New job, new house

Didn’t really expect to be wearing socks to bed for warmth while living in Indonesia, but my new home is a bit chilly & it has been raining quite a lot over the last 3 weeks. I invested in a fleece blanket, am glad I packed jeans & several long-sleeved shirts & it’s a nice change not to be continuously sweating while simply sitting on the couch. 

Amir collecting samples

I’m living in the left half of the house (photo on left). Cristine, a graduate student from Italy who is studying macaques; their behaviour, eating preferences, and nutrition; shares the other half with her assistant, Amir, who is multi-talented and indispensable. He climbs 40-metre trees to gather samples, cooks dinners, fixes electrical cords, cleans fish, does motorcycle maintenance etc. etc. Cristine has been here for almost 3 years, so we communicate in bahasa Indonesia - me not having much Italian (that is, none). I’m sure I’m now picking up the accent with my bahasa ‘though, so it’ll be a strange variant that I’m speaking. I went out to the forest with them a couple of weeks ago & saw one large monkey travelling through. There are 3 bands in the local area - 2 resident in UnHas forest and one in Bantimurang National Forest, the boundaries of which abut the Learning Forest. 

The picture to the left is my side yard - a wide rice field surrounded by the limestone hills. The higher elevations have pine forests and lower down the slopes are covered with mixed species dipterocarp forest. The karst geology leaves a landscape with steep-sided hills, frequent landslides in the rainy season & river valleys that vary from narrow to wide plains. I saw an article in the news that karst is also subject to sinkholes - one of these swallowed a man in Florida a couple of weeks ago. That’s not one of my major concerns. It’s a beautiful landscape & a relatively quiet location. The road is about 100 metres downhill, so there’s some traffic noise, constant hum of insects and a weird snuffling noise outside my house last week (I didn’t get up to check - sounded like a wild pig, which is possible). I’ve started seeds for a garden - lettuce, tomatoes, beans, zucchini & herbs - and am looking forward to fresh produce in a few months. The local market is convenient (2 days a week), but I’m pretty sure I can grow equivalent or better veggies right outside my front door.

Tree roots on rock

Local scenery

The job? Well, it has some potential. My work partner Nasri & I have several projects that will make the Learning Forest a more valuable and organized resource for research, education and local outreach that are priorities for the university. We’re developing a short after-school environmental programme, need to start work on a waste management plan for the main site, and delineate boundaries of the agroforestry model area as a first step in establishing that as a learning tool. I’m being very generous with our timeline - in six months we may see a few baby step results.

About once a week or so I should be able to get into the city, Makassar (when the cats aren't using my bike) to work at the university office & eventually teach a couple of subjects. Not to mention, get a caffeine fix at Starbucks & pick up some groceries. Next week is already looking busy - a quick trip to Singapore for visa renewal, then a two-day session given by Mangrove Action Project to learn about rehabilitation of degraded coastline habitat. More on this later.