The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

I grinned back wickedly. “Oh, I’m afraid imagination wasn’t necessary.”

  Yves’s face, already turning pink, flushed a crimson red. There was another long wait before he could bring himself to speak further. Meanwhile, Linda was chattering happily to him in the cockpit, unaware of his discomfort. Herbert was strangling with laughter beside me. I kept a bright grin on my face. Then Herbert remembered something Yves had said about his girlfriend taking some pictures, too.

  “I especially liked the ones with you in them,” I said, with a sly and knowing smile.

  Yves’s worst fears were now confirmed. I really had seen them. He sank down, practically transforming into a puddle of red ectoplasm on the hot teak deck.

  I milked this for several minutes. I revelled in his agony. This was my payback for all his fart jokes. Then finally, I smilingly said, in a very low voice, so he could hardly hear it, “Hook, line, and sinker.”

  Northern Magic wasn’t quite the same without Yves. Yet he somehow managed to leave us a lasting gift, and that was the gift of laughter. After our month with him, we had all learned to laugh a lot more, and we continue it to this day. After leaving us, Yves continued around the world overland and by sea, and had many fantastic adventures of his own. He continues to be our close friend, and regularly exchanges e-mails with us and with Jonathan. When we were about to cross the North Atlantic, Yves e-mailed us that he would wear his lucky underwear on our behalf. I mailed back that it wouldn’t work unless he sent a photo. He never did.

  Linda’s trip to Bali was now also at an end, and we began preparing Northern Magic for our own departure. Over the previous days, Herbert had twice taken time away from our hotel in Ubud to attend to our failure-prone fridge, and it was once again humming nicely. We sailed to the islands of Lombok and Bawean, meeting more new friends and seeing other aspects of that fascinating collection of diverse islands that is Indonesia. At every stop we made, seven-year-old Christopher, being the smallest, found himself the centre of attention. Curious fingers reached out to touch him, caressing his cheek, his arms, or his fair hair. Many ladies were so delighted with him that they repeatedly pointed to him and then to themselves, indicating their desire to take him home. It always seemed to be the most wrinkled old crones, with ragged stumps of red teeth, rotted from years of chewing betel nuts, who most wanted to hug and press their faces against that of our youngest child. Christopher shrugged off this unwelcome attention, eying large crowds warily and sometimes hiding behind my skirts when necessary.

  We continued into the Java Sea, and leaving the beaten tourist path produced in us a new and unwelcome sense of insecurity. Southeast Asia was at that time the world’s hotspot for piracy, and our worries were reinforced by warnings and just about daily descriptions of pirate attacks we kept receiving on our Inmarsat satellite system. There had been a recent plague of incidents against ships on both the north coast of Java and the east coast of Borneo, so this troubling thought rested uneasily on our minds as we travelled between those two very spots.

  In the daytime everything felt fine, but at night our fears ran rampant. Every light, rather than representing a friendly beacon or a sign of humanity, signalled the presence of a potential murderer or thief. In fact, just four days after our departure from Bawean, pirates attacked a boat in the very harbour in which we had been anchored. There was much fishing activity near the north coast of Java, and we were never out of sight of at least two or three lights. At three in the morning Herbert roused me from my sleep, saying one of those lights appeared to be following us. He had already been watching it for an hour as it had approached from ahead, circled completely around us, and then began following in our wake. It was now less than half a mile away, close enough that we could clearly hear its throbbing engine. We were drifting along placidly at around four knots under a spinnaker, and our pursuer – if indeed we were being pursued – was certainly speedier than we were.

  Chances were it was only a curious fishing boat, but given that it seemed to be following us, what should we do if it attempted to come alongside? Should we try to outrace it? Take out our flare gun? Shine a bright light in the pirates’ faces to blind them? Use our pepper spray? Ram their wooden boat with our steel one? Do nothing at all?

  We had the VHF radio on, and although there was no talking, people were definitely communicating with each other – a series of whistles went back and forth, perhaps in some kind of secret code. We had heard these whistles often enough before, but the division between realism and paranoia is blurry at three in the morning when you are alone in the dark Java Sea and being followed by a mysterious vessel with unknown intentions.

  While Herbert continued to keep his eye on the boat, I went below and turned on our satellite e-mail. It felt ridiculous to be doing this, and as I typed the following, I partly wanted to sit back and laugh at this unreal situation. This is what I typed: “At 3:06 a.m. we are at position 6 degrees 23 minutes S and 113 degrees 38 minutes E. Being followed by another vessel, possibly pirates. If no communication in next hour we are in trouble.”

  I didn’t transmit the message; I just left it there, glowing on the screen, ready to send with a single keystroke if necessary.

  We were a hundred miles from the nearest sailboat, but there was nothing stopping me from pretending we had a buddy boat just out of sight. Often, if the second boat is farther away, you can hear only one side of a conversation. I took the radio and spoke huskily into it, “Futuna, Futuna, this is Northern Magic. Situation 68. Situation 68 … Roger.” It sounded pretty corny, but at the time my puny, sleep-deprived brain just couldn’t think of anything better to say. Even as I spoke, that other part of me had a good laugh at my ridiculous and rather transparent charade.

  After a while, Herbert decided it was as good a time as any to turn on the motor, charge the batteries and run the fridge – not to mention adding a few extra knots to our speed. The boat continued following us for a long time without making any threatening moves, only whistling occasionally on the VHF. Eventually, we left whoever it was behind us, and our alarming computer message was never sent. Morning’s light left us feeling rather silly about the whole episode.

  It took several more days to traverse the Java Sea. The morning of our last day, the VHF radio crackled into life just as the sun was about to rise on Herbert’s watch. It was the early morning call to prayer, a loud singing chant you would normally hear broadcast from the minarets of a mosque. This was the first time we’d ever heard it at sea. Herbert looked outside and watched half a dozen small fishing boats respond to the call by simultaneously turning their bows to face west, the direction of Mecca, as their devout Muslim crews performed their morning prayers.

  The wild and mysterious island of Borneo lay just over the horizon.

  12

  Standing on the Front Line

  We didn’t even see the large, low, jungle-covered island of Borneo until we were almost upon it. As we entered the mouth of the heavily wooded Kumai River, an enormous variety of vessels passed us, from modern passenger ferries to wobbly dugout canoes. We passed large wooden cargo vessels that looked as if they ought to be centuries-old Portuguese trading ships laden with silks and spices. In fact, they were carrying huge logs cut from the rainforests of Kalimantan, the Indonesian province that constitutes the largest part of the island of Borneo. We dodged the surprisingly fast arklike ships and, by late morning, were anchored across from the rough and bustling logging town of Kumai.

  Kumai had the look of a lawless frontier outpost, with a chocolate-coloured river and a weird assortment of boats lined up along the water’s edge. Large floating islands of jungle vegetation often made their way down the river, getting tangled up on our anchor chains and requiring fending off with poles.

  The people of Kumai, looking rougher and wilder than their more cultured Balinese counterparts, were nonetheless just as friendly. “Hello, Meester!” rang out from every corner, and dark faces invariably lit up with broad smiles as we passed by. We began ca
lling “Hello Meester!” back to the flocks of children, causing them to break into uncontrollable fits of giggles.

  Garbage was strewn everywhere. An open sewer ran beside the crowded outdoor market, adding its own pungent note to the riot of smells that rose up from the dirty stalls selling overripe bananas, withered carrots, raw seafood, whole chickens, with heads and outstretched legs still attached, and large smelly bins of dried fish that looked like strips of shoe leather. Walking through the market was an experience that involved all the senses.

  The market offered many surprises. We spotted a child thoughtlessly dragging around a small brown ape on a chain. The young black-handed gibbon was terrified, clinging to anything it could reach with its long delicate arms in order to stop being dragged through the milling crowds of people. The boy was oblivious to the gibbon’s terror and continued yanking on the chain looped tightly around the animal’s slim hips, dragging it through the dust behind him. The skin under the chain had been rubbed clean of fur.

  We immediately arranged a trip into the jungle by longboat, along with friends on three other sailboats: our old friends on Futuna, with its young German crew, Nanamuk, another Canadian family, and Blue Ibis, a retired couple from England. We were heading into Tanjung Puting National Park, one of the world’s greatest natural treasures and home to a critically endangered species, the orangutan.

  From the moment we had heard that we could actually see the great orange apes, nothing could stop us from going. Many months before, we had stood on a dock in Australia, holding in our hands cruising notes and updates on the situation in Indonesia, pondering whether to come to the archipelago at all. There were so many potential problems: ethnic warfare in Kalimantan; possible all-out war in East Timor; political instability; an economic crisis; and pirate attacks. Many cruisers were steering clear altogether.

  Strangely, all the things we had feared before going actually happened while we were in Indonesia. There was armed conflict, right in Kumai, between Madurese and Dayaks. East Timor, a province that wanted to re-gain its independence against the wishes of the Indonesian army, did explode into full-scale war. Indonesia’s government was toppling, and new political leaders were trying to establish themselves. Piracy was rampant throughout the archipelago. The Indonesian economy was imploding. A state of chaos ruled. Yet despite all this, Indonesia, with all its variety and mystery, held us in thrall.

  For our group from four sailboats, we hired four small riverboats, called kelotoks, four captains, a cook, a cook’s helper, two English-speaking guides, and half a dozen other miscellaneous boatmen. We also engaged four young men to sleep in the cockpits of our sailboats and chase away any would-be thieves while we were gone.

  We bought our provisions on the morning of our departure, with the help of our hired cook, a young man of twenty-five with the unlikely name of No. Over the next three days I was to become particularly fond of our hardworking and talented cook, who, outfitted in a feather headdress and tomahawk, would have looked every inch the archetypal handsome North American Indian brave. He had shoulder-length shiny black hair, high, slanted cheekbones, and flashing dark eyes. Indeed, my initial assessment that No looked like a warrior proved accurate, as later in our trip we were transfixed by his stories of local wars between the men of Kumai and those from the island of Madura.

  In between endless hours of peeling vegetables for our large contingent, the quiet young man told us about the most recent battles. The Kumai men had been victorious, he explained, because the local witch doctor had used black magic to give them extra courage and valour in battle. A few months earlier, they had avenged themselves on the Madura men, unwelcome transplants from an island near Java. One of the Madurese had wounded a Kumai man with a machete. In return, the Kumai men murdered several of them. Only the arrival of the army had prevented a full-scale war.

  The four women in our group met No at seven in the morning on the day of our departure to buy food for all of us and our hired crew, thirty-five people in total. We Western ladies, clad in our usual attire of modest long skirts but still looking very large and conspicuous, followed No as he wound expertly through the market, carefully selecting bundles of fresh ingredients. Many of them, we couldn’t even identify. Watching what No bought, and in what quantities, and comparing this with the delicious dishes he concocted over the next three days, ended up being one of the more interesting parts of the adventure. He bought, for example, more garlic than he did onions, three different types of fresh ginger, many packets of tofu, and small neon-coloured shrimp chips which, when deep fried, expanded like popcorn. After watching the stall-owner’s children play in the open sacks of rice with their dirty bare feet, we ladies unanimously voted to buy a complete unopened twenty-five kilogram sack of rice, even if it ended up being too much.

  It took us five hours to complete our purchases. Then, with watchmen installed on our sailboats, we were soon gliding smoothly in our blue wooden kelotoks up the Sekonyer River. The river itself was sluggish, narrow, and the colour of milk chocolate. Exuberant plant life crowded in from either side. It was just like the Jungle River Cruise ride at Disney World, with monkeys in the trees and colourful birds overhead, with one big exception: this was real. I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I was awake.

  A couple of hours’ travel through a narrowing river, surrounded continually by dense greenery, brought us to Tanjung Harapan, the first of three stations inside the nature reserve. We were greeted by the gregarious character who was, in the end, to define our magical experience in Kalimantan.

  Michael Junior stood up to about my knee, although if he stretched up his long, hairy brown arms they would have reached well over double that height. As he walked, which he did in a comical side-to-side bobbing gait, his elongated hands had to bend sharply inwards to avoid dragging on the ground. His face was brown, furry, and utterly adorable, with an oval-shaped white fringe around his eyes. The eyes themselves were large, perfectly round pools of liquid brown. Michael Junior was a gibbon, a black-handed agile gibbon to be exact, and the friendliest, funniest, most endearing creature you could imagine. He looked like the ideal monkey of everyone’s childhood fantasies. He wasn’t a monkey, though; he was an ape, a higher order of primate that includes the orangutan, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla. Apes, we learned, are offended if you call them monkeys.

  “Agile” certainly was an apt description of Michael Junior’s physical prowess. He looped nimbly around, swinging off the limbs of trees and humans alike as adeptly as any circus acrobat. He wanted to play, and whoever was prepared to indulge him got to swing him around, let him do flips between their arms, and throw him into the air, with Michael Junior fearlessly holding on with various combinations of his four hands. He loved people and saw them simply as a friendly extension of his jungle playground. At two years old, he was a teenager, rescued from captivity six months before as a desperately ill and mistreated creature. Animal-loving volunteers in the park had helped transform him from that pathetic creature into the fearless, mischievous, delightful clown he now was.

  Michael Junior’s only simian companion was Nyo, a grey female long-tailed macaque similar to the ones we had fed in the monkey forests of Bali and Lombok. Nyo had also been rescued from captivity and, like Michael Junior, chose to make her home around Tanjung Harapan. Macaques have rather fierce and aggressive-looking faces. They have pointed Vulcan ears and expressive protruding eyebrows that bob up and down, communicating curiosity, mischievousness, and, sometimes, anger.

  Christopher learned about the mercurial nature of macaques the hard way. As soon as our boats arrived, both Nyo and Michael Junior had hopped on board. Nyo, to everyone’s great delight, had immediately nestled into Christopher’s lap for a snuggle. Seven-year-old Christopher wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Nyo was immediately attracted by his right nipple, plucking at it curiously with her dexterous fingers. Then she did something unexpected. As if suddenly understanding the purpose of that little pink bud, she made an explor
atory nip at it with her teeth, and then, satisfied with the results of her investigation, began to suckle!

  Christopher, understandably, didn’t like this. He pushed Nyo’s hungry little mouth away. Nyo didn’t like that. As I helped separate the monkey from the object of her interest, she bared her teeth, revealing alarming canine-like fangs and emitted a combination growl-hiss. The one thing Nyo couldn’t stand was rejection. Eventually, we had to chase her right off our kelotok, but that made her really mad. A few minutes later, she darted in without warning and gave poor Christopher a nasty bite on his ankle that he truly didn’t deserve. Christopher wasn’t badly hurt, but naturally enough he didn’t want to have anything further to do with Nyo, or with any other of the many macaques we met during the rest of our travels.

  For her part, Nyo was slow to forgive as well. She continued to snarl at Christopher from various treetops. Evidently hell hath no fury like a female macaque scorned. For the rest of our time there, Christopher hung close by my side, jumping onto my hip whenever Nyo came near. In order to make my proprietary relationship perfectly clear, I began to pick conspicuously through Christopher’s hair, as if searching for lice, just as a mother monkey might do. I hoped that this would make it obvious to Nyo that if she made any further advances on my baby, she would have to fight me first. My attempt at monkey language worked, and Nyo made no further hostile advances. All the boys thereafter made very sure they were wearing T-shirts at all times.

  We had timed our arrival at the next stop, Pondok Tanggui, to coincide with dusk, because that is when proboscis monkeys came to the river to feed. And sure enough, the jungle was alive with large brown monkeys whose weight bent the branches of the trees as they moved.

  Proboscis monkeys are so named because of their elongated noses, which grow almost as long as Pinocchio’s, but which, being made of flesh instead of wood, hang down somewhat more limply. The males, especially, have huge noses, hanging ridiculously from their faces like droopy sausages. We saw hundreds of the endangered monkeys congregating alongside the river, and counted as many as seventeen in a single tree.