Tales of a Female Nomad

by Rita Golden Gelman

  There is one baby in the nursery who has had to be adopted by one of the Dayak workers. There was no female ex-captive to adopt and nurse her, so Dr. Galdikas assigned a human man with a bottle to be the mother. Day and night, while the human “mother” eats, sleeps, reads, bathes in the river, and walks in the forest, the baby clings to his clothes, and defecates and urinates on him. In the wild, orangutan babies do not leave their mothers for two years.

  It is five-thirty in the morning, two days after we arrive. I am settled into a dormitory that is one of several buildings in the clearing known as Camp Leakey. I am about to accompany two Dayak men into the forest. As instructed, I am dressed in a long-sleeved shirt over a turtleneck, long pants, two pairs of socks, the outside pair pulled up over the pants, and gloves. We have sprayed Deet insect repellant on our clothes wherever they overlap: where the gloves meet the sleeves, where the socks meet the pants, and where the socks disappear into the sneakers. It’s leech protection. (I am also taking one doxycycline a day for malaria prevention. After my Mexican skin-peeling experience, I won’t go near anything with quinine in it, not even tonic, as in “gin and.”)

  For the last two days our guides have been following an orangutan mother and her baby, noting everything they do, every tree they feed in, and every fruit and leaf they eat. There are several teams of Dayaks who are helping Dr. Galdikas record the details of the orangutans’ lives in the wild. Last night, at six-thirty, the pair of orangutans went to sleep and the young men returned to camp in the dark. Today, we are going to follow again and take notes. We have to be at their tree, which is one hour away, when they wake up.

  It is still dark when we walk the few hundred feet across the clearing and enter the forest. We are stepping carefully, lighting our way with flashlights. Already, even before dawn, there is a noisy cacophony of songs coming from the forest. From our right, there is a cackling staccato voice.

  “Monyet,” monkey, whispers one of our guides.

  Gibbons, those long-armed aerial gymnasts, also sing their musical greetings to the world, unforgettable songs that get louder and louder until the gibbons are singing to miles of forest creatures that they are there and a new day has begun.

  While I concentrate on where my next step will be placed, the ubiquitous cicadas, sounding like dozens of chainsaws chopping down the forest, whine and tick and whirr and buzz. Day and night, sometimes so loudly that you want to hold your ears, other times no louder than a hum, millions of male cicadas vibrate a membrane at the base of their abdomens and score the background music of the tropical forest. Every minute of every day the cicadas play their endless concert.

  As dawn appears tentatively and sparsely through the overlapping leaves a hundred feet above our heads, we step carefully on slippery logs and planks and twisted roots that mark the path. In the depths of the forest, the air, heavy and damp, smells like mildew and signals that we have passed into another world, where our human senses will be challenged by a new way of experiencing the environment.

  Dr. Galdikas has a rule: no talking in the forest. Our silence magnifies the voices of the forest creatures and focuses our attention on the magical world we have passed into. A world of exquisite spiderwebs woven in the sparse underbrush, still wet with diamond drops of dew. Moss. Leaves. Branches. Monstrous roots. Massive trees. And the chorus of gibbons and monkeys and cicadas and birds. From time to time we stop and stand motionless, listening, looking, observing. From the songs and the sounds, I know I am surrounded by animals, but I see none.

  Finally the guides stop and indicate that we have arrived at the tree where the orangutans are sleeping, a mother and her baby. When we arrive, there is no orangutan in sight. And then, about fifteen minutes later, leaves rustle and one of the guides points. I see nothing, but I am looking for a big red orangutan, three feet tall, carrying a baby. It’s the wrong “search image.”

  What I should be looking for is a black spot in the leafy canopy, a big clump where no light is coming through. That means a body is blocking the spaces between the leaves. Since the body is not lit from below, there is no reflected light, and the big red orangutan is a big black shadow. If we were searching for an orangutan to follow (as opposed to one whose location we already know), we would also be listening for rustling leaves, cracking and falling branches, and fruit pits and inedible bits of bark dropping to the ground.

  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.

  Th
ere 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.