Moving on

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In preparation for my summer project, we headed to the medical market to buy various supplies (you wouldn’t believe what you can buy here!). Behind the medical market is the live wild bird market, which we visited for education sake. There are no real regulations here on the trade of wild and endangered species. Luckily, it is not my job to visit these markets regularly and investigate what’s there. Though, it is good to know your enemy, and so we looked around. It was awful. Truly and overwhelmingly distressing. There were thousands upon thousands of beautiful birds in cages; birds that may or may not be endangered species, though considering the demand for them as ornaments it is more likely than not. They are housed in tiny little cages, and while they seem to be being fed fairly reasonable diets, they do not have adequate water for bathing or appropriate caging at all. We were being shown around by a man, who was smoking of course, who proudly showed us the beautiful birds he had. As we walked around, I focused all my rage and fury on the man’s cigarette. It was absolutely all I could do to not burst into tears. They brought us a wild baby cat at one point; I had to very quickly walk on. There were also primates in there. I lasted a good ten minutes before I couldn’t take anymore. I suppose each time you see something like this, you are slightly more immune and can handle it better. For now, I am brought to tears to think of the suffering of these individual creatures and the decimation of their natural habitat.

We flew to Yogya (pronounced and usually spelled Jogja) that evening. Jogja is in central Java, one hour by plane, but nearly 10 hours by bus from Jakarta. It is a whole different world; it was described to me as the Berkley of Indonesia. The flight was no problem, we brought many suitcases and many boxes of supplies and were not charged any extra fee this time! We’re staying in a lovely guesthouse called Bladok Losmen - I definitely recommend it to anyone in Yogya!

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Photos

Pasar Burung - stacks of cages
All of these have a magnificent forest bird

Comments

[Kristen]

Bird market sounds awful :( I couldn't handle that either.

[Christine]

I almost cried just reading about those poor birds!