Borneo Pulp

by John Francis Kinsella

The outboard advanced slowly in the afternoon heat, following a branch of the Barito River, searching for the main stream that led down to the sea. Although the river and its branches were clearly indicated on the map, it was obvious that they were lost. Their guide did not bother to look at the map; he was incapable of reading it. The branch they had taken was perhaps the Kuin Kecil, which should have been five branches down from the last bifurcation in the river.

  The boatman shut down the motor and the boat rocked slowly on the waves created by the wake that washed back from the banks. There was an almost total silence except for the hum of the insects and the occasional cry of a bird or monkey.

  Brodzski was haggard and perspiring heavily, his white hair stood up and the tee shirt stuck to his bulging stomach. He had not shaved for two days and in spite of his continuous exposure to the sun, his skin was white as ever. A plain Gauloises cigarette hung from his lip and small pieces of black tobacco stuck to his chin, in the corners of his mouth yellowish flecks of spittle had formed.

  At sixty seven and in his condition it was no place to be lost, up a god-forsaken river in Borneo. The previous night he had drunk a more than an advisable quantity of cognac, by the time he had been ready for bed he had almost emptied the bottle. He had not slept well on the simple camp bed of the guesthouse.

  The windows were covered with mosquito netting, which would have been effective if they had been well nailed to the wooden frames, they were as useful as an open door. The mosquitoes attracted by the prospect of a good meal had poured through the opening and the soft skins of the Europeans been severely bitten by the insects. Ennis had always been careful to take his quinine tablets, which unfortunately did nothing to alleviate the mosquito bites that he scratched furiously the whole night.

  It was three days since they had arrived in the area, to finalise the choice of the mill site. Their goal had been to satisfy the investors that there was no other viable coastal site for the mill. A site where the wood rafts could arrive at the quay and the pulp could be loaded directly onto ships, without having to negotiate the smaller rivers of an inland site.

  Brodzski, the father of the pulp mill project, had insisted on being there for the record. He had always personally selected the sites for the mills that he had built in the past. He had set the scene so that he could declare his site at Martarpura suitable site for the pulp mill, in the presence of local dignitaries, the members of the consortium and their Indonesian partners.

  He had paid for a television crew from Paris to be present; they were to record the event for their programme ‘Man of the Week’.

  Everything had commenced in good spirits a few days before in Jakarta, where they had waited patiently as Riady negotiated with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Communications for authorisation to film in the area. It was simply a question of a couple of extra days, and the TV team had no objection, relaxing by the hotel pool during the day and in some of the less reputable bars by night.

  George Marie, the business news commentator from Canal One, led the TV team. Claude Brechingnac represented the business press from the leading daily Parisian financial, Le Tribune des Finances, covering the binge at Papcon’s expense.

  The good atmosphere in Martarpura soon degenerated and become tense as Strecker argued with Brodzski over the potential logistical problems of the site that Brodzski had originally selected. It had been a reasonable choice when Brodzski had first envisaged the project, when the plan was for a small mill of 150 tons a day. Three years later it had become quite different, the logistics of a 1,000 ton a day mill excluded the choice of Martarpura.

  It was obvious to Strecker that the existing infrastructure was insufficient and the additional traffic and pollution to the towns of Martarpura and Bandjarmasin would be unacceptable. Brodzski sulked, as it became evident that one of the alternative sites would have to be considered. Strecker’s typical diplomacy did not help as he proceeded to explain why.

  ‘Listen my dear Brodzski, it stands to reason the original site is unacceptable, nobody in his right mind is going to agree to transporting millions of tons, fifty kilometres up and down the Martarpura River for the pleasure of it!’

  Brodzski’s programme went badly wrong when Strecker finally declared that they would explore the estuary of the Barito River for an alternative site. It was easier said than done, where the river joined the sea, it was almost twenty kilometres wide.

  Neither their boatman nor the pilot spoke English, Riady acted as interpreter for Strecker, who asked directions from the Indonesian engineers who accompanied them from the governor’s office, they smiled and pointed in different directions. After some discussions, they decided to continue down the same branch and the boatman restarted the motor. They advanced slowly as the black water washed sluggishly against the sides of the boat. The river palms leaned out over them, dead trees and driftwood bobbed in the black stream.

  As the river broadened out they accelerated, and from time to time, the boat hit a sunken log that floated unseen just below the surface of the water. Riady suggested politely to the boatman in Indonesian to go easy, as they would damage a propeller if they went to fast, he simply grinned broadly and continued without any perceptible change of speed.

  They continued for about forty minutes, until a small sandy beach appeared. It looked like a suitable place to stop and take their picnic lunch, Riady signalled to the other boat, which followed at about fifty meters distance to join them. They clambered out onto the white sand. A slight breeze was blowing in from the wide expanse of water; they were probably very near the open sea. They spread out exploring the beach up to the line of vegetation, which formed a dense barrier between the sandy beach, which was in fact a finger of dry land that bordered the mangrove forest that lay beyond.

  There was no shade and Brodzski decided that he would take his lunch in the boat where it was a little less hot. The boatman had erected an awning where he could at least sit down in reasonable comfort, shaded from the burning sun.

  Riady with the governors men got out the lunch boxes and distributed beer and soft drinks, there was cold chicken and rice wrapped in banana leaves, for desert were bunches of rambutan, a lichy-like fruit covered with a hairy skin and crawling with ants.

  The cameraman, Patrick Michel, filmed the scene for the TV coverage, it looked good to him, courageous industrialists and engineers braving hard conditions for the sake of French exports, disembarking on a distant tropical beach, led by the adventurous businessman, Antoine Brodzski.

  Ennis looked at Brodzski as he lay flopped out on the bench seat, his head back against the side of the boat, his mouth hung wide open, several insects lazily buzzed around in the prospect of a meal.

  Ennis turned and saw Riady waving to him about one hundred metres further down the beach; he had appeared out of an opening in the thick vegetation, where he had gone to explore with one of the governors engineers ten minutes earlier. He was with two elderly men who appeared from their dress to be local people, Ennis made a sign indicating to the others to follow him in the direction of the new arrivals.

  Nestled in the dense tangle of mangrove swamps beyond the beach, was the tiny village of a group of people who called themselves Orang Laut, or sea people. The village was a collection of tottering huts on stilts, lined with crab traps cobbled together from rattan, hanging out to dry with old fishing nets. A few naked children played amongst the chickens and yapping puppies in a fog of smoke that rose from slow burning wood fires.

  It was a picture of another age, the women hid shyly behind the open doors of their huts; they were bare breasted, the children half in fear and half in astonishment screamed at the unexpected appearance of the strangers with the tall Europeans, the likes of whom they had never seen before.

  The villagers had little contact with the outside world. Their only means of transport was by boat to the log loading station, a few kilometres down the river, where an access road had been constr
ucted.

  They eked out a traditional living, fishing and catching crabs, selling a part of their catch to the recently arrived loggers for cash to supplement their meagre needs. Cash gave them the means to buy a second-hand outboard motor and a transistor radio, as well as gasoline, canned food and beer.

  The headman told them that life had become increasingly difficult. In the past, they had collected rattan and wild animal skins, which they sold every few weeks, in a large village twenty kilometres down the river. There they bought rice and other necessities.

  Times had changed, the Orang Laut could not compete with the people who had arrived with the logging camps, who hunted with more sophisticated means and collected rattan with ease from the tree felling areas. The villagers did not possess power saws and other modern tools; they had only recently saved enough money to buy their outboard motor.

  The headman invited his unexpected guests to his modest hut and offered them coffee, the weather beaten construction rocked on its pilings as the heavy men seated themselves on a rattan mat. Ennis glanced around at the scanty assortment of tinned foods and bottles, which rattled on the rickety shelves.

  The traditional necessities were few as the villagers slowly became dependent on the material products from the outside world. It was certain that their ancestral life would not survive much longer and the men would be forced by their new circumstances to work as lowly paid labourers with the loggers.

  As they looked around, signs of the twentieth century were evident including the Japanese made outboard motor, which had replaced the hardwood paddles to propel their narrow boats.

  They knew nothing of electricity or running water. They bathed and refreshed themselves in the stream that ran to the nearby sea. Their drinking water was collected in large earthenware jars, handed down through generations, which were the common property of the villagers, as were almost all other belongings.

  They were a hardy people, who had lived in a precarious harmony with the mangrove forest for generations, alongside the leeches and dengue carrying mosquitoes, living off the fruits of the forest and sea.

  They were a fishing community and Strecker quickly realised that their knowledge of the sea and the coastal waters could be of invaluable assistance. The headman explained, smiling broadly, showing the stubs of his blackened teeth, that the currents were fast and dangerous for those who did not know them. There were many drifting sandbanks that lay just below the surface of the water, which were navigational hazards for ocean going vessels. The coast was frequently swept by strong winds and even dangerous encounters with sharks were not unusual for the fishermen.

  They were accustomed to their way of life; they ate pig, monkeys, snakes and monitor lizards with the rice they bought in the village upstream. They were not Moslems he told them, he was not ashamed to say that he was not circumcised; they had their own beliefs.

  The villagers had never known schools or mosques, they had never known doctors or taxes, they had only heard of those things in recent times in the larger villages and on the radio. They had led their simple life undisturbed by the problems of the twentieth century, or the benefits of modern medicine and education.

  The visitors left the village leaving cigarettes, beer and drum of gasoline. Reinbold always resourceful gave the children a couple of packets of peppermints. They had seen another world, which left a vivid impression of a way of life that they were changing, with industry, deforestation and pollution.

  It was one thirty already, they had left the camp at ten that morning. Ennis figured with nightfall at six they had not much room for manoeuvre. They gathered their cameras and maps, waking Brodzski they clambered back into the boats.

  Strecker and Reinbold were in the second boat with Rudini, they still seemed to be enjoying the outing. Reinbold was laughing with his Sobrane cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, he was pointing out something of interest to Strecker.

  They continued downstream and soon the river widened, there were more fine white sandy beaches, not quite like the postcards of Bali, but littered with masses of natural debris, fallen palms, dead vegetation, coconuts and seaweed. They navigated along the east bank until the estuary of the Barito gave way to the open sea, where in the distance they could see the surf breaking on the sandbars.

  They followed the coast for another five kilometres, hoping to discover another site, their boat rising and falling with the waves, as the surveyed the monotonous the landscape. Indicating the beach the boatman turned towards land and without difficulty, he deftly beached the prow of the boat on the sand.

  On the beach again, they examined with aimless curiosity the debris that they had seen from a distance, there were masses of strange nuts of all kinds, many five or more centimetres in diameter, there was an incredible variety of seashells. Very few people had every landed there, apart from the locals who perhaps took shelter when the weather turned rough.

  They looked out to sea there was not a boat in sight, just the line of the surf, maybe a kilometre out. It was no different to the other places they had seen previously. The wind had become stronger but there were no menacing clouds on the horizon. Riady translated the boatman’s explanations that it was a windy coast and the local fishermen avoided it. There was nothing else to see and they headed back to the Barito River, where apart from the occasional log that they hit jerking the boat in the water; the ride was a lot smoother than the bone jolting buffeting on the sea.

  They returned to overnight to the Forestry Department guesthouse, which lay on the riverbank, about ten or twelve kilometres downstream from Bandjarmasin. They washed off the sweat and dirt of the day, with five gallon cans as make shift showers or pouring water from a large plastic tub that stood on one side the broad veranda, a spectacle for the local children who had gathered to watch with amusement the large white bodies of the Belanda.

  They ate rice and chicken with cold beer - it never varied - on the veranda in the early evening twilight, lit only by a couple of naked bulbs. It was relatively cool compared to the heat of the day and they soon relaxed enjoying their beers.

  After dinner, the cognac appeared and they got around to discussing the results of their explorations over the last days. They agreed that the coastal area did not appear to be suitable as an anchor point for sea going cargo vessels and lightering also appeared to be ruled out, because of the sandbars that followed the coast.

  Riady had invited a couple of the local villagers, who explained that kapal laut, the larger ocean going ships anchored in mid-stream, few ships docked at the small port in Bandjarmasin, where only small tankers and cargo ships could be unloaded. It was the reason why log rafts were floated further down the Barito where they were loaded onto the ships at anchor.

  It seemed that the only suitable site in the region was between Bandjarmasin and the mouth of the Barito, on what were then rice fields. The land could be bought for a low price; it was flat and the river navigable along its banks.

  The principal disadvantage was the poor resistance of the soil. The construction would be costly. The piling required to underpin the concrete raft on which the main structures of the mill would be built would need ten thousand concrete piles, twenty five meters long, to be driven into the soft alluvial soil. The piling alone would cost twenty or thirty million dollars.

  Brodzski shook his head and Strecker shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘The sub-soil in Martarpura is much better suited for the construction, there’s solid bed rock just below the surface.’

  ‘I agree, but don’t worry we can solve that problem, were civil engineers, that’s a one time cost. You can’t build the mill in the middle of Martarpura. The site here is cheaper and better from a logistical point of view, transport requirements will on the other hand remain with the mill for the whole of its life.’

  Ennis saw why Strecker was in favour of that site, apart from the technical and logistical questions, he imagined Strecker rubbing his hands at the
thought of his share in the civil engineering contract increasing by twenty or thirty million dollars more.

  Brodzski was furious, he was not at all ready to give in so easily, he argued against the additional cost of the Barito site, but he was already outvoted. Reinbold sided with Strecker, as did the Finns. They had spread the maps on the table, amongst the glasses and bottles, under the feeble lights that flickered as the small diesel generators of the guesthouse stuttered from time to time.

  ‘In Martarpura there’s existing infrastructure and workers,’ said Brodzski. ‘It’s near the airport and the river will supply the millions of litres of water needed for the process plant.’

  ‘The infrastructure is inadequate and the volume of fresh water demand would be too great for the river during the dry season,’ retorted Strecker.

  ‘Mr. Brodzski I’m sorry, but I must agree with Mr. Strecker!’ said Reinbold, ‘You are right that the Barito site is costly, but the logistics are against the Martarpura site.’

  Hakkala who had been silent for most of the time, apart from the occasional question intervened.

  ‘He’s right, in the last few days we have seen the sites proposed by the men who have spent months investigating the problem. We don’t have much choice, the Barito site is not the best for building a big mill, but, from the logistical point of view we have to accept it as superior to the original site at Martarpura.’

  Brodzski sat back crossing his arms, then he fumbled for one of his Gauloises, which he lit, then drained his glass of cognac and lifted his hands in the air.

  ‘If that’s what you think, what can I say!’ he almost whispered, his voice trembling.

  DEFORESTATION