Nova, one of his colleagues and I left the kampung to go to a place near Kerinci where Nova was overseeing the construction of a road through the forest to a new logging site - I think he oversees that too. The road construction is interesting: once the route has been cleared, a layer of tough fabric (geotextile?) is laid down. The sand is bulldozed over it to make a flat surface into which coarse gravel is flattened. It makes roads good enough for the massive logging trucks and other plant. I understood that Nova was also considering moving his family to live here - a new mosque was under construction and Nova, a devout Muslim, wanted his daughter (Nurul) to have a good place to learn and practice her religion nearby. Also, Nurul and her mother (Bertin) lived in Batu Sangkar, about 3 or 4 hours away and Nova missed his wife and child very much.
I recall we drive to Kerinci, crossed the sungai Siak on a wee put-put car-ferry and then drove on, deeper into the jungle to see the new road and logging site under construction. Nova told me how his brother-in-law had said he was Greenpeace's enemy and I began to see why. Although Nova's company reported and prevented as much as possible illegal logging in its areas, and security guards at every kampung and workplace checked all vehicles coming in and going out for contraband, the scale of the clearances was overpowering. I think they cleared government-alloted areas of native forest (by felling and burning) and then planted fast-growing trees which would use the ash as fertiliser. I don't know whether the jungle would be allowed to return after that.
After felling, logs are transported by canal and lorry towards sungai Siak, where the are then sent on their way for processing.
After visiting the clearing site and road, Nova took us back to Kerinci to eat. I recall he ate sandwiches made with durian jam. He and many other Sumatrans think durian is delicious. I tried it - it's ok but the smell of durian is overpoweringly unpleasant.
Nova then took me to a museum in Kerinci. It was very small but had some lovely exhibits from when Minangkabau was a separate kingdom.
We drove through miles and miles of native forest and kelapa sawit plantation, to a canal bridgehead: here logs that had been cleared from the site we'd visited earlier were offloaded from barges that travelled along a canal to the bridgehead. A massive caterpillar-tracked grabber lifted the logs and plonked them onto lorries which shook as each 'mouthful' was added. Then the grabber picked up a huge log and knocked this against the logs to balance the load and push in any logs that were sticking out.
I asked Nova why the company couldn't dig a further canal to sungai Siak and save time by not having to transfer the logs from barges to lorries and not have to deal with the attendant logistics. He told me that this would entail crossing the route of a gas/oil pipeline (you can see it in one of the movies on this page) and so it couldn't be done.
Nova and his colleague took me on a wee speedboat up a canal (kecil sungai - 'little river') to see the logging site from the other side. Again, the scale of the clearance was overpowering.
On the way back to the kampung, Nova bought some rambutan. These are hard-shelled fruit with juicy/waxy succulent interiors - the taste was a cross between a smooth orange and a lychee - and big stones. Of course Random Bozo couldn't resist play-acting - see the last-but-one photo on this page!
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006