Big lazy river

Well, here I am at last in the smokey place! Actually at this time of year it is not yet smokey. It is still the rainy season although it doesn’t necessarily rain every day any more. It is very, very flat here with a big lazy river winding through. From the air the ground appears green and covered with bushes, but with no particular crops nor any forest. The place where the town is located is very sandy and while not particularly swampy right now, there are plenty of frog noises and wetland grasses. I am told that much of the land isn’t really producing anything. The forest has been cut down and even efforts at reforestation have failed because of the annual burning season when fire spreads from one place to another and gets into the peat where it can smoulder for months and is difficult to extinguish. Locals burn off the land to provide a bit of charcoal to fertilize the growing of a few vegetables but they say the soil is not very fertile. Repeated burning probably doesn’t help the fertility either. Since arriving last week, I have several times been served oil palm heart cooked as a vegetable, so there must be some oil palm plantations in the area.

This afternoon we went to a very unique riverside park which has rows of little huts on stilts with dock-like walkways connecting them all. (The stilts are for when the river floods.) You can rent one of the little huts which comes complete with a mat on the floor to sit on and a low table for food and a few pillows and a wastebasket. You can buy food and drinks there or bring your own. There was a built-up sandy play area for kids, or you can go fishing or just sit and enjoy the shade.

We sure seemed to be the attraction today. My friends have lived here for several years and they said they’d never seen anyting like it, they were amazed! Shortly after arriving, a woman (a stranger) came over to our hut with a couple of kids and wanted to know if it was okay for her young daughter to “salam” us – she takes your hand and kisses it and puts it to her forehead. They were all smiles so what can you say? Then a bit later a couple walks into our hut and said they wanted to practice their English, though it was soon apparent they were J witnesses, a novel experience in itself in this part of the world! My hosts sent them packing as politely as possible. When we were leaving, another family came up and wanted to take pictures of us and them with their cell phones. I was starting to feel like somebody famous – he, he, he!

While there, we also went to see some animals that were caged there, most had been rescued from fires, and included alligators (or crocodiles? – I don’t know the difference), monkeys, sunbears, hornbills (big colorful knob-schnozzed birds with eyelashes), and some other largish creature that was too fast for a sloth and kind of whiskery like a wolverine or something. Outside of town there is also a rescue/rehabilitation place for orangutans.

The river was the main means of transportation out of here until a few years ago when they built a bridge over a big swamp and thus made it possible to drive down to the coast all year round. Sometimes during the worst of the smoke season they do have to close both the river and the road due to poor visibility. The river is still very much in use for transporting goods and people in long narrow motorized boats.

No doubt people as well as the wildlife here are experiencing big changes in their lives as "civilzation" encroaches, the forest disappears, and roads are built. Cell phones seem to be as rampant here as everywhere else. :-)