Heart of wood

There are these pieces of wood, scattered on the forest floor. They are usually large, sleek, abnormally heavy and resistant to cutting. At first I thought they were termite nests, since when I managed to break open one, the wood had been replaced by earth, and inhabited by termites. But if you went beyond the superficial layer, you find wood, pure wood, exceptionally compact and smooth. I am not sure how these pieces came to be. Some theories (absolutely speculative) suggest that they were tempered by forest fires, or the wearing of time and rain (and other organisms). I decided to take a large one to carve a box. It is amazing how hard it is to cut through it. The saw gets stuck every little while, I need to put oil to ease its way, and still, it gets hot [I know wood, and I am used to cutting..]. Fascinating.

Rant 2: shipments & packages

Next rant is about supplies. Some of them need to be shipped from the USA. The first shipment was ordered in Jul 07 and reached me in Jan 08, which is the sole reason why I am still here instead of celebrating the end of the data collection. Shipments arrive to the airport, where one has to go, clear customs and pick them up. For the first shipment, I arrived and was asked 1,200$ of custom taxes to release it! It took me a whole day and a half to reduce that to 600$, the third day to get to 200$ and the fourth to convince them to get it for free. The best was the first guy, who filled out the fake form saying I had to pay 1,200$: after it became obvious that he had tried to cheat me, he still wanted to be paid 35$ for the form, which he had to fill out using resources, computer, internet connection!

Last week, a second package arrived. I alerted WCS office, but the shipping company instead of calling sent an email, which was kindly disregarded. So after a week that I expected the package, I went out of the forest and found that it had actually arrived a week ago. After asking if WCS could send somebody to take care of this, which was rudely refused, I took the bloody night-bus and started my fight in the cargo area at dawn. I thought I could make use of the broad experience I had gained, but not at all. I release the documents, go to the customs building, discover that there is another one, I make my way to the big boss in only five steps (last time it took me about 14), he says he will help, he cuts the taxes in half but that still leaves 300$ to pay. He says I should then talk to the other office (the bigger boss). They take me back there, I am directed to a creepy office with pictures of people arrested with illegal drugs (not the big boss, whom I met the previous time, surrounded by a godly aura, in a celestial blue office full of curtains and airplane models). I explain my case again, tailoring it to the new audience, they decide to help me, call the first boss, make me write an “autocertification letter”, and send me back with some hope. After another eight bureaucratic steps, they all go to pray and then lunch, except for a mother-like woman who keeps working on my application, and offers me water and “gorengan”, mixed fried foods. We then go inspect the stuff, with an overweight and frightened officer, then back to customs, other four steps and indeed I can go get the package without having paid anything. Having protested that I had not been properly warned of the arrival of the package, they waive the storage fee as well. The package of course is in the middle of nowhere, and I am on foot, eheh. But the nice girl who signs the last document offers to take me to the bus stop when she gets out of work, in 20 mins, at 5pm. This hardly an exciting tale, yet, sadly, in the state I am in, it takes the place of great adventures and accomplishments. To improve the post with some meaningful conclusive remarks, I can say that in the world there are people that are useful and helpful, and others who are not. And I am being fortunate enough to meet several of the first kind. In this instance, among dozens of idling useless burocrats, there were some that, only out of their good heart, went out of their way (and out of the law too) to help me. I must also stress the fact that I was never asked a bribe by any custom officer (because one must fight commonplaces).

Rant 1: permits & visas

This blog runs the risk of becoming a cross between a medical bulletin and a psychotherapeutic exercise. This is one reason why I have been reluctant to add new posts. But now I think I should just embrace its latter function and go ahead and vent, and friends will worry about my mental state and let me know when it is really enough..

So today’s rant is about the renewal of research permits and visas. Here is the procedure. Write a request (and provide lots of documentation) to the dept. of research and technology (RISTEK), in Jakarta. If successful, go and get the research permit extension. Take that to the Police central office (also in jkt) to get a travel permit, which you will need to then go to the ministry of internal affairs, to get another document, which you will need to take to the dept. of forestry, which will release a permit to enter the national park. This is already a complicated procedure, but, eheh, there is a catch: to get the travel permit from the police, you need another document, sort of a residence permit, which you can get, in the region where you work, i.e. Lampung, Sumatra. So you have to travel to jkt (a nice 10 hrs of night-bus), get document #1, then back to bloody Sumatra, get #2 and then back to jkt! Several of these steps don’t really require my presence, so I asked my ghostly counterpart (WCS) to help, by sending somebody to get these documents, but they were quite blunt in not helping. I asked RISTEK, and managed to get hold of a girl who said she would do the steps 3-5 for me. But then she said it would take approximately 8-14 days! So in the end I had to go and do all by myself.

Additional little frustrations and some gratifications:

- After two nights of no sleep, arriving to jkt at 5.30 a.m., waiting for the office to open, being admitted by the guard, going up to the right floor, finding nobody, going down and being told that well, of course nobody is there, since today is a national holiday..

- Telling WCS I need them to send a fax to Immigration, with large advance, and after one week still waiting for it, but

- The Immigration officer, at that point, having pity and giving me the visa even if that thing was not arrived.

- During the countless hours waiting in an office, being shown a piece of paper, hoping it is the document I so desperately need, but no, it is a job offer for his son, just graduated, in a plantation, in Sarawak or Kalimantan, what do I think of it?

- Or being introduced to two interns, who are supposed to practice their English, and talking to them for two hours about the state of tourism in Sumatra and the best ways to improve it.

- But, being driven to offices I must get to, by the officer who was on his way home with his son (on a very fancy SUV), or by the job-offer guy (on a ancient Vespa).

- Having to pay the usual 30$ bribe to the police to get the travel permit, but

- Managing to get a receipt for that!

Tigers

Conservation is a great and important thing. Of course, when we talk about dangerous animals, most people living in safely urbanized areas may not think of some aspects of living in close contact with these animals. I am having the chance to experience this now. Five tigers were captured in Aceh, North Sumatra, where they were causing “conflict”, eating cattle and people and terrorizing several villages. The plan is to put them radio-collars to be able to track them (via GPS), and release them elsewhere. Elsewhere happens to be about 25 km from our field station. Tigers can cover about 30 km/day. The GPS data are almost top-secret, only three people have access to them, which makes sense, given the risk of them falling in the wrong hands. But now, in addition to the “conflict elephants” (four, infamous man-killers), we have “conflict tigers”. Encountering one is bad for two stupid reasons: one, you cannot really claim to have seen a really “natural” tiger, it wouldn’t count, it has a collar.. And two, while the behavior of “normal” animals, that live relatively undisturbed in the forest, is somehow predictable, I would really not know what to expect from these tigers, who already had a taste, in many senses, of men..

Health (Medical bulletin #1 – centipede)

“…you should really marry Agus.. That way, he could spit on my wound..”

One would hardly imagine he will pronounce such a sentence in his life.. and yet, here is another experience granted by that great place that is an Indonesian forest..

How do we get there? Well, I was bitten by a centipede. I thought that it would just hurt a lot, but remain localized, maybe swollen. But I was wrong, a plague-looking sore (I spare you the pictures) started spreading behind my knee, soon making it painful to walk, and then, on the third day, convincing me to go out while I still could on my legs (also following the concerns of the field assistants, who somehow don’t cherish the idea of carrying my dead-weight again).
I always appreciate local traditions, so before going to a proper doctor, I inquired on the traditional medicines that would be used in that case, and here are the two best ones:

1. You must find a person (a woman is preferable), who was once married, then wasn’t anymore (it doesn’t matter if widow or divorced, though perhaps the latter is more powerful), and then re-married, with a person who is instead married for the first time. Once you get hold of that person, she can spit on your wound, which is sure to cure it. [Hence my suggestion to Alice, Agus being a suitable (a mix of subtly fascinating and slightly disgusting traits) “candidate”, notwithstanding his being married..]
2. You find a kirai tree, extract its sap, boil it and make a sticky potion with which you can dress the wound. This was suggested by a radiant and excited Ismail, who then proceeded to show me the broad and thick scar that this method had left him. Having ascertained that all of the people who had it except from Ismail were cured by “non-traditional” doctors, and that it would be harder to find the re-married woman than a doctor, I decided to go for the latter: found a rather creepy purple-orange-haired old man, who looked at the wound and said “four days”, which happened to be true. He gave me lots of medicines, which I despise, but which cured the bloody (literally) thing in a few days.

Surfing 2

My parallel life as a surfer continues, and it is now not confined to my mind. Here is an update on my latest achievements:
- I gave up the idea of carving my own surfing board. Materials are important, and as much as I love wood, an 80-kg board is far from ideal.
- I went to Uluwatu, Bali, a famous surfing site. I discovered that waves have names, and that there is an official terminology, rather different from the one I had creatively come up with. I didn’t try the 8m high waves (I had one of my mysterious fever attacks), but I sported a perfectly appropriate, worn surfer t-shirt.
- In Kuta, I eventually tried. I was modest and wise enough to renounce to a real board and go for the sissy one, the one you stay on your belly. Immensely frustrating experience. I thought I “knew” the waves, but I seemed to be constantly in the wrong spot, either taking the waves in my face or seeing them pass and break far from me. In the process, I got insanely tired, and badly bruised my belly and chest. Becoming the cool surfer is harder than I thought.

Dengue

I guess few words about dengue are necessary.

It is a disease, similar to malaria, also parasites carried by mosquitoes. I got it. First day I tried to give the example to my assistants, you must work even if you don’t feel perfectly healthy. I ended up crawling back to camp like a tired zombie. Next day I was not able to feel my pulse anymore (too light and fast, over 125 beats/min, against my normal 65 – sadly we don’t have a thermometer). I stayed two days in camp hoping to recover, slightly delirious, only drinking water with sugar, cyclically shivering and sweating. When I wasn’t able to walk anymore, I accepted to be carried out. This involved eight assistants, a sturdy bamboo pole and three sarongs (cylindrical pieces of cloth, traditional Indonesian garment). In addition to the 5 km the poor guys had to walk, the river had flooded, so they had to carry me on their lifted arms to keep me dry (and safe from the waters).

I was taken to Gisting’s hospital, a very comfortable place where I laid seven days (of which I only remember five), constantly attached to an infusion. When I was able to stand, I was taken to another, larger hospital, where they tested me and confirmed I had dengue. I stayed three more days there, then I couldn’t take it anymore (I didn’t have music, computer, books, and I had quite enough of introspection) and left. After two more days I managed to walk back into the forest where I completed my convalescence.