Orangs and Orangutans

Indonesia, orangutans, research...these words embodied a feeling of adventure and they meant something different to me when I first arrived at the field site, than they do now.

First, Indonesia, I imagined a country with people who spoke a different language, dressed differently, had different ideas about life...Different. But I didn't consider what that meant, I had no idea of what I expected the people to be like. I have found that indeed "Indonesians" are different, but each person is as unique and individual as any person in the states. Each person lives their life according to personal values and religious affiliations that are not shared by all. In essence there is not a cookie cutter picture I can display for you of what being Indonesian means. This simplicity of this revelation is so humbling for me, when I think about the naive idea I held about learning how different Indonesians are from Americans I feel embarrassed. Of course we are different! But we are all so similar in the end, all rushing through life bumping into people and taking a little piece of knowledge from them and incorporating it into our view of the world, we all have relationships with our friends and family that only we can understand, we all want to live a happy life. The Indonesian people still speak a different language, but even though the words are not the same the feelings are. And I feel like even though I don't understand all the intricate social rules I know that a smile and a laugh go a long way in making a bridge over any cultural differences.

Orangutans. Long legs, even longer arms, red/brown hair, personality. These great apes are amazing. The first day I entered the forest I saw a flanged male, he was huge and the fact that he hung suspended between the miniature looking branches looking right back at me was kind of a shock. I realized that I really was standing in the jungle, I really had seen a wild orangutan, a privilege that may be gone in as little as 10 years. This is devastatingly sad. What makes the situation worse is the fact that orangutans will just continue with their relatively solitary lives until there are no longer enough of them to breed in the wild and then this amazing, smart, relative of ours will no longer roam the forests of their evolutionary birth. Another casualty of human greed. The drive to participate in conservation has always been present in me but now there is a desperate fire where previously a spark existed. I don't know how but these animals need to be saved; I know there are others like me out there, who feel helpless, we need to unite or the realistic estimation of a single decade of freedom left will come true.

The answer to the problem! Research! Wait that doesn't actually make sense...Coming here I thought that if more research could be done then the Indonesian people would benefit from the money paid in fees to the government and the money spent by foreign researchers in the towns that boarder the forest would boost local economies. These may be true, but the other idea I held as fact, that more research would help increase awareness of the plight of orangutans and help save them, is no longer as clean cut as I thought. Research, as I am finding out, is a tricky business. To stay on top and get grants the researcher needs to be producing work tirelessly. Collect data, analyze said data, write scientific paper and try to publish. Publish or perish they say, you either jump on this crazy train or you will not get funding for your project and since this is where the money to live comes from (essentially since universities can drop a professor who has yet to get tenure and is not bringing in grants), you have to produce, produce, produce at a frenzied pace. But with all of these responsibilities coming first (to keep you in the field) the other business of working on conserving the population you are studying comes second. This is not a sustainable system and I think that researchers, grad students and professors know it. I am finding out that maybe research isn't as beneficial for orangutans as I thought. Wow it sucks sometimes when you find yourself in reality, it isn't always so pretty.