Before an overnight in the mangroves...

Well, today was truly incredible. We spent the morning with a wonderful man named Peter Korsano, one of the founders of BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival) we are truly privileged to have such incredible speakers and accomplished people who take time out of their days to present their life’s work to us. Peter’s English is excellent, and he has a kind of presence when he is speaking- pausing for very dramatic effect. We will hopefully spend more time with him later in the trip- he has so much knowledge to share I just want to soak up as much as I can from him.
After Peters presentation, we had lunch and then piled into the taxi-busses that are used here, and drove to the riverside village where Stan (the Mangrove and Proboscis Monkey specialist we had a presentation from yesterday) lives and does most of his research from. Group 3 (myself, Spencer, Jesse and Nadine) and group 4 (Michaela, Veronica and Elise) will be spending the night in his hut on the river.
When we got to Stan’s, the reception we received from the local people was incredible. Stan lives as the only white person in this village of fishermen, and so everyone was very excited and curious to see what we were doing, and to be in our pictures. The children are Beautiful (capitalized with reason) and especially love to be in pictures. We were able to spend most of the remainder of the day with these wondrous little Indonesians; they are incredibly quick learners- and good teachers too. Literally hours were spent today sitting and trading words, it’s good for their English, and for our Indonesian (which I must admit is much worse than their English most of the time).
The Village (Kampang Baru) is located on the Mahakam River that drains into the ocean, and the bay of Balikpapan. There is quite an incredible amount of garbage floating around through the stilts of the village, and sadly there is no septic system, meaning that all feces end up in the same water that all of the children play in every day. Stan has begun to educate the local people about managing their trash, however the sewage is a much harder problem to address. In Stan’s ‘free time’ he wants to convert his living room into a kind of classroom for the children- he is another incredible person with a great big heart.
Tonight a group of us took a walk around the villages, and stumbled upon a game of volleyball that was very well attended (I think most of the community was present) and we were asked to participate in the game. I am unfortunately not feeling 100% and decided to watch from the sidelines, taking pictures and video instead. What fun!! The entire place was alive with cheering and clapping when Jesse Nadine and Spencer walked on to the hard-packed sand court. There seemed to be no scoring system, and a wide range of skill-level. Everyone was smiling and having a great time, it seems to be such a happy community.
After Volleyball, we ate dinner with one of the local mothers in her house. She prepared a grand meal for us, and humbled us with her humility and generosity while she waited for us to eat before she allowed herself or her children to partake in the meal.
There is also an incredibly open women’s muslim group here, that got together next door and sang prayer songs with drums for a period of time, while a lightning storm passed in the distance. We were invited in to watch the prayer, and some of us did that- but since there was little room in the small house I decided to try instead for one of those elusive lightning pictures. We had our tripod set up on the dock, which children all around shaking and moving the camera unfortunately, and I had almost given up on the whole thing until there was a gigantic fork of lightning that struck a hut-roof right in front of us. Somehow there was a child hanging on to my tripod when the lightning struck, and the bolt scared him so badly that he jerked backwards kind of throwing my tripod out towards the water under the bridge we were standing on. I fortunately was holding my camera at the time- and had the shutter open in a time exposure to capture the bolt. I was shooting with my new Fisheye lens, at it’s full 180 degrees of view (at 10mm) and so the bolt looks further from us than in fact it was- but the resulting picture I’m sure you will agree is quite a powerful one. We of course abandoned our position immediately, because of the proximity to the storm, but I felt incredibly fortunate to have captured (if very shakily) this image.
Tomorrow we will be conducting an irrawady dolphin survey (freshwater and snub-nosed, not to mention borderline extinct). I am very tired, and very humbled by this day.