The Rainforest

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  Batu Puteh, Malaysia
Thursday, March 6, 2008

I arrived in Borneo and stayed one night in KK before flying to Sandakan to meet the other 2 volunteers, Trevor and Meredith (a canadian couple who are in month 8 of a round the workd trip - really nice) and Martin who is the guy involved with the project.

The village that we are staying in is a 1 and a half to 2 hour drive out of Sandakan, the main town in East Sabah - the road is pretty good and the village is right under a gigantic bridge! When I say village I mean wooden huts mostly on stilts...... and a mosque that looks the same as the houses but is painted yellow and has a small dome thing on the top!!

We spent the first afternoon on the Jetty (there is a big structure where the project people hang out) talking about Borneo and the project and then we hopped in a boat and went to see the project sites in the Rainforest. the river is really high at the moment and is running really fast. they are building an eco camp in the forest - 8 lodges overlooking an oxbow lake and out into the forest with a communal dining area. They are also working on a forest restoration project - so growing seedlings in a nursey and then planting them in the foreset to help repair some of the damage done by the logging in the past. Apparenylt you can see Orangutans fairly frequently if you work down there so fingers crossed I might see some!!

We are staying in home stays - 4 different ones so I change tomorrow - I like the family I am with at the moment and want to stay but oh well - the food is excellent and there are 3 children, 17, 20 and 25 who all speak excellent english and it is quite fun to have their company in the evening. It is a gigantic house, satellite tv, big swish ty set - really strange in the middle of nowwhere, and, mobiles work in theJungle!!!! They also have a bathroom which I think is a luxury - I am expecting to be washing my clothes and me in the river at some point?!

Work so far has been good, the first few days we were in the nursery playing with the plants, not so exciting but a gentle introduction!! Then we went into the forest and started moving planks of wood from the river bank to inside the camp and then building the edges to the paths, planks in the mud and stakes to hold them up - it is hard work and my body hurts!! I have only had one leach so far - I am triing not to be paranoid about them!

It has rained every day since we got here and the river level is rising - it is meant to be the end of the wet season and Martin expects that the river will have dropped by 6 feet by the time we leave but it doesn't look as though that is happening?! when the water goes down we should be able to see the crocs on the bank - I am quite excited about that, I just won't go swimming in the river!!

That's all the news for now..... not sure when the next update will be....


Monday 17th March - the end of Week 2

I am back in the land of email communication today, we travelled in the opposite direction from our village to the other coast. a much easier and cheaper journey!

It seems like a long time since I last updated this, I have been busy and working hard! We moved to the next homestay on Monday or Tuesday and are all together this time - we are staying with the boss of the project who is a really nice guy. A bit of a smaller house compared to the last one and we eat on the floor without cutlery but this just adds to the experience! my bed is confy but pretty noisy - lots of frogs outside and then sometimes the goats and geese join in with the chorus! There is still a bathroom though with a big bucket of water so I am still escaping washing in the river.....

It rained really hard for most of this week, the river level went up even more and the path that we use to go into the jungle was flooded to deeper than wellie height...... that wasn't very pleasant!! Mostly the mornings are dry and we get wet working after lunch - I can deal with that when I know I am going home soon. One day last week we were moving sandbags in the moring and I was covered in wet mud then we went to help fill more bags - these bags had come from the floor mill so as I shook them I got floor all over me..... and then it started to pour, so I had muddy flour mixture all over me?! I decided the easiest way to fis this was to stand under a drain pipe and wash as much as I could off - it would save the hassle of trying to wash my clothes later on?!

As well has lifting a shifting I hvae been developing my hammer and spanner profieciency - I only bashed my finger once!!

We played proper tourists yesterday morning and went out on an early morning river cruise - and yes, we saw 2 orangotans!! it was very exciting, they are quite shy animals so you don't always see them but we managed to spot a couple in the trees by the river. We drove the boat up right under the tree and sat and watched them - I was suprised at how long they stuck around to be watched before sauntering off into the thicker trees. They are pretty amazing looking animals. As well as the Orangotans, we saw some birds and some other types of monkey. We had our breakfast sat on the boat drifting back downstream and then went for a walk through some of the rainforest. It was pretty muddy and we didn't see any animals but we did see a pretty exciting tree - a strangling fig tree that grows from the top of another tree down to the ground to put its roots in and then kills the host tree. The roots are enourmaous and spread out a long way.

What else have I been up to? Not much really, my flip flops went missing so I bought some new ones and then this morning we went to visit someones house and there they were!! I attempted to buy looroll and the smallest packet I could buy was ten rolls so we are well stocked for that! and I am really missing tea....... have only had one cup this week.... and even that isn't a good cup of tea?!

That's all for now..... xx


Thursday 27th March - Nearly finished

Another homestay experience last week - we stayed in another vilage a little way away from the main village so we had to be driven there and back again. I stayed in a house where I think 3 families lived - the mother (a very very fat lady) and the familes of her 2 sons who lived out of their own rooms in the house - lots of children everywhere which made life a bit more fun, a couple of one year olds, a 5 year old and a 10 year old. One of the babies took a liking to me and we had some fun playing! They didn't have any toys to play with and there was excitment when I indroduced jangling a bunch of keys!!

They took me to a prayer ceremony with them one night, and once again was dressed in the traditional clothes, gold this time! The prayers were for an uncle who had died last year and all the men stat in a cirlce in the house reciting the koran, the women and children talking in the background - and then they served as all dinner. There were a lot of people in the house and they fed all of us on the floor.

As for working this week, we have mostly been planing wood. They buy the timber cut with chainsaws from the merchant and then we move it to the place where we want it - for the floors and railings we need to then plane the wood so it is smooth and pretty. it has been pretty monotonous but we have got through a giant pile of wood.

We also organised a first aid refresher course for all the project members, well Meredith and Trevor did and told me what I was doing..... wiht my limited first aid training (ie non existant) I was only able to talk about common sense stuff! It went as well as we could have expected but I'm not sure how much they got out of it, the language barrier is pretty tricky......

Having worked a long week last week we are having a mini holiday in the middle of this week. We went to visit some ancient caves on Tuesday and to walk to the top of the limestone rocks for the most wonderful view over the forest. It was a really really hot climb and lots of leeches - i was impressed that I didn't scream once! On the boat ride back to the jetty we spotted a giant crocodile - it sidled into the water and completley disappeared..... it doesn't suprise me that it is not uncommon for fisherman to disappear in the river....... After that we headed for town where we stayed in a nice hotel and I had a hot shower!!! It was amazing, the first time I have been properly clean for weeks! and a comfy bed and aircon, what more could I want :) Yesterday we caught a speed boat to an island 40km off Sandakan where turtles come to lay their eggs - we spent the day on the beach, the most beautiful water, and then waited for "Turtle Time" after dinner....... Unfortuneatley my dinner didn't agree with me so I missed out on the evenings turtle activites, but first thing in the morning we saw a green turtle on the beach covering up the eggs she had just layed, so I still got to see one! We are off to the Orangotan Sacturary this afternoon and then back to the village for the last few days of work.


Sunday 29th March

The Orangotan Sanctuary on Thursday was really good fun - it is a rehabilitaion centre of orphaned orangotans, they take them in and look after them until they are old enough to fend for themselves in the rainforest and slowly reintroduce them to the forest life and away from human contact. when they release them back into the forest they have a series of feeding stations that they can return back to for food if they need to - it takes them about 6 years to stop being dependent on these. The tourists are allowed to watch the feeding at the first platform - there were 2 orangotans there when we visited, we were really close to them - they are amazing creatures and I am sure were pozing for the cameras?! we sat and watched them for about an hour and they were swinging back into the forest as soon as they were finished eating.

When we got back to the village it was a shock to see that the river has dropped a good 5 metres.....! I can't believe how quickly the water is disappearing. The banks are pretty muddy and horrible now but apparently soon there will be a few days of heavy rain that will "wash the mud" as a local explained it to me!

Only a couple of days left at work and I was the carpenters (albert's) assistant - not the most exciting job but I make a pretty good assistant! I was asked to do some chiselling but discovered that this wasn't my forte..... especially without a lesson on how to start and in a very awkward place sitting with my legs dangling off the edge of a platform, chisseling over the edge not really been able to see what I was doing!

I left the village this morning and am in KK now and on my way to Australia........

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