Sometimes You Do, Sometimes You Don’t

Conservation is a social science, and my time in Indonesia was a crash course in the cultural adaptability it requires. I spent a week in an intensive Bahasa Indonesia course at the Realia school in Jogjakarta, moving into a home stay across from the school to immerse myself. I sat across from a teacher named Pupu who wore a jimbab and wrote perfectly upside-down and backwards on a notepad so I could read it as she talked. I felt like I was standing under a waterfall trying to take a drink. But slowly, the words came.

Later, in the jungle of Gunung Gede National Park, we hiked through the dark to a stilted research cabin with no water. I was rewarded at dawn by the singing of Javan Gibbons. They are apes, not monkeys, and their haunting, melodic calls echoed through the mist as they swung through the shadows. A researcher named Igut told me that my name in Sundanese means, “Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.” It felt appropriate for the unpredictability of the field.

The trip was not without its trials. My welcome to Indonesia got hotter when I contracted dengue fever. I spent a week in a hotel room with my body feeling like it was being cooked from the inside, reading Watership Down and pumping myself full of guava juice and chlorophyll drinks while I waited for my blood platelet levels to stabilize. It was a week of fever dreams supported by CI’s entire Indonesia Regional Program. Whether facilitating climate workshops or monitoring endangered primates, I learned that you must sit in the conference room and learn the language so the gibbon can stay in the forest. Trust is the most valuable tool a scientist can carry.