Oily Palms!

Its raining and I am stuck on the sofa in the lobby of the Yasmin Hotel of Jayapura, my camp office, except that they shooed me back to my dingy room when i fell asleep here at 1 am last night. I think the guard wanted his sofa back to take his nap.

All morning my colleagues have been struggling with the Indonesian administration for various permits et al, and it occurred to me how similar are the Indian and Indonesian bureucratic cultures, oil a palm and things will move. Hmm gives palm oil a whole new meaning.

Anyway, do watch Todd's video above and for your own edification read Jamie's blog on the Forests for Climate ship tour.

Forests Forever!

Analogies are fun and always good for a laugh, but sometimes they can be educative as well. Like the ones I noted down today at an otherwise intense seminar on forest protection and the role of the communities in Jayapura.

A leader of the Papuan Indigenous communities coalition compared Forests to Supermarkets.

According to him all typical requirements for the survival of the human species, for which you and I walk into a super market, his tribe merely walks into the forest and picks it up, no packaging and no cost, except legwork.

Food, fruit, medicine for sustenance; wood for fuel, building huts, furniture, canoes; barks, beads, hemp and leaves for clothing and accessories; alcohol and weeds for recreation and yes he mentioned some herbs for procreation; It was a long list but I could not agree with him more.

A pastor from a remote village in Papuan highland compared forests to a church.

I will spare you the details of how he compared the various verses from the Bible and the visions he sees in a forest but all of us were cracking up when he called on the forest department officials to come to him and confess their sins, and then went on to wink like he had a serious tick. Jeez of the Jungle!

Unanimously everyone insisted and agreed that forest was like their mother. Except a couple of suited guys who insisted that Forests were like their grandmothers. These were the folks who want a part of the logging and plantation actions, and don’t want to be caught doing naughty things to their mothers, I was told confidentially by a Papuan who shall remain unnamed.

I must also share with you the unique way some Papuans tribes zone their forests, unlike the usual tourist, buffer, core zone of forest departments. Apparently some Papuan tribes zone it by blocking it off for the spirits of dead and dear relatives.

This is the area where the spirit of my great grandmother lives so it is out of bound for everyone. This patch is where the spirit of my first wife resides, so don’t mess around this wicked place. This is the home of my uncle who perished to an unknown disease, so enter at your own risk. This one is for my aunt who eloped with that guy from the tribe across the hill, this is for my favorite dog so on and so forth. I asked if they had a patch reserved for the unborn children, but got funny looks.

I left the seminar relieved that traditional wisdom beats all modern science and walked into a street market where the women from faraway mountains bring forest produce and vegetables to sell in the shadow of an air conditioned supermarket.

That these women are defiantly competing with the modern day supermarkets mushrooming around their street is yet another sign, that the human spirit will survive as long as the natural supermarket, the forests survive.

(Photo of a Dani woman selling sweet potato in Jayapura)

Papu ah!

To say that the 8 hour flight, with 2 stops, from Jakarta to Jayapura, was uneventful would be untrue. The Garuda girls are overzealous in their desire to feed you the worst kind of airline food, nasi goring in this case, after every halt. So they woke me up at 11 pm, then again at 2 am and then one more time at 5 am for breakfast, by pulling the blanket off my face, prodding my shoulders until I had responded to their question Makaan?

But all that and the lingering pain in my hip was forgotten, when I looked out of the window at the dramatic landscape unfold below me, a vast expanse of green, without an end, broken by brown rivers, a blue lake, and thickly forested hills. Ah! Papua!

Call it what you like, Irian Jaya, West Papua or just Indonesian Papua, the view of the forests is a grand testimony to the efforts put in by the Papuan Governor, Mr. Barnabas Seubu . No less than 85% of the island is covered by rainforest, much if it primary and untouched by man. Other prevailing ecosystems include steamy mangrove forest and savannah right through to alpine highlands with snow-capped mountains. Wildlife abounds and includes some of the most interesting creatures known to man.

I was heading in to Jayapura to welcome Greenpeace ship, MV Esparanza, that is in Indonesia to bring the world's attention to the last of the ancient forest, climate regulator, home to hundreds of indigenous communities who speak more than 200 languages, yet to be discovered biodiversity, and all of which is now on the chopping block. Literally.

An hour long drive from the airport at Santani and I was in Jayapura, founded in 1910 as Hollandia by the Dutch, then changed to Kotabaru, then to Sukarnopura and finally to its current official name. Among ethnic Papuans, it is also known as Port Numbai, the former name before the arrival of immigrants.

A quick shower and I was at quay side, alongside the MV Esparanza dancing with the nimble footed Jayapurians, decked out in their traditional fineries, painted faces and stone and bead jewellery, grass skirts et al. Happy to be here, Happy to hear them sing songs of the forests. Happy to have survived the Garuda flight.

Tomorrow I will write about my visit to the market, but tonight I will go check out the Karaoke/Disco to get a deeper understanding of the effects of transmigrasi.

(In the picture, Robi Tui aka Joey poses alongside MV Esparanza)