Today marks the end of the first third of our trip. I cant believe that it is already this far in. My initial feelings were those of sadness because everything is going by so quickly. But when I stopped to think about everything that we have done in the last 18days, I am blown away by how far it seems that beginning of the trip was. Everyday it feels like we are just getting started on our adventure, but I think that has a lot to with the concepts that we talk about everyday and just that everything is so big that we just jump into one experience and then we have to move on to the next.
Right now we are sitting on a houseboat cruising up the Mahakam River. We are currently on our way back to Samarida where we will be spending two days before going into Kutai National Park. The purpose of the houseboat trip was to experience first hand ecotourism and to evaluate if we think that it could be a possible effort to help preserve the nature and the environment of Borneo. All day and night on Saturday we cruised on the very comfortable houseboat. Sunday morning we stopped at a local community to visit their market then got in smaller speed boats and cruised up smaller rivers for 4 hours until we arrived at a ‘remote’ Dyak community. The boat ride was unbelievable. We were three students in each boat sitting one behind the other. For four hours we experienced open river deltas where the horizon seemed endless, passed through small fishing communties and weaved our way through dense green trees. We got to see more proboscis and makak monkeys, a meter long poisonous snakes, thousands of birds dive bombing the water and hundred of other unidentifiable insects. For the first time it felt we were in the mystical/ biodivers Borneo that we had read so much about.
When we reached our destination we were greated with a tradtional welcome ceremony and show of traditional dances. Unlike all of the other communities that will be visiting later in the trip, this ceremony was performed for us as ecotourist.
After reflecting on the experience afterwards with the entire group, there were lots of mixed that arose. Many of the students (including myself) felt very uncomfortable with the ceremony. The ceremony seemed to lack genuine interest from the preformers and authenticy. The teenagers from the community sat watching the ceremony laughing in their nike t-shirts rather than participating. It was very clear the changes that this culture has faced in the last 15 years , as it is clearly visible in the teen generation. They no longer have any interest in learning about their own culture values, and all they wanna do is try and adapt to the western way of living. How do you explain to these youth that they do not have to lose their own culture identity as the world around them change and they change with it.
The idea of ecotourism to preserve a culture brought up many emotions in me. Is it really preserving a culture, if the only times the culture is expressed is to wide eyed foreigners, and the second we walk away they go back to their way of living that is no where as “cultural” and primitive as us outsiders would think.
All in all I thouroughly enjoyed my day, and it sparked many convorsations within the group that bring us to a better understanding of how the people of Borneo continue to change and adapt to their idea of the new world.
I do not think that there is any way that try and halt these changes and it is very narrow minded of us to think that these people should keep to their old ways and not be desiring the life that they see on their satelite tv’s.
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