The Adventure Continues...

Well I haven't used this blog in a long time, since I came back from Indonesia. However, it has come the time, and I am off to parts unknown again so I thought I should start this blog up again. I am off to South Africa to take a couple of Field Guiding courses as there is a lot more knowledge I would like to gain in working in the field and working with animals in the bush, and this should also forward my career.

I have also copied the blog to Tumblr too as I think it might be easier to follow and certainly easier for me to manage. This time I should more consistent internet so I should be able to post more regular updates.

Anyway come 7pm tonight (GMT) I will be on my first flight, of two, and starting my trip to the outskirts of Kruger national park in South Africa.

Let the next adventure begin!

Cheerie bye

Another Late Entry

Again I appear to have left this place lacking an update for a good couple of months. It’s just finding the time to write between the work and the recovering from the work. Now though I am coming to the end of my stay in Tasikoki. I cannot volunteer forever, unfortunately, and that time has come, I must move on and earn some money. That being said I shall always be working with animals in one aspect or another and I will expand this blog to cover future adventures and escapades not just my time here at Tasikoki, as long as I can keep up with the updates. But I digress…

So what has happened the past 4 months? People wise, we have had a nice flow of volunteers all coming and going, sharing experiences and generally being amazing fun to work and live with. As for I have been able to cover most of my Enrichment Coordinator work, working through enrichment catalogues creating frameworks, and other around the centre. At the moment I have had to take back a few extra responsibilities as we mourned the loss of our Primate Husbandry Coordinator, as he had to go back home due to back difficulties, but these things cannot be helped. On a side note we had to renew our visas a little while ago which involved us travelling to Singapore for a week. It was an interesting trip all around really, the city is great, as far as cities go (never particularly liked cities). Though we did learn that we had been in the jungle too long through events like standing in front of a window of a mall expecting it to be an automatic door, Western World 1 – Scott 0! On the other hand, as vacations involving me usually turn out, we had to investigate the Singapore Zoos (Zoo, Night Safari, River Safari & Jurong Bird Park). These turned out to be some of my favourite Zoos I have visited – pictures to be uploaded, when I am back in the UK, to my photo blog and 500px account. I have made a note to visit these if and when I have long layovers win Singapore in the future.

Anyway enough about me, an update on the animals. Our real change in the animals here is we have had an increase, two influxes of confiscations have occurred in the past months. Many Sulawesi Crested Macaques, 1 Gorontalo Macaque, 1 Long-tailed Macaque, 2 Bear Cuscus, 1 Reticulated Python, 1 Pig-nosed Turtle, and a menagerie of birds have all joined the animals already in safety at Tasikoki and are doing much better for it. It is important more than ever that Tasikoki now has the support in needs in order to build facilities to accommodate the victims of the illegal wildlife trade.

On that note I think I’ll mention some of the stories of our new arrivals:

·         There is Rudi, a very “chatty”, young Crested Macaque who had been chained up, around his waist, for over 2 years to a tree at car wash in Manado with no shelter from the sun or rain.

• Jacky, the macaque featured by the BBC, whose story won’t air in the Crested Macaque documentary in October but will be in a web program on the BBC website at the same time, his story is very much typical. He had been tied around the waist to a tree, in this case in a tree, over hanging a road. This restricted existence, forced to live with close air pollution, had been home for many years. Most shockingly, soon after removing him from his tree, a passing vehicle destroyed the tree, by some miracle this hadn’t happened during the long time he had been living there.

• Then there is Jack, a Gorontalo Macaque, whose suffering I witnessed first had with a group of volunteers on our way to our Wednesday excursion before Christmas. He had been tied to a post under mango tree at a tyre workshop after moving from Manado. The owners had taught him how to smoke cigarettes; he also has a damaged hip joint from some unknown cause.

• There is also Bobby, another case of animal cruelty as well as the illegal wildlife trade. An extremely skinny mature male Crested Macaque, his fur had also turned ginger-brown, instead of being its usual jet black, due to malnutrition. He has since gained some weight and his fur is turning back to its usual black.

• Two Ornate Lories were recently confiscated from a house near Mt. Klabat. A common story with birds here, they were chained to frames hanging outside a house, unable to fly and being fed unsuitable food for a high energy bird like a lorry.

• A Papuan Sulphur-crested Cockatoo was rescued recently. Again tied to a perch, however, outside of a restaurant near Manado. Unfortunately she is a little psychologically disturbed from her captive condition, patrons and owners.

• Two young Bear Cuscus were confiscated off of villagers on Bunaken Island after their mother had been killed and eaten. A common story in the illegal wildlife trade, an animal’s parents being killed.

• A large male Cassowary kept as a pet in a backyard with a pile of junk and a bunch of chickens. A large, dangerous, fruigvorous bird being hand fed fish, rice and sambal… that’s just not right.

• A quite severe case of this trade. A VERY skinny, young Crested Macaque was kept by the side of a very busy road. He had been bought to be trained and used as a Topeng Monyet (Google it, it’s terrible). Well apparently he didn’t perform well so he was called stupid and left to starve by the side of the road.

These are but a few examples of the cases and miss treatment of wildlife that arrives here. All wildlife in the illegal wildlife trade (believe me it is a lot, the trade is worth $20 billion annually) are subjected to conditions like this and worse. It is only places like Tasikoki, with people who care who can help them. If you do care please support these organisations in whatever way you can, it doesn’t have to be Tasikoki just somewhere that helps. Everyone can help make a difference.

So this is my last update from Tasikoki, but won’t be the last update of adventures with Wildlife. We’ll see where the next one turns up.

Ta Ta

Scott

Racing to Play Catch-up

Hi All,

Sorry I haven't been keeping this updated. I have been quite busy, the internet has been iffy and I just generally haven't got around to doing it. It's been 4 months today since I have updated it, so I head to the end of my 5th month of stay here in beautiful North Sulawesi I think I should update on the past months. The first month here was jam packed, so hopefully I can summarise the past 4 months whilst doing them justice.

Whilst sitting in this place almost designed for musing I shall find somewhere to start.



Well to begin with, since arriving here I have seen many people come and go. All have been great people and I have learnt so much from them, they will all be remembered and I wish them luck with everything they do, and we will hopefully meet again in the future.

Many things have happened, I am back as the enrichment coordindator again which is great, I have almost sorted all the work frameworks I needed to do which means I can get back to designing and making. Working great with the new Primate Husbandry Coordinator, a macaque enclosure has been redesigned, and many other enclosures made, and almost complete. We are slowly building up a great team of coordinators to support different areas of the centre.

Very many more excursions and trips since November, seeing baby Green and Hawksbill turtles at the Turtle project supported by Tasikoki. Many trips to Tangkoko National Park to see the Spectral Tarsiers (Tarsius tarsier) (lots of them), the Crested Macaques (Macaca nigra) (likewise lots), Bear Cuscus (Ailurops ursinus), Hornbill (Aceros cassidix). Also encountered the BBC on several occasions now, whilst filming a documentary on the Yaki (Crested Macaques) due to air in October (in the UK) so make sure to check it out.

I visited Vietnam for a week, to see the Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Project in Cuc Phoung National Park, and to see the return of a pair of Owston's Palm Civets (Chrotogale owstoni) back to their native country of Vietnam to join a breeding program of these rare civets. Perhaps in the following days I write individual posts of some of these events in more detail like Vietnam. It was a great trip, nice to see the place and see these civets I have had some work with head "home" as it were.

A little bit about how I have been doing... great! Not much has changed about me... except maybe my hair. I still have the same mentality on animals and the life here as I arrived, I love it and it won't change. Not many new experiences outside of work as most of it here is work, and that's great. To add to my list of illnesses here I got a strange skin infection over Christmas and New Years, I think from using dirty gloves, but that is all sorted and was nothing major. Christmas and New Year were great here. I was still working but just a great atmosphere with the people here, a few parties a local's houses and such. I went for a run a long the beach at midday on Christmas Day, can't say that very often. It wasn't supposed to be a run, I wanted to collect a large clam shell I found for enrichment purposes, and the sand was so bloody hot I had to run! New Years was great to, a nice calm little party with the few volunteers left here, and then up to the top of the tower at the Guest House for midnight, when the horizon exploded into fireworks! Great to see. 

Many of my days off now, have been involving snorkelling instead of work now, so much so, to include a day off when I was snorkelling for three and a half hours about 500 metres off the coast. You see so many fish and so much stuff; otherwise I would have been out there so long. Many beautiful things out there to see, Parrotfish, Pufferfish, 3 species of Clown fish and many other miscellaneous reef fauna, and not to mention Banded Sea Kraits (Laticauda colubrina). I must get a photo of one of those Sea Krates before I leave. Many beautiful wildlife spotting opportunities on site too. I have seen many beautiful snake species, Asian Vine Snakes (Ahaetulla prasina), Sulawesi Black Racer (Ptyas dipsas), Coconut Snakes (Chrysopelea ornata), Celebes Black-tailed Rat Snakes (Gonyosoma jansenii) and many more. Not to mention gorgeous spiders, many Orb Web (Nephila pilipes spp.) species and Sulawesi Black Tarantulas (Cyriopagopus spp.), the former being simply stunning, but not as plushy as their South American cousins.

It's great being here for so long, you get to learn the animals and know their behaviours, know what they like and don't like (in the case of Is and Bento), and gain the trust (or at least tolerance) of many of the individuals. All the animals here are just characters, many of which you will gain the trust of simply by being here for a few weeks, others you really have to work on and you a get a sense of accomplishment when it happens. I have had several of these such accomplishments. First of all with Is and Bento, so much so that I begin to understand their actions a little more, such as Is' spitting either wanting something you have, wanting you attention or getting annoyed at you when you are "winning" a game such as trying to retrieve the hose when someone accidentally got to close with it. Bento more of begin his house keeping service, whenever I got to the enclosure there is always something he wants cleaned and returned such as his bag he likes to sleep in, or his cloth he likes to clean the enclosure with. This desire is often indicated by throwing said cloth at my face. Hey, if I was taken from the wild by poachers as a baby and been put into captivity would throw my dirty cloths at people with some kind of indignance even though they are feeding me and giving me things I enjoy doing. Other such trust I enjoyed working towards was that of Beckham, the alpha male of the release group. He is one handsome monkey, all Crested Macaques have an obvious Mohawk/crest - hence the name - at least that is what I believed until I saw Beckham... Beckham, unlike the others, has a Mullet, and it works, it is almost as if he woke up one morning and thought "I'm too tired to do anything with my hair today" caught he reflection in a pond and thought "Hmmm, who is this handsome monkey" and never looked backed. I didn't do this by any extra effort on my part or spending large amounts of time in the primate centre, we try to limit time people spend down there as some macaques find it stressful and others we want to release we don't want to associate anything good with. Whenever I walk past the groups many macaques ignore my presence, a bit step from being a new volunteer when they actively try to grab and scare you. However in recent months whenever I walk past a few, including Beckham occasionally lip-smack towards me (a friendly greeting in macaque terms, at least of many Southeast Asian Species). Another of these lip-smacking indicators of approval came from a Long-tailed Macaque (Macaca fascicularis) called Freddie after I gave him the mother of all hermit crabs (a least 8cm long), whilst handing out hermit crabs to the other Long-tails. These Long-tailed Macaques I was unsure as to whether they did the lip-smacking, and in fact they do! The next macaque to gain my trust will be Stare (another Long-tail) even if it kills me... or he does. He is a very angry macaque and I understand why and respect him for it... and I always like a challenge.

Hopefully I can update soon on specifics of events, but here is a brief overview. If no update then next will be Singapore to renew my visa and visit various aspects of their supposedly magnificent zoo.

Ta Ta

Scott

Selamat Pagi

Hi all,

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to update this in while because the internet is really temperamental here in Sulawesi. It also makes updating through Facebook and Twitter quite difficult a lot of the time too.

I have been here in Tasikoki for 3 weeks already! It has gone really quickly. All the volunteers here are amazing and it is so much fun. Some have already left who arrived with me, and who were already here, but it fun to meet them all and share stories. I am sure in my six months I will see many waves of volunteers. I already know of one group at the end of November, and about two waves of volunteers coming through in December. Even though you have to wake up at 5:30, it is still good, especially since that is pretty much sunrise! I have been really busy, working on all the routines which is good fun, and this week is the first week I am Team Leader for routines. As well as this, I am the enrichment coordinator (obviously), which is good. I have come up with a few ideas which have had varying amounts of success; I have also helped the other volunteers come up with some amazing enrichment ideas. On top of these two responsibilities, I have been the head of the new bear enclosure project for the past week, as the usually leader (Brooke) has been away volunteering at another Masarang project for a week. I am also the only person working on a training and enrichment project with the orang-utans (Is and Bento) here http://www.mic.polyu.edu.hk/index.php/create/research/touch-project. Finally, on top of these roles, I am being trained to be the cover volunteer coordinator for the days he is off or sick. So I am going to be nice and busy for the next six months or so!

Other than work, spare-time has been fun too. In my first week, on Wednesday (our half day), we went to the Masarang sugar palm factory in the mountains which was interesting.  After this we travelled around about, saw a geothermal lake, which you were technically allowed to swim in, but no one did… It didn’t look to inviting, might have been amazing though. We also went to visit some hot springs up in the mountains, since the whole of Indonesia is volcanic, they are quite common. It was quite amazing… There were Pine Trees in the middle of the rainforest around these springs! I am not sure if they are naturally, I think they are.

I have been down to the beach at Tasikoki a couple times, it is really nice, volcanic black sand, really warm water, and really strong currents along the beach and in the lagoon when the tide is coming in and going out. I have bought a snorkel locally as there are several good places to snorkel along their beach; a pier, a small coral reef and bit of mangroves.

Seen quite a lot of large spiders around the place in the past few weeks, mostly wolf spiders (I found one in my shorts) and a couple tarantulas. Seen a few snakes (none venomous yet) just a couple green racers and a brown-tailed rat snake. Loads of geckos, small lizards and a couple Water Monitor Lizards, I really wanted to catch the largest one I saw (maybe 2 foot long) to have a closer look.

I have been to the local supermarket (like 30 minutes away) a couple times with a group of volunteers that is quite an adventure in itself. I wasn’t built for Asia, I am too tall, especially the taxis, luckily some of these taxis have a place for you to sit in a doorway, effectively hanging part-way out of the car, so I sit there, and it is so much fun. I am also beginning to love the Gangnam Style “song” as that seems to be the theme tune of our supermarket trips, so loud you can hear it for hundreds of metres around the taxi. The supermarket itself is really westernised as a lot Sulawesi (and probably the rest of Indonesia) is. But going to the supermarket or any town or city is fun. You feel like you’re famous, everyone is staring at you, it feels so weird but it is fun at the same time. You here people shouting Bule, which is Indonesian for foreigner, or people saying “Hello Mister, how are you?” even Mister to girls which is quite funny. You even occasionally get asked if they can take your picture, sometimes not even with them in, but to put on Facebook to show people they met a foreigner.

A couple days ago I went to a local market in a place called Tomohon with another volunteer (Edwin) and the volunteer coordinator (Graeme) because it was our day off. It was really quite interesting, all the locals staring again, but also really surreal. Again, we weren’t built for the market, lots of ducking but that is beside the point. Just walking through seeing all the local fruit for sale, some western clothes, some loose, dry rice and spices, amazing amounts of multi-coloured fish of all sizes!... and then you turn around and people are selling mobiles phones and SIM cards, it was so weird, but good fun none the less.

A couple days ago I had an extremely unfortunate and severe group of problems and illnesses, I felt so bad, but I am mostly better now. Luckily, like one of the Danish girls said, I am smart enough to find out what was wrong with myself and fix it myself. First off I got really bad back pain because I had pulled a couple muscles in the base of my back, which I assume was caused by the fact I was working on different projects all week, all of which involved heavy lifting or digging. The next day, my back pain hadn’t lessened at all but I know had a massive headache/migraine that I couldn’t get rid of and started to get a little bit of a sore throat and blocked sinuses. That evening we had a party at the Eco-lodge to celebrate the female Javan Leopard going to Java after 2 years of trying to get her there. As I started to head to the eco-lodge I was beginning to feel even more unwell, and it was real struggle to eat as I was losing my appetite. I then began to get a fever, the giveaway being that it must have been about 30°C and I was feeling cold and shivering. So I eventually left the eco-lodge, got back to volunteer house, took a load of painkillers and went to sleep. I felt a bit better the next day, but kept taking painkillers. I let Angela and Simon (the people running the project) and they said for me to stop taking the painkillers to see if the symptoms were just being masked, so I did. That evening the headache, back pain and fever came back with avengance. The next morning my back pain had gone down and fever had gone, but I still had my headache, so I made sure to take a bottle of water with me for the shift before breakfast. After breakfast and lunch I had forgotten to take water with me, so I just drank during the breaks, and that’s when it began to get interesting. First of all I couldn’t physically make myself eat at all that day, except for the watery pineapple at breakfast. My headache was still bad. But now new, weird symptoms began to emerge. First of all it was getting hot, and the normal response is to sweat, except I got an odd sheen of watery sweat all over me, which dried off… and then I didn’t sweat for the rest of the day, which was odd I thought. A couple hours later I was starting to get back pain again, but this time I noticed it was actually kidney pain, which I have never had before. I then desperately needed to go to the loo (toilet) and it became weirder… as I peed blood! That’s when I thought I must have become very dehydrated! But on top the fever may have been cause by a kidney infection as there was no water to clean them, and I had caught a bit of a cold off another volunteer as there wasn’t even water in my blood to help with my immune system! So that evening I drank 2 litres of water, a cup of salt water, and two cups of really sweet sugar water. Within a few hours my kidney pain had gone down, there was no more blood. The next morning I drank a litre of Coca-Cola, to try and get some slats and sugars I needed back into my body, then two more litres of water. No more symptoms of dehydration and my appetite has come back slightly, presumably since water is needed for digestions and everything in your body. Still not full hydrated, but on my way there, still drinking tons of water and taking a larger bottle with me to work. It certainly pays to be smart! However my fever stayed with me for 5 days! So I went to a hospital in Manado to see what was wrong. It could have been a simple infection, or Malaria, Typhoid, or Dengue Fever. They all show similar symptoms but the latter are a lot more dangerous. Unfortunately they cannot identify most of these problems through blood tests until after 4 days. So I went to the hospital on the 5^th day and had a bloody test. Luckily it came back saying I had a simple infection, so they gave me tons of antibiotics and I feel much better and am back to work.

The end of my fever and infection came at the perfect time too. The volunteer coordinator has now suddenly left Tasikoki so now another volunteer (Brooke) and I have been promoted to volunteer coordinator for the time being. Another challenge on top of many, but I sure we can handle it just fine!

But all is good, despite being dangerously dehydrated; I would not miss this for anything! Everyone who can do this sort of thing, even for a couple weeks, should do.

I’ll try to keep this regularly updated, internet depending.

Cheery-bye

Scott