pretty cool and close up behaviours!
People who have been living/working in this area for the last 18-20 years said that the rain we are having now is the worst rain they have ever seen. There have been 2 days so far that have been consistently torrential downpour all day/night, which is quite unusual. Normally the heavy heavy rains only last a few hours at the most (from my experience at least), but not allll day. I just heard this morning, that the other day it rained 900ml! Oi! I think it will be more today actually – it has been raining non-stop since about 11pm last night (it is now 9am), and doesn’t show any signs of letting up or slowing down. I honestly don’t know how the clouds are holding all this water in them! Apparently many of the crops have been destroyed already by all this rain, including rice! And you know there needs to be A LOT of rain to drown rice fields! And rain like this makes most jungle-y activities much more difficult and dangerous so most people can’t even go out, but if they have set traps out then they have to go out regardless. The forest ground here is limestone, and basically looks like coral reefs throughout the forest (dead/white coral of course). It is quite hilly, so taking a wrong step in the forest and slipping is can be quite dangerous. I’ve already cut my hand here, and now I need to take really good care of this cut so it doesn’t get infected, as infections can happen quite quickly and be quite severe in this humid environment. But just to set the record straight – when it is nice here – it is NICE here. I am going to try to remember to bring my little thermometer out with me next time but I think its probably getting to about 40 during the days (when it’s not raining).
Sorry this is so long winded – just wanted to give a bit of background as to what exactly is going on here!! Tomorrow is the official day off, even though today has turned out to be one as well due to the rain, and then starting with the students on Friday (2 July).
Miss you all!
Indonesian arrival! (20-24 June)
My time in Jakarta went so fast and now it is over Didn’t do all that much, but it was nice to relax. We were staying in quite a fancy little hotel, as Rich was on “holiday” and wanted a bit of luxury, which I was JUST fine with! Didn’t even see too much of the city, just basically explored a couple of streets in the search for some clothes for Richard, and a dictionary, whistle, and pencils for me. We watched football everyday too (me mostly just one match, as I didn’t want/couldn’t stay up to watch the games starting at 0130am), sometimes venturing out to watch and sometimes just watching in the lobby of the hotel. But what was really nice about the hotel was the swimming pool on the roof that had a really great view of the city centre. There are some pretty amazing buildings in this city, I am quite impressed. I keep forgetting that we are in Asia, because there is nothing compared to this in Ghana, incl. Accra (the capital). Also had numerous language lessons with Rich, who apparently is now Indonesian ;) and can speak bahasa Indonesia fluently or at least is able to carry on conversations with anyone about anything it seems! It is quite impressive! He was a good teacher but I swear I am dyslexic when it comes to speaking Indonesian. I keeping the letters or parts of the word around.
Rich also took me to a Pasar Burung – a bird market. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely shocked me. First of all, was the smell. It was such a overpowering heavy smell of dust and feces mostly. And the number of birds shoved into a single cage was absolutely shocking. Many were only just over a foot wide and maybe 2.5 feet high, and they would be crammed so full that there was barely any room for the birds to move. Swans in a cage just tall enough for it to stand. And then there were rats. Crates of rat pups, rats layered on top of rats, dead rats and live rats all stuffed into one crate. And then there were bats. Single bats in a small cage, with just enough room to hang upside down, but wouldn’t be able to spread their wings open – maybe halfway. A king cobra in a clear plastic container without any sort of anything in it. And macaques - tiny little baby macaques that had permanent fear grimaces or were trying to suckle a box because they had nothing else near them. It was a very strange experience. I brought my camera along with the plan of taking pictures, but as soon as we stepped into the market, I knew I didn’t want to even ask to take pictures.
I have now left Jakarta, as well as the island of Java. I am now in Sulawesi – an island to the north east of Java, and southeast of Borneo. Currently I am enroute to my final destination for a few weeks. I am now in the airport in Makassar which is on the west coast (south) of Sulawesi, and will soon be flying to Baubau – the capital city of the island of Buton, where I will be for the next 6 weeks. I’ve just learned that “Bau” means smell in Bahasa Indonesia, so I hope it’s not a bad smell….but I’m not very optimistic about that one!
Rich also took me to a Pasar Burung – a bird market. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely shocked me. First of all, was the smell. It was such a overpowering heavy smell of dust and feces mostly. And the number of birds shoved into a single cage was absolutely shocking. Many were only just over a foot wide and maybe 2.5 feet high, and they would be crammed so full that there was barely any room for the birds to move. Swans in a cage just tall enough for it to stand. And then there were rats. Crates of rat pups, rats layered on top of rats, dead rats and live rats all stuffed into one crate. And then there were bats. Single bats in a small cage, with just enough room to hang upside down, but wouldn’t be able to spread their wings open – maybe halfway. A king cobra in a clear plastic container without any sort of anything in it. And macaques - tiny little baby macaques that had permanent fear grimaces or were trying to suckle a box because they had nothing else near them. It was a very strange experience. I brought my camera along with the plan of taking pictures, but as soon as we stepped into the market, I knew I didn’t want to even ask to take pictures.
I have now left Jakarta, as well as the island of Java. I am now in Sulawesi – an island to the north east of Java, and southeast of Borneo. Currently I am enroute to my final destination for a few weeks. I am now in the airport in Makassar which is on the west coast (south) of Sulawesi, and will soon be flying to Baubau – the capital city of the island of Buton, where I will be for the next 6 weeks. I’ve just learned that “Bau” means smell in Bahasa Indonesia, so I hope it’s not a bad smell….but I’m not very optimistic about that one!
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