Week 2 - Arrived in Kahingai, which is about 7 hours from Pangkalan Bun. We travelled by ambulance and stopped off at a town called Nanga Bulik. The views on the journey were disturbing, acres of palm oil plantations seen for the the first 5 hours. It is so sad to think just 20 years back all of this was primary rainforest.
The last two hours of the journey, thankfully we found the rainforest, but there is only an estimated 25% left on Kalimantan.
We were warmly greeted by the rest of the volunteer group in Kahingai. Kahingai is one of many small villages located in the rainforest with about 70 families living there. The aim of the project is to encourage the locals to stay put and not give in to bribes from the logging or palm oil corporations.
The first week on camp consisted mainly of hard labour, digging holes, mixing cement, fixing reinforcement cages, all needed for the dam construction. Many of the group, whom had been there for 4 days before we arrived were getting injured or sick. It was quite funny since the main topic of conversation was infection, diarrhoea and malaria.
The food was really nice, but we had only been eating rice noodles and vegetables for one week and the others soon pointed out that it does get boring.
The week past quickly and we were rewarded we a trip to a rice plantation.
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