Timo, a Javanese who seemed to have no clear-job description in our small expedition, gazed up at the birds and said he wished that he had a gun. We thought this a bit odd, since Timo works for the Indonesian Department of Nature Conservation. We suggested that his department was supposed to conserve things. Our comments didn’t seem to change his attitude, and he made irritating popping noises for the rest of the day. Earlier in the trip I had asked him what he thought should be done to conserve Indonesia’s forests. “Wah, sousa,” really difficult, he said, raising his gaze as if searching for heavenly inspiration.
But I wasn’t about to let Timo shatter the moment. I gazed upward, as did Alfred Russel Wallace who exclaimed that “the bird of paradise really deserves its name, and must be ranked as one of the most beautiful and most wonderful of living things.”
We watched the birds of paradise for half an hour. Mark and I remember this as a profound experience. Ely and Yos seemed to patiently wait until we had gazed our fill. Timo, realizing he couldn’t shoot the birds in our presence, wandered about, bored.
Funny, isn’t it. Ely looked at the bird and saw a meal-ticket, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote about the “ecstasy” of just seeing the creature, while Timo the game warden mentally calculated how much the birds would be worth stuffed and sold to a trader.
I tried for a final time, to instigate Ely to revolt. “You should be controlling these birds of paradise.” As soon as I said it, we both knew it was unlikely. Without saying a word, Ely and I looked at Timo and then looked back at each other in understanding. Timo, who was not-from-there, nevertheless had access to this forest, and, via his government job, some authority which he could leverage into bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to trading in birds of paradise. If push came to shove it would be the Timos of the world who got control of the birds of paradise. I looked at Ely standing there in his shorts and carrying his bow and arrows and remembered our conversations about his needing money to send the kids to school. I then looked up at these valuable birds, true things of beauty. It’s easy to paraphrase Keats, I thought, if you can afford to carry a Nikon around your neck.
Chapter 11
DIVERS IN INDONESIA DO IT DEEPER, THEN DIE
Chinese middle-men put huge pressure on nature and people
ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia
I suppose Chek Chong isn’t legally a murderer. But that’s the way I see him. He is a Chinese merchant in the Aru Islands who loans scuba equipment to young men so they can dive for mother of pearl and oysters. Some of the men wind up as shark food.
The divers in this isolated region south of Irian Jaya are generally poorly educated fishermen who are given little or no scuba training, and, because they are paid by the piece, dive deeper and more frequently than they should.
In addition, when I dived with tanks and regulators rented from Chek Chong during a recent EEC-sponsored research expedition, I saw first hand that the equipment is not kind to inexperienced divers. All the equipment was battered and corroded. Four out of five regulators malfunctioned. None had depth or pressure gauges; the tanks lacked reserve pulls.
One recent victim was 22-year-old Daud Karatim from Kampong Sia in southeast Aru.
I suggested to Chek Chong that perhaps Daud’s death was the merchant’s responsibiity.
“They choose to go down,” he said, not at all pleased by the conversation. “They want the money.”
Many who go down don’t come up. Much of the data concerning diving deaths are anecdotal, but I spoke to enough Chinese merchants, divers, and officials to believe that the following incidents represent the tip of the iceberg.
• A researcher at the University of Pattimura in Ambon, has recorded 18 diving deaths for the Aru Islands in 1992 and four for the month of January 1993.
• A fishermen on board the Cahaya Laut, sailing out of Dobo, Aru, said that he knew of seven men who had died within the last two months.
• On Pulau Baun, two men died during a one week period in March 1993.
Diving tragedies are not limited to the Aru Islands.
• On the island of Bobale off Halmahera, six men have died because of diving-related accidents, and another six have been crippled for life.
In the event of an injury, the merchant who “commissions” the diver is only required to pay immediate medical costs, which are insignificant since there is nothing you can do to reverse the permanent crippling effects of a mild case of the bends. When a diver dies, the merchant is required to pay compensation to the deceased's family. The amount is determined by the Indonesian labor office – generally around US$500 to US$1,000. In Daud's case, Chek Chong paid the man's family US$750. The cost of doing business.
This is a small cost, too, considering the profits involved.
Divers can earn US$5 for a mother of pearl shell and anywhere between US$1.70 – US$15 for an oyster that can be used in culturing pearls.
The Chinese then sell the mother of pearl to overseas craft workshops and the oysters to one of the 26 oyster farms in Aru for a profit of 300 percent to 1,000 percent.
Can anything be done?
A diver with the bends cannot be sent to a decompression chamber since the nearest facility is in Surabaya, some thousands of kilometers and a day's journey by (non-existent) plane. The only choice is to go back down once the cramps start. Ely of the fishing boat Cahaya Laut explained that when he got the bends – Indonesians call it rheumatik – his colleagues brought him back down to about 30 meters, where he stayed for 48 hours while his friends brought fresh tanks and slapped him to keep him awake.
The answer obviously lies in better equipment, proper instruction, and perhaps a more equitable profit-sharing arrangement (which might also include quotas to limit excessive diving and over-harvesting of the natural resource).
I work in nature conservation and the deaths of a few dozen pearl divers in a forgotten corner of Indonesia is not an environmental issue. It is, however, a human issue, and I urge the Indonesian authorities to take action to stop the underwater slaughter.
Chapter 12
RELIGIONS ON THE WING
Everyone in Irian Jaya wants a piece of Zakarias’s soul
MINYAMBOU, Irian Jaya.
When the fundamentalist Baptist missionaries in this isolated valley in Irian Jaya (now West Papua) asked for contributions to build a new church, Zakarias chipped in with the most valuable thing he could find – a bird of paradise.
The irony of buying his way into heaven with a bird that represented holy salvation to the early Portuguese and Dutch explorers (the skins the heat-struck Europeans were offered had neither legs nor wings so the Europeans theorized that the birds spent their entire lives in the heavens. The Portuguese called them Passaros de Sol, or Birds of the Sun. The learned Dutchmen who followed, called them Avis paradiseus, or Paradise Bird) did not occur to Zakarias. What he did recognize is that everyone, it seems, is after his soul.
Zakarias showed me chunky grey caterpillars that nature conservationists encourage him to raise. These will become gaudy, yellow and black swallow-tailed butterflies, and when sold to collectors will earn him a welcome few dollars each. Zakarias, I suppose, calls it a modest business that only recently has begun to pay off. For a couple of years he had undertaken the extra work strictly as an act of faith – he had received promises of a payback, but no guarantees.
To the conservationists the butterfly venture represents a philosophy which opines that conservation of the rainforest will work only when local people get some tangible benefit from it. The quid pro quo in this case is that Zakarias agrees to help manage and protect the Arfak Mountains Strict Nature Reserve in the Bird’s Head corner of the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea.
Call it what you will: an act of faith, a new way of saving nature, an example of “sustainable development”. I call it a religion. In effect, the conservationists have, more or less, convinced Zakarias to change his behaviour in return for a possible future reward. “Do not clea
r land for farms in the nature reserve,” the conservation commandments say. “Respect the national park boundaries and enter not therein except to hunt deer with a bow and arrow. And don’t even think about killing that bird of paradise.”
The conservationists are among the most benign of the new religionists. I count at least four nouvelle faiths: the belief systems propagated by the government, the churches, the businessmen and the people who promote nature conservation.
The Javanese who run the country from distant Jakarta want to “Indonesianize” Zakarias by encouraging him to speak Bahasa Indonesia; to follow the civic principles of the national philosophy called Pancasila; and to ignore the disruptive free-Irian movement simmering many kilometers and many language transitions to the east.
Fundamentalist Protestant preachers want to “Christianize” him, and by doing so add his tenor voice to the Sunday choir.
Tycoons who manufacture shampoo and jogging shoes want to “consumerize” him, by making him feel the need for things his people have not needed for millennia previously.
And conservationists want to “empower” him, to give him a voice in saving nature, as long as it coincides with the way the experts think conservation should work.
“Trust us,” these modern-day evangelists seem to say. “We’re from the government/church/business/nature conservation sect. We’re here to help you. If you believe in us, even though we give you no guarantee, your life will be improved.”
And make no mistakes, the four “religions” of government, church, business and conservation have achieved some significant results.
For example, some Christian missionaries in Irian Jaya, notably the Catholics, have helped stop cannibalism and infanticide, have established schools and clinics, and have initiated community development projects like water systems and gardens. But the conversions are not necessarily deep. While many people profess to be Christian, of one form or another, it is not uncommon for Irianese to believe that sitting in church will result in immunity from sickness and that forgetting to shut one’s eyes during prayers will lead to blindness.
It also seems that many societies out here are retrograde cargo cultists at heart.
I was told this, perhaps apocryphal, story. An American missionary had a disciple, a young man whom he had hoped would go off and undertake God’s work in another valley. The missionary and his wife and two kids lived in a prefab house that someone (surely not them) had somehow lugged up into the mountains. Although he had known the Irianese would-be-missionary for several years, the American Bible-thumper had lived aloof from the community and had never invited the acolyte into his house. Finally the American felt the local lad had passed all the hurdles but one. He suggested the young man join the family for a Coke, whereupon he asked him: “How will you know that you are the best Christian you can be?” The local man, who had grown up in a village without running water or access to medical care, gazed around the inner sanctum, taking in the sight of a television and VCR, a radio-phone, a microwave, a refrigerator, a boom-box, all powered by electricity generated by a tiny hydroelectric system the missionary had asked the local people to construct on the stream behind the village. The young man pondered the question, because it was important for him to get it right. Finally he replied: “When I have all the things you have.”
Sounds like the koreri cargo cult – a widespread Melanesian belief that if proper rites are performed the ancestors will bestow good health, food and material goods – hasn’t died out completely, despite the fact that the good Hatam people of Minyambou raise their voices to Jesus every Sunday, before depositing a sweet potato in the collection box.
Clearly the soul is a complicated organ. The day I was leaving Minyambou, I sought out Zakarias to say goodbye. He admired my watch. Seeing that I wasn’t about to give it to him, he offered me a trade: my Casio for a bird of paradise skin. I said a prayer for all of us.
Chapter 13
“TRUST US, WE KNOW BETTER THAN YOU DO”
Brown-brown arrogance is the new standard
LOIKAW, Burma
The Catholic Bishop in this Burmese backwater insists that girls of the Padaung tribe will not be allowed into the mission school if they wear the brass neck rings that have earned the women of the tribe the appellation “giraffe women”.
Bishop Sotero Phamo argues that “the only way for our rural people to join modern society is through education.” Speaking enthusiastically in his diocese headquarters, which houses what is certainly the best school in the region, Bishop Sotero adds: “I have 1,500 students to look after. Ornaments such as neck rings just create social barriers.”
I seek out a Padaung student to get her views. Beneletta, 17 years old, is shy and attractive, with neat bangs and a Pepsodent smile. She wears a green sweatshirt and a faded sarong. “Yes, one or two girls in the village have neck rings,” she says. “And they’re still there – they’re too shy to leave. When I was five or six some people in the community urged my parents to put the rings on me. My father refused; he didn’t want me to become a prisoner in the village.”
Although the Bishop’s stringent no neck-ring policy might disappoint culture trippers, it probably is the right thing for the youngsters in the tribe.
Yet it smacks of a paternalism that one finds wherever someone in power sets the rules for those without power.
In Asia, the classic arrogance is white vs brown, the anthem of which is Kipling’s famous “white man’s burden”, which he penned on the occasion of America taking possession of the Philippines. He warned that when victory is near “Watch sloth and heathen Folly/Bring all your hopes to nought.”
While I lived in Asia I wondered why it was generally accepted that American Peace Corps volunteers, like me, were sent to Asia, but Asian countries never sent volunteers to help Americans? Why couldn’t Malaysian community development experts set up youth employment schemes in Los Angeles, or Indonesian community reforestation experts help create town parks in Detroit?
Yet in today’s Asia, brown-brown arrogance is much more prevalent.
Take for example the message promoted by tourism boards throughout Asia who encourage foreigners to experience “native cultures”. This is an evolution of the African game park concept, but instead of judging the success of the holiday by whether the visitor sees elephants and lions, the cultural-safari tourist will go home content having bagged an all-night rice-wine blast with sons of headhunters in Sarawak, one of the Malasian states on the island of Borneo.
I sought out James Wong Kim Min, who was both a Sarawak state minister of tourism and a very rich timber tycoon. Wong had been regularly and noisily criticized for his paternalistic policies concerning Sarawak’s semi-nomadic Penan tribesmen; basically forcing them to drastically change their forest-oriented lifestyle and move into semi-permanent resettlement camps. Some cycnics, including sentimental Westerners said that this was simply a tactic to remove the Penan from the forest. thereby eliminating a pesky blockage that was preventing timber barons like Wong from logging more of the rainforest. Wong, however, suggested a more altruistic position, noting basically that it was the duty of rich, successful, well-educated Malaysians like himself to bring the downtrodden Penan into the mainstream, and to give them education and health care.
I asked if he had a message for his critics.
“If the West can do as well as we have done and enjoy life as well as we do then they can criticize us. We run a model nation. We have twenty-five races and many different religions living side by side without killing each other. Compare that to Bosnia or Ireland. We’ve achieved a form of Nirwana, a utopia.”
I explained my experience with Penans who had been encouraged by generous government incentives to resettle into longhouses, an alien environment for some of them. How their natural environment where they hunt, fish and collect plants had been hammered, how their faces were devoid of spirit and energy, how they had seemingly tumbled even further down the Sarawak social totem pole.
Chapter 14
BORNEO NATIVE GROUP SCORES LAND CLAIM VICTORY
How a poor Iban longhouse took on Big Timber and won; sort of
RUMAH NOR, Sarawak, Malaysia
“There is no greater sadness on earth than the loss of one’s native land.”
- Euripides
We park the car along the side of a rutted dirt road in the middle of an acacia tree plantation five times as large as Singapore. Lani anak Taneh points out a metal sign, the size of a paperback book, pounded into the ground at ankle height, which announces that the land we are about to enter belongs to his longhouse, Rumah Nor. We start walking through a desolate landscape that is all too common in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo – what once had been rainforest owned by a local community has been grabbed by government-supported big business and destroyed in the name of development.
Rumah Nor, some 60 kilometers southeast of Bintulu, site of the world’s largest natural gas complex, is Ground Zero in one of many land-rights battle in which Sarawak’s indigenous people are fighting, and about the only one they are winning against powerful government and industrial powers that previously had been considered invincible.
Lani, 33, was one of four plaintiffs in a legal battle that one conservationist has called “a major victory for the indigenous tribal people of Borneo – as important as the 1954 anti-segregation decision Brown vs Board of Education was in the United States.”
The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen Page 19