31 MAR 09

We're back in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to escape the midday sun. Today the internet connection is actually working, unlike last time where I trawled the coffee shops in search of a link to the world wide web before deciding I'd be better off giving up.

We went out for Chloe's birthday last night. The Loft was covered in post-it notes and pink balloons which we blew up in Francoise's car on the way. It was all a bit of a mad rush as Min and I decided to try and make a birthday cake in the afternoon at Francoise's house. Poor Francoise was trying to get some work done so we moved the baking session to Marc's where we attempted to whip cream. Somehow we overwhipped it and ended up with a curdled mess, which Min tried to rescue by adding more fresh cream. Isabelle and Elie walked in as we were staring hopelessly at our yellow lumps floating in runny white goo and my patience with our inability to make a cake from a box was running thin. She suggested we started again with the cream whipping, and we eventually managed to make a passable excuse for a birthday cake! It received mixed reviews, from a polite 'that's very nice' to 'Eew, it's horrible' from Elie. Thanks mate.

It was really nice to see all of our KK friends together, so thanks for turning out last night guys!

We're back to the jungle again tomorrow...

Rachel

P.S. Milena sent me the U2 album in the posta nd it arrived yesterday!!! I'm very excited but not had a chance to listen to it yet! Thanks so much!!!!!

29 MAR 09

We arrived at the school bazaar and set up camp in a classroom. We’d put up the orang-utan bridge between two trees the day before and I’d quickly typed out a sign for it on Saturday morning:

Orangutan Bridges
There are several orangutan bridges in the Kinabatangan. They’re used to link patches of forest that have an obstacle between them, like a river. Orangutans can’t swim and it is hoped that they will use these bridges to move between forest fragments so that they are able to interact with orangutans in other parts of the forest.

The classroom was decorated by our ‘Save the *insert endangered species here*’ posters, focussing on orang-utans, elephants, wild cats and sun bears, and we shuffled over to make room for the scary face-painting team. It was actually quite a relief having someone else do the face-painting as I think we would have resorted to simply painting all the children orange and trying to convince them that they were orang-utans. Instead we focussed on our primate colouring sheets and mask making. João, one of the new students at Danau Girang and Farina were also there manning the darts game outside. João provided us with entertainment just by being quite tall when one of the little girls making a tiger mask said “Wow, you’re so tall, your arms are like an orang-utan! If you reach up really high, birds can make a nest in your hands!” That, on top of us introducing him to everyone with ‘This is João. He’s from Portugal, the capital of Spain!’, must have topped off his week. Overall, the bazaar went very well and it was good to work with the guys from Sukau and get to know them a bit better.

Last night was ‘Earth Hour’: Sixty minutes where people were encouraged to turn off the electricity to give our planet’s resources a well-earned break. I couldn’t work out how to turn the corridor lights off in the hostel, but I did make everyone sit in the dark until half past nine. Unfortunately we were hoping to go out to The Loft to enjoy a drink in the candlelight but as I couldn’t shower in the dark we missed it! Nevermind. We still had a good evening and I found someone who was willing to buy my rum and coke for me, which was rather nice.

Today we’ve been helping Farina get her wedding outfits made. I’m getting really excited about it now that we’ve found out we can come out to Kota Kinabalu for it! This evening we’ll meet up with Benoit after him and João have finished playing ‘futsal’ with the WWF guys and at some point I’ll carry on fiddling with orang-utan data. At the moment I’m just enjoying the sea view from The Coffee Bean. I came in here just to check emails and put this thing on the internet, only to find that the internet connection is down, which is annoying as I didn’t really fancy a coffee in the first place. The saving grace is that it’s a Sunday, so I get to drink tea today (which I’ve given up for lent) and there’s plenty of time to find somewhere else with connection to the www at some point!

27 MAR 09

Hello again! Sorry about that, an influx of children prevented me finishing my post.

We're no longer in Sukau. Whilst there we invaded a wedding, amongst other things, which was really very interesting. It seemed like the entire village had turned out in force and somehow all the hungry mouths were fed. Imagine having to cook rice, chicken, beef, prawns and vegetables for a whole village at your child's wedding... I would guess people would stop having kids but that's not the case as the average family size here is much larger than in the U.K.. Our cook at Danau Girang for example has 15 brothers and sisters! I remember our family being chaotic enough at times with two!
The bride and groom were dressed in lilac, silky outifts and turned up after having made their vows at the mosque. They then made their way onto a bench on stage where family members would bring blessings for maybe two hours.

I'm currently sat having lunch in Kota Kinabalu, having travelled here yesterday with the KOCP team. There's a bazaare at the International School tomorrow and we're helping to translate some posters about elephants and orangutans. We've also agreed to do face-painting. Poor kids. Before we can start to panic about transforming five-year-olds into tigers though we have sixty animal masks to cut around, so I'll get back to that now.

Apparently Stephen Fry was sat in a restaurant two door down from us last night, but we didn't realise because we're not 'Twitter-addicts', whatever that means. Anyone who can shed light on this new internet phenomenon - feel free to leave a comment or something!

Rachel x

22 MAR 08

It's been a busy few weeks.

I'm currently sat in Sukau in an internet cafe; I can't believe it! I don't know when it opened, but it's definitely here now. It's amazing what people are using it for though. From my seat I can see two ten year olds, both on Youtube. One is watching a video about waxing and hair removal tips, the other is watching a Barbie massacre.

Damnit, there's a school group coming in and I have to leave... basically my pig is dead (Quasimodo), we have three new people at the centre, all of whom are very nice and it's Chloe's birthday today!

Laters,
Rachel

12 MAR 09

Hello again, terribly sorry for the lack of communication recently; we've had a few technical glitches that need ironing out, but all is well in the jungle!

We've had a busy time of it recently, zipping back and forth between Danau Girang, Kota Kinabalu and Sukau for various reasons. It's been quite a while since the parents returned home now and we're back in full swing getting our work done and 'being jungle'.

I tried to follow an orangutan for a coupe of days this week but to no real avail. My attempts at recording behavioural information failed miserably but I had to have a go! He was spotted one afternoon on a brief jungle walk, so I followed him until he built his nest for the night which was about four hours after he was first seen. The next morning I was up at half five to catch him before he left for breakfast and at first I thought it was all going rather well. I managed to keep up with his fruit-eating-rampage until he seemed likely to stay put for a while and I strung up a hammock to sit in whilst he ate. He was feeding for over an hour and I was just replying to a text message (amazed that I had any signal at all!) from my brother, wishing him all the very best for his show, when I looked up and found that 'Dunstan' had gone! I struggled to get the hammock down and searched for over an hour but he was obviously hiding and I was quite hungry by this point. I was just contemplating going to find some breakfast (it was about 10am by this time) when I heard an unusual bird approaching at an alarming rate. It turned out to be Chloe calling to me in the style of our friends in Sukau who make 'natural type noises' to find each other when they're in the field. She'd brought a food parcel from the field centre after reading my note!

Yesterday I was sat out on the steps of our studio (little house thing) playing guitar and wondering how I could possibly have lost a bright orange orangutan amongst a green forest when a familiar cracking of branches nearby caught my attention. I looked up to see Dunstan suspended between two trees, giving me exactly the same 'don't you dare follow me' look I'd been given on that first afternoon when I found him in the forest. As I wasn't wearing any shoes at the time he was in luck, but it's good to know he's still in the area and I'll have another search for him tomorrow. I'm sure he likes me really...

This morning Chloe and I went to Sandakan to collect a parcel that's been waiting for us for over a month. We arrived, signed the appropriate documents and ran back to the car with our precious packages... only to open them and find that we'd each received a blue holdall from Reader's Digest. We were both a little confused as the only link we have to this particular magazine is the online daily draw my Mum has tried to force me to enter every day for the last two years in a bid to win a huge amount of cash. This didn't explain our curious parcels and it was only when I turned the packaging over that I realised that we were in possession of two holdalls belonging to a Mr Huing Wan Hung and a Mr Richard Gibley. Returning to the Post Office I tried to explain that my name wasn't Richard and that Chloe certainly wasn't Mr Hung, and only suceeded in convincing the clerk by explaining that 'Mr' is a term for a male and we were most definitely female. Unfortunately my Malay is still pretty dire and so the best I could do translated as "I girl, Mr Gibley boy. I not Richard, I Rachel. I no have Reader's Digest. I want letter mine." He got the picture and after reluctant searching brought out three parcels, all with 'Reader's Digest' printed on the outside and addressed to a 'Mr G.Smythe', 'Mr Chung' and another name I forget now but did not include the words 'Rachel' or 'Chloe'. Some further exasperating conversation and waving of my driving licence convinced him that I wasn't going to accept any of the identical blue holdalls and really did want my mysterious parcel. Miraculously he managed to find both and Chloe now has her Marks and Sparks ingredients for a Christmas dinner (non-perishables...) sent by her Mum in time for (next) Christmas and I have a make-your-own monkey door hanger for my birthday! When we return to the jungle I think we'll have to have a Christmas pud and craft session...

08 MAR 09

Against all odds the jungle is now connected to the internet! Of course, I have no idea how long this will last for, but at least it's been here for long enough to sort out some boring admin things and send an email or two. It's also given me a moment to peruse the 'stat-counter' thing that records how many people read this blog, and I've got to say I'm impressed! In the last week there have been visitors from Kuala Lumpur, Germany, America, France and even Russia

(Edited 12 MAR 09: The internet died as I was typing the next sentence and I've forgotten what I was intending to write about, so this post has been abandoned and a new one embarked upon. Sorry about that - these things are temperamental out here!)