15 JUL 09

Rachel, Milena and I at the water-cooler

I can't believe how the time has flown in the last few weeks. It seems like yesterday we were counting down the weeks until 'home-time', and tomorrow we'll be heading towards the airport in just a couple of hours.

The fieldcourse was still in full-swing when we left the jungle yesterday. I'd been helping with the 5am and 5pm primate surveys, along with various other bits and bobs. Our last day was over-ridden by an unshiftable sense of anticipation. It's hard to know what to do when you know you're leaving the next day... walk in the jungle? Help the students? Hang around with the staff? Pack? Finish the newsletter? Drink copious amounts of the addictive Milo drink? In the end I flitted between all of the aforementioned and didn't really get a lot done. I had a brilliant day though. I'd heard a flanged male orangtuan calling in one of the botanical plots and was determined to find him, having not seen an orangutan for nearly three weeks. Unfortunately the forest was flooded and I hadn't believed our lecturer when he said the water was waist-deep at some points. I found that out for myself as the ground fell away beneath the water and I ended up submerging both my camera and my phone. Remarkably, both suvived! I couldn't quite get to the orangutan site, so I about-turned and ran the long way along the circular trail to get back to the same place. As I was running, which is never the best idea in a jungle, I tried my best to absorb the jungle-ness around me, not really minding that I wouldn't see much wildlife at high-speeds. So I was a little taken aback when I came face-to-tail with a King Cobra! This magnificent snake is massive, and although this one was probably no thicker than my wrists, it was about four metres long. I watched it slither across the path and followed it until it reached the hollow of a nearby tree and disappeared inside. I didn't find the orangutan but I certainly can't complain about that!!!

We then took a boat-ride to Batu Puteh with Zainal to say goodbye. The last day has been constant 'Jumpa lagi's (see you again) and the like. I'm pretty knackered, but will be home in a couple of days, where I plan to re-aquaint myself with the sofa and cheese-sandwiches.

It's been a long year that has passed exceptionally quickly. It's been far too long since I've seen people at home, yet time has flown, and I honestly can't believe I won't be here in forty-eight hours time!

Saya akan rindu Sabah. I'll miss Sabah.

16 JUN 09

Before heading back to the jungle from Kota Kinabalu we took a slight detour to bid farewell to our friends in Sukau. It was our last visit to the village for the foreseable future, certainly for this stay in Malaysia.
Whilst there we sorted out our data/computer issues with Mislin, visited some old friends in a village further downriver and were able to spend some time with the family at the homestay. We also took another trip to the study site where the orangutan-staff were following Jenny and her baby Mallotus. They were particularly 'un-bovvered', munching on leaves in a particularly tall tree, but it was a nice way to spend a day and say goodbye to the field-staff, for the time-being at least!

Of course, there's still a month to go, and a busy one at that. There are lots of jungle visitors scheduled in for the next four weeks, as well as the 2009 field course coming out from Cardiff... I have a feeling it's going to be a hectic time!

More soon,
Rachel

30 MAY 09

We spent a week doing hardcore, statistical computerisation with our supervisor who flew out from the United Kingdom. It was a busy week at the centre, with our boss, the orangutan man and a friend from Kota Kinabalu also being present, as well as two zoo keepers from America! Despite my fear of numbers I surprised myself by surviving the intensive few days, and came away with what I hope to be an understanding of how to go about working with this orangutan data. I have to keep specifying 'orangutan data' to remind me why I'm doing it! Our supervisor is also 'a bird man', which was rather nice as we could spend two mornings netting and ringing birds. We caught several that had been ringed last year on the field course, so it was satisfying to know that at least some of our feathered friends are just as alive and well (and stupid/blind) as they were last year!

We drove the boat to deposit both our supervisor and Joao at Batu Putih. I can't begin to understand where the last three months have gone, but Joao (aka Spoonface, the Portuguese volunteer) has reached the end of his time here with us and has disappeared back to Portugal. Chloe and I had great intentions to pick up some Portuguese whilst he was here, but this sentence is all I can muster:
'Eu gosto de macacos, de vinho e de queijo'
which translates as 'I like monkeys, wine and cheese'.
Although we haven't exactly mastered the language, I feel this is a good start and am now confident that I could go to Lisbon and not go hungry or thirsty, and if I'm lucky I may find someone who also likes monkeys...

20 MAY 09

TARSIER!!!

I went out on a nightwalk with Rachel and Ridzwan again, doing what we call 'point sampling'. On this type of 'monkey mission' we walk to pre-decided points along a transect (straight trail), turn our head-torches off for five minutes, stand silently in the dark, turn on the lights and try to find nocturnal primates.
On this particular walk I'd fully resigned myself to the fact that we rarely encounter slow lorises or western tarsiers and was holding out hopes of catching a glimpse of a civet or an especially large frog. Up until this point we'd mostly found things whilst walking between points, as opposed to whilst at points, and so I'd spent the first three points trying to think of song titles beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
Amazingly, at our fourth surveying point, Rachel spotted a tarsier! They're peculiar creatures, resembling something caught between a gremlin and a teddy bear. The resulting effect is that of a small, evil-looking bundle of fur that doesn't want to be messed with. Rachel managed to get the data she needed and we left 'Samson' to it. This is the third tarsier spotted at the field centre, but for me it was a first and it's a sighting most people interested in primates would kill for!

16 MAY 09

He came back.

After another night of gnawing I wasn't very impressed, so I set out another trap last night. I caught him on the second night after his original capture, kept him in a cage (with food and water) until the following lunchtime and sent him on a boat down the river. The rat is apparently now happy and looking for a new home far, far away.

Thank goodness for that.

15 MAY 09

We returned from Cambodia safely, albeit tiredly, last week. It didn’t help that on arrival at Kota Kinabalu International Airport we decided to wait for the bus. They come every hour so we wouldn’t have to wait long. Naturally the bus came when Chloe was in the toilet, and the security guards took great pleasure in telling us that there wouldn’t be another one for at least two hours. Eventually we gave in and took a taxi into town. We spent Saturday in town eating and shopping with Francoise, LiYing and Yu Li before heading back to the jungle on the tedious six hour bus journey.
During the last week I’ve been occupying myself with three main tasks:
1. Getting my work sorted before our supervisor arrives
2. The occasional night walk with Rachel and Ridzwan or helping Joao with his trapping
3. Rat Protection

Although my interests lie in conservation it’s not protection of the rat that I’m concerned with at the moment. There’s one particularly evil rat that has now munched its way through two pairs of trousers, two shirts, three bags, a toothbrush and an inflatable kangaroo. And just to torment me a little more he spends all night either running around my room or gnawing at my door.

The first stage of Operation Rat Attack involved merely covering the hole in my door with gaffa tape. This has been successful for some time now, but for some reason the rat is on a real mission to enter my room. Since the tape ceased to be of any use when we returned, and having been severely annoyed at the loss of my monkey bag, I decided it was time for drastic action. Paper, cardboard, tape and wood are obviously no match for my attacker so I set off on a hunt for something metal. If nothing else it’ll give him toothache if he insists on chewing at my door. The only moveable metal item I could find was a water bottle left by Verity after the field course; other options included the sink and the metal pipe running down the outside of the house if I were able to detach them from the wall. A highly technical application of tape and a precise positioning of the bottle to cover the inside of the hole followed by further tape application would, I hoped, stop our rodent friend from entering my room. I took it a step further by attaching a piece of string to the back of my door which could be hooked up to a bungee cord outside my room to keep the door shut. As I don’t have a key for my door, the rat had been entering whilst we were at dinner and causing havoc before the lights even went out. All of this worked wonders. However a new problem arose: by keeping the rat out of my room it then focussed all of its energies on trying to gnaw its way through my defences, resulting in my average sleeping time reducing significantly. My solutions to this problem included throwing things at the door whenever the chewing began and spraying the door with mosquito repellent in the hopes that it also repelled rodents. No such luck.

Eventually I gave in and set a trap. I closed my door and locked it from the inside. Hearing an almighty ‘clunk’ I tried to unlock my door, only to find that the locking mechanism had come unattached from the locky-unlock-knob thing (technical term). So I was now locked inside my room. Fortunately I had my nifty multi-tool to hand and after some fiddling with various implements I managed to dislodge the lock with the pliers. Wondering how I could have such an unlucky door I propped a chair up against it and retired to bed. The rat didn’t wait long and after only seven minutes I heard the trap spring shut. I tried to make him apologise for destroying everything and keeping me awake but he just carried on sniffing around his cell looking slightly confused. At least he had an oil palm kernel to munch on until morning. Morning came and the rat was released a little way from the field centre... I now look forward to a good night’s sleep!
The Prisoner of War


The Rat-Prevention Mechanism: Mark II


My travelling shirt...

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...

13 FEB 09

After a tense 48 hours last week wondering whether or not the snow would lift enough for Heathrow to begin operating like a normal airport again, Mum and Dad walked into the Arrivals Lounge of Kota Kinabalu airport.

The last eight days have been so busy that I've not had time to write anything, but I'll highlight a couple of our momentous points before the cafe who's internet we're using closes. It's just taken Dad over an hour to type three emails because he's not used to this laptop and has been repeatedly deleting and re-typing them. At least it's nice and warm outside; I imagine that sitting outside a shop at midnight typing an email in England is the last thing most people would be doing in the current weather situation.

Today we visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. For me this was the third trip in seven months, but orangutans never get old. Well, they obviously get old but not 'old'. Mum and Dad loved it (I think), and we watched several orangutans feeding on the specially built platform.
There was a young orangutan who seemed intent on winding up the adults in any way he could. This started with a mild pestering of his mother when he'd had his fill of bananas . Not getting anywhere he opted for swinging away from the platform along the rope, designed to protect the nearby saplings from the hungry mob twice a day, and bounding back onto the platform to stand over 'Mum' expectantly. Seeing that 'Mum' was still engrossed in her fruit-feast he chanced a tug at her fur, which resulted in an unimpressed look and Mum turning to face the other direction. The little one then turned to face Dad who was concentrating on a particularly juicy looking piece of lunch and climbed on top of him. Dad shook him off and gave him a very definite 'Do that again and I'll clock you one' stare. He went back to hang around on the rope for a while before getting fed up and swinging over to wind up a family of macaques who were patiently waiting for any leftovers from the great ape feeding session.
The next time I saw him swing into view he was holding a branch twice as long as he was tall in his left foot and trying to maneuvre back to the platform with his prize. I'm convinced he wasn't trying to be awkward, but like so many small children his intentions went misunderstood, and hitting his mother on the head with it whilst trying to drag it onto level ground didn't go down very well. She grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him back to a behaving, sitting position. Sulkily he snatched an entire bunch of bananas and retreated to the rope with the bunch grasped in his feet.
The 'eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome' soon set in though and he flumped down next to Dad in search of attention. None came his way, so he started poking his father. This, understandably, was as appreciated as accidentally hitting his mother on the head with a tree branch and resulted in a wrestling match with Dad, who must have been at least four times his size and weight. As we left, the little one stood up looking very proud of himself and probably would have been able to walk away with his head held high, but he chanced one last swipe at Dad and the fiasco recommenced, just as the park closed and we were ushered away from the feeding area.

The jungle's been flooded since the day Mum and Dad (human versions) arrived and it's been touch and go as to whether we'll be able to get there or not, but fingers crossed...