By Louise Sullivan, United Kingdom

September 2008 volunteer

Deciding what I wanted to do in Borneo was easy. It definitely involved orang-utans, and it definitely involved pygmy elephants. After surfing the Net through many tours (all of which seemed very uninvolved), I finally came across a project where I could get involved in research, community work, tree planting and have a chance at seeing both the Orang-utan and Pygmy Elephant in their natural habitat. The two weeks also involved staying at the most eco friendliest lodge on the river! This seemed so much better than volunteering time in a zoo or park. Booked!!!

I felt very involved right from the start. We were all introduced to each other at the hotel and then taken to dinner where you got a chance to find out about your fellow ‘projecteers’ and their reasons for coming to Borneo to volunteer. On the bus journey across Sabah to Sandakan our guides explained all about the history of Sabah, the terrain, the project, our participation, the country’s development, the palm oil and the native animals. The details of what we were going to be doing and how this was helping the conservation effort were all explained further on short stops on our boat journey down the Kinabatangan river to Sakau.

Data Gathering

The first morning of data gathering arrived. I was very lively and excited for 5.30 in the morning, but the thought of a small motorised boat through the jungle to find animals was just too much for me to stay calm and blurry eyed! That first morning was one of the memorable visions of my life, the mist was just starting to lift from the river with the rays of sun breaking through. You could hear the animals and birds. It did take a couple of trips to try and remember not to just look at and photograph the wildlife, there were GPS co-ordinates, identifying and counting to do!!! Ooops!!

As the data is gathered and inputted onto a data sheet it builds a story of the animals lives and movements, allowing researchers to monitor how their numbers are doing and how much they rely on the forest for survival.

Tree Planting

There was also the tree planting project, this involved clearing away weeds and bushes for space for the tree saplings to live in. These new saplings also needed soil nutrients, in the form of leaves, from the lodge! So the odd hour here and there was spent gathering and bagging as much of the leaves from the Lodge grounds as we could. We also gathered as much of the rivers choking water hyacinth as the boat would carry to use as fertiliser too! This was an amazing two days. We got 11 or 12 trees planted. It gives you a great sense of achievement to know that you have planted a tree that may one day have a Pygmy Elephant walking under it, or an Orang-utan sitting in its branches. Incredible!!

Planting trees in the cleared spaces between the forest joins up the corridors to enable the animals to move freely. Animals are vulnerable without trees to protect them, especially the apes and monkeys.

School Visit

During to the two weeks we also had a day at the local school in Sakau to meet the children and teach them more about the fragility of their rainforest and why we were there. This was September 1st, my birthday J. As well as working directly with the children, we also painted the whole front of their school building with a mural of endangered animals. This has really brightened up the school. Everyone had a great day and again the sense of achievement was brilliant. The rest of the school children must have been very surprised to see their new brighter school building on the Monday morning. Personally this was the most memorable birthday I’ve ever had! Maybe my panda should have been drawn tucking into a cake!!!

Rumble in the Jungle

This afternoon (or was it morning?) definitely involved donning wellington boots! It was a trek through the rather wet rainforest on foot, getting ‘said wellingtons’ stuck in the mud or filled with water! We didn’t come across any apes, monkeys, deer, elephants etc, but did happen to find a tortoise and lots and lots of leaches!!! I probably frightened off any wildlife with all the ‘leach screaming’ and moaning! But it was fun looking back! It felt like a rescue when the boats arrived to pick us up on the soggy bank! What did we expect in the rainforest!!! :)

Prior to our jungle trek our lodge host Winston gave us a boardwalk tour with lots of amazing stories of his time as a soldier in the jungle. Winston talked us through what we could touch, eat, shelter under, drink from, get high from and use as medicine, as well as a list of ‘not to’s’ that weren’t that easy to remember!!! He also gave us a sample of leaves to eat.

Bush Cooking

Cooking in the jungle is fascinating, (even if it wasn’t quite the jungle, but the lodge grounds… near enough!!). But who would have thought that you could use bamboo as a cook pot! Not me! We collected some herbs and leaves from the boardwalk and got to work chopping and stuffing. The meatisaurus’ had chicken (no poisoning monkeys on this trip) and the veggies had potatoes (wild yams had we been lost in the jungle). The food was absolutely delicious! If only we had fresh bamboo at home to stuff and throw onto the open fire. It would be much more fun than the average barbeque!!!


Lessons Learnt

There were many interesting facts learnt during my time on the project, a few include:

o Sakau Rainforest Lodge is the only one in the area to use electric boat motors through the smaller outlets of the river
o Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in South East Asia
o Pygmy Elephants are on average three feet smaller than their Asian cousins and have bigger ears and shorter tails
o You can use bamboo to cook your hotpot!
o The female hornbill is sealed into her tree trunk hollow to nest and rear her chick, relying on the male hornbill to bring food for up to four months
o How to remove a leach
o Probiscus Monkeys are only found on Borneo
o Sabah is home to the largest flower in the world (Rafflesia)
o That Ludovic and Zoltan are not afraid of crocodiles (they took a swim in the river!!!)