Tales of a Female Nomad (18 page)

One of the young men hands me the binoculars. I know exactly where this orangutan is and I know what to look for, and still it takes me five minutes to find her. But I do. She is there with her baby, more than one hundred feet up, holding onto a branch over her head with one hand and gripping two other branches with her feet. The baby is nursing.

My heart is pounding. No matter how bright the day, the tropical rain forest is a shadowy, eerie, magical world. A world where the sun is reduced to streaks of light that filter through masses of leaves. I am overwhelmed by a sense of awe. Suddenly I understand Dr. Galdikas’s obsession. There are tears streaming down my cheeks.

All day we follow Georgina (for purposes of her study, Dr. Galdikas has given names to the different orangutans whose lives she is tracking) as she moves from tree to tree looking for fruit or leaves or bark to eat. When she finds a cache she likes, we tie up our hammocks and watch from below. We are not permitted to sit on logs or lean on trees. The dangers range from acids that can burn through your clothes to poisonous snakes and fire ants. The tropical rain forest is not a friendly place, but it is mesmerizing in its otherworldliness.

A few days later I go out with another Dayak team. This time we are searching for an orangutan that hasn’t been followed lately. All of the orangutans in Dr. Galdikas’s study live most of the time in the area around Camp Leakey. Her work, with the help of her staff and volunteers, is to track their lives. What do they eat? How do they mate? How many children does an orangutan have in the course of her lifetime and how long do babies stay with their mothers? The questions are endless, and until Dr. Galdikas devoted her life to these studies, very little was known about orangutans in the wild.

Year after year, since 1971, volumes of observations have been recorded. Our mission today is to find an orangutan and follow it. We leave in the light, since our only hope of finding one is to hear it moving around or eating in the course of the day. All day we listen in silence for leaves rustling, branches falling, things dropping to the ground. We are constantly looking up into the canopy for that black spot or those moving leaves. But when the day comes to an end, we have not found an orangutan.

When I get back to the camp, I change clothes and discover a big fat leech sucking away at my ankle.

I pull it off and watch the watery blood pour out of my wound. Leeches have three jaws, and each jaw has ninety teeth that saw open the skin so the leech can secrete an anticoagulant that helps him/her (they are hermaphrodites) suck blood. I have no idea how the little guy/girl got through the pants that were tucked into two pair of overlapping socks and heavily sprayed with Deet. Although, he/she was a lot smaller when he/she started out.

After I have been in the camp for two weeks, I am ready to begin writing. I have a good sense of what it is like to live and work at Camp Leakey, and from the articles and papers Dr. Galdikas has given me, I understand the purpose and process and passion of her work. I’ve been into the forest three times (we did find an orangutan the third time out), and I’ve spent hours in the nursery where the newly confiscated pets undergo their education.

I have also been eating in the dining hall where ex-captives climb the chain-link fencing that cages us in. Like people at a zoo, the orangutans watch us eat. If they are given a plate, they hang on, often upside down, and eat at the same time, knowing instinctively how to hold the plate so the food doesn’t slide off. (It is extremely convenient to have four hands.)

I have a lot of material to work with, and I can begin writing; but I am missing the voice, the passion, the intensity of Dr. Galdikas. I have not met with her yet.

There is a small cabin about a hundred yards away from the dining hall. I am set up with a desk, a chair, an old manual typewriter, and a stack of paper. Each day now, after breakfast, while the gibbons are still calling and the cicada chorus fills the air, I go to my office and write. I no longer go into the forest or even to the nursery where baby orangutans are clinging to people as though they were their real mothers. I do occasionally stop by the bridge for the morning and afternoon feedings, but mostly I stick to a rigid writing schedule. I don’t even go back to the dormitory to go to the bathroom. When the urge comes, I hide behind a bush. One day I discover that my “offering” of the day before has completely disappeared. The next day I watch as dung beetles consume every crumb, just minutes after I deposit it.

The writing moves well, but since I am writing as Dr. Galdikas in the first person, I reach a point where she and I must talk. We have barely had a conversation since I arrived. I am willing to meet anytime, morning, noon, or night, but she is always too busy. There are the graduate students, the local staff, the cataloguing of the “follow” information, the tending to a sick ex-captive, the education of the twenty or so volunteers from Earth-watch (there were three of these volunteer groups during my tenure in the camp), and the occasional trip to Pasir Panjang to see her children and her husband, and on and on and on. All legitimate, all important, and all keeping the book on hold.

I am about halfway through the book when my two-month visa expires. Indonesia gives an automatic two-month visa when you enter, and you have to leave the country and reenter in order to renew it. Singapore is close by. I’m there for two days.

When I return, I discover that in my absence, a tree near my office has burst into white bloom. Like a magnet, the blossoms are attracting thousands of white butterflies. The butterflies are swarming around the tree the way bees swarm around a hive. I have time to sit and stare because I can go no further with the book until I meet with Dr. Galdikas; and she continues to be inaccessible.

One of the highlights of my visit is a boat ride and a walk with Pak Bohap, Dr. Galdikas’s husband, a native of the area. We are walking silently across an open field when there is a sound from the tall grasses nearby, a sort of
blurp.
He smiles.

“That was a snake eating a frog,” he says.

Pak Bohap can read the world he grew up in like a mechanic can read the sounds of a motor. Pak Bohap’s hearing is fine-tuned to the natural world. Every movement creates a noise and every noise records an action. Pak Bohap is fluent in “forest.”

After attempting for more than three weeks to get an hour or two with Dr. Galdikas, I finally write her a note:

Dear Dr. Galdikas,

My weeks here in Camp Leakey have been an extraordinary
experience. I will never forget them. I consider it an honor and a
privilege to have had the opportunity to visit the forest, to live with
the orangutans, and to read about and watch your work.

But in order to write a book under your byline, I need your
words, your observations, your comments, your emotions. I will
need at least four hours of your time during my final two weeks
here.

I will understand if you cannot find the time to meet with me;
the beauty of the experience will more than compensate me for my
time. But I do want you to know that unless we meet, there will not
be a book.

Thank you for opening my eyes to a new world.

We finally meet. Late at night. After all her other obligations are asleep. By the time I leave, there is a draft of the book. Six months later, we have a sale, to Little Brown, the publisher that has contracted with Dr. Galdikas for her autobiography.

But there are strings. Our book will not be published until a year after her autobiography is out. And we agree that we will not write anything else about the orangutan camp for children.

But the autobiography is not finished for several years. During those years, another book for children about Dr. Galdikas and Camp Leakey is published, by a different publisher, with an afterword by Dr. Galdikas. The book is similar to the one we have written, and because of the material by Dr. Galdikas, Little Brown feels justified in canceling our contract. The book is never published.

I am disappointed. I wanted to introduce children to orangutans in the wild, to the passion of Dr. Galdikas, to the intensity and fulfillment that comes with committing one’s life to a cause, and to the extraordinary tropical rain forest.

My experience of the tropical rain forest was like stepping into another dimension of life on earth. The muted color of the light, filtered by a canopy of leaves; the heaviness of the air hovering over the swampland; the sounds of insects and primates and birds filling the forest with their music; and the overwhelming knowledge that all around me were hidden eyes peering down or across or up at me. The only world I will ever enter that is as extraordinary as the tropical rain forest is the world on the bottom of the ocean. And it will be eight years before I will dive with a tank on my back into that watery paradise.

CHAPTER TEN

ARRIVING IN BALI

I have always loved New York and its creative, pulsing energy; but going from the forest in Borneo to the streets of New York is not a good plan. Every civilized sound is offensive. Garbage trucks grinding their refuse replace gibbons calling out their morning songs. Horns honk where only hours ago cicadas were buzzing. And people screaming at each other have replaced the gentle sound of the soft-spoken Indonesians. A part of me wonders if my explorations on one end of the spectrum will ultimately reduce my ability to enjoy the pleasures at the other end.

I race through my visits with family, friends, and editors, just a little off-balance and impatient to be somewhere else. I suspect that with a little more time, I would slip back into the delights of the city, but I don’t wait around to find out. I stay for two weeks and get on another plane for Indonesia.

This time, I’m going to Bali. Noted for its art, music, and dance, Bali is an island the size of Connecticut with a population of about 3 million, 95 percent of them Hindu. Main industry: tourism. Main attraction for me: the Balinese people, who are known for their spirituality, something that has always eluded me.

As a kid I sought spirituality in the synagogue, but I found words, music, social events, and fundraising. The rituals, the social stuff, and the camaraderie were great, but I never felt spiritual.

I have also looked in Protestant, Catholic, Unitarian, and Quaker churches. I looked in Nicaragua at the First Communion of Marco’s daughter. The setting was right: the chapel was dimly lit, the voice of the priest was soothing, and the sun-illuminated stained-glass windows told me that this was a holy place. But I didn’t feel anything spiritual. Not inside or outside. And my Israeli experience wasn’t even close.

In Palenque, considered by many to be a particularly spiritual place, I felt the presence of the ancient Mayans, but it was the dramatic history of the people that set off my imagination, and not really anything spiritual.

Little do I know, as my plane flies over the Pacific Ocean, how deep and intensely spiritual my Bali experience is going to be. There’s not even a hint that Bali is about to become my home for eight years and that its spirit will change forever how I look at the world.

The plane lands for a forty-five-minute stop on the island of Biak in Irian Jaya, the easternmost province of Indonesia and the western half of the island of New Guinea. As I step onto the metal stairway that has been wheeled up to the exit door, I am greeted by the earthy smell of forest and the intense heat and humidity of this equatorial island.

The flight attendant standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the steps hands me a plastic transit card that I stick into the black nylon passport case that I always wear around my neck when I’m on the road. Walking next to me is a couple, American missionaries, who tell me they are planning to live and proselytize (my word, not theirs) here in the highlands for two years. As we chat, I make a mental note to visit the tribal people who live in those mountains before they have totally abandoned their native religions and customs.

Inside the terminal, a group of grass-skirted women and guitar-and-drum-playing men are singing and dancing for the transit passengers. I watch for a while and then walk to the back of the room, where I join a dignified-looking Indonesian man who is studying a topographical map of Indonesia. Dr. Djelantik is a Balinese doctor returning home after doing malaria research in Irian Jaya. His English is nearly perfect.

I ask him about his research. He asks about my destination. For forty-five minutes we talk about Bali and its uniqueness as a Hindu province in a Muslim (88 percent) country. We talk about the music and art and history and religion of Bali. And we discuss customs and ceremonies and life in general. We continue our conversation on the plane.

When we land in Bali, Dr. Djelantik asks me where I am planning to stay. I tell him that I am going to Ubud, that the guidebooks say Ubud is the center of music and dance and culture on the island.

“Oh no,” he tells me. “Don’t go there. You are interested in anthropology, culture, religion. Ubud is too touristy for you.”

Then he writes on a small piece of paper:
I Gusti Ngurah Ketut Sangka,
Puri Gede, Kerambitan, Tabanan.
I have no idea what it means.

“Go to this man. He is a scholar and as close to an anthropologist as you will find in Bali. He is a friend of mine. Enjoy your visit.”

I collect my bags, climb into a cab, and hand the paper to the driver. Without a word, he takes off. Soon we join hundreds of motorcycles and bicycles and honking horns as he drives through the tourist town of Kuta, which is filled with shops, tourists in shorts, and rock music blaring from loudspeakers.

But as we move north along the western part of the island, we begin to pass through towns where there are no tourists, just Balinese people and shops selling altars for family temples, pots for the kitchens, and pottery and stone carvings for gardens. We have moved into a part of the island that still belongs to the Balinese.

An hour after we leave the airport, we turn off the main road and wind for another fifteen minutes between terraced rice fields that stretch as far as I can see in every direction. Then, finally, we enter a village.

The driver pulls up to a group of men who are clustered in front of an open pavilion. He reads from the paper I gave him, listens to directions, then backs up and drives about a hundred yards down a side road and stops. We have arrived.

I have no idea where we are or who it is that I’m about to meet. I leave my bags in the car and hold off paying for the cab. At least I’ll have transportation out if I need it.

I walk through an arched gate into a grassy garden and am welcomed by the sweet perfume of a gardenia bush that is nearly as tall as I and filled with fragrant white flowers. A tiny old woman, topless, her waist-length gray hair hanging down her back, is stooped over, sweeping leaves and flowers off the grass with a three-foot-long broom. The noisy swish of the bristles, made of palm-leaf veins tied together, allows me to watch unnoticed for a few minutes. Her waiflike body is wrapped from the waist down in a faded brown-and-tan sarong. As she sweeps, she hunches over, holding her left hand behind her back. With her right hand she brushes pink petals and brown leaves into little piles.

I step onto the stone path in front of her. She looks up, smiles toothlessly, and, feeling modest in front of a western stranger, puts her hand across her naked chest. I smile back and read the paper to her:
I Gusti
Ngurah Ketut Sangka, Puri Gede, Kerambitan, Tabanan.

She nods, smiles, and rushes off. Soon, two younger women, one in her thirties, the other in her forties, approach, smiling. (There is a lot of smiling in Bali.) They are dressed in western skirts, flip-flop rubber sandals, and T-shirts. The older and heavier of the two is wearing a T-shirt that says “We are the world.”

I show them the paper. They nod. The older one, Dayu Biang, walks me to a nearby patio, sits me down on a bamboo chair, and asks me if I want
kopi.
I nod, smiling. The other goes off, deeper into the compound.

A few minutes later, two cups of coffee appear, one for me and the other for a tiny beautiful woman who looks about forty years old (I later learn that she is nearly fifty-seven). She sits in a chair across from me, dressed in an earth-colored batik sarong that is wrapped around her small body like a stocking. A yellow-and-purple flowered top sets off her shiny black hair and her wrinkle-free bronze skin. She sits straight, smiles at me, and I show her the paper. She nods. Then she places her hand on her chest.

“Tu Biang,” she says slowly, enunciating clearly. Her name means, literally, a princess who has children.

“Rita,” I say. “America.”

She looks toward the old woman who is sweeping nearby.

“Ibu saya,”
she says. My mother.

“
Ibu
Tu Biang,” I repeat. Tu Biang’s mother.

“Ya, ya,” she says, laughing, with an endearing, inclusive glee. “Ibu
saya.”
My mother. “Tu Nini.” A princess who is a grandmother.

When I show her the paper, she smiles.
“Suami saya.”
My husband. She reads his name, which is I Gusti Ngurah Ketut Sangka.

As we sit and sip, we do not speak much, but we smile a lot. Then, after about ten minutes, a tall and distinguished-looking man approaches. He is wearing a patterned scarf tied artistically around his head in traditional Balinese fashion. His sarong is the same earth colors as his wife’s sarong, but unlike her skin-tight wrap, his is loose and tied with a roll of fabric at the waist, and a soft flow of folds in the front. He is also wearing a long-sleeved white shirt. He is in his late sixties.

“May I help you?” he asks in English, smiling.

“My name is Rita,” I say through my smile, my prayer hands, and my nodding head. “I have just arrived from America. I met Dr. Djelantik on the airplane and he suggested I come here.”

The man’s smile gets even bigger and spreads to his eyes. “Welcome,” he says. “Let me show you your room.”

I live there for four years.

I Gusti Ngurah Ketut Sangka, Puri Gede, Kerambitan, Tabanan
are the words Dr. Djelantik wrote on my paper.

I Gusti Ngurah Ketut Sangka
is the name of the man I have just met, the doctor’s friend.

I
indicates a male.

Gusti
indicates high caste.

Ngurah
means he was born in a palace.

Ketut
says he is the fourth born.

Sangka,
his personal name, means “big shell.”

Puri Gede
means “great palace.”

Kerambitan
is the village.

And
Tabanan
is both a city and a country.

The man who has invited me to stay, addressed as Tu Aji, a prince who has children, is the unofficial scholar of the Kerambitan dynasty, the son and brother of a king. Everyone in this royal family is called
Tu
something, usually translated as “prince” or “princess.” It’s an indicator that says this person is from a high caste.

Dr. Djelantik, who, Tu Aji tells me, is a prince of a different dynasty, directed me to a royal palace, though this section of the palace does not look very royal. There are three traditional buildings: a pavilion—the Balinese call it a
bale,
with two open sides and nine columns holding up a tiled roof (the
bale,
which measures about ten by eighteen feet, is frequently used for ceremonies)—and two other buildings about the same size, one-room closed structures, each with a porch and columns. The other three buildings are simple one-story white stucco houses that contain bedrooms.

There are no gilded statues royally proclaiming wealth, nor elaborate friezes broadcasting grandeur. Instead, in this part of the palace, there is a feeling of serenity conveyed by grassy stretches with flowering trees and bushes, and stone pathways that are lined with flowers of every possible color. The gentleness of this family compound is a reflection of the people who live here.

My room is in a small house consisting of two rooms, with an open, covered patio between them that faces the garden. Behind the rooms, accessible from the patio, are a toilet and bathroom. I will be paying the family eight dollars a day for the room and three meals.

I step into the bathroom with my towel. There is a big tiled tub nearly four feet high and two and a half feet square in the corner, filled with clean water. On the rim of the tub there’s a red plastic scoop with a handle for scooping out the water (you never climb in).

The water is cold compared to the air, and I squeal with the first few scoops. But, like jumping into a lake, after a few minutes of splashing, the water feels refreshing.

“Sudah segar ya?”
Are you refreshed? asks Tu Nini, who is still sweeping when I come out in clean clothes and sit on the patio.
“Sudah minum?”
she asks. Have you had something to drink?

“Ya, terima kasih,” I answer. Yes, thank you.