Nick's Sad tale
Photograph courtesy Philip Greenspun
You guessed it! Nick here. Today I've got a sad tale to tell, but someone has to do it. Something we saw last year that just blew me away, maybe even brought a tear to my eye (but I'll never admit to it). Our guide, who we called The Hiking God, told us about Cara and her brother Carl. Later we got to meet them in person, so I can testify (can I get a witness?) to the truth of the story. If you need a minute to fetch a nose rag, go ahead before you read on.
Cara was about 3, cute as a button, red-haired, not too tall (as you might expect from her age) and she was eating some foul-smelling fruit off the forest floor when Hiking God found her on one of his rounds around the perimeter of the forest. She looked pretty ratty then, hair mussed up, sitting on the path, mother nowhere in sight, picking at a piece of durian fruit. She looked like she hadn't eaten too well, and she had this very sad expression, one of confusion and loss, in her eyes. Hiking God looked around and called for her mother ("Selamat soree', bu!") No answer. Since Cara (he actually gave her that name later, as you will come to know), appeared to be okay, he thought something must have happened to her mom, so he did a reconnaisance of the surrounding bush.
This was the typical secondary bush, not the clear, awesome primary forest of the old days. It had been cut down and burned at some point in the last twenty years, probably by one of the early groups of transmigrants to come from Java and attempt to settle in the untamed Gunung Leuser area. Being traditional slash-and-burn agriculturists, they just whacked away at the "jungle" as they called it, thinking it to be a place of ghosts and evil spirits and obnoxious biting creatures. Then they burned it to the ground, leaving the place looking like the inside of a Karo Batak fireplace, a mess of ashes and charred stumps, and cremated organisms. Instead of the cathedral-like towering diptocarp trees and filtered sunlight their ancestors might have known and enjoyed, now the tangled mass of vines and brush and prickly nasties were all that had grown back and was what Hiking God had to hack through to get to the broken body of Cara's mother, crumpled up at the base of a giant Banyan tree.
Now Hiking God was well aware of the dangers of this forest, as the scars that raked his leg and arm bore mute testimony to the pain and evil circumstances that had befallen him. Well, what do you expect- the forest and its vicinity is filled with the creatures of local legend- Sumatran tigers, Sumatran rhinos, Sumatran elephants, Siamese crocodiles, Burmese pythons, and the absolute worst killer of all (take one guess), the fierce hominoid bipeds that have ravaged the world for millenia, the two-legged, ten-toed, bloodthirsty, short-sighted greedy humans. Cara's mom had not been mauled by a giant cat or gored by a nearsighted rhino, rather she had been shot in the head with a high-powered rifle. And now, her red head lay facing the canopy of the forest, her unblinking eyes forever searching for her children. (I hope you don't mind me telling you all this.)
Now Hiking God was acutely aware of what had transpired, as in his long career he had encountered such scenes before. He was sure there was another child involved, perhaps a very small infant, but he also knew there was nothing more he could do at this point. The infant would have been carried off by the killer, and would very soon be on his way (I say "his" way, because as we later found out, the infant boy was Cara's brother, Carl) to a place far from this forest, most likely kidnapped and sold into slavery to a travelling Southeast Asian circus. Carl would not have gone without a struggle, but would have been pried out of his mother's final, protective grasp and would have been carried off, perhaps in a dirty burlap sack, screaming for all the world to hear, all the world except for one.
Since there was nothing more to do at the moment, Hiking God returned to find Cara crawling around on her belly in search of roots and grubs (you know, those big fat, juicy beetle larvae that bore into rotting stumps?) and stuffing some green leaves into her mouth. She screamed in fright and anger and bit him right through his Ranger shirt down to the fibula (that's the big bone I think in his arm). Another scar to add to his collection. She soon calmed down with his soothing words and calm stroking of her red hair and he headed back down the path to the Ranger station.
Back at the station, Hiking God cleaned her up, and got her the first good meal she'd had in at least a day, some milk and a few bananas, typical breakfast around there. Then, after checking her for signs of leeches and ticks, he locked her up in a small room, no more than four feet square, with bars on the door so she couldn't escape. Then he went home, as it was getting late, and it was time for his favorite t.v. show, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Now, you might be saying- hold on there, Captain- something doesn't quite fit here, but what I'm tellin you is just what Hiking God told us around the campfire the night we first made camp along the Bohorok River last year. We didn't believe a word of what he said either, though a few of us had nightmares about it all night as we tried to sleep under our open-air tarp in the middle of the jungle, about five miles as the hornbill flies from where the murder took place.
But the next day, as we tubed down the river back to Bukit Lawang, we pulled over to the bank at the Ranger station, got out of the water, and followed Hiking God up to the exact same identical room where he had taken Cara a few months before. And to our utter disbelief, there she was! Cara stared out at us, pretty as can be, and reached out her little hand to us (she still couldn't speak a word, maybe because of the trauma she had been through)- reached out in greeting and in search of some human warmth and kindness. Hiking God stopped me from going any closer, though I protested in further disbelief, because he said that we might give her a cold and there was the danger that we would make Cara used to our company. That was to avoided at all costs! Why?! What kind of sick experiment is this to keep her behind bars and away from all but the most essential contact? What kind of life is that for a girl- just a few cups of milk and a handful of bananas a day?
Hiking God then sat us down and told us the reason why she had to kept locked up day and night. It was to keep her from getting eaten by pythons! Yes! It had happened once before to this very child as she slept in this same room! They had left the door open one night and a huge Burmese python slithered into the room and swallowed the baby whole. A wind must have blown the door shut, because the next day they found the python inside with a big bulge about four feet down from its head. And not a sound was heard from inside. The python was too big to squeeze out through the bars with the fat stomach and escape, so they caught and killed it, cut open the snake, and what do you suppose they found? Cara was sound asleep and woke up with the cutest little grin on her face, like she'd just had the funniest dream!
As we listened to his bizarre story, we learned more about this interesting place and its motley crew of keepers. A sign identified this outpost as the Bohorok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Center , a place where orphaned baby orangutans were brought when they were found in the forest, their mothers having been killed by poachers, or when they were discovered in passing circuses, learning their roles as red-haired clowns, full of monkey- shines and mischief. Or rescued from zoos or private homes, to which they had been sold by unscrupulous men, who thought only of making a fast buck, or rupiah, from ripping this great ape, this close cousin of ours, from its happy home. Ignorant, cruel men with little thought for the mother they had to kill in order to get the baby, who clings to the mother for several years like a velcro rag doll.
This sad tale simply has to end, right now, because the next chapter is a happy one and one that simply begs and shouts to be told. It will be told soon, and the next generation of Sumatran Trekkers and Virtual Trekkies will be the ones to tell this tale. It is a tale of hope, and triumph, of one young red-haired, cuddly, pug-nosed orang after another, rehabilitated, raised with its best interest in mind (which is why we had to keep away), and released, set free once again into the deep, warm, wet, rainforest home, its other mother.
P.S. Carl was found, safe in a cage in the basement of a moneychanger in Medan, and is now at the Bohorok Center undergoing the milk and bananas cure!
Stay tuned for more true tales from the rainforest!
Signing off,
Ranger Nick