Angels That Came

By Sheena James

The Angels That Came was named so because of so many people who were involved in this project. It is with the aim of popularising Science and a dedication to the people who spent most of their lives in conserving nature and its species. Thus its a mixture of romance with particular interest on the subject of orangutan where the ecology of the animal is being discussed stipulated with the knowledge of physics. It is with hope that the motive of this book is to promote the concept of evolution and findings on biomass. The book is an incredible mix of Indian mythology and touches a deep aspect of culture life in North Borneo where orangutans are found. Not many people know of its conservation status in this interior part of the world. Therefore, this book also enlightens the reader by telling a bit of history, culture and socio-economic status as pragmatic as possible. The orangutan is recognised as a protected species and is prioritised as an emblem for tourism and nature conservation. Hopefully, this book succeeds in educating society on its existence and act as an introduction to this beautiful world of ape and people co-existing together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456888480

Sheena James

Sheena James is a local born of Sigh heritage in the island of Borneo. In this book you will see, intertwined are some twist of enigmatic portrayal of how the natives live in this part of Malaysian Borneo. But far from truth, they uncover a little about the racial mix of people living this day as a democratic country. Sheena graduated in Conservation Biology with Second Upper Class and was given a full scholarship by Darwin Initiative to continue a course of molecular ecology in Cardiff, Wales. She graduated Master’s in Science in 2007. She worked with the Habitat for Humanity assisting volunteers from Dubai in 2010. She spent part of her education career and field work on orang-utans and met many people from all walks of life which she collaborate with.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Sheena James.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011904620

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-8847-3

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-8846-6

ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4568-8848-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Prologue

A Voice from the Sky

Epilogue

Reference

To Agung . . .

Prologue

PEOPLE SAY IT’S the longest living river in Sabah. Stretching far to 560 km, it snakes across different forms of vegetation and bathes the topography from rocky hills to the flat mud plains of Kinabatangan. I, for once, would like to call it the fragrant river.

It occurred to me how traveling by boat felt like flying. As the soft breeze sweeps you across the face, your adrenaline pitched high with the speed, the smooth acceleration aloft the chasm body of water, and the mirror of puffy clouds beneath, give a tale that you’re no different from the birds of the Bornean sky.

The sweet taste of figs tantalizing to the nostril is yet a tempting manner, for in contrast to its smell, it is not palatable neither to humans nor animals. Or so I thought. This image is what Kinabatangan conjures. Almost everything is such a contradiction to the other. The degree of uniqueness is at its peak here in the Kinabatangan.

We’re entering into the domain of wild orang-utans, man of the forests as defined by the word or the red apes to others. The orang-utan is the only great ape in Asia with two adjacent cousins, the gorillas and chimps in Africa. Sabah, Borneo, is fortunate enough to harbour these marvelous creatures. Orang-utans are only confined to two countries, both Malaysia and Indonesia respectively. Far from what people think, orang-utans are not found uniformly throughout the country. Restricted to certain areas, orang-utans are deprived from pristine lush forests. Thereby, unsurprisingly, they could also be found in degraded forests such as those in the Kinabatangan region.

What attraction drew me to this forest creature? It’s the same question that I ask myself every day. There isn’t any definite answer that I can simply put it down in words. Maybe it’s because they share the uncanny resemblance to us humans. Some had argued how similar we are to them in relative to other great apes in terms of behaviour, physical form, and social relationship.

Orang-utans are sexually dimorphic, long-lived, and the most solitary of great apes as Birute Galdikas put it. What better reason than this can we say as we speak of ourselves?

Maybe it’s also because of that intrinsic value they hold, although some would prefer to call it economically beneficial. There’s no doubt that orang-utans are the golden goose for the proliferating tourism industry. Everybody wants to see cute, cuddly orang-utans. Why? Because they’re endangered, labeled as potential candidates for extinction and the fact that they are cute. But is that all?

What is the value of one species gone entirely from the face of the earth? Is it measurable in our materialistic language of ringgits, dollars, pounds, etc.? Once gone, it’s gone forever. Well, except for the coelacanth and other species like it that have thought to be long gone. But what is the probability of this chance, one in a thousand, one in a million?

The only rendezvous we have with these long-gone creatures is a cold memoir of dead species carved in tombstone near Brooklyn, New York. And children’s story books.

Ask any tourist why they come travelling to Kinabatangan, and you’d be struck dumbfounded to hear their answer: People tell us to better come here before it’s too late. Eerie feedback, but true.

I recall a story once told by a good friend of mine. He used to work as a logger before making a head start into conservation. You’d be surprised how bulldozers can work wonders with the forest landscape. Within minutes, trees that took years and hundreds of years to develop would be squashed down to the ground, flat.

Going through his daily routine, he continued to pull down logs until he came to one last standing tree. Huddled close between the foliage of leaves were a mother and a baby orang-utan. One thing about orang-utans is that they don’t flee away as logging operation takes place. Hoping to stay camouflaged and undetectable, they remain quiet and still. As the last tree falls, so do the orang-utans.

The mother dead, with the infant still tugging her arm. Unable to bear with this sight, my friend quit logging and ventured into the Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project, an initiative of a French NGO Hutan. What becomes of the baby orang-utan? Perhaps wanting to sell it into the pet trade, the loggers took it away and tied it down with cables like a dangerous animal. The sharp wire etching into the flesh bit by bit drew the last breath of the baby orang-utan. A bit the same story as elsewhere.

I have been wondering to myself, are the orang-utans able to think or feel as we do? If perhaps the answer’s yes, then do they qualify the same status as we humans oblige? An ethical recognition in a sense.

A philosopher once noted that this question is not the matter of thinking or feeling capability but to their ability to suffer. Not the extreme degree of suffering but the ability to feel pain. This is what all beings share in similarity.

I am studying the orang-utans which, I hope could better help me understand their behaviour. And also, with the hope that I could personally see the empathy in them, just as how one looks a kerbau[1] in the eye, or even other creatures big and small.

A Voice from the Sky

IT ALL STARTED in a place called India, where the maharajas and shahs lived their wants and the peasants held their grunts. Not because they were abstained from living their means but because their leaders were just. I was on my quest to find the mother of all knowledge, the knowledge that brings us all down to one single entity, one universal, the holy grail. To begin with, this knowledge had put me down to knowing the mechanism of the rulers that led and not only them but also the recipient to their power. On studying orang-utans, I deciphered four aspects which led their very survival and as it is, predation, high density, fragmentation, and degradation. It makes me laugh to see how I presented them during my viva when I put them in numbers and where they should go as they address world provision. I also specifically notified the examiners that they should be placed into the section for bibliothèque for documentation and quietly alarmed them that they hold such prestige into the meddling affairs of the shahs and sultans, as later on I might explain. Where have all these civilizations gone to if we haven’t revived them in their right place? Indeed. I was satisfied at this point.

On quoting Carl Sagan, if only we know how precious we all are and that we are not alone each and every one of us. That will continue to be my wish. Well, it is mine too, a repeating character. Perhaps it’s even easier to write if I were to serve a master. But this master is all too fervent and extreme at the same time. Silent