Follow Paul!: Oh Poopnanny

Well hey there gang. Today I had an out of body experience. The river that the village is located on the bank of, loves to flood the street that walks down from my house to the TNC (The Nature Conservancy) which is where we have class and eat and gather, and at most parts the water level was up to my ankles. As Moses once stood on the brink of salvation of his people, I looked upon the sediment rich water gentle flowing in front of my soleful (ha! You get it! Damn I be good) feet. I rushed to be able to get breakfast and had no time to go back and switch to shorts or sandals, just as Moses and his people had not had time to let their bread rise, we together separated the water as to make it to the other side. Well Moses did so more in a legendary way, I kinda just hiked up my pants and trudged through, but epic none the less.

Celebrations continue, with a wedding this afternoon, parties are being prepared and thrown, and at nine in the morning a pig has already been sacrificed and dances held. It will be another long night of tuoc and beetlenut, with conversing in broken indoinglesh and lot of buleh laughing. The Wehea Dayak of Nehas Liah Bing have been teaching me more and more about both their culture and life in general. Research and learning is always a reciprocal relationship, as I learn about the customs in which they live their life, I am gleaming tidbits of mine to them, and we erase biases and precontrived ideas about how we each lead our lives. As time goes on and my bahasa Indonesia slowly evolves from infantile to toddler, I joke around telling them I am not buleh, I am Wehean. As a joke it may get a chuckle out of it, but it makes me think more and more. What makes a Wehean and Wehean? A gringo a gringo? A buleh a buleh? What truly differentiates them from me? While there are cascades of examples one can trickle off, the root factor solely is location. I was born in the Yay, and they here. But what is the difference between us? We both take two or three lovely showers a day, we bathe and wash our clothing in the river, we eat with our right hand and avoid touching things with our left (I think you know why), we love soccer and we dislike Christiano Ronaldo, we drink tuoc and chew the beetle, we give our energy at healing ceremonies to the sick individuals, and as a community we laugh and enjoy each day learning about each other and putting energy and thoughts to those who need it, we hold hands with little kids walking down the adobe colored road and watch sponge bob on Sunday mornings, know we haven’t eaten a meal unless there is rice involved, love our gulah (suga suga suga) and know that the most important things in our lives involve family and the community that you situate yourself in, rather than monetary hierarchies and material engraved chains.

I guess as I listen to the flowing river and drink gritty sugary coffee and hear little boys chanting fish for sale as they drag their feet on the river floor that yesterday was the neighborhood street, I get overly sentimental, but I can’t help it. We learn so much from the people we surround ourselves with, and we learn so much more about ourselves when we take time to step out of our boundaries and give ourselves the ability and the chance to surprise ourselves. I just know that I continually am so thankful for the friends and family that have kept me alive and well all my life, and that I can never repay all the individuals whom have shared their love and their time with me. People here are so amazing, so kind and so happy, that I want them to continue living that way for the rest of their lives, as well as all the generations that follow them, because they deserve it as much as everyone. This village’s resilience thus far to outside disturbances is truly impressive. With massive floods, deforestation all around them, palm plantations and coal mines sprouting like weeds and bringing massive populations of individuals for plantation work turning a once populous majority of people into a tiny indigenous minority, who face migration from their traditionally owned land and cultural disintegration for economic goals headed by the international community for economic process and overall excess. If the Wehea forest is cut down and used for palm oil plantation, thousands of Javanese or other Indonesian populace will be brought here to work the plantations, furthering this displacement, destroying not only one of the richest areas of biodiversity, but one of the most true, kind hearted and wonderful cultures. Land tenure is difficult, it is impossible to ignore that, but just as impossible to ignore the importance of ironing the kinks and untying the knots with in it. The land has traditionally been the Wehean Dayak’s, before the Indonesian government existed to distribute and nominate land as their own and deem it production land. While it is easy to villianize others, this is simply put, a really convoluted and difficult issue, just as land tenure between indigenous populations and governing nations is worldwide. You can look at the imprints of these issues documented and footnoted throughout Canadian and American history. The panacea is not clear, and may never be, but we’re working on some facet to get the job done, or at least started.

It is an amazing feeling to know that I have family in both Brazil and Indonesia now, it is a warming and reassuring feeling that I continue to learn how grateful I am that people everywhere are willing to open their minds and their arms. Wow… I apologize, that was a lot of poopnanny, guess I needed to get that out. But life is short, doesn’t matter what religion or culture you identify with, we must all deviate our paths into realizing we need to live for each other and put humanity first, because as corny as the quote is, the quote the top of my blog says this: The only real nation is humanity. Written on a little sign inside of a village named Cange, Haiti, Tracey Kidder wrote it down with following Doctor Paul farmer, a sign simply saying that the only nation we are citizens of is humanity. Boo-yah poopnany.