Around 3am Laf rushed me out of sleep and off the bus just as it was lurching forward to continue on; everyone stared at the sleepy bule (white girl) with the crazy hair who couldn’t find her shoe and held up the whole bus. Our taxi driver stopped in a dark field in the middle of nowhere and announced our arrival. It was around 4am when we arrived to the outskirts of the small port town of Kumai at the office of Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), the incredible organization my colleague Laurel visited in Bali earlier this year that has a similar community reforestation program in Borneo.  After brushing my teeth next to a massive spider I collapsed in a makeshift bunk bed using my rain jacket for a blanket and a t-shirt for a pillow and fell asleep to the sounds of Indonesian sunrise: loud Muslim calls to prayer, a singing gecko, a rooster crowing, and a chainsaw running somewhere behind the little shack we slept in.

A few hours later I awoke with anticipation and stumbled outside to use the squatting shoot toilet and saw in the center of the office floor tea and two small plates each with two individually wrapped donuts. After not eating refined sugar for almost a year, I wasn’t planning to touch them with a ten foot pole. But Lafcadio warned me, “Ash, we’re in the bush now. You have to eat every meal as if it’s your last.” So I ate the small buttery donut with chocolate sprinkles on top, finding it quite comical that people eat such things in the morning or at all, but felt grateful to have something in my belly before setting out on our adventure.

We raced on motorbikes through the small town lined with fruit stands and curious faces until we reached the edge of the expansive Kumai River. We traveled by speed boat to the small mouth of the Sekonyer River, the gateway to Tanjung Puting National Park – a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and one of the last strongholds of the endangered orangutan. Despite the incredible importance of Tanjung Puting, the park is under serious attack from illegal logging and mining operations as well the most ominous threat – the encroachment of palm oil.

I saw a huge “Welcome to Tanjung Puting National Park” sign and tingled with excitement by the hopeful prospect of actually seeing an orangutan in the wild. Since joining RAN’s rainforest agribusiness campaign over two years ago, the extent of my personal connection to orangutans and natural forests in Indonesia was purely academic. I had spent years reading and writing about the dire consequences of industrial scale oil palm plantations in Indonesia: one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, critical habitat for endangered species like orangutans destroyed, gross human rights abuses and labor conditions, and social conflict between communities that depend on the forests for their livelihoods and the companies destroying them. This trip was going to take my theoretical understanding to a new level.

What these impacts actually look and feel like on the ground is staggering, and I found it hard to believe that even on the edge of a globally treasured and protected national park I encountered the most severe case of palm oil expansion I’d witnessed yet. What I saw during the ensuing four days was more extraordinary and devastating than anything I could have imagined.

The weight of my realization about what’s at stake in that small corner of the planet hit me hard the day we spent the morning walking through old growth tropical rain forest, seeing wild orangutans, Horn Bills, Proboscis monkeys and the recent evidence of a Sun Bear clawing a tree for honey, followed by an afternoon of watching an excavator tearing down and digging a drainage canal in one of the last areas of natural forest remaining in the buffer zone of the park. We were on the edge of a community agroforestry project designed to demonstrate an alternative to destructive monoculture in an area almost entirely razed by oil palm plantations.

In the same passing moments that we watched, horrified, an irreplaceable, high density plot of biodiversity falling before our eyes, two FNPF staff yelled for us to look up and see the two horn bills flying over head and the rare red langur monkey peering at us through the trees.

The reckless, short-sighted expansion of oil palm plantations in Central Kalimantan is pushing many of these species to the brink of extinction, literally leaving them with nowhere to go. The site we documented was horrifying – we stood in endangered orangutan habitat and we saw a pregnant mama orangutan with her young orangutan trapped – sandwiched between an oil palm plantation and the river, unable to cross over into Tanjung Puting.

To reach this devastating scene, we rode on motorbikes for almost an hour, passing rows and rows of industrial oil palm plantations. The deeper in we got, the more severe the picture. The drainage canals along the edge of the plantations were filled with water and dark black, carbon rich peat soil exposed the troubling reality that much of this plantation was on top of peat soils and thus emitting massive amounts of CO2 as it rots upon touching the air. In the converted peatlands, many of the oil palms were growing sideways and some even falling over. It seemed certain that the yields were marginal and the costs – the loss of a thriving and rare ecosystem and community livelihoods — was great. I wondered whether the Indonesian law prohibiting conversion of deep peatlands was being violated. Peat clearing is still allowed under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

In addition to its massive plantation growing on top of cleared and drained peatlands, at the expense of primary forests and irreplaceable species, and the fact that this biological desert is right up against a national park housing endangered orangutans, the company is also grossly disrespecting the rights of the local community.

The vibrant Sekonyer community of just over 100 families sows deep seeds of resistance into the backbone of village life. Immediately entering the village (by water – the only way to access it), we saw two huge protest banners and a large sign reading, “PT Bumi Langgeng: Return the Rights of the Sekonyer Community.” The community depends on the forest for their livelihoods and sees the encroaching palm oil as a threat to their reliance on community food gardens, agroforestry, and fishing.

We visited a tiny stilted hut next to the agroforestry site and drank hot tea with the beautiful couple and their baby that lived there. We washed the thick layer of mud that was caked on our feet and legs from trekking through the peatland destruction site barefoot. Our sweet FNPF guide Basuki urged us to leave; he could see thick gray clouds and the rumble of a monsoon rainstorm moving in. As we hauled ass through the muddy roads back towards our boat in the village, the heavens opened up and as if crying trillions of tears for all the beautiful beings losing their homes in that forest, it poured. Just when we thought it couldn’t rain any harder, it did. Our motorcycles were sliding and slipping all over the place and we actually fell over a few times. Basuki had to take his flip flops off and use his feet as stabilizers to get us home safely through the thick, wet, muddy terrain.

Relieved to have made it back safely, we stripped off our drenched clothing and ate a typical delicious dinner of white rice, tempeh, veggies sauteed in coconut milk and fruit while the mosquitoes feasted on my thighs and feet. During our stay in the community, we slept under mosquito nets on a boat on the river’s edge. Our second night in the community FNPF Borneo director Basuki organized a meeting between RAN and 25 community leaders. We learned that the community has been at odds with the palm oil company in the area for many years over a land conflict but that in the last several months, community resistance has escalated as land clearing continues at breakneck speed.

When the company cut down the community’s native rubber trees around six months ago it triggered the first demonstration. Police showed up but no one was arrested. The latest demonstration took place just a few months ago after community leaders sent formal letters of complaint to the company as well as district, provincial and national government seeking recognition of their lands, compensation for the 2,200 ha. of community land already taken by the company and a halt to further expansion into forests and remaining community lands. So far they have not received any response.

This is the true cost of palm oil. Is it worth it?

As the cheapest, highest yielding vegetable oil and now the most heavily traded edible oil in the world I understand that companies benefit from this lucrative industry so dependent on cheap labor and precious yet cheap rainforests. But at what price are we going to continue expanding this commodity? Expansion of palm oil into ecological and cultural biodiversity hotspots needs to stop. The community of Sekonyer needs our support to secure their rights and  justice. The time is ticking for the orangutans and other species depending on the forests; if they can’t be protected  from palm oil expansion on the edge of a national park the prospects for responsible palm oil look grim.

From this experience I will take away the sweet faces of the hundreds of Macaque monkeys who in the mornings and the evenings would sit high in the trees on the west side of the river and then all swim across the river in groups to avoid getting eaten by crocodiles; the loud whoosh of a horn bill taking off for flight amidst the trees above; falling asleep to the intensity of a tropical rainstorm hitting river, a symphony of insects, the gentle rocking of the boat and the warmth of the rainforest holding my spirit; and the inspiring words of the brave community leaders fighting to protect that magical forest.

I have done a pitiful job keeping up with this blog site since the last investigative trek, mostly because I am blogging on the Understory about once a week as the Rainforest Agribusiness campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and haven’t found the time to keep up. But one of my greatest passions is writing inspired by travel and experiential learning – so here I am again.

I am currently in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia – the Northeast tip of the island of Borneo. It’s seriously beautiful in this small coastal city, with tons of patches of floating, emerald green islands of forest off the coast and the magical feeling of waking up every morning to shimmering water. Definitely beats Jakarta, where I was for last year’s RSPO conference.

Feeling so inspired by my surroundings has been a huge blessing during these past 3 days of grueling conference activities -  it has helped keep my soul alive amidst the corporate agendas and depressing stories (click on the hyperlink above to read my three live dispatches from the conference). If you can’t imagine how much it wore me down hearing corporate cronies from the largest agribusiness giants in the world talk about how “sustainable” their rainforest destroying palm oil operations are, you should hear the testimonials I recorded of community members who have had their homes bulldozed and communities torn apart. Stay tuned.

But I don’t want to fill these pages with those sad stories – all that and more you can read on my work blog – the Understory.

For now what I do want to share is how amazing my day was yesterday – a day of much needed relaxation and adventure after all the draining travel and work, our first and last free day before heading to Indonesia for field work. In keeping with the theme of this trip so far, I woke up too early after not enough sleep and busted out a blog post sharing insights from the last day of the conference. Then I called my beautiful family via Skype to wish them a happy Thanksgiving (meanwhile here in Malaysia we ate ramen noodles and peashoots with garlic for dinner).

We headed to the pier and ate thick, heavily spiced plates of food as we dripped sweat under the tent next to the water. Rich nangka (jackfruit) cooked in a delicious coconut red sauce with rice and a hard boiled egg they serve fried in some strange batter. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat the eggplant dish I had ordered because 100 tiny fish eyes all of a sudden peered up at me beneath the red peppers.

Lindsey and I bought tickets for Mamutik Island and jumped on a speedboat, racing past the most amazingly vibrant and thick patches of forest islands, with tiny stilt houses lining the water’s edge. Sadly our boat was propelling itself forward much too fast as well as thrashing up and down on the waves to get quality photo or video, but you may get an ounce of the beauty in some of the slide show images above.

Lindsey and I had a couple of hours to walk around the tiny tropical island of Mamutik, known for its diving. Actually, over 75% of the coral biodiversity known to science exists right here off the Northeast tip of Borneo – imagine! I drank two beers, swam with a sting ray, denied several Asian tourists on their offer to take a photo with me, and reveled in the site of finally seeing my first real patch of forest in Borneo after years of fighting for its protection. It was a moment to behold.

Back on Borneo I ate the most delicious, chunky, real coconut ice cream (first time eating dairy ice cream with refined sugar in almost a year!) and wandered through the wildest outdoor marketplace along the waters edge. So many fruits and vegetables I’d never seen, and a crazy huge fish market with images that would give anyone a nightmare (especially a life-long vegetarian). All the vendors were yelling at the tops of their lungs something like “dua ringgit dua ringgit dua ringgit” over and over, which means “two ringgit” but it all blended together and kind of put me in a trance. Little shiny silver fish sparkling like gems, big yellow fins, green and pink lobster, bright blue and yellow crab, fish heads, fish eyes, fish guts, and blood. Lots of it. The thousands of beautiful souls were arranged artfully and intentionally in piles, lines, assortments, some amassed into delicate shapes in pools of blood or heads getting carved.

Although I am opposed to taking any precious life from our oceans, I know that what I saw in that marketplace was part of a rich culture and not representative of the wholesale slaughter of our oceans for which the fish industry including bottom trawlers are responsible. More than 70% of the world’s fisheries are “fully exploited, over exploited or significantly depleted” and I believe we need to give these fish all the help they can get to replenish their stocks.

I digress.

Tonight we fly to Jakarta and then on to KalTeng (Central Kalimantan) to visit our allies at Save Our Borneo. From there we will spend several days in Tanjung Puting National Park with Friends of the National Parks Foundation. I may even get to see an orangutan for the first time!! And rather than only witnessing and documenting the dark side of oil palm plantation expansion, I may get to document communities who are resisting palm oil and instead thriving off local, community agro forestry and reforestation projects, community food gardens, and eco tourism. Did I say I’m excited?

Stay tuned for the next update! Loads of love.

Sunset Yoga

As 2010 drew to a close, one of my dearest sisters wrote me a beautiful end of year reflection that I want to share:

As we continue to move through this exquisite life, finding our way towards who-knows-what, trying so hard to become what we believe we should and can be, l pray that we may each find our own way to realize the absolute brilliance of the present moment. The past can be cherished- we cling to it. It can be thankfully left behind~ we run from it. And the future… the future can be bright and promising~ we long for it. Or, it can be vast and terrifying~ and we fear it.
Yet the moment we face here and now, whatever shape it finds us in, carries truth and beauty, if our eyes are only open to see.

We are blessed, we work hard, we do good for the world, yet we must somehow continue to remember- we’re not exempt from the single truth of this human existence- that it is temporary.

I pray for a year of open eyes, an open heart, and loving-kindness, loving-kindness, loving-kindness.
Please be gentle with yourselves, and kind to one another.
This life is not ours to keep, and the ground is moving beneath our feet.

There is nothing more important in the entire world than right here, right now, being within ourselves what we wish the world was for us.

I love you all and feel your presence and love everywhere.
May all your endings, beginnings, and breaths in-between bring you joy, and sadness, woven together perfectly.
It couldn’t be any other way.

In Hawaii, we saw many sea turtles, whales and a black tipped reef shark while we were paddling way out off the coast of the Big Island. The whales breached all the way out of the water and splashed their perfect tails way up so that we could see them, some 50 yards away. It was exhilarating. These encounters with such powerful animals reminded me of their medicine. Here is some turtle medicine:

Turtle – Mother Earth

“In Native American teachings, Turtle is the oldest symbol for planet Earth. It is the personification of goddess energy, and the eternal Mother from which our lives evolve. In honoring the Earth, we are asked by Turtle to be mindful of the cycle of give and take, to give back to the Mother as she has given to us…The turtle augurs a time of connecting with the power of Earth and the Mother-Goddess within. This is a reminder of the ally you have in Mother Earth. It does not matter what situation you have created: ask her for assistance, and abundance will follow. “

Bliss

I am blessed, and so grateful for all of life’s lessons. I pray that we can work fast enough to reverse the horrible damage done to our sacred Mother Earth.

This Baby Orangutan and His Family Needs your Help in Indonesia

I just returned to Kalimantan after a week in Jakarta for the 8th annual Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil meeting (RT8) and am writing my last note before heading deep into palm plantations to do some investigations. Read my short blogs on the RAN website describing a few of my experiences and thoughts on the RT8. I learned a tremendous amount there and made some good connections, but overall it was an emotionally draining experience (if you want to know why read those two blog links above).

After only 5 hours of sleep, we woke up very early this morning to get to the airport after a week in Jakarta but the 9:30am flight listed online didn’t exist once we got there. So we had to catch the 11:30am flight (the earliest flight to Pontianak out of 4 airlines) and the only thing available was business class, twice as much money ; ( But it was an incredibly interesting experience hanging out in the Executive Lounge with all you can eat fancy food bars, coffee bar, newspapers, fast wireless, etc. but the air of arrogance was sickening. The discrepancy in class here is more notable than I’ve ever experienced. If you’re rich you’re really rich and they take the service to the next level.

Aerial Image of Destruction, Forest Conversion for Oil Palm Plantation Expansion in Riau, Sumatra. Photo: Greenpeace

We didn’t get here to Kalimantan til 1pm, too late for our 6 hour speedboat ride to Ketapang. So Lindsey and I hung out with our field coordinator, Adri, and some WWF folks for a while and now we’re chillin back at my old Hotel Kapuas stomping grounds, all too familiar. But for the first time, now that Lindsey is here with me, we went swimming in the outdoor pool! But it was covered in a layer of ash, kind of gross, maybe from burning trash? There was a lot of ash in Jakarta from the continuing Mt. Merapi eruptions, but I don’t think they could have traveled all the way here.

We’re leaving for the speedboat at 8am tomorrow, heading to several oil palm plantations and to talk with affected communities affected. We’re also going to see deep peat (the richest carbon sinks in the world, the protection of which is our only hope to start reversing major climate change trends), tromp around in some orangutan habitat and try to navigate our way through the insanely wet and muddy jungle roads made by palm companies.

Flying in today, I saw my first ever palm plantation from the air – sooo intense. Miles of them, plantation after plantation. I think I captured some good photos from the plane. After over a year of working on this campaign, it was amazing to finally see an oil palm plantation cut out of the magical, dense forest like cookie cutter grids.

I just barely caught these powerful views out my plane window since I was entirely distracted by the food they served me on the plane. I thought it was tempeh with peanuts and poking around at it doing my usual vegetarian investigation, about to put it in my mouth, I noticed dozens of tiny eyes staring up at me. I gasped and realized that there were dozens of tiny fish, the size of my pinky nail, mixed into the tempeh, but their eyes and heads were all fallen off, mixed and matched – quite the culinary feat.

I’m in good spirits and feeling very blessed for this experience. It became really tough to stay positive at the RSPO conference – so many meetings and lectures and non stop work and palm oil from 7am til midnight and I became drained emotionally. All those palm oil company execs started to bring me down.  And without the physical exercise to release it all, I’ve been feeling gross. But now that we’re back in Kalimantan and ready for our next big adventure, I’m feeling reinvigorated and excited for what we’re going to see! I have my rain pants, rain coat, bug spray and lots of long sleeves.

Manifest sunshine and no mosquitoes for us, will you?

Hand painting a traditional Dayak Shield in Pontianak

I was finally getting in my flow when I left Pontianak (Borneo) this morning, learning the moods of the weather – a peak of calm sunshine in the early morning as starlings dance along the tops of bamboo, diving down to the rice patties, followed by a pouring forth of the heavens and roof pounding rains until 12 noon and then the return of the thick, humid grey sky until another storm around 4:30pm.

And I was beginning to feel at home in my hotel where I made good friends with all the staff. But now I am on to the next adventure!

I am now in Jakarta on my way to Bogor, writing from a taxi. Yep, no joke – I’m blogging from a taxi. Sounds strange, I know, but I guess this means I’m officially on a business trip. It’s very strange for me to choose efficiency and class executif over the cheapest, slowest, most culturally rich way of transport – bus or train – but I have four NGOs to meet with in the next two days and took my experienced Indonesia colleagues’ word that it’s worth it. So I’m heading in the direction of West Java and Mt. Merapi where toxic ash is still spewing out, causing the displacement of 65,000 people from the three different volcanic eruptions that have taken place in the past week.

But natural disasters aren’t the only reason that thousands of people in Indonesia have been displaced from their homes in the past few weeks. Just two weeks ago, 32,000 people became refugees in the Sintang and Kapuas Hulu Districts of West Kalimantan as their traditional forest lands were flattened in preparation for oil palm plantation conversion. Thank you, Sinar Mas.

Indonesia's disappearing forests

I’ve been learning so much about the systems and laws around land use permits in Indonesia, and the more I learn the more I feel disheartened about protecting the few remaining intact natural forests here from palm oil expansion.

It’s so easy from the U.S. to feel like we are making a huge difference in changing the oil palm industry and creating demand-side pressure for responsible palm oil – because we are, but the amount of corruption and confusion around land use planning here on the ground is dizzying. Because land acquisition for palm oil happens at the local Bupati (district) level in the post Suharto regime (since 2000), permits for forest clearing are way too easy to access as they don’t go through any national, centralized policy framework.  This means that even the Indonesia-Norway LOI and the 2 year moratorium on palm oil expansion – two recent, promising developments  – could be rendered meaningless unless there are some immediate changes implemented.

As Martua T. Sirait wrote in Indigenous Peoples and Oil Palm Plantation Expansion in West Kalimantan, Indonesia:

Oil palm has become the most popular plantation crop in Indonesia due to Crude Palm Oil (CPO) prices doubling between 2000 and early 2008 and the prospect for increased CPO markets for agrofuels.

Oil palm plantations have expanded rapidly in Indonesia in the last decade.  They cover more than seven million hectares and are managed by more than 600 companies and one million small farmers. An additional 11 million hectares of forest land was allocated to the oil palm industry but never planted; after cutting and selling the wood, the companies simply abandoned the lands.  Local and provincial governments have plans to issue licenses for an additional 20 million hectares of oil palm plantations over the next decade. It is expected that most of the permits will be issued in forest areas, as the timber obtained from forest conversion can pay for plantation establishment costs.

Sumatran Tigers and Orangutans on the Brink of Extinction from Palm Oil Expansion

If that isn’t depressing enough, Adri and his friend who stopped by yesterday from Greenomics told me that on the island of Sumatra, whose Riau Province has the second highest rate of palm oil expansion in Indonesia after West Kalimantan Province, there are no more than 300 Sumatran tigers, 400 Sumatran elephants and 4,000 orangutans left.

After hearing that I got up and hovered over the squatter – a beautifully tiled potty hole on the floor that you squat over – to pee, as I tried to hold my breath from the stench. I wondered which was worse – the mix of water and urine I was standing in, barefoot, or the depressing state of the forests and the species that rely on them for survival.

You can probably guess which one I decided on.

I am now wrapping up the day in my Bogor hotel room after a very long, intense interview of three ex palm oil plantation workers that escaped their slave labor situation and are now seeking help. Stay tuned.

It smells like grandma’s house in here, but I think I may smell worse after the heat I experienced today. Yikes you wouldn’t believe it – I just found a three legged cockroach limping in the bathroom – the poor little bugger! I’m glad I always find only one, but hope they are not lonely. I’m going to fall asleep dreaming about the most delicious meal of the trip thus far – garo garo – veggie peanut sauce heaven!

Kalimantan Barat – Pontianak – Borneo

Kalimantan

I arrived on the island of Borneo amidst a steamy, wet tropical storm early last night on a small, teetering plane. Closing in on over 30 hours of travel, from San Francisco to Hong Kong to Jakarta to Pontianak, my weary eyes settled on the lush vegetation and small dwellings, reminding myself that I was on the other side of the world now and that there was no turning back. Somehow I negotiated my way into a hotel decision and taxi cab and ended up in a what looked like from the lobby very fancy hotel but once you get inside your room things crawl through the cracks room. I placed my bags down and didn’t feel lonely for long as I discovered a friendly cockroach skeetering across the bathroom floor.

“Oh, hi,” I said as I shook off my eeby jeebies.

After a hot, sweaty but plentiful in deep sleep night, I decided to examine my surroundings from the window just before 6am as the starlings enjoyed the beautiful dawn hours. My mind was at peace but my body ached and my stomach groaned in confusion after not eating a proper meal for 48 hours. “Well, I guess this is what jet lag feels like,” I said to myself after realizing that up until this moment I had denied its existence despite many long journeys around the world including to places like Brazil, Poland, Australia and Italy.

I ate a delicious breakfast in the lobby and was happily able to provide entertainment to the entire hotel lobby staff by trying to pay for breakfast. Each of the staff tried using different words, sign language and gestures to explain that breakfast was included with my room until one of them finally said, “Free!” The look of comprehension on my face at last gave them all a great giggle as they congratulated the winning contestant who was able to get through my mostly entirely Bahasa-free, foggy head. “Terima Kasih!” I said as I walked out to meet Adri in the lobby.

It was 4 minutes past 9am, and I was embarrassed to be late in meeting up with Adri. But as the clock passed 9:30am I began to worry and called Adri. No answer. Just as I was pulling out my computer to try to find him on Skype, he showed up. His chain had fallen off his motorbike on the way over, forcing him to stop and get it fixed. Well, that’s a good excuse I thought to myself. After getting to know the kind forest researcher and activist for several minutes, we sped away on his motorbike with my luggage on my back. The next 20 minutes was both exhilarating and frightening. Not to say that I didn’t trust Adri and his 30 years of developed skills in maneuvering an Indonesian motorbike, but sweet lord I wondered how anyone got out of the onslaught of motorbikes and vehicles surging and pulsing through the crowded streets alive.

I noticed several small children including babies being held in the arms of someone on back of the bike or sitting in front of the driver holding on but falling asleep and I thought wow, and carseats in the U.S. can’t face forward until the child is 40 lbs? As we weaved through traffic honking our little horn every 10 seconds to warn our fellow driver friends that we were passing or about to pull a hell of sketchy maneuver such as squeeze between another motorbike, a coconut cart and a van, I held on and soaked it all in, gratefully accepting the new experience. Not quite like being on the back of the Van Kesteren’s motorbike in Holland riding along canals with Erol, I thought, in appreciation of the different cultures.

What clearing for palm oil looks like. Photo of Sarawak by Mattias Klum

We pulled up at Lembaga Gemawan, a local NGO that works to support palm oil-affected communities in their struggles to maintain rights to their ancestral lands from the ever increasing expansion of the palm oil industry. Much more like a house than an office, I joined the three men around the big table all working independently at their laptops. As the morning hours disappeared, I noticed that about every 12 minutes, internet would cut out for approximately 14 minutes making internet productivity very challenging but personal conversations much more rewarding. Adri and I took advantage of this time to have several great discussions. He taught me about the palm oil licensing process, about all the key corporate players in the palm oil industry in Indonesia, and shared many fascinating details and insights into his experience working with affected communities across Sumatra and Borneo. Throughout the entire afternoon of discussions he had a cigarette in his mouth, as did the other men in the room.

On the brink of extinction

I asked him if it would be possible to see an orangutan on during our field visits which we would embark upon after the RT8 Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) meeting in Jakarta next week. He shook his head and laughed at me.

“There aren’t any left in West Kalimantan, Ashley. Very hard to find. It’s all palm plantations. A decade ago, yes. But now I return to those forests where I found many families of orangutans and now it is all palm plantation. A few have survived in cages of local communities, but it is very sad. The communities keep them in cages, don’t want to let them go because they love their orangutan, but often the orangutan will die of hunger or emotional stress in that cage. If the community let it go, the orangutan will bite the children because it is stressed.”

I took a deep breath, absorbing what he had just said, and wondered how it could be true that the world’s first ape could go extinct in the next decade due to the expansion of palm oil companies in natural forests.

Around 1:30pm the sweet staff who had been working upstairs brought Adri and I lunch. What a pleasant surprise! I opened my box to find chicken and white rice with a small plastic baggie of meat sauce and one of greens. Adri told them I was a vegetarian (he’s so sweet) and they took the meat away kindly and brought the most delicious soup ever – Jack fruit soup!! I bit into the mysterious slices of meaty flesh and to my fearful surprise melted in ecstasy. It had a rich, coconutty, orange broth and big chunks of jack fruit. Yum!

Throughout the day we could hear the multiple calls to prayer at the mosque nearby. Adri explained to me that over 50% of the population in West Kalimantan is Muslim, about 30% Catholic and the rest a mix of Buddhist and Hindu. The majority of women wear their heads covered with beautiful bright colored cloth.

Watching the news tonight, I could not understand what people were saying but the unmistakable devastation in their voices was more powerful and moving than words. Hundreds have lost their family members to the tsunami in Western Sumatra and thousands more have had to flee their homes on Eastern Jave from the second eruption of Mt. Merapi. I’m keeping all of these people in my prayers and ask that you do too.

It’s now Saturday morning and I am about to meet with reps from Walhi Kalbar (Friends of the Earth Kalimantan Barat) – another group doing amazing work to protect the few remaining forests in West Kalimantan. I think I am finally full after a lot of effort put into filling my hungry body – I just ate a breakfast of: a piece of toast and jam, a vegetable noodle dish, yellow rice and egg dish, two sweet potato balls, 2 bowls of corn flakes with coconut milk, fresh watermelon and papaya fruit and a glass of orange juice and papaya juice. Lekker!

To follow my blogs on Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN) site, there is about one a week posted on RAN.org. Here is the latest one.

Love to all.

Dutch all the way baby...

The last week in Holland was amazing! We went on a full day canal boat ride with Erol’s aunt Marjorie and adorable cousins, Char & her brother Eve.

We just cruised along through miles of canals, through Leiden and many small, traditional, adorable Dutch towns, farmlands, and tranquil countryside. Swans, ducks, geese, birds of all sorts singing, sheeps and their precious sheepy babies, fat cows, pigs, chickens, horses, llamas, kitties everywhere….so nice. Especially I liked the ripe, super gnar gnar smell of fresh poop clouds along the water – truly the smell of Holland and a special treat! In Leiden we stopped at a marketplace along the water and bought some delicious cheese & I bought some very nice Dutch fabric for my mama to complement the very gorgeous Italian fabric that I got. Another day we boated through the canals leaving from Kaag with his aunt and uncle Nelly and Hain, and we pulled the boat off on a grassy island for a lovely picnic. But his aunt pressured me to take a bite of some nasty meat-filled quiche that supposedly didn’t have meat in it. Gross! Experiencing Holland by boat is a mUsT!! Such wonderful tastes, smells, and perspectives this way of travel! It’s especially amazing and unbelievable that the brilliant predecessors managed to elevate the canals above the farmland – wow. Will be interesting to see what happens with climate change and rising water levels.

The following day we had the brilliant idea of taking the scooter into Amsterdam, which is some 35 km. But the scooter is pretty old and maxes out at 40 km/hr so we bumbled along pretty slowly, and we didn’t know the fastest route so we ended up winding through an excess of country roades and canals. We stopped under a highway overpass when it started raining. Who would have thought?! A week of hot, gorgeous weather, but the one day we scooter to Amsterdam it rains and is cold. But that passed and we continued on. At one point, despite the cold and craziness of taking a 3.5 hour scooter ride into the city when it could have taken 20 min. in our nice European rental car that sat at the Van Kesteren’s, I felt so high on life with the wind blowing through my hair, a huge grin on my face, reggae blasting from the ipod headphones we shared, crossing bridge after bridge over canals, and enjoying that sweet taste of exhilarating freedom that accompanies wild and pure adventure.

After hours of blissful Amsterdam explorations and some tasty Indonesian food with Floris along the magical sunlit canal, we grumbled about the scooter ride home but decided that it was the best choice to head home while it was still light out. So we did Scooter country road trekk Part II from 9:30pm til 12 midnight.

Erol was our bug and wind shield, bless his heart

We saved an hour on the way home without rain and with a little better navigating luck. We must have asked at least a dozen people throughout the day how to get here or there, and we got many entertaining answers. By the time we got home, we were so incredibly exhausted and wind blown. It was so hilarious though, the bugs on the way home were so bad, Erol was riding with his sunglasses on, but as it was getting dark, the battle was between him driving in sunglass darkness and scootering through poop piles or getting bug missiles in his eyeballs. I definitely had fun on the back, laughing the whole way at the situation, feeling bad that he was shielding me from all the wind, bugs, and cold.

Another hi-light from last week was cooking a big feast with Erol for the Van Kesteren’s! We made coconut rice with fresh mango, chicken and veggie skewers with Marian’s amazing peanut sauce, huge arugula salad, and patat frites (french fries) with fresh fig, strawberry, bananas & dark chocolate with cream for dessert. Lekkers!! We sat in the garden drinking wine until 11pm when it started to get dark. The balmy, humid evenings of the Holland heat wave were fantastic. It was an abrupt return last night to the dark, cold bay at 9pm!

I found it very interesting that Dutch people don’t believe in “doggy bags,” or saving leftovers. I found it almost offensive, the whole idea of wasting food when there are so many hungry people in the world. The Van Kesteren’s thought it was disgusting that Erol and I were constantly saving leftovers for the following day. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s a philosophy related to fresh food and good health, but considering that Niek Van Kesteren doesn’t eat anything green or fresh that’s not meat or starch, I’m not sure about that.

Go Oranje

Friday, our last day in Holland, we watched the second Dutch World Cup match in Holland, and again they won! They beat Brazil in an incredible feat and now they’re going on to the Semi Finals!! I had orange eye lashes, orange lipstick, orange cake, orange chips, an orange hat, and all the kids were blowing their orange blow horns in the streets with every goal. What a treat to be in Holland for the World Cup!! Amsterdam went OFF that night! We sat in an outside cafe drinking iced coffee as everyone was sweating balls that day with the intense heat, watching the excitement grow with the sea of orange writhing in the streets, all the car and scooter horns blowing constantly, and copious amounts of beer getting consumed. GO ORANJE!!!

Just found out tomorrow is a holiday! Yay no work til Tuesday!! Today is Summer BBQ at Erol’s with all his best friends who are in town, my sis and her baby (yay!) and some of my amigas too! LOVING THIS LIFE.

Erol teaching the 6 boys frisbee = magical

We fit right in among the hundreds of bikes and scooters that ebb and flow with the minimal car traffic through bike lanes and bike lights. We have it all backwards in the states, it’s quite amazing how public transport and biking have revolutionized the transport system here! We really have it all wrong in the US with no trains, massive SUVs and all the rest of it. The way towns are laid out here, with gorgeous canals and boats leading everywhere, no stop signs or stop lights but rather round abouts and yield signs, speedy trains with great access, etc. it makes for such wonderful efficiency! And the tiny cars, tiny houses, tiny sinks, and such efficient use of space, I love it.

Today was our last Monday of vacation! Sad! Can’t imagine going home…today we spent the afternoon exploring Delft, the quaint very Dutch town where Erol’s grandfather grew up before settling here in Voorhaut.

Delft City Hall - most beautiful building in the world

It was incredibly sweltering hot (Holland heat wave = score!) so we wandered, enjoyed some Alpha Blondie in a coffee shop and then were swept off our feet in a magestic, ancient church with such powerful energy held within the stone flooring, stain glass window art masterpieces, and organ music.

breath taking church stained glass

Erol walked on his ancestors & we dreamed about all the stories preceding us in that church – prayers, people, faces, challenges, families, wars….so awesome. We ended up outside up in the church tower, some 300 ft. in the air after walking up 476 narrow winding steps!!

476 stairs or so up on tower! insert massive clock above head!

The view was incredible and just above our head, the HUGE church clock sang every 15 minutes. It was massive, a force to behold. My entire life flashed before my eyes up on that tower with the church bells rining. After getting swept up in the glory of the church, we realized what time it was and rushed to Noorwijk to catch the second half of the Netherlands world cup game with over a hundred people dressed in orange on the beach. Horns, flags, beer, yelling children and the warm breeze with the ocean steps away made for a super exciting winning match! Now Netherland plays Brazil on Friday, going to be an exciting experience in Amterdam!!

Yesterday was a rough start – I was electrocuted making a smoothie, but at least it was hella lekker.  Then later at the beach I was stung by a gnarly huge ass bee on the under arm and it’s still red, hot, swollen and itchy. And I stepped on a shell playing frisbee and bloodied my toe! Too much fun!

beach with the van kesteren's

But all day yesterday, Sunday, we played in the hot sun on the white sand beach with 7 of the most beautiful children in the world (the van kesteren grand kids) ages 2-10. 6 boys (Flo, Boat, Storm, Peer, Tis) and a little girl, Pepper.

Fleur's daughter Pepper!

We played frisbee, soccer, on sand and in the water. They are all so beautiful, watching them play and laugh and talk Dutch just melts my heart.

Flow, cutest ever youngest of 4 boys to Mirel

These kids carry a special kind of magic in them, so much calm, innocense, purity and love, it fills me with so much happines. I so want babies!!!

After hours on the beach, we drove into Amsterdam and met up with one of Erol’s old best friends, Floris, his brother Martin and his girlfriend Climmy (Clementine). Loved them all! We drove out to Floris and Martin’s mama’s house (Erol’s mom Henny’s best friend) about 45 min. into the country from Amsterdam, and had an amazing evening. We ate, drank, enjoyed the gorgeous summer night in the garden, and laughed. Such LOVELY people. Every single person here I’ve met, all family or family friends of Erol, is wonderful. Erol and I have been receiving the royal treatment. I truly love Dutch people, but epecially these kind souls, feeding us meals, drinks, housing us, giving us house keys and scooters, and Wed. and Thursday we go on two different canal boat rides with family members!

I am so happy and grateful for all these experiences, especially touched by the lives and new friendships of all these new people! I’m more and more in love with Erol every day and everything feels so right. Each day is an empty slate that we take one step at a time, and how it all unfolds is like a fairy tale dream over which we have no control.

When I return home next weekend I promise to put up way more photos – they’re all on a memory card now. love and kisses!

Mediterranean magic

I am finally sitting down to give another adventure update, but there is SO much that has transpired I hardly know where to begin! I am right now sitting in the living room of one of the classiest, funkiest, most rad houses I’ve ever been in, the Dutch “Knip.” We are staying with the Van Kesteren family in Voorhout, Holland — the small town where Erol’s mama Henny grew up, which is a huge family of beautiful people that are dear friends of Suzan and Erol. Suzan has been best friends with their daughter Fleur since a little girl so the family loves her and Erol. So lucky to be staying here! They are such incredible people and have dreamy lives. The home is just 10 Km from the North Sea coastline, and we’ve been blessed with just magical weather! Thank goodnes, because they’ve been having the same rainy weather that we had on and off for a week in Italy! Now it’s just pure blue sky breezy sunshine. We arrived yesterday from Italia!

the Van Kesteren Knip

Yesterday was crazy. Woke up speaking Italian and went to bed speaking Dutch! Erol and I woke up at 4:30am in San Gimignano, in the heart of Tuscany.

We drove three hours to Rome to make a 10:40am flight but there was a 9 car pile up accident just before the airport (because Italians are the craziest drivers EVER and tailgate so badly in addition to driving like bats out of hell) which put us almost an hour behind schedule. Erol had to pee in a bottle while driving because were so late and stuck in traffic which was hilarious and then we had to race through one way streets the wrong direction to return our rental car. For some reason in Italy, we really do stand out as the confused, dumb Americans, and I’m not sure why. Whether its handling fruit in the produce section of grocery stores & forgetting to weigh each item, holding up lines, or driving down one way streets the wrong way 4 time in a row, or ordering 4 ham sandwiches when trying to order oranges in a gas station and holding up a line of 10 pissed off Italians, we’ve definitely found it challenging to master the unique Italian sytem. Anyhow, we just barely made our flight to Amsterdam!

We got here, to this wonderous Holland, yesterday afternoon, and went straight to the sunny park in central Amterdam. After we got our fill, we spent the evening with Niek & Marian here in their awesome home – herring, beer, and a delicious dinner. Then we biked over to their daughter Mirel’s house just 4 blocks away, and watched the Netherlands-Cameroon World Cup match. It was such a rich cultural experience! Hours of dutch language, orange outfits, orange cake, and every time Netherlands scored every kid in the whole neighborhood ran outide cheering and blowing horns.

Erol is totally fluent in Dutch, it’s pretty awesome seeing him back to his roots. We’ve spent time with all 3 of the Van Kesteren daughters and their 7 kids, and we still get to visit with his aunts, uncles and cousins. Such a good time here, and such a rich cultural experience hearing all the dutch and living in a dutch house. I love the people here! Maybe we’ll live here for a time some day…

Tuscan sunset in san gimi

San Gimignano was probably my favorite Italian spot out of our entire trip. The vibe there was just so chill – very friendly Italians, a dope room for cheap, epic views, the most delicious gelato I’ve ever had in my life (blackberry lavender!!!), yummy salads every day cut up in our bathroom sink filled with fresh veggies, red wine bottles and dark chocolate dinners at sunset, driving off on dirt roads leading to magical meadows to paint and draw and read and play….

gratitude

Erol and I spent three whole nights and two days there, which was sweet after so much moving around. It’s this magical, quaint castle-like village that sits perched atop a green valley of grapes, castles and olive. The most incredible architecture (I’m obsessed with all the archways, windows and doors), narrow cobble stone paths leading to breathtaking panoramic views, singing birds, . We drove in at sunset on the Summer Solstice, our 6 month anniversary!

san gimignano reflections

siena love

Before San Gimignano we lived it up at the villa outside of Siena, which was one of the more gorgeous places I’ve ever been, as well as 3 days in Florence and Lucca.

Florence piazza da santa marella

Firenze

Well it’s really late and I need to get some sleep after a long day of fribee and play at the h0t beach today!

Here are some photos to enjoy!!

xoxo

Ferry to Elba

San Gimignano

wine Italy style

yum

Italy Wedding Dance party!

We are having such a magnificent journey! I feel so incredibly blessed for this experience. So far we’ve been on the road 13 days, and we’re about half way through our adventures but yesterday was the best day yet!!! Right now we’re in Tuscany, at a magical villa called Villa Castignano, in the heart of Tuscany just 5 km outside of Siena.

It took us 2 hours and 9 Italians to find this place in the middle of  nowhere! Everyone else rented GPS’ but we made it happen with Suzan’s French and my Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.  Was truly a treasure hunt, and the pot at the end of the rainbow is nothing less than magical!

Tali, Suzan’s best girlfriend, is getting married tonight. We got here on the 15th and we’ll be chillin here until the 19th. It’s the plushest part of journey for sure! We’re staying in a beautiful, aged brick villa with sweeping landscapes, grape vineyards, hills forever, a huge pool at the top of the hill, rosemary and jasmine everywhere, ancient looking archways through every doorway, and everyone here is good looking, it’s truly eye candy all around.

Our room has 10 windows that open out to the courtyards, on either side, with Mediterranean breezes blowing in every morning.  We wake up with sunlight streaming in the window, embraced in the cacoon of Erol’s passionate, pure love, and after a lot of giggles and pondering of our happiness, we head to the banquet room for breakfast which is typical italian yogurt, cereal, poached eggs, croissants, and coffee.

We’ve been exploring Siena during the days, which is probably the MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY I have ever seen. I would love to come live here for a time!

Little cobble roads lead in every which direction with the aged, burnt siena color everywhere, shades of orange and yellow and peach and turquoise with green or blue shades.

We walked through the old town and explored the Duomo piazza – the oldest, most incredible hand carved stone church.  And, of course, took millions of photos and ate gelato. I broke my refined sugar cleanse here, and have eaten gelato at least 3 times!! People here eat it every day.

Before Siena, we spent a few days on the island of Sardinia, which was SOOO gorgeous!

We took a 6 hour ferry ride there and explored the eastern coast, el Golfo de Orosei, which boasts Italy’s finest beach, Cala Luna.

All the boys of Sardinia were in love with Suzanna and it was her 34th birthday so we got showered with all kind of free gifts! We got a free day boat pass and got dropped off at all these epic beaches and caves, crystal clear turquoise waters, and cove after cove of our own private beaches.

Before Sardinia we were in Cinque Terre – the 5 small villages known for their terraced agriculture comunes, and the stunning cliffside village architecture.

We slept in Monterosso, which had epic beaches, but explored all the other villages by day and night – Levanto and Vernazza. We had our first real Italian meal in Vernazza – fine wine, seafood pizza, grilled fish, and the finest home made pesto gnocchi that wold make you cry. I actually did. The senore’s mama made it right there on the spot, and it was absolutely incredible. Leading up to that meal, for the first week or so, we were eating like street kids on steps of buildings, on the beach, etc. out of markets. To save money, we usually ate yogurt and fruit for breakfast, made salads for lunch with fresh olives, mozzarella bufala, tomatoes, arugula (rocket), olive oil, aubergine, etc. and dinner some sort of sandwiches. But that first real Italian meal in Vernazza rocked our world!

Before Cinque Terre we spent a couple of nights in a bungalow in Elba, another small island off the coast of Tuscany. We took a ferry there from Piombino. It was the true Italian island experience as we were the only tourists there!

Beach exploring, driving through small villages and exploring beaches all day long, getting lost all the time.  To summarize our trip, I’d say we’ve gotten really good at staying at the cheapest possible spots – bungalows or low end hotels, getting lost a lot (leaving Rome heading to Elba we shot out on the wrong side and was an hour in the wrong direction!), eating bomb food, finding the most beautiful non touristy spots, and having an interesting time getting used to the Italian driving character which is to tail gate like a mo fo and drive SO fast in the left lane that it’s just insane. Our car is stick shift so Suzan and Erol have done all the driving. The shoppping here in Siena is OFF THE HOOK and I could spend a lot of money (especially if my sis were here!) but I think instead I’ll enjoy the sunshine. It rained yesterday!!

We’re heading back to Rome on the 24th early, and flying to Amsterdam for 10 days. We’re going to stay with Erol and Suzan’s familia and friends there! Can’t wait!!! Until then we have a few more days at the Villa and then exploring Tuscany and Umbria – San Gimignano, Lucca, and beyond!! What a blessed life!!!!

Amazing song: Kol Gagal’s “Looking for the Dorot”

xoxoxo

Ashley, Erol and Suzan*

Delft tower

Chiantigiana near the villa exploring dirt roads!