The journey began for us in Jakarta last Tuesday morning after a long flight from Australia via Malaysia. Felicity Blake, assistant director and production manager, and I went straight to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to finalise our filming permits. Then we took the taxi ride from hell to the house of environmental consultant Patrick Anderson. The driver got horribly lost and finally, after asking the sixth person for directions, we found a street I recognised and was able to direct him to the house. I have never been so happy to get out of a cab!! Patrick was wonderfully welcome, as always, and our crew were there waiting. They are Ezther, the cameraman who has shot most of the footage for the film to date, and Handi, our sound recordist/translator.
It was getting very late, so we went straight to work, filming a sequence with Patrick and his family at home and out walking in their local neighbourhood before we lost all light.
The next morning very early we all met at the airport and flew to the province of Jambi where Patrick was scheduled to meet with Governor Zulkifli Nurdin to talk about his efforts to stop the fires. We were welcomed at the steps of the plane by Katamso, an advisor to Governor Zul (as we were told to call him) who has become a good friend to us during our stay in Jambi. He took us across the tarmac to the VIP room, while his staff retrieved our bags. They had a car waiting which took us to our hotel. We were all impressed by this unexpected VIP welcome.
Arriving at the Governor’s ‘palace’, a large, ornate set of government buildings, we were met with further ceremony. Aides escorted us into an elaborate meeting room, with a screen set up. Clearly the governor was going to give us a slide show. When he arrived, dressed in a white military style suit and accompanied by about a dozen staff and advisors, we were impressed by how young he looked. He is in fact 60 but looks twenty or so years younger. Patrick asked the Governor about his efforts to curb the fires, and what alternatives he is proposing for the traditional ‘slash and burn’ method of land clearing. He is clearly passionate about finding ways to stop the fires, and showed us slides of his personal efforts in the peatlands to put out a spot fire. Other slides showed him planting rubber trees and encouraging alternative industries like fish farms. We discussed the impacts the fires are having on climate change and the potential benefits of carbon trading. After the interview, he presented me with a plaque of the shield of Jambi, and we gave him a gift of coffee and chocolates from the Byron Bay region.
The Governor offered to help us in any way we needed during our stay. We found out later from Katamso that he met with all the regional leaders the next day, and during his speech, told them of our visit to Jambi and that they were to support us in any way we needed. 
The Governor also agreed to a follow-up meeting on August 2nd with Emil Salim, the ex-environment minister and advisor to the president. Emil is a highly respected figure in Indonesia, especially amongst environmental groups. I interviewed him during the Governors Roundtable meeting in Bali in April where he spoke of the government’s determination to stop the fires this year – mainly because of the upcoming COP meeting in December this year in Bali to discuss the next stage of the Kyoto Protocol. The Indonesian government will be very embarrassed if there is a smoke plume over their country while the delegates to this meeting are in their country.
The following day, local environment group, WALHI made arrangements to take us on a trip deep into the forest to meet the Orang Rimba people. They are the indigenous people from this province who still live a subsistence life in the forest. WALHI is concerned to protect their lifestyle and culture. both severely threatened by the logging and burning of their forest region for palm oil plantations. Ovi (Patrick’s wife) has been actively working with this group, and her organization has equipped one young man from this community with a video camera and laptop to make movies of their culture as a means of preserving it. These are people who wear almost no clothing and live in the depths of the forest with no possessions other than hunting and cooking utensils. Seeing a video camera and laptop computer in use in this context was one of the more bizarre images of our trip.
We set off on Friday morning and drove all day to a small town not far from the access road to the forest. On Saturday morning we were back on the road at 6am, taking a four hour drive along the roughest, bumpiest road I have ever experienced - potholes all the way. And it just got worse the further we went. On the way we filmed a palm oil plantation, some burnt and chopped down forest areas and a family burning their land to clear it. The man of the family told us he was planting vegetables, but across the road was a stand of oil palm trees, so its likely he was clearing for more oil palm. He let us film him cutting trees with a chainsaw while his small fire burnt away in the background. We also filmed a load of oil palm being loaded onto a truck and carted away.
Finally, we got to the end of the road, and our guide met us there. He is an Orang Rimba man but doesn’t live in the forest. 
His people wear some clothing and live in a compound on the outskirts of the forest. We left the car under the watchful eye of our driver, and set off by foot. About 30 people from the compound accompanied us on the journey – kids (mainly naked), adults and a couple of very elderly people – all smoking constantly. We were quite a possie. We walked along a narrow, slippery clay, path deeper and deeper into the dense forest for about an hour. Then we came to a small settlement made up of half a dozen shelters, which was good as it started raining just as we arrived. The shelters consisted of raised wooded platforms each with a canvas roof. We waited there for about an hour, and then out of the forest came a man, three women and about six children. The man wore only a small loincloth, and the woman wore sarongs and were topless. The children were all naked. Ezther and Handi got wonderful coverage of them and we did an interview with the man. He told us how his lifestyle and forest home are threatened by palm oil and that he wants the government to give him a protected area that can’t be logged or burnt. It was poignant and yet disturbing as he smoked all through the interview. They are all heavy smokers in the forest, men and women, which I found surprising and quite distressing. We were advised to take supplies for them in return for the interview – and these consisted of cigarettes, sweets, salt and matches. I baulked at such a gift, but we were told that was what they most wanted. After the interview, we presented the gifts, and they shared them out amongst themselves.
Before we left, the forest women sang us a song. It was a lullaby, and Ezther and Handi got great coverage as one of the babies was rocked to sleep. It was a strange and haunting sound, and one few Westerners will have heard before. I felt privileged and moved by this experience, and hope to use the sounds as inspiration for our Jambi music theme.
The long journey back consisted of a one hour walk, a three hour drive back to the main road, late lunch in a little town and then an agonising four hour drive home. We hit a few big potholes at speed after dark which battered us about quite a bit. Besides the tiredness, it was very hot in the forest, and we had sweated until we were drenched, so we felt very sticky, sore and battered by the time we got back to our hotel in Jambi at about 9pm.
Sunday was a day off from filming for the crew. This is supposed to be the dry season but it was raining quite hard, so I was happy to stay indoors. I watched all the footage from this first week and wrote this blog while Felicity made arrangements for the coming week’s activities. She also went out to visit an ancient temple on the outskirts of town and arrived back drenched but glad she’d made the effort to see some of the local sights.
Our cinematographer from Holland, Leonard, joins our team on Tuesday. In our second week, we will be travelling out to Ahmadi’s village and filming developments of his story. He will take us to his plot of land to see what clearing he has done, and will talk to us about his plans for the next few months – including when he plans to start burning. We will offer him the opportunity to meet with WALHI to discuss alternatives to burning. Also Governor Zul has invited Ahmadi to meet with him to discuss the issue of land clearing using fire. I have no idea how Ahmadi will react to this invitation! At the end of the week, we depart for Aceh.
Written by Cathy Henkel
Producer/Director of The Burning Season
Sunday 22 July 2007
