Thursday 29 March 2012

Rebuilding.

If there's one thing this project is not, it's smooth sailing. As Willie Smits so rightly pointed out on the first few days of the project:

"The only thing you can be certain of in Indonesia is that nothing is certain"

The last 10 days (since I met up with the other Eco Warriors, the film crew and Dr. Willie Smits) have, just like the roads, been bumpy, uncertain and covered in pot-holes. It has been a great disappointment to us all that no large companies have stepped up to give the financial foundations that this project really needs. On top of this, we have not yet received the laptops we were promised from Samsung, which has left us with only 5 computers between us all, limiting our ability to communicate with our networks and work on fundraising. We have lost 4 of our Eco Warriors to personal issues, including the 2 competent Bahasa Indonesia speakers, which has left some communication problems! On the plus side, my Bahasa is improving exponentially!

Nevertheless, I love being back.

On the journey to a town in the centre of Pontianak, we spotted this guy precariously driving his top-heavy van on the windy, bumpy roads. At one point the wheels on one side lifted off the road.

The most exciting part of returning - the bit that we had all been curling our toes in anticipation for - was meeting up with baby orangutan JoJo and her new playmate Juvi. Whilst we have to respect a 20 day quarantine period before we can go close to them, it was so great to see them play. Click Here is a video that Eco Warrior Paul Daley made of them playing with their care-worker.

Setting up for the first early morning webinar with thousands of kids from around the world (including schools from Pakistan, Brazil, America, Australia, India, Canada, Croatia and the UK). We spoke about ourselves, our plans, our aims, and our new campaign, orangutaNation, which involves young people from around the globe in rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned orangutans. It was so amazing to engage with these stake-holders, and to answer their questions. One girl asked Willie Smits if he, like her, had already decided at the tender age of 6 to spend his life saving orangutans.

Shadrack's Throne - Eco Warrior Shadrack Kalasa napping on his huge bed whilst the final midnight webinar is recorded behind him.

An exciting new toy for the EarthWatchers programme. Earthwatchers is a ground breaking new software tool to enable young people across the planet to monitor the forests and provide usable intelligence to stop deforestation. It provides a new approach for education by actually involving the students directly in the conservation effort by allowing them to monitor real data. This photo was taken from a GoPro camera which will be attached to a drone - a 6 foot remote controlled plane (bottom centre of the picture) - in order to take photos from a birds eye view of illegal deforestation.

With a small budget, we have managed to rejuvenate the enclosures within and security surrounding the Orangutan Centre which houses Juvi and JoJo, and which will soon house dozens more rescued orangutans. Click Here to see a video of this process by Paul Daley.

Bugs, bugs, everywhere. On your face and in your hair.
This little dude needed a paracetamol after crashing head first into a spinning ceiling fan. We healed his wound with a cotton bud, and he was soon ready to be re-released.
Sunset on the red bark. It's great to be back in the Beating Heart of Borneo.

No comments:

Post a Comment