The adventure begins!

The 20 of us, 18 Quest University students and Ethical Expeditions leaders Brent Loken and Sheryl Gruber, have been in Balikpapan for almost a week now and are beginning to adjust to the hectic city traffic and life as a spectacle. Our first week has been full of meetings and presentations from incredible people doing important work and research in Borneo.  As Jill mentioned, we met with Budi and Danielle Kreb who have been conducting research on the river dolphins in the Balikpapan Bay and Mahakam River, specifically the Arawaddy Dolphin, for 10 years.  They started a non-profit organization (NGO) called Rasi to help protect marine mammals in the area.  The co-founder of Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Peter Karsono met with us and told the most incredible and inspiring stories of his 30 years working to protect the orangutan species.  We met with representatives from the Nature Conservancy and the manager of our Hotel about current projects and going green.

Also in our busy week was a working with Dr. Stanislav Lhota doing mangrove forest and proboscis monkey surveys for his research.  After heading out in the small narrow motor boats to find the monkeys before dusk, we promptly became trapped in an enormous rainstorm, and being students in Squamish, decided to wait it out.  There is something quite magical about tropical rainstorms that always excites me, and this occasion along with a boat full of smiling, laughing, incredible people, was no exception.  The sprinkles turned to heavy rain turned to downpour turned to sitting under a cascading waterfall was half an hour soaking in (literally) the power these forests hold, and reinforced the reason I joined the expedition to have an opportunity to get the word out about conserving what is left of these beautiful areas.

Not only are the wildlife and natural beauty leaving me breathless, but also the people we have the opportunity of meeting along the way.  Spending the night in a local Balikpapan fishing village called Kampung Baru, everyone on the trip was bombarded by hoards of happy excited children and the most welcoming and giving neighbors offering you food and a place to sleep before even asking your name.  Seeing such generosity only increased my perception of the inverse relationship between wealth and generosity.  It seems to me, the more people have, the less they are willing to compromise and share, while those with very little see the importance of sharing, not only money or food or clothing, but knowledge and wisdom and experience. Without such ideals I question how much we are capable of globally changing.  Education and attitude might just be the biggest hurdles we have to overcome.

Each student wrote a blog on the Ethical Expeditions site,  as well as group video blogs about a certain issue or event from the week, which you can check out on youtube or at ethicalexpeditions!  Here’s the group 4 vodcast(my group) about the mangrove forests:

With my expectations fr this trip and estimated gained knowledge already way past exceeded, I can’t wait to see what will happen next here in Borneo!