Six o'clock this morning is different than the other mornings in the past two months at the camp. With the mixed feeling of glad and sad together, and I am sure that everyone at the camp feels the same. Today's main task is to pack things up. Yes, it's our last day here.

Yesterday, more than a hundred of people from the villages of Kuala Cenaku and Kuala Mulia, folks from Mapala Oasis, Mapala in Pekanbaru, Jigalahari and Walhi were here for the sacred hand over ceremony. I didn't really want to realize that this is called an end (for now). It's been one of the life-time memorable experiences and I am so honored being a part of the camp. Volunteers of different nationalities, local communities and partner organizations altogether
have made this happens and I am so thankful for them.

I still remember the day that we started clearing the land back in late September, finalizing the camp layout and design, having the ritual ceremony before putting the first post into the ground, launching the camp even though the Balai Adat was not yet completed, until everything was good for running the full campaign activities.

I will be missing the heat of the equator-on-your-head forest area in the sunny morning and the super lightning and thunder storms in the afternoon same day. I will be missing the annoying insect at dusk and thousands of mosquito bites that left a lot of scratched marks all over my arms and legs. I will be missing sleeping on the floor inside the mosquito net with more than ten others on the same roof. I will be missing the dry toilets that finally have no strong smell
of human waste (but someone still miss the point!). I will be missing the brown chlorinated water pumped from the black-ever-seen peat land river and the surprising moment when the 1000 liters tank was empty as quiet an often that it lasted only for half a day.

I will be missing Kuala Cenaku food which main specialties are indomie, salted sardinefish, sardine, eggs and vegetables. I will be missing the shouting MAKAN MAKAN (eat eat), RAPAT RAPAT (meeting meeting), BANGUN BANGUN (wake up wake up) and the most important one CUCI PIRING (wash the dishes). I will be missing all the Boole Gila (crazy foreigner) and the crazy local nurse. This doesn't count the time that we were threaten by anti-Greenpeace protesters. We had to practice the emergency role play in the middle of the night and not everyone knew the same thing about the plan. I will not forget the expected and unexpected visits from the media, local government, police and military intelligences, strangers and all others unidentified. I will be missing all these moments after all.

Even though we are moving out from the area, it doesn't mean that we are abandoning our campaign in Riau. We have ignited the fight (non-violently) for the rights of local communities . They have to continue riding on and making it sustained. As I always believe that Greenpeace is an inspiring organization, we have already did our job. I am confident that they will win at last as the locals now are braver and dare to speak for themselves.

At last, I hope that I will have a chance to come back again one day as I already feel home and very welcome here. Terima kasih banyak semua orang dan sampai jumpa. (Thanks a lot everyone and see you again later)

Blogger: Topsi

Wansiri Rongrongmuang (alias Topsi), Regional Actions Coordinator for Greenpeace Southeast Asia based in Thailand, has been playing her role at the camp as a Camp Manager. She had spent totally 69 days at the camp.

Posted by Chuck at 11:19 AM | Permalink

No update from the camp today so I thought I'd post this photo (taken on 29 October 2007 by Oka Budhi).

Caption: Greenpeace activists work with locals to halt drainage by constructing dams on the peatland canals. This will prevent the peatland from drying out and releasing carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

-- Andrew, web editor (in Amsterdam)

Posted by Andrew at 10:20 PM | Permalink

From Hayden

I spent this morning at one of the dam construction sites as one of the standby medics. I was the only one who got hurt this morning though. I was climbing down the face of one of the dams when I used a piece of wood that hadn't been nailed in as an anchor (always test your anchors!). I came tumbling down into the water, along with my camera. My camera appears like it will recover. And I escaped with only a small scrape.

I departed the work site with about 15 hugs (turns out Indonesians are huggers - either that or they assumed that Americans are) - I even got a hug from our stoic finnish action coordinator, Petteri.

I'm really going to miss many people here. I've made a lot of new friendships with people from all over the world. And it's been an awesome experience to be a part of this camp, where people converge from all over the world for the same purpose: to save the remaining peatland forest (and all the stored carbon it contains.)

Right now Rob is stapling up all the articles that we're featured in. There are stories in many different languages from newspapers all over the world. There's actually not enough room on the wall for all of them. To see th articles is a great reminder that what we're doing here is making a difference.

Although I'm leaving, the the work of the camp is continuing. Many more journalists are arriving next week, and interest is continuing to pick up. It's almost a good thing that the dam construction is taking so long, as it gives more opportunities for the press to witness what is happening here.

I want to thank Rici, Rob, Geoff, Coang, John, Yudi, Hapsoro, David, Frode, JJ, Cedar, Yifang, Titis, Ranga, Oka, Imam, the U.S. Consulate in Medan, and everyone else who has helped make the camp work (and that's a lot of people, at least 200 others, not including all of our generous donors).

As I was leaving the dam site today, someone yelled "don't forget us!" - I'm sure that I will never forget this experience.

Posted by Andrew at 3:06 PM | Permalink

From Hayden:

Here I'm holding a piece of peat that was excavated from a drainage canal. Peat is a hugely important carbon sink and also provides a very rich medium to sustain an extremely biodiverse ecosystem (i.e. a lot of trees, animals, and plants).

In this area, the peat goes to over 8 meters (24 feet) in depth. That, my friends, is a lot of carbon.

Posted by Andrew at 8:11 PM | Permalink

From Hayden:

I wanted to write a quick web log entry about our major means of transportation here in this corner of Sumatra: The Pompong.

The pompong is THE means of transport on the rivers here. In fact, it's the only type of boat that I've seen on the Cinaku and Indragiri rivers.

The pompong is a custom made boat that is long and narrow, and comes in a variety of sizes. What they all have in common is an old school inboard diesel engine that can be heard from over a mile away. The engines have no electrics. It is started with a crank, just like the old cars. And being a diesel there are no spark plugs involved. The engine is then connected to a shaft that runs through the hull at a very shallow angle and sits just behind the middle of the boat. This protects the prop from river debris, which is important since the rivers here are almost swamps. It also allows the boat to go in very shallow waters, which is important for the work of the pompong. They use these boats for transport, fishing, and shipping.

The steering system is very basic, like everything on the boat. It uses two ropes that wrap around the steering column that then run back to the rudder. While the potential for steering failure is high, any problems can be fixed while on the water. I've been witness to this, as we lost steering through a narrow canal, but they merely retied the ropes and we were off again.

On Cedar and JJ's trip back to Rengat yesterday they actually lost the rudder. Luckily they were close to the village of Kuala Cinaku. The driver of the boat disembarked and disappeared in the bushes and reappeared about 30 minutes later with a new rudder. Having a standardized vessel for the entire region makes finding spare parts easier.

The name of the boat is derived from the sound that they make: pompongpompongpompong...

They are so loud it sounds like a helicopter approaching, and I'm sure some of the pompong drivers have long term hearing loss, as the sound can be deafening.

And the last feature of the ponpong is that anything goes; anything can be towed, no lifejackets required, smoking is allowed, even if you're sitting on the gas tank, and the capacity of the boat is as many people as can fit. This morning, on our way to the damming site, we fit about 15 people on the boat, and then towed two canoes full of people. We managed to get a crew of about 30 to the work site in one trip.

The pompong is what keeps things moving (including Greenpeace) here in Riau.

Posted by Andrew at 6:04 PM | Permalink

From Hayden:

So today is a pretty relaxed day, other than having about 100 people at camp today for day 4 of the fire fighting training (and on a side note I got totally shafted and was on dish duty yesterday and had to help wash what seemed like hundreds of dishes.)

The highlight so far today is that I just sat down for an interview with QQ.com, the fifth largest web site in the world (and the largest in China.) I was a bit circumspect as to why she wanted to interview me, of all people (as opposed to Hapsoro, our Indonesian forest campaigner, or Rob Taylor, the overall logistics coordinator) and Yifang, our Chinese forest campaigner didn't help at all when she supposed that she wanted to interview me because I'm "an attractive and charming American" - the internationals in the room thought that a bit of an oxymoron. Regardless of the reason I wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to tell 120 million people about why this campaign is important, and about how China and the U.S. are partners in leading the world in creating pressures that lead to deforestation - and how all of that links to global warming. I definitely hit all the important points, as to what she chooses to write, that remains to be seen. I wish I could read Chinese (or Mandarin, I suppose.)

I definitely got the feeling that some of my more assertive comments won't make it to print. Being such a large website their content is watched closely by the Chinese government, and any criticism of the government must be balanced with compliments. Needless to say, I didn't have too many good comments about China's role in forest destruction, other than that they are beginning to do a decent job of protecting it's own forests. And of course I linked the U.S. into that equation, as China is many times just the middleman for manufacturing of products that end up in American homes and buildings.

On a completely unrelated note, half the camp was awoken last night by a blood curdling scream. We all got up to look for the source for the scream, but to no avail. I think it was just someone having a vivid and vibrant nightmare, not a too atypical side effect of taking Chloroquine, an anti-malarial. It took me awhile to get back to sleep after that. Especially with the chainsaw snoring resonating from the women's sleeping quarters.

That's all I have for today. We're busy unloading materials for an upcoming activity that we're working towards. I'll write more about that next week.

Posted by Andrew at 3:09 AM | Permalink

From Harrie:

There were rumours going around that a Sumatran tiger had been spotted near the camp. Little did they know that soon they would have to deal with a greater disturbance. Representatives of the Dutch office were to visit the camp, accompanied by a world famous Dutch actor (OK, world famous in Holland at least). An initiative to create as much media attention as possible back home, which is very necessary as Holland is Europe’s largest importer of palm oil. And yet, the story of what is going on here is completely unknown to the Dutch public.

That is why the Dutch office recently started a campaign to confront the Dutch people with the fact that 60% of the products that we buy in the supermarket may contain palmoil. This means that the forests in Indonesia are burning for our groceries. Over the past 10 years our little country alone has been responsible for the disappearance of 1.5 million hectare of forest worldwide.

So, lots of work to do for Cees and the rest of the team. You know how they always say that holidaying Americans try to do Europe in a day? We tried to film the whole of Sumatra in just three. Starting of course with the camp and the recently burned forest surrounding it. Sad and angry I felt when I stood up to my anckles in fresh ashes. How is it possible that my country is involved in this?

The next day we wanted to film intact rainforest, so we can show the folks back home what the forests of Indonesia are supposed to look like. It took us six hours to get there. That is how much rainforest is already gone. It was only exactly at the spot with a sign saying ‘You are now entering Bukit Tigapuluh National Park’ that the rainforest began. That is why many of the locals would like to see that all the forest of Sumatra that is left, become a National Park. In their eyes that is the only way that the forests get some sort of legal status and the protection that comes with that.

For now, the land of the locals is illegally taken from them and it is heartbreaking to hear their stories. Cees, and he is a big fellow, was moved by this and the depressing sight of the surroundings of the camp. He probably did not expect to be living in an ashtray for a couple of days, but he is going home with a story that needs to be told. It is good to see that it is being picked up by the Dutch media. Then 78 musquito bites seem a very small price to pay.

Harrie(t)
Forest Campaign Communication Officer
Greenpeace Netherlands

[ Image: Palm plantation and forest in Kuala Cenaku area, Riau Province, Sumatra Indonesia. © C. Anderson ]

Posted by Andrew at 3:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From LI Yifang Forest campaigner Greenpeace China:

I started to write my blog on a major Chinese website since my arrival at the Forest Defenders Camp. Now it has already got 260,000 hits. A guy left a message like this, “Indonesia people used to treat our people badly. Why we help them to save their forest? ”

I consider this as a common query in Chinese people’s mind. All I want to answer is, “We are not just helping them; we are helping ourselves.” Even something unhappy happened in the past between us, we won’t be better off if the whole Indonesia becomes a desert. Deforestation makes Indonesia the third largest GHG emitter in the world. And the climate change impacts are not restricted in some certain countries. If we keep doing what we are doing now, 80% of Himalaya’s glacier will be melted; there will be more floods, more tsunamis, and more droughts. And no one is gonna escape from that.

Surely, we used to think in the logic of “my back yard”, “my community”, and “my country”…I am no exception. When I was in the Europe, western people criticized about China being the largest emitter of GHG, I replied as “then what did your country do in the past century?” But when talking about the solution of the world’s environmental crisis, there is no national border any more. We have to consider the planet as a whole.

Taking the forest destruction in Indonesia as an example:
Timber is certainly harvested in Indonesia, but then export to China. After that EU and the US import plywood and wood floor from China. So who should we blame in this chain, source of the timber, producers, dealer, retailers or the end consumer?

So let’s face it. We have no other choice but work together. Stop sitting there and blaming each other, we don’t have time for this. Take some real action now! At the end of the day, it is our common future; it is we sharing responsibility.

[ Image: Greenpeace paramotor spotting for forest and peat fires in an oil palm plantation. © Greenpeace / C. Anderson ]

Posted by Andrew at 3:11 AM | Permalink

From Hayden:

We all got up this morning at 4:30. The group of climbers wanted to make it to the edge of the palm oil concession without being noticed by the workers, or the security patrol. The edge of the concession, or what we call "the forest wall" is where the burned clearcut ends and where the native forest begins. However this native forest is in the process of being cleared for more palm oil. The "forest wall" is just how far they've gotten in clearing the forest.

To edge of the concession is about 4km away, but is clearly visible from our fire lookout tower. Rob and I were up in the tower at 5am as the team left. My responsibility was to run communications for the climb team, and also for the para motors, which were scheduled for a flyover at 8am. My new title, as Rob told me yesterday, is "Communications Hardware Coordinator", so now I'm no longer just the U.S. campaigner/volunteer. GPI is even putting up a photo of me with that title, apparently.

So, back to the action. The team, of all Indonesians, hung a huge banner (36'x30') from two trees across the road that runs into the forest from the concession. Shortly afterward Cedar flew over in the para-motor, this time with the wing that has the Greenpeace logo on it. We got some great images, and the entire event went remarkably smooth. No conflict with the workers at all. And as of this writing the banner is still hanging. We decided to leave it there as a parting gift.

[ read more about the action ]

In other happenings, we dug up some maps of the area, and I found out that the river that runs by our camp has it's headwaters in the hills, not near town, so now I've started to go for swims in the afternoon (I can't go in the evening, as the local residents believe that if people swim in the evenings, and have fun, that bad things may come.) Today I went for a swim with JJ, Frode, and Hengke, and we had a great time, diving off the dock. As we were getting out a boat arrived that was unloading about 80 huge bags of sand. We did the Indonesian thing to do, which was to pitch in and help carry the bags of sand up the dock to land. So we worked for about 20 minutes, and these guys were really surprised and entertained by 3 "bule" (white foreigners) helping them carry heavy loads up the dock.

And that's all I have for now for an update. Stay tuned. The most exciting stuff is yet to come. Also, I'm happy to report that there aren't any lingering effects from the lightning strike. I'm fine.

[ Image: Climber M. Ediandre climbing tree to hang a 10m x 12m banner saying, "Save our forest; save our climate", on the remaining forest adjacent to an encroaching oil palm plantation in Indragiri Hulu, Riau Province, Indonesia. © Greenpeace/Oka Budhi ]

Posted by Andrew at 3:07 AM | Permalink

From Hayden:

Yesterday evening, a very powerful lightning storm came through camp. As we though it was winding down I was crouched on the porch of the warehouse talking with one of our pilots, Cedar, when a lightning bolt struck a tree about 30 feet from us. A massive shock came up through my feet and into my legs. It was very painful, without a doubt the most powerful electric shock I've ever received. I looked at Cedar, and said some things that shouldn't be put into print, and then asked if we're okay. Both of us were shaken up, to say the least, and kind of stumbled back to the main building. It turns out that a lot of people felt a shock to some degree. Suzette, who was in the communications room (and my bedroom) writing an email got a major shock. It turns out that the electric charge likely came up through a ground wire into the room and burned into some of the floorboards. Also, our inverter, which converts the battery power (charged by our solar panels) from 12 volts into 220, was completely fried. So we're without power for some of our most essential electronics. But we're working fast to get a new one (and I'm typing fast, since this computer is running on battery power.)

So yesterday was a very exciting day and I think we're all lucky that no one was seriously hurt. And now I have yet another story to tell when I get home.

Posted by Andrew at 3:05 AM | Permalink