Rutgers-Primates, Ecology, and Conservation in Indonesia

Written 7/13

The last few day shave been quite a culture shock after the rugged conditions of Tuanan!

On Tuesday (7/10) we made our final good byes to the staff at Tuanan that wouldn’t be accompanying us back to Palankaraya and rolled out, quite literally, with our cart full of luggage down to the river through the village for the last time. On the way we found Micah (one of the American students with us) up high in one of the trees next to the path with Sui (previously mentioned research assistant ) standing at the base smiling up at him. Apparently after so many years of following and studying Orangutans Sui had figured out how Orangutans make their nests so high up in the trees every night and had passed on this knowledge to Micha. To make their nests, Orangutans weave the tops branches of the trees together to make a sort of woven cradle that is strong enough to support their 200lb bodies. Micha, who is an avid climber, was delighted to be so high up supported by the leaves and it was quite an incredible experience to see.

Down at the village we loaded back into the large motorized canoes (packs in one, us in the other) and waved to the village kids, Sui and Elise standing on the dock. The two hour canoe trip back was un eventful for our boat but the boat’s propeller broke part way down the river. They had stopped in one of the villages on the side of the river and thankfully were able to replace the part and arrive back at the dock only 15 min after us.

On the car ride back to Palankaraya we slowly got service back (spotty at first and then constant) and were all able to contact our families and friends to let them know we had survived and had had so many incredible experiences. Our driver also stopped at one of the fruit stands on the side of the road and bought us a fruit called rambutan. I’ve been told that we can also buy rambutan in the US so some of you may be familiar with the fruit but it was the first time I had tried it let alone seen it. I’ve included a picture so you can see what it looks like. Once you peel off the red spiky/hairy skins you expose a clearish lychee like fruit that tastes amazing! It has a large seed in the center that you can eat although most discard but I didn’t know this while eating them so I downed the whole things seed and all.

Back in Palankaraya  we trudged into the nice white floored hotel lobby with our muddy sandy feet and created quite a mess. Nothing quite like coming out of the jungle and back into civilization! We got up to our rooms, rinsed off in a real shower for the first time in a week and collapsed on our beds. I was sharing with Mallory that night and so after a short nap we headed off to the connecting mall to find some lunch. We wandered past a bakery, took some pictures of some tasty looking cakes, and continued on to the food court. After wandering around the food court, nothing was really catching our eye. We kinda looked at each other and then at the same time said “do you want to just eat that cake?” And thus we went and bought ourselves some cake for lunch and enjoyed some fluffy confectionery lounging in our beds. Twas delightful! After that we chilled in our room, spent time catching up with people back home, posting blogs posts and napping till dinner.

Pak Odom, Nando and Hesti (our two Indonesian TAs) all had come with us to Palankaraya and came to the hotel to pick us up do we could all walk together as a group. We had a lovely candle lit dinner that night with salmon fired rice and melon slushy. After we got back to the hotel most of the group went to do karaoke on the fourth floor of the mall attached to our hotel. I meant to take a short nap and then join them but as everyone knows, short naps and exhaustion don’t really go hand in hand.

Next thing I know is was 5:00am in the morning and we were getting up again to head to the airport at 6. We took our Nasi Goreng (fried rice; a typical breakfast food) with us in boxes from the hotel and loaded up into cars. When we had gotten to airport there was a bit of a stressful episode because one of the students had forgotten her phone in her room at the hotel. But Erin called Hesti who came to the rescue by hopping on her motorcycle, rushing to the hotel and then the airport with the forgotten phone. Before long we had sent all our baggage included out white fried rice boxes through through the scanner and were sitting at one of two gates at the Palankaraya airport. Both gates led out on to the tarmac where five planes each bound for different destinations waited. Thankfully I had people to follow otherwise I might have gotten on the wrong flight!

I spent the plane ride updating my blogs and before I knew it we had landed in Jakarta. Once we had collected our baggage and some people had gotten coffee and snacks we made our way out to the bus lanes in an attempt to get on the public bus to Bogor. This proved to be quite a challenge because despite our purchase of tickets we had no confirmed seats on the bus and our group was so large we needed the majority of one bus to accommodate us. Eventually after two buses had passes with unsuccessful attempts to board it we made game plane. We left all larger luggage with Erin and Nando (who wasn’t coming with us to Bogor) and all stood where the bus doors would pull up. We would jump on the bus and save a seat for Erin while her and Nando chucked all our luggage under the bus. The hope was that since we were all on the bus the driver wouldn’t pull away without our luggage or Erin. The plan worked smoothly until the bus started pulling away with have our luggage still in carts and Erin standing on the curb. Thankfully Rebecca was able to get the bus to stop and help Erin load the rest of bags on but we were close to having to figure out how to find our professor again in Bogor.

Getting into taxis was also a struggle once we got to Bogor. Cars and motorcycles were whizzing by as we attempted to safely navigate our way to the cars and heave our bags into the trunk. Being surrounded by so much activity after the quiet of the jungle was overwhelming and the drive to the hotel was a crazy one in which cars on both sides were never more than 10 inches away from our vehicle. When we finally got to the hotel and walked in our mouths fell open. Vaulted ceilings, marble floor a beautiful pool with a fountain, drinks and cake waiting out for us; no we definitely weren’t in the jungle anymore. Sneha and I headed up to our room to find a luxurious full bath, king size bed and *drum roll* a massage chai! Sneha jumped right in the bath and I hopped into the massage chair. After about ten min I was still sitting in chair and I got a call from Rebecca on WhatsApp. When I picked up she told me there had been a mix up with rooms and Sneha and I had accidently gotten her and Erin’s. I looked down at the very nice message chair I was sitting in and said to Rebecca, “yeah that makes sense”. Our actual room didn’t have the full bathtub or massage chair but it still had a king size bed an lovely wooden accenting so we weren’t too disappointed.

We all took a dip in the pool that afternoon and took showers before heading to dinner. Dinner was on a veranda overlooking the city so we got to watch the sun set over Bogor as we muched away on some traditional dished. I spilt three dishes with Rebecca that night: a mix of vegetables with peanut sauce, fried squid and grilled shrimp. It was all delicious and I fell asleep that night with a full stomach and happy heart.

The next morning we ate a buffet breakfast at the Hotel and then went to the natural history museum. While it was a nice museum was nice, after having spent the last view days following Orangutans in the wild reading about just still have the same gravitas. We only spent a half hour or so at the museum and then headed to Bogor’s botanical gardens. The gardens are huge and cover most of center city and are so nice that the president of Indonesia himself resides there 5 days of the week and only 2 days each week in Jakarta. A guide took us through the garden for 2 hours but admitted you could spend three full days in the gardens and still not see everything of note. We saw many types of fruits and flowers as well as graves of Dutch merchants (the gardens we started in 1718 when the Dutch were still in Indonesia) and giant yellow bamboo.  We finished out the excursion with a wander about the orchid house which contained so varieties and colors of Orchids I was min blowing!

We then all piled into a min bus and drove about a have hour from center city to the cultural village. The cultural village is a collection of houses and a pavilion where groups can book an afternoon with traditional food, dance martial arts and music lessons. None of the coordinators at the village spoke English so my guess is that the village is geared more towards Indonesians who want to learn about their culture rather than tourists. We started by eating lunch of leaves and then proceeded to learn a traditional Javaness dance, Bornean martial arts forms and how to play and instrument native to that region of Indonesia made out of a scale of bamboo contraptions hung on a bamboo frame. We then had an impromptu drum line to the song that the coordinator was playing on the speaker with the drums the instructors had been using which amused them so much they pulled out their phones to video the white teenagers banging away having the time of their lives. We then tried out some stilts and wooden skis used for races on the lawn next to the pavilion. After all that it was time to head home so we piled back in the bus/van and drove back to the hotel. We all took a dip in the pool again and worked on our presentations of our Orangutan data a bit till Erin came around to hand us all 50,000 ruphia (3.48 USD)as our dinner allowance for our evening since she was leaving us to our own devices for dinner.

We all headed to the mall first to check out how it compared to an American mall and we were not disappointed. So, since that night I’ve been told that this is not how all Indonesian malls are and some are in fact very similar to American malls, but his particular mall didn’t really have a hallways and stores set into the walls and instead it was set up like an indoor flea market where you could wander between racks and not really know where one store stopped and another started. Also, every store was flood with Gucci, Nike, Vans ect. look a likes that were only around 3 USD.  We first went to a bag store to get an extra duffle for one of our group members who needed somewhere to store extra stuff and then wandered through the next five levels.

A couple of us went and purchased some bubble tea at a stand. I got taro tea which I usually really dislike in the states because it’s sickingly sweet but here it tastes really fresh and delicious. We then wandered into a store and I purchased two really awesome linen tops with cool colors and wooden buttons as a memory from the mall. Finally we wandered around the fourth floor which was the electronics levels to help one of our group members purchase a simcard. Unlike buying the simcard in the airport none of the electronic attendants spoke English so trying to communicate what we wanted proved to be a challenge but eventually we managed to get across our point with much gesturing and a couple broken words.

That night we ate in the hotel and watched a soccer game between Indonesia and Malaysia. I had ordered lab fried rice with vegetables which was delicious… for the most part. I was happily chomping away on the cucumbers and carrots that came with the meal until without realizing I bit now on a tinny pepper. Basic rule of thumb is the smaller the pepper the spicier it is and this rule held true for the little green ones I didn’t know had been mixed into my vegetables. Within a min I was crying, bright red and chugging the little bit of water I had left in my glass. My mouth was in more pain then I think it ever has been and all I could was sit there in silence staring straight ahead with wide eyes watering. After 20 min I could breathe easily again ad carefully removed the rest of the peppers which I know saw from the vegetables and finished the rest of my tasty meal with the life lesson to always check for hot peppers before you chomp down!

An early breakfast at the hotel started off the next morning (today) followed by the arrival of three new students from UNAS (our partner university in Indonesia). We all were traveling together to Halimun National park and the research station there all together to continue the next park of the lectures for the course at that station which focuses primarily on gibbon conservation. We piled into the same bus/van we had used the previous day to travel to the cultural village but with the addition of extra students and luggage in was tightly sandwiched driving arrangement. Out the window for the next five hours the landscape changed from inner city Bogor, to sparely populated country side to the beautiful roaming mountains filled with mist and luscious tea plantations. Despite the beautiful scenery the drive wasn’t always enjoyable though because of the close quarters and extremely rough dirt/stone roads which made or a very bumpy last two hours. We got a little stir crazy in the van and were overjoyed when we made it to the station this evening and could get out, stretch or legs and breath a bit.

This station is much “nicer” than camp at Tuanan as has more amenities and nice accommodations so it feels a little less rugged than our week at Tuanan. But despite the nicer arrangements we couldn’t all help but agree we really like the camp atmosphere a Tuanan that is not felt as strongly here at Halimun. Im currently sitting out on the deck at the research station finishing up this blog post and, believe it or not, wearing the fleece jacket I brought to keep me warm on the plane ride! Because we’re up in the mountains it is significantly colder here and were all bundling up and snuggling under blankets in our beds tonight. I’m quite enjoying the weather change and the chance to use my fleece and am excited for what the next few days back in the jungle will bring! Good bye for now and update you all soon on the lives of the researchers and javan gibbons here at Halimun!

Written 7/9, posted 7/11 due to wifi availability

I am currently sitting in the “service” tree house a quarter mile from camp. It’s around 8 feet off the ground up a rickety ladder. I came here in an attempt to get service but after 30 min and only one successful WhatsApp message I’ve more than contented myself with laying back against the tree, closing my eyes between typing and enjoying the breeze, which you can’t feel at camp between the trees. It’s nice to have few minutes just to sit and recollect my thoughts as the last couple days have been so busy and exciting!

Last time I wrote I had only see Kerry and Ketambe once for 15min or so; that alone was an awesome experience but the last few days have brought more than I ever expected. The following day (Friday 7/6) we spent the morning using techniques we had learned from Ibu Suci (the head professor from University National Jakarta who brought 9 students to the research station at the same time as us) and Erin (our head professor) to determine the health and type of forest we were in from a measurement called DBH or diameter at breast height (1.3m). The technique itself is somewhat self-explanatory from its name.

The head of my group is a man named Pak (respectful term for an older male) Odom who was actually the one that found the perfect location for the research station over 15 years ago. His journey to Orangutan conservation is a fascinating and impactful one as he came from a village that ate orangutans and grew up with this as his only thought about the animal. Now as one of the most dedicated Indonesian born conservationist, an absolute expert of all things jungle and a genuinely kind, caring and jolly man, it’s always a pleasure to be in his group for forest excursions and chat with him about his experiences.

The afternoon brought much excitement for everyone as we had another chance follow Kerry and Ketambe this time for 2 hours instead of 15 minutes. As I mentioned in my previous post, the research assistants keep a carful log of all sorts of data including activity, height from ground, distance from offspring if applicable ect. every 2 min for the whole day which can lead up to 1,800 data points daily. This amount of data may seem excessive but it helps the researchers calculate a really accurate picture of how Orangutans spend their day and is important in answering the whole range of research questions that the scientists here pose. To get a feel for the researcher assistants work, we were assigned groups and mimicked the assistants job by recording all this data at each 2 min mark; don’t worry the assistant continued to take data so our lack of experience didn’t taint the data put into the stations records!

It was a similar rush the second time I saw this pair of orangutans in the tree tops and I got decent footage of both of their heads poking out from behind trees as they snacked on one of the local fruits named Kemunda (Kemunda is also edible by humans and the taste is somewhat bean like rather than what we might consider fruity). I was pretty exhausted after the 2 hours were up and while I was remise to leave the orangutans, I was equally happy to head back to camp and remove the film of sweat and bug spray coating my body with a cold Mandi. A Mandi is a type of shower which consists of duping cups full of cold water on your head from a 30 gallon bucket. It was a bit odd to get use/figure out, but it is honestly the most refreshing part of each day.

That night after dinner, we discussed our main research project which we would be collecting data for during the next two days at Tuanan. The three options given us were a biodiversity survey of the forest with Pak Odom, a study of the primary and secondary succession occurring in parts of the forest burned in 2015 fires with Ibu Suci, and the third was a longer Orangutan following experience with the research assistants. While the first two sounded very interesting and the third was the most time intensive and physically demanding, I was motivated by more chances to see the Orangutans and opted to do follows (the term the use to describe following the orangutan around the forest)  with the assistants. The two Orangutans being followed while we were at Tuanan were Kerry&Katambe and Ekko. Ekko is supposedly the largest flanged (protruding cheek tissue) male present at Tuanan and he would have been incredible to see but Erin, keeping in mind I was filming for the documentary, assigned me to Kerry&Ketambe instead, since Ekko spends the majority of the day sleeping while Ketambe likes putting on a show.

I was up the next morning at 3am and out on the slippery board walk made of 2 by 4s by 4am. Armed with my head lamp (the only way we could see anything that early in the morning), two full bottles of water, granola bars and my camera I was ready for the excitement I knew the day would bring! It was still pitch black when we arrived at Kerry’s (the mama orangutan) nest we all sat in silence on the forest floor. The next 45 min was a steady lightening and waking of the forest as the sun rose and bug, bird and primate alike all released their wake up calls into the trees. Kerry work up at 4:50am and Tono (our accompanying research assistant) stood under her nest just as she woke up with a plastic bag on the end of a stick to collect a urine sample. Urine is helpful for the researchers in determining stress levels, fat burning, health ect. and is collected daily from the Orangutans being followed.

Kerry immediately took off, and we, as well as Ketambe, were in hot pursuit after mom. Thus began our day of running and resting. Kerry would travel a couple hundred meters at a time and then would rest and or eat anywhere from 10 min to 2 hours. During these times I did my best to make my way around the forest floor and find the best angle to see Kerry, Ketambe or both so I could get could footage and pictures. This wasn’t an easy task as the canopy in the jungle is thick and even in spaces with leafy openings, Kerry and Ketambe were always back lit making it difficult to see their faces. Also during this time we (Gab (American), Silvi (Indonesian) and I) got a chance to talk to Caroline who was a researcher also accompanying us for the day. Caroline is a French American who, after receiving her masters in France, received funding from University of Zurich to come do research at Tuanan. Her year of research ends August 1^st so she was happy for the chance to come out for a full day follow during her last two weeks there.

About 9 am Ketambe had had enough of eating Kemunda in the tree tops with mom, and decided to come down to about 5-10 meters above the forest floor. It wasn’t till he did this that I realized how poor my visibility of him and Kerry had been before. He was clear in view with beautiful lighting and he was having a blast! Swinging on vines, hanging about by just his feet, kiss squeaking (a classification of primate sound that can express distress but in this case expressed curiosity) and staring at us, Ketambe spent the better part of the next two hours being the perfect model and cutest little one. Orangutans in general, especially babies, also like to break branches off of trees and throw them to the forest floor. Ketambe thought this was especially funny since we all ducked and covered as he chucked his bits of forest at us. On more than one occasion I got a faceful of branches because I was looking at my camera screen rather than realizing that the branch I was seeing thrown on my screen was coming straight for my head but thankfully none of the branches Ketambe could break off were of really substance. So, other than a couple of stray sticks and leaves that fell out of my hair during my mandi later, I escaped Ketambe branch bombardment unscathed.

Around 11:30am the afternoon group of students came to replace us in the forest and we headed back to camp along transect JH and WS.  Back at camp we collapsed from our morning on the floor of the common area and took some time to gulp down water and munch on some fruit left on the table. That afternoon I did laundry with buckets left out by the kitchen. Since I’ve washed my laundry by hand before in camping situations, this wasn’t an odd experience for me as it was for some of the others. However what was a challenge was trying to dry clothes in a 80+% humidity climate under the shade of the jungle trees. There were plenty of clothes lines around in the shade so I began to hang my dripping clothes on one of these when Pak Ottowan came over.

Pak Ottowan is a key member of the research station as the maintenance man, husband to one of the cooks and in-house cat lover. I don’t think I’ve mentioned up to this point, but the station itself owns two cats who they brought with them as kittens from Palankaraya (they use to have 3 but Nina got eaten by a python #ripnina). Practically, Leo and Tigre are there to keep down the mouse/rat population but their emotional support for researchers who are there for months at a time is also a huge bonus. They’re both very happy cats that love to be cuddled and one can often find Pak Ottowan with one on his lap, the other at his feet and a huge grin on his face. So this, along with his tendency to play practical jokes on all involved while giggling at himself and other, makes him the jolly old fellow of Tuanan.

Pak Ottowan however only speaks a word here and there of English, so when he came over to me hanging my laundry and shook his head no, I didn’t know exactly what he wanted. I thought at first he might be joking but he insisted and managed to say “no sun”. I knew the clothes wouldn’t dry well since they were under all that shade but there were no sunny spots to hang them so I just stared at him blankly. Finally he beckoned for me to follow him so I packed up my stuff and wandered after him down the boardwalk towards the village. He led me to a secret little cove I didn’t know existed that was in full view of the sun and was lined with clothes lines. He grinned from ear to ear and pointed and I thank him, hung up my laundry and he led me back to camp. So Thanks to Pak Ottowan I didn’t have to shove moist mildewy moldy clothes back in my pack!

For the rest of the day we laid in hammocks set up in the forest, did some class work and filming (an interview with Ibu Suci) , enjoyed dinner with a presentation from the Indonesian students and headed to bed early. The next day I had the afternoon shift so I used the morning to interview Erin and film more shots of the station itself. I also got a chance to organize my room which had become quite a tangled mess since it was almost always dark in there(there was only power each day from 4pm-9pm) and I had been so busy with the class work. We headed back out into the jungle at around 10:30am. Erin went with us and stayed for the first hour during which time I found out she had been the one who found and named Ketambe and therefore had a special place for him in her heart. After Erin left we were with our two research assistants, Sui and Abok who are both from the village. Sui lives there with cousins and Abok is married with two daughters (and I think a son but I didn’t meet him) who I became good friends with. Sui and Abok are longtime friends and quite a hysterical duo. From their setting up of hammocks when Kerry was napping so they could nap along with her to straight our pranks, they made my last day in the forest a jolly time. The only moment of crisis was when they, who were usually calm over just about anything, saw a type of wasp buzzing near us and said “move! Move! Move!”. They told us afterword that the sting of that particular wasp is so painful that people have been hospitalized for it. Glad to have had the experts there with us to alert us of the danger we didn’t even recognize!

Kerry had apparently had an exhausting day of eating and napping so she built an nest early that day at around 4pm. Once she and Ketambe were settled down we took our leave and with an SD card full of fabulous footage headed back to camp. At camp we began to synthesis our data from the past two days into understandable graphics of Kerry allotted time for each daily activity.

Then on Monday we got to sleep in a bit till 6am (I know I sound crazy but waking up at 6am instead of 3 really felt like sleeping in) and headed to the village a 7. As a part of our trip fee, we had all contributed to the purchase of three wells for the village so they could have fresh ground water rather than polluted river water. Some of the village men are trained by the Indonesian army in installing hydrants throughout the forest to protect from fires so they direct us all in the best wats to help install these wells. The wells consisted of a series of specialized pipes bore into the ground around 18meters using pressurized water. Because this area is a peat swamp forest, reservoirs of clean water lay relatively close to the surface and make creating a well an easy process as long as you have the funds to purchase the materials which is what we were able to provide.

Spending the day in the village also meant the chance to play Frisbee and volleyball (the local sport of choice) with the kids while work that we couldn’t help with was being done. It also was a great reminder of how much cooler the jungle was in the shade of the trees rather than out on the white beaches of the villages. We all learned the hard way that near the equator one application of sun screen in the morning simply isn’t enough.

The village woman cooked us an AMAZING chicken soup with local vegetables and a bit of chili peppers for lunch that day. Even though eating hot (both in temperature and spice) soup in the middle of the blazing sun and sweat wasn’t exactly refreshing, it was totally worth it for the taste. After some more filming, playing with the kids and a group picture with students and villagers alike in front of one of the three wells, we headed back to camp to mandi and pack.

My bags are almost all zipped up and waiting for the last few items to be stuffed in in the morning when we roll out. Since I packed up quicker than expected, I’ve been able to come out to the tree house to relax and reflect. The past couple days have been so amazing and jam-packed I can’t really comprehend how much has happened but sitting here and writing it all out has helped me realize yet again how thankful and blessed I am to be on this trip. Were head back to Jarkarta and then Bogor in the next two days so I’ll write again when I have the chance to update you all with the adventures from the next leg of our trip! Till then!

(Written Posted 7/6 and posted 7/10 due to wifi constraints)

Selamat pagi (Good morning) and hello from the Jungles of Borneo!

After our flight landed in Jakarta on Tuesday we (12 students, 1 TA and Dr. Erin Vogel our leading professor) ate large group dinner to inaugurate our trip. This was the first opportunity we all really had to interact as many hadn’t been able to come to the pre departure orientation and we had all been separated on both flights from Newark. It was a wonderful time of laughter an excitement about what was to come, paired with some delicious seafood rice/noodles and a local drink made from avocado and condensed milk.

We spent that night in a hotel right next to the airport because we had to be up and at em’ the next day at 2:30am to catch another flight to Palangkaraya. This was only a two hour flight and was by comparison with the 16 hour flight to Hong Kong, a breeze. Palangkaraya is the home base for the researchers here, as is convenient to the airport (15 min) and still within driving distance from the boat launch to the research station (2 hour 30 min). After lunch in Palangkaraya and a chance to relax for bit at Erin’s (Dr Vogel; our head professor) house, we boarded a bus to the boat launch. It was a treat to have the chance to just see the country side flying by and really get a grasp of the country’s landscape and how locals live.  The last part of the bus trip brought us to an extremely bumpy sand road which we traversed for an hour till we pulled up at the boat ramp. Three canoe like boats each around 30ft long were waiting for us and once our packs were loaded on one, additional supplies for the research station packed on the next the us squished into the third we were off for another 2 hour ride down the Kapuas river. Other than the cramping and stiffness that occurs from being crammed in a skinny boat that you’re afraid might tip, the boat ride was amazing! Along the river we saw local villages, the jungles and our first taste of the endemic primates. We didn’t see any orangutans but several gibbons and macaque made appearances.

 

At the end of the trip we pulled into a sort of harbor created with wooden docs. The boat couldn’t pull all the way up to the shore so we all took off our shoes and socks (which was quite a feat when 14 people did it all at once in the tight space without tipping the boat), loaded up our bags, jumped out and waded in. We were greeted on shore by a group of smiling children standing around Elise who is one of the full time researchers there affiliated with Rutgers. She works most closely with the locals of any of the researchers as she, in addition to orangutan tracking, is working on the cultural science project about the meaning of the orangutans to the people here. The bond was evident between her and the children crowded at her feet and made for quite the welcoming committee. Some of the local men loaded our bags onto hand carts and we all made our way to the station which is about a mile inland from the river right in the midst of the forest. The trail there begins with a sandy path and ends with a board walk over the bog right to the front door of camp. The station itself is mostly all out door pavilions with tin metal roofs to keep off the rain and the only enclosed spaces are the dorm rooms of which there are 17.

The front door leads directly to the foyer area which has pictures of all the past research groups and visiting students and two rooms off it, one of which is mine with my roommate for our stay Eriel. If you continue straight through the kitchen is on your left where Ibu(a respectful term for an older woman with children) Masak and her two helpers make us delicious meals three times a day. On your right is the wing of the building with the remainder of the rooms which is two levels with porches and stairs lining the walk ways. Right in front of you is the main common area with tables used for research, lectures and meal times and on the far side of the tables is the identification wall. This wall is made up of close ups of the 143 orangutans studied in Tuanan. They are organized by flanged males (a male with a disk face and large protruding cheeks) un flanged males, adolescent females and mother offspring pairs. The orangutans all have names which are a mix of everything from types of alcohol to traditional Indonesian names as the researcher that first finds the Orangutan reserves the right to name him or her. Family trees are organized by the naming system as well because a mother and her offspring always have names that begin with the same letter. For example Kerry, Kondor, Kecap and Ketambe are all related despite being spread out on all different sections of the wall.

The whole structure is built on stilts about 4 feet above the boggy forest floor and separate sections are connected by 2 by 4s which makes the whole experience of walking through camp like going on an adventure through a tree house. Also, in an effort to keep camp clean and reduce he need to sweep, everyone is required to go bare foot which adds to the adventure vibes.

That night we settled in and all hung up our mosquito nets above our beds (despite being “enclosed” the rooms are still prone to wandering mosquitos). After a delicious dinner of rice, a sort of chicken noodle soup and spinach & pumpkin stew we had our first lecture which was about primate survey techniques.

We were exhausted from our long day and many of us opted to head right to bed at around the 7pm after our lecture. Because we are below the equator and therefore experiencing Indonesian “winter” it gets dark early here and so after our long day it was quite easy to collapse on my bed and fall right asleep that early. The next morning we were up at 4:45 am to eat breakfast at  5 and be head into the study area a 6 am. Orangutans wake up around 5am so we needed to be out there soon after their waking to hear the long calls the made in the morning and find some of the previous night’s nests which is what we spent most of the morning doing. The study area is set up in a grid of transect trails cut through the jungle  that a marked with tags every 50 meters so you can always identify where you are, where the orangutans are and how to get back to camp. To walk the perimeter of the area would take over 4 hours so getting lost is definitely not advisable.

We all came back from our transect hike to compare date and triangulate where the orangutans were based on the time, direction and distance of their long calls. Then came lunch and the chance to head back out into the forest and see our first Orangutans which were Kerry and her youngest Ketambe. The researchers don’t use GPS trackers on the Orangutans so the only way they know how to find them each day is by the tireless work of the research assistants. The assistants are all young Indonesian males who are orangutan experts as well as experts in local flora and fauna. They head out of camp at 4 in the morning each day to the nest of an orangutan being tracked so when the Orangutan wakes up at 4:30 to 5 they are there and can subsequently follow them all day till around 5pm when they make their nest for the night. Once they settle down for the night the assistants return to camp and mark on the transect map where the nest was so the assistant tracking the Orangutan in the morning can be to that exact spot before they wake up the next day. In addition to tracking all day, the assistants take data every two minutes on the activity of the orangutans down to the exact genus of the species the Orangutan is currently snacking on. Their days are long and grueling but the station itself would function without them and the researchers are endlessly grateful for the expertise of their assistants.

I’m currently sitting back at camp after the chance to follow Kerry and Ketambe for 15 min with Tono their research assistant for the day. It was incredible to see them swinging through the trees playing and eating and realizing that we may be the last generation to see the amazing creatures in the wild.

So far, throughout the trip there hasn’t been a moment that I have had my camera pointed and filming everything happening around me. It would be impossible to capture it all but my hope is to have enough to give my audience even a small feel for the excitement of living in a place thriving with research and discovery and the wonder I and all my compatriots feel at witnessing and fluffy orange primate chilling the trees above our head.

 

In a matter of hours I will be boarding a 15hr and 55min plane ride to Hong Kong and then a 5hr and 5min connecting flight to Jakarta Indonesia and I couldn’t be more excited! It’s been a long journey already to get to this point so while the real trip is just beginning there is a sense in which so many hurdles have already been surmounted. From making sure I have the necessary watertight cases to protect my equipment in the humid jungles, to an unexpected mad dash up to the New York City Indonesian consulate to obtain the correct visa in time, the challenges have already been many but so has the accompanying sense of adventure.

Back in February I had the privilege of hearing a guest lecture in my principles of Ecology class given by Dr. Erin Vogel about her work with the Bornean Orangutans of the Tuanan jungles in Indonesia. Beyond the fascinating nature of her work, her passion for the research and commitment to her project was so evident in her manner and it was infectious. As I mentioned in my bio, while at Rutgers I’ve been able to partner with many researchers here to make films about their work and the thing that has made each of those experiences so memorable and enjoyable was sharing in a passionate professors’ joy as they explained what they had devoted years of their life to. I saw the same excitement in Dr. Vogel as I had seen in them, and knew right away I wanted to make a film about her and her Orangutans. I reached out to Dr. Vogel proposing my idea to join her on her study aboard trip to make a film about her lab in Tuanan and after reciprocated interest from her the snow ball of events that has led to this day began.

As I make my way to the airport with a backpacking pack, checked duffel, day hiking pack and camera bag all stuffed with filming equipment, mosquito nets, an air mattress, first aid supplies galore and so much more I muse over what the next three weeks will bring. I can’t wait to share with you all the ups, downs, challenges, successes and unforgettable memories as they come, so selamat tinggal untuk sekarang (good bye for now) and catchup with you all later from Indonesia!

Andrea

As I sit here at my computer, 4 hours until I leave for the airport to fly to Indonesia, whatever feeling I am supposed to be feeling has not hit me yet. There is some slight nervousness but honestly, right now, I am just looking forward to the pizza and TV that will be my last moments in the States for three weeks. I suspect that once I am in the airport the excitement will hit and I won’t be able to control myself, but up until this point, preparing for this trip has been quite intensive and has left me little time to dream about all of the amazing memories, friends, and experiences that are about to be made. Preparing for this trip took weeks of planning, purchasing and collecting gear, and coordinating doctor’s visits for all the vaccinations and emergency medicines, but it is going to be all worth it and I can’t wait to share with everyone the craziest three weeks of my life!