Without a doubt, Seminggoh Wildlife Reserve will be a highlight for us not only this year but also an everlasting memory. Being able to watch such majestic creatures swinging semi wild through the jungle is a wonderful privilege. We met 'Ritchie', the head male so big he had to walk on his knuckles instead of swinging through the trees. 'Edwin', a charismatic young male who posed kindly and patiently whilst us chimps snapped in desperation photos of his glorious face and the young family who held hands whilst swinging to ensure their baby 'Ruby' would be safe as she clung on to her mother 'Sadam's back. The incredible experience we watched unfold was also deeply distressing as we knew that orangutans are predicted to no longer exist in the wild within 10 years due to the mass deforestation and illegal capturing that exists. What we were seeing that day would not be possible for future generations.
Politically, we have had some interesting conversations between ourselves. It would be easy to point a finger at the Malaysians and blame them for cutting down trees and killing innocent animals however this simplistic first impression is not reality. Are we in Australia looking after our natural resources and wildlife? How are our koalas? How is the coal seam gas exploration faring or our Great Barrier Reef coping with the dredging, fracking, tree removal and raping of our minerals and selling off of our precious national resources? This chapter could easily digress into a dissertation on how the wealthy exploit the poor and how the poor often have very little choice but to make quick cash crops to put food on their (lack of ) table in order to survive each day.
One only has to step into a supermarket here to see that the first or second ingredient in EVERY product is Palm oil and that in the west, it usually is also although usually cleverly disguised as a non descript 'vegetable oil'. Send off a few emails to the customer service email on your favourite snack product and watch how quickly they squirm when asked to disclose what oil it truly is (asking from an allergy perspective of course!!) Palm oil is in our soap, shampoo, plastics, food, cosmetics, pet food and numerous other items which we all buy daily. How do we make a difference? Well that is what Tony and I are hoping to discover through our travels and we are both very well aware of the fact that by us merely being able to sit in an aeroplane, we are in fact, incredibly rich and no doubt contributing to these issues. Flying is destructive, materialism is destructive, the imbalance of wealth is destructive yet we have to try and find a way to create a meaningful dialogue where education is key, agendas focus on change not blame, all humans have access to fresh water, food and a stable roof over their head and we see that we are all on the same planet with the same hopes and dreams as those living in other countries.