Day 5 - Lampuko Mampie Wetlands, Indonesia

I don’t know how I can possibly do justice to the experiences I’ve had in the last couple of days.  I’ve been chewing on thoughts of ways to describe the things I’ve seen and the people I’ve met and all I can say is that it’s going to take a lot of words and photos (thank you Chris Harbard for those since my battery died).  So pop a bowl of popcorn, pour yourself a glass of glug, put on your favorite background music and prepare to dig in. 

I’ll start with the easier one, which three days ago I thought would be nearly impossible to write about, but perspective changes all.  We took the guests in zodiacs upriver again, this time along a very shallow river with a cut in and out of the river mouth.  The local fishermen are friendly and waved to us, smiling and flashing peace signs as we pass.  They sat in groups on top of cabin roofs, or in the bottom of long, colorful wooden hulls with sputtering lawn mower sized diesel engines.  Sometimes they steered with a piece of rope wrapped around the rudderpost and drive like cowboys reining a horse from side to side.  They also waved us towards the right parts of the river and away from shallow banks.  One particularly friend crew even turned around and led us back into the river mouth they had just come out of.  As it was, the zodiacs were kicking up mud and driving with rooster tails from the tilted props the entire way. 

Several fish farm ponds were being excavated near the mouth of the river.  A giant smoke-belching front-end loader was digging irrigation channels and the vegetation was being burned off up and down the visible coastline.  The practice is devastating the native mangrove and coastal forests, and here probably infringing on the poorly protected national park.  Thanks to the low tide, wading birds were taking advantage of the space to roost for a little while, or probing the exposed mud with long beaks.  We saw pairs of regal purple herons similar in appearance to our great blue herons, scores of bright white egrets, fish-eating Brahmani hawks soaring overhead, whimbrels, and plovers.  At least three species of delicate terns also drifted around the boats, plunging into the water occasionally to retrieve small silver fish. 

The river became quieter as we headed up against the flow.  Shacks and small areas cultivated with crops like banana, corn and coconut were sprinkled along the muddy banks.  Groups of people were watching us from these farms along the shore as we passed.  They waved and smiled; we waved and smiled back.  And so it went for about 45 minutes as we muscled along the river, literally plowing through the mud in places until we started to see larger groups of people, mostly children swimming and wading, cheering and waving at us from the rust colored river.

The included photos best describe the scene at our landing sight.  Simply put, a mob greeted us.  We knew coming in that prior to our expedition leader going in to scout out the town last year, the only non-local who had ever been here was a Korean ornithologist.  The expedition leader was treated like a rock star and had his photo taken and was visited by everyone in the village, so we sort of know what we were in for.  What we didn’t appreciate was that word of the 80-odd white people coming to town had spread up and down the river and several villages had turned up to greet us.  There were scores of mopeds parked on the far bank, and people had obviously waded over to meet us, and we are talking grandmas, grandpas, brand-new babies, kids of all sizes, shy teenaged girls, groups of young men.  It was fabulous. 

So many people had cell phones with cameras and everyone wanted photos.  I noticed that many were shaking as they took the shot, either for a friend, or with an arm outstretched to get us both in the shot.  Literally shaking with excitement to take our photo and have a photo taken with us.  I must have been photographed 100 times if not more.  I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face as I passed painfully slowly through the crowd.  For every step I was able to take forward, I was stopped with someone saying, “Photo, photo miss.”  It took nearly 2.5 hours to walk from the water to the end of the straight road through town and then back again, a distance of many 200 meters.  One of the strangest things I noticed was the reception of the Philippino boat drivers from our ship.  They were invisible.  I watched them wander along the fringes of the mob with no notice. 

 

Two women on horseback were elaborately costumed and made-up.  It must have taken them hours to get ready for us.  A man at the head of each pony made it prance up and down in tune to the beating drums of the drummers walking just ahead of the ponies.  This assemblage greeted us at the landing site and then brought up the rear of the procession as we walked through the town.  They were also just behind me the whole time so that I almost got run over a couple times because of being stopped constantly for my photo.  But the whole thing was great – we were laughing and giggling – I never smiled so much in my life and it was never threatening or intimidating. 

We were bringing good fortune to the people, and having their photo taken with us was a huge honor that would bring them luck.  We were blessing the babies and respecting the old people.  It turns out every house had prepared food for us and had a fresh coconut for everyone under the front porch, but we never even left the road.  There were just so many people pressing up against us, there was no way to know what we were supposed to be doing. 

When we finally got back to the zodiacs I felt as if I’d already gotten home.  People stood slack jawed looking at me as I took the tiller.  They’d never seen a woman drive a boat, and I was quite a novelty.  One local described it as being, “very handsome.”  I was the only female driver in a group of ten boats.  A hundred hands and smiling faces surrounded the inflatable boat and pushed us out into the river.  We were floating in a sea of smiles and well wishes.  As we left, my boat ran aground on a shallow bank a little way down the river.  Just as I was ready to hop over the side and give the boat a shove, about 40 kids turned to us and with a huge yell they started running through the water to get us off the bank.  It was awesome to see that backlit crowd coming to our rescue as the sun started to set. 

Later, the ship crossed both the equator and the Wallace Line within about 12 hours of one another and we landed on the long western shore of the huge Indonesian island of Sulawesi in a port town called, Pare Pare.  

But that is a story for another day.