jungle trekking

01Aug07

So, as I mentioned briefly at the end of my last post about “climbing” Mount Kinabalu… as great as climbing the mountain was, nothing could have prepared me for the exciting adventure I faced when I finally reached the bottom: alititude sickness. For four days and five nights I laid in my bed or on the bathroom floor just waiting for a spontaneous session of sickness! Talk about “wow factor”.
Anyhoo, on the fifth day I rose again and was able to finally start my second placement, jungle trekking. Sue and Isla, my work group, had been trekking for four days already with James and Gabili. The jist of trekking is that you walk throughout the jungle and look for the “semi-rehabilitated orangutans” (who sometimes are gone for days at a time) and see if they are building nests. [Sidenote: yes, orangutans build nests, high in trees, like Big Bird's.] But mainly, you just look for nests and other interesting things and scream about leeches. Now, I was really worried about spiders upon coming to Malaysia, but really, I’ve only seen a couple terrifying spiders. What you really need to watch out for are the cockroaches and leeches. I’ve never seen an actual leech, and because of this my only reference to them was that scene from “Stand By Me” which terrified me as a kid. While working in the Outdoor Nursery I’d come across a couple leeches, but they were all pretty small and usually just on my big rubber boots, easily flicked away. This was not the case deeper in the jungle. The sneaky things hang out on the tips of leaves, just groping around for something with blood in it. They must be able to sense you coming because they manage to cling to you as you pass by them, and they move pretty slow. I know this sounds ridiculous, but the leeches really slowed down the trekking. At least one every ten minutes. And that’s excluding the ones you catch on the leaves. To “deal with” the leeches we brought spray bottles with Dettol and water. A couple spritzes and the poor guys would be temporarily paralyzed and fall off. So generally we were pretty calm when we came across them. Just a lot of saying “pachat” in my angriest jungle whisper and flicking it off. But if they’ve already got a hold of your skin then it’s another story. Did you know that if you put salt on them, as people sugges, they actually regurgitate everything in their system back into your bloodstream. Gross, eh? One day, I brought my voice recorded with me on the trek so I could send some “jungle sounds” back to my parents and happened to record a “pachat panic” where I suddenly, in a weird state of panic, start screaming about a leech that had already attached himself onto a healing wound on my wrist. It’s quite funny. I might upload it on here soon, with some of the said jungle sounds whenever I remember to set it up.
So anyway, I only really got to have one day of full-on trekking, the rest of the four days were spent trekking/trapping for small mammals (mainly tree shrews and moon rats), but I assure you there were just as many leeches. Jomius and James took us on the trapping treks and were always teaching us Malay, playing tricks on us and being generally giggly and friendly. After one of the treks they brought out some beer and demanded we all have one. They even brought us ice cream one morning! So on the last day, we hid some beer with notes from orangutans in the last trap because it was always empty. It was very sneaky and we got lost in the jungle to do it, but their reaction was definitely worth it. Although, it did mean Isla and I had to stomach another beer, which we absolutely hate. Such sacrifice. We also got to do some nocturnal treks into the jungle to see the nightlife (unfortunately, no karaoke). The night treks were amazing, there’s just so much to see in the jungle at night and it’s sooooo loud. The point of the nocturnal trek is mainly just to give the volunteers a chance to see the jungle at night. But it’s also so that the rangers can sneak up on the orangutans in the outdoor nursery while they should be building their nests (nests are generally built at sundown so they can sleep in them). We went to great lengths to keep quiet and sneak up on them so we could see them without them noticing us, but five minutes away we could already hear them. They’re such troublemakers. All of the bigger big kids were on the roof of the cage for the littler big kids, just thrashing around and causing a lot of noise. There were no nests to be had on this night. They were already in a playful mood and having us show up in the dead of night was incredibly inviting to them. Within moments they were all climbing down and trying to climb us. Definitely a couple fun nights. I can’t get over how human-y these guys are. They’re all so innocently hilarious.
Now, we have a long lunch hour here as I’ve mentioned before and when you’re jungle trekking you get an extra long lunch hour because you just get so tired. You also get very sweaty, and as such it is common practice to hang up your clothes on the line to dry during lunch. The key to this working is that you shake your clothes out before you ever put them back on. Now that being said, Isla and I were rushing to get back after lunch one day and just as I was about to walk onto the road from the lawn, I felt something scratch my butt. Immediately I grabbed onto the offending spot in my pants and was horrified to grab something through them. Something that crunched. I stopped and said to Isla in my best panicked-yet-calm voice, “Oh my God, there’s something in my pants.” As I said this, I looked down and saw two little drops of moisture coming through where the object I was holding was. “I think it’s alive. Isla, you have to put your hand down my pants and get it out.” What’s funny about this situation is the sudden commradery and sense of important duty that comes in these situations. Isla already had her best panicked-yet-calm face on. You know, where you open your eyes real wide and don’t blink whilst keeing your mouth just slightly open, ready to reassure or question at any moment. This is where we giggled a little bit. We were in the middle of a highly public area, talking maybe a little bit loudly because of the panic and while my left hand grasped my butt, my right hand was undoing my pants and Isla was preparing for the worst. We were trying to do this as discreetly as possible, but somehow I feel we were failing. So Isla goes to grab whatever I’m holding through my pants and, of course, she kind of flinches and then I flinch and neighter of us are holding the “thing”. Isla pulls out her hand admist a bunch of “Did you get it?”s and “I think I got it”s only to reveal a cuple of sesame seeds. There’s a moment of silence where I think, “Well, that’s embarassing, I just made her put her hand down my pants and I’ve got a friggin’ hamburger in my pants.” (I later found out Isla thought the same). What follows was this:
Me: “Is that it?”
Isla: “I think so…”
Me: flips back pants to reveal a huge, still writhing cockroach laying on the inside of my back pocket.
Both: lots of screaming.
Onlookers: lots of laughter.
I was so startled by this huge cockroach that I accidentally flipped my pants back closed and lost sight of it, had to awkwardly run back to the rest house, go into the washroom and take off my pants. The gross thing about cockroaches is that if you crush them, their eggs go everywhere. So then I had to wipe a whack of these gross cockroach eggs off my legs. And THEN I had to get Isla to come in and check to make sure they were all gone. All while the cockroach flitted around on the floor. It was all very hilarious and terrifying.
Anyhoo, that’s it for now. Watch out fer them dang roaches.

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