Oh, and by the way, what am I doing with my life again? Sometimes, when I'm walking through puddles of fish scales and getting stared at throughout the day and then resting my head on blood-stained pillows in rickety-old hostel beds at night... I start wondering what I'm quite focusing on at the moment.Spending a couple hours wandering through street markets and asking locals what species of shark they caught in order to sell the offered shark fins, or perhaps having small child put on the "oh, poor me" face on and then tug on my arm for food when there are hundreds of people around selling food for 50 cents and I just so happen to be the only white woman in the lot... yeah, it's nice and all. The shams. And the ignorance. And then there's me, knowing that I'm here but not quite understanding the relevancy. I'm here offering to help. Give me something you need help with. How can I help you? How can I help your state's conservation efforts? What can I do? And there's no direction. There's a vacant chair labelled "Motivation" and another vacant chair reading "Organization". I'm knocking on the office door, but the chairs are only chairs... empty cavities in which individuals with soul may rest and lead and think and TRY. But no one answers my knock at the door made of jungle tree wood. Instead I leave with a splinter from its frame. A fragment of the jungle planted in my finger -- or is it my brain? -- reminding me with its solemn, throbbing message of "Lest We Forget." But I cannot forget. It stabs at me. And the locals -- the locals cannot forget either because they have nothing to lose to the gaping hole of lost memories. They live simply. And those who do know lack the connectivity of a supportive network. Call it an island infection of isolation mentality, but reality hits home and it screams, "DO something! TRY something! CARE!!!" Because soon enough there will be no cares to throw forth in opposition to indifference.There will be no jungle and the seas will be suffocated with plastic bags sinking like weighted jellyfish. But, money. For one strong decade -- maybe -- there will be money for the locals. Ignorance and indifference will rain the riches of a palm oil industry upon their welcoming but unknowing brows. And when Inevitable Year 11 rolls around, once the floating decade has passed, the jungle will be rows of trees, dug-up red soils will bleed their sorrows, and rehabilitating zoo structures will dapple the state -- zoos now, because wild animals cannot be released into a no-longer-existant wild. Brunei, with all its riches and land of empty souls, will spread its rule over the state in theory, as Sabah locals will be rolling in their riches and counting their multiple-ringgit bank accounts only to blindly bump into the next heavy-hitting recession after their palm oil market has become humble once again.
All I ask is this: Care. Please, please care. Know where to apply help when it is offered. Have some organization. Put people such as myself to work.Otherwise, I have time to soak in a simple life amidst the staring and culturally-intrigued virgins of the surrounding society, and I have time to ask myself questions of why I choose to carry a burden of knowledge and of -- that haunting word -- care. I can answer these questions soon enough, however, as I cannot be lowered so quickly into ease of nonchalance. I do not carry a burden. Knowledge is liberation and to see so many people suffering from a lack of care is the only weight I am truly burdened with. But me, myself? Burdened? No. Priveleged.
Yesterday, I paid 7 ringgit for a haircut by a student who was just learning to cut hair. For one and a half hours I sat there waiting, patiently, as he separated one hair at a time from a rat's-nest of a knot he had created at the back of my head by shampooing my hair like he were swirling cotton candy onto a paper stick. Patiently, I told myself, "All in the name of Education. Every one of us has to start somewhere. This is my contribution to Malaysian education for my month stay." But 90 minutes later I still sat and he was still separating individual hairs under a blow-dryer now. A language barrier kept me from sharing tidbits of insight. Tidbits such as: "My head is rock-hard. You could drag me by my hair from the back of a pick-up truck and I wouldn't wince." Instead, I felt a form of mental Chinese water-torture, and at the 91st minute I couldn't take it. I assured him it would dry in two seconds outside in the unbearable heat and not to worry. "Thank you," I said, "but I really must go." Seven ringgits paid, and then, with a frizzy do, out the door.
This is what I cannot do. People in need of help who do not know how to organize help -- it feels like some diagnosis of labelling a people "Those Who Want to Learn But Just Don't Know it Yet". Hitler-esque, much? Slightly. When working for Greenpeace, I had to speak to a community of Sudanese refugees about the whaling issues occurring in the Southern Ocean. Sudanese refugees. Men and women who had only enough money for one family member to come to Australia and try to work hard and long enough hours to afford to then bring one of several children over as well, one at a time. Brave souls scarred by dark depths of humanity I can only attempt to relate to the darkness I have seen in illegal wildlife trade. Incomparable, as are any issues these deeply-cutting. But real, both of them. And so I speak to educate. Not only them, but firstly, and selfishly, myself. I want to know about their situation and why it is the way that it is. Then, and only then, will I briefly describe the whaling issues -- only out of formailty really, so that they do not feel they are a pity case of, "I'm sorry to have bothered you. You must be so sad to live away from your family, not knowing whether they're alive or dead. I will let you simmer in your own unjustified misfortunes, for one who suffers so much should not be weighed down by even more, albeit they incomparable." So, I would talk to them. Who knows? Maybe in some weird and perhaps too-far-fetched way, these Sudanese refugees could even relate to the whales' story which only we as humans can pass on to our species. And in that unlikely scenario, there could exist, if for only a moment, a glimmer of interspecies empathy and understanding. I will not be giving to your funds to help bring your kids over here to a Western, safe world. I will not even pretend that I will. And, you, you will not pretend to give your savings to Greenpeace in its efforts to stop the Japanese whaling ships. But we have listened to one another for two minutes of time, stranger-to-stranger. And, perhaps, we have each learned something.
Like this, I have much to learn. But my spirit is fighting to not get to heavily-tainted by my seniors who, in frustrated defeat, chant how "unrealistic" particular hopes are in these situations when I show them I still CARE.
So, tomorrow, I will be knocking at WWF's office door for the second time. I will attend the Sabah Nature Conservacy Society meeting at night. I will network. And the following morning, I will meet the Orangutan Appeal-UK Project's leader, Mike Steele, over coffee in a local bookstore. This isn't about getting pretty stamps with cute, furry animals painted across the previously white pages of a CV anymore. This is about moral character. About representing one's mind in one's actions. Because, if not that, what else are we supposed to be doing with this life? I, for one, cannot slip away into the white foam of carelessness sipping martinis from a bank account coated in the absolute filth of a corrupt palm oil industry. Or any passage of ease which comes with forgetting to represent one's mind and soul. "Lest we forget," right? Lest we never forget what we stand for in this life, for not everyone gets to stand at all. Take pride in your privilege and then, quicker than the previous step, take action.
I needed to write all day. Now I know why.
