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Published: November 15th 2010
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I was early for work one morning and rather than standing around, waiting for the nurses to unlock the clinic doors, I decided to go for a stroll in the adjoining forest. Suddenly I saw an orang-utan in one of the trees and as I moved closer to find out who it was she lowered herself down to my height and stretched her arms out to me; before I knew what was happening she grabbed me and embraced me. She was obviously terrified of something and held me tight like a scared child, looking at me with large, trusting eyes. And having this nearly grown up orang-utan turn to me for help was such a strange and touching experience and so entirely unexpected that I was suddenly overcome by emotion. I felt so unspeakably sad that such a beautiful creature was reduced to this – a frightened bundle huddled up to a human being in desperate search for protection. In an ideal world she should not even want to encounter humans; she would be roaming wild in the jungle after having been taught all the skills she needs from her mother. Instead she had been orphaned through callous poachers, and now
lived in a small piece of protected forest - a tiny island in a sea of oil palm plantations, yet another symbol of human greed and ignorance.
I don’t know how long I stood there with this orang-utan in my arms, but eventually I decided to take her to the clinic where she was admitted for some food and TLC. Her name is Tompong. She is 7 years old and has previously been bullied and badly bitten by Britt, one of the orang-utan mothers who come to the tourist platform. Unfortunately this does happen sometimes. The high population density in this relatively small area of rainforest surrounding Sepilok can give rise to aggression and fights among the orang-utans and there are several other “walking wounded” in the clinic at the moment, having their injuries tended to.
One such casualty is Ankung. He is about 8 years old and seems huge compared to the babies we usually deal with. His intelligent eyes and the long red hair growing from his lower chin give him the appearance of a wise old man. One day we were cleaning an adjoining cage. Ankung watched us intently and then suddenly ripped the sponge
out of my hand, spat onto it and started to clean his own cage! The next day he managed to get hold of a broom, bent its metal pole into small pieces as if it were paper, took the brush off and proceeded to scrub his cage before brushing himself. And afterwards he spent hours trying to put brush and pole (or what was left of it) back together...
Cleaning is a large part of our job in the clinic. And it’s made quite challenging by all these arms reaching for us from the cages – the orang-utans try to get hold of our t-shirts, trousers, boots, cleaning equipment and most popular of all, our hair. And they pull and rip and occasionally bite and it’s evidently great fun for them while for us it’s more like running the gauntlet...
After the cleaning we get to take the youngsters out to the “jungle gym”, a lovely patch of grass at the edge of the rainforest with ropes and small trees for them to learn how to climb. Quite often we are joined by a young female called Ganang. She is fair, with beautiful eyes and the sweetest, gentlest
disposition. The first time we encountered her we were a little wary, because the babies are so small and vulnerable and we didn’t know how she would react. So we tried to shoo her away and barricaded ourselves protectively in front of the smaller orang-utans. But we needn’t have worried because next thing we knew the little ones were all over Ganang and they were all together rolling in the grass, playing. And since then she’s become something like a mentor to them. They watch her every move, and Michelle, one of the more precocious young orang-utans, keeps following Ganang into the trees and ever so often grabs hold of her face to see what she is eating. It’s lovely to observe and I’m sure Ganang is a much better teacher than we could ever be.
A few days ago we noticed that Ganang had a couple of sores on her feet. We asked the nurses to take a look at them but as soon as Ganang caught sight of the grey uniforms she started squealing and turned around to retreat - too many memories of unpleasant examinations and painful treatments I suppose. So the nurse handed me a can
of antiseptic spray and went back inside. Surprisingly Ganang sat down again and as I crouched next to her she turned her feet so I could tend to her wounds. And while I was cleaning them and applying the spray the little ones gathered around us, curiously watching over my shoulder while leaning against me. It was such a tender, lovely moment.
The clinic does not just encompass the casualty ward but is also the place where the youngest orang-utans spend the night. And when we first started working here I was given the task to look after Gellison, who at 12 months is the youngest baby at Sepilok. He is tiny and his movements are still slow and uncoordinated. He has a large teddy to keep him company and he sleeps in a little hammock. And when I gave him his milk bottle on the first day and he was looking at me with his large innocent baby eyes while exploring my face with his little hands I found myself for a moment making plans of how best to smuggle him back home with me... In the wild Gellison would have been clinging on to his mother more
or less continuously until about now. And he would only just start to learn how to climb. So my task was to take him out to the baby gym (which is a series of low hanging ropes in front of the clinic) and get him to climb. Trying to get a baby orang-utan to let go of you is near impossible. Once you manage to get their little arms away from around your neck you still have to somehow prise yourself out of the grasp of their legs. And once that’s done the arms are firmly back around your neck... Eventually, after a considerable struggle, I managed to put him onto the rope. And his first reaction? He started to scream. And it was not just a little whiny noise; it was a full blown, panic stricken, hysterical shriek - and I felt like the worst mother in the world. But I’d been warned about this so I tried to reassure him and just walked next to him as closely as possible while he tried to get to the end of the rope. As soon as he was back on my arms he was happy again; but against my maternal
instinct I had to be firm and repeat the procedure. It was heartbreaking. However, after a few rounds he seemed to get the hang of it and when he managed to scramble along the rope fast and without too much of a scene I felt very proud of him; and the smile on his little face seemed to indicate that he was pretty pleased with himself, too...
PS: since I'm not allowed to take pictures inside Sepilok I've added a few pictures I took during our placement at Rasa Ria. The work there was basically the same as at Sepilok, except that it's close to KK and I missed the jungle. We were based in a small town called Tuaran, where nobody speaks English and no tourist ever seems to set foot in. It was actually great fun and we were kind of forced to learn Malay. Our flat was next to the pagoda and I went there most mornings.
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anonymous
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Julchen, dein Bericht hat mich zu Traenen geruehrt!!!