Progress and Pictures

Last Sunday, the girls and I returned home from Phnom Penh and Ben also returned home from the forest.  He had been out there for 16 days straight.  He had just run out of food so was looking forward to eating – anything.

He brought with him some pictures he had taken. Unfortunately he had forgotten to take our small camera and the only camera he had was the one on the GPS.  One we haven’t used before.  We had upgraded the GPS to include the camera one, wondering why we needed it.  Well it has proven its worth.  We have a picture of the banteng that he saw – albeit very small (there is no zoon on the GPS!). And, also shots he took of the latest building progress.  Enjoy.  I have a recording of a languar (or leaf monkey) barking at Ben – need a better internet connection before I can post that).

Can you see the brown spot in the middle of the page?  That is the Banteng.

Here he is, zoomed in, but somewhat pixelated – same shot.

Here is the building #1 on August 27.  It is starting to look like a building.

And here, from September 1, is the building with three-quarters of the roof on!  Exciting.  Now just a floor and we can use it (walls are superfluous – we have never liked walls!)

Finally, here below is the future site of our house.  The forest is a Deciduous Dry Forest so not as muggy and oppressing as a Tropical Rainforest.  Beautiful in wet season – a little bit leafless in dry season but still a thousand times better the concrete jungles that Phnom Penh is becoming.

WWF Report on the Status of the Banteng and more

This is for me mostly - to keep as a reference... But

Here is a link to a summary of the report of from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature about the banteng that they conducted in 2011.

And here is a video showing a Cambodian news report of the Banteng Status in Cambodia.  And another, this time a long report from CTN (Cambodian Television Network) with a more detailed analysis of the situation for the Banteng.  Finally a photo essay showing some of the challenges that Wildlife Conservation Society is facing in the North East as they protect the forest there.

Did you know that July 31 was World Ranger Day?  I didn't know that there was a World Ranger Day but there is.  So there you are!

Hunter Gatherers

Ben has been camping in the forest for the last ten or so days while the first building is going up.  Right now, the posts are all up.  The long beams between the posts are on.  The up and down pieces are attached to those and the "plan" (that is the Khmai word for the horizontal bits of wood that you nail the tin onto) are being nailed on.  After that goes on, then the roof.  You can tell I'm not a builder - I don't even know the English words for all these pieces.  I'm not sure that Ben does either because he always uses the Khmer words which I can't remember.
He has had about 2-4 helpers out there with him.  Some have started clearing hiking trails.  The rest helping out with the building.  And then one of them usually stops work early and makes the meal for everyone.
Ben has been telling me lately how we really don't need to have a garden when you live out there.  Today he said we don't even need to buy anything from the shops.  This morning he called me and said they had caught about a kilogram of perch.  This is exciting for everyone because they have all pretty much run out of food stocks.  Ben had taken out a bunch of dried beans and they are almost used up.  His helpers don't seem to like his beans.  They'd prefer to eat rice and salt.  He had given his workers an advance of money so they could buy food to take out there for themselves, but that just meant they bring a tiny bit of dried something - so it had long since run out.  But every day they gather leaves.  They hunt for various kinds of protein (you don't really want to know what these are) and of course they have the rice they brought from home.  Today they had the fish, with some sour green leaves.  Yesterday they ate rattan shoots and the day before that bamboo shoots.
So, if we can learn to identify all these good greens, when we move out there we should never be in need of vegetables.  I think I still want a garden however.

Spotted - Three Banteng

Report on the Banteng
By Amelie Davis

Daddy was in the forest today looking for snares.  He saw three banteng bulls (Bos burmanicus).  Two of them ran into the forest, the third bull stayed but as they went towards it, it then trotted away.

A banteng is a type of wild cow.  They are like domestic cows except they are wild.  A banteng can weigh 400 to 900 kilograms.  The banteng legs always have white socks which reach the knee.  They also have a white rear end.

In the world, they estimate that the number of banteng is 5,000 to 8,000.  In Cambodia from 1960 to 1990 the population reduced by 90 percent.  The banteng has been classified as endangered since 1996 on the IUCN Redlist.  In 2011, World Wildlife Fund said that there were 2,700 to 5,000 banteng estimated in Cambodia.

The baneng are suffering from loss of habitat that land concessions have been taken for rubber plantations, and other agriculture.  Banteng are also suffering from hunting in their dryland forest home.

We hope that people will stop hunting banteng inside this new community forest and it will hopefully be protected from agricultural land concessions which are destroying the banteng's habitat.

Jumping Caterpillars

It has been a long time since we made any installments on this blog.  Ben went to Nepal so all work stopped out at the Forest.  It was a very unfortunate time to go as it was a lovely dry July and the rice farmers did not have enough rain to start planting.  Naturally as soon as he returned, the rains started and all his potential helpers were no longer available.  So instead he got to stay home with us which we all enjoyed.  Last week he went to the mountain and camped for two nights.  The river and mud hole outside the village were too much of an obstacle to traverse with a loaded pickup so he parked that in the village and hiked out.

With no tools and only one man he couldn’t do much work so he traipsed around the forest and had a fun time.  The forest is beautiful this time of year, everything so green and pretty.  I want him to write about it but who knows if he’ll get to it but he spotted two troops (??) of leaf monkeys – silver langurs.  He was able to watch them in the trees for quite a time.  The male and leader was most alarmed and annoyed.  Making loud grunting sounds.  They were way up in the trees and photo attempts were not successful.  He does have a recording of the males agitated scolding.  He also came across a herd (now that is the wrong word) of wild pigs.  They were running away luckily and there must not have been a very angry one there otherwise Ben would have had to run up a tree. 

Well, finally the weather cleared up properly and on Monday, he was able to actually drive the pickup out there loaded with all sorts of equipment and materials.  Today I believe he got another post up on the building.  The most interesting thing however was the spotting of these giant caterpillars.   He has about five workers out there with him.  He noticed them jumping away in fright at something.  On investigation, they had found a large caterpillar, about seven inches long the fatness of a thumb (maybe Ben’s thumb which is pretty large as thumbs go).  The workers were terrified of them.  Ben was told that they jump on you and that they can jump about a metre!   But when they tried to make them jump, they refused to perform.  They are the furry kind that usually sting so it wouldn’t be nice to have one jump on you out of the blue!  Being so big as a caterpillar, they must turn into a pretty big butterfly!  They found about three of four of them and they eat leaves from the Chleat tree so maybe he can keep them till they become chrysalises and see what they grow into.  They might just escape in the meantime. 

And that is the story of the jumping caterpillars.

The building has begun!

Ben was finishing up as much as he could before he leaves for Nepal and Base Camp on a little hike.  He managed to finish up the road project at the end of last week, so it should now be passable in the mud and they started the first building.  He is finally onto the fun part of the project.  He camped out in the forest this week with 4 workers from our village here in Rovieng – apparently a vast improvement from sleeping in the village on chicken mite infested mattresses with khmer movies (actually Khmer dubbed Thai soap operas) on till 10pm everynight and and all sorts of other diversions!  They managed to put up two posts and cement them into the ground as well as build a little shelter to sleep in.  They took out about 3 kilograms of fish to eat and the workers foraged in the forest and they ate wild mushrooms and bamboo shoots with their fish.

 

Here are some pictures of latest “Improvements!”

The corduroy road

 

 

The camp

 

 

 

Barefeet and Thongs

For the last two weeks we have been trying to hastily fix the road before the wet season totally sets in.  While the bridge over the creek is finished, there is about 150 yards of swampland to cross on both sides of the creek which is turning out to be as impossible to negotiate as the river is in the wet season.  We had been negotiating with a construction company for months trying to get them to come help us make a proper gravel road and they had been putting us off, always telling us to wait “one more week.”  Finally the wet season set in and they told us they could do it for us next year!  Yay.  So we have been trying to make the road usable. With little road building equipment to work with, we have been forced to become very creative.  Since we can’t haul gravel, we are using old logs to lay crossways in the road across the swamp and then lay a row of boards to drive that match the width of the tires.  Telling my dad about this, he told me that they used to use that style in the US in swampy areas and it is called “corduroy road.”

At the moment, we are about three fourths finished with that project.  We lay about 30 yards a day, and there is about 250-300 yards total to cover.

Last week we had a big rainstorm all night long and by morning the river had overflowed its banks.  Since I couldn’t take the pickup to work, me and my four workers walked to the bridge site and found our corduroy road under about 50 cm of water.  The actual car bridge was under about 4 meters of water.  At any rate, we didn’t get much work done that day.  Luckily by the next day we could work again as it didn’t rain anymore and the water had gone back down so we could drive across again. 

We have stacks and stacks of lumbar at the building site which we hope to start putting into a “headquarters” very soon.  We took a truckload of old wood from our house in a big old Russian Army truck – call an “Elephant Truck” in Khmer.  The truck left Rovieng at 6 am and arrived to the village about 11 am.  As we approached the mountain, the truck kept getting bogged despite the fact that it had a winch and a 4 wheel drive.  So we kept offloading lumbar along the way in piles until the truck was finally light enough to make it to the mountain.  He only got back to Rovieng at 11 pm that night.  It was a well earned $225 for Mr. Mao.

Since it rains all the time, I have had to trade in my steel toed boots for thongs which I end up tossing straight away and going barefoot for the rest of the day. I think my feet are getting tougher because I walk around barefoot in the thorns and I don’t seem to notice.  The other day, I took a 20 km hike through the jungle in shorts and thongs.  Which I only thought Australians knew how to do. 

Last week we said good bye to Savuth.  I was very grateful for his 3 months of help and support.  I think I worked him half to death because he went back to Phnom Penh and spent the next three days in bed with the flu.  Thank you Savuth!!

If the nice dry weather holds I’ll be able to finish the road next week and start working on the headquarters.    We’ll see.

The road immersed

Future site for the Lodge