A piece of experience in a corner of Borneo

A piece of experience in a corner of Borneo

By Gary Gentry

BONTANG, East Kalimantan (JP): You never really know a man until you drink beer with him in a cheap bar on a rickety pier over stinking tidal flat six miles from the equator. I know James Angus Leonard, by God.

I met James Angus at a construction site called Bontang which sits right where the equator crosses the east coast of Borneo. That's in Indonesia, but if you want to look it up it's called Kalimantan. Nobody calls it Borneo anymore, but it's still steaming jungle right to the edge of the sea.

James and I supervised construction gangs there building a gas plant. Sun browned, gray headed, crew cut old s.o.b. always wore a plaid work shirt and paisley tie. Claimed it gave him some distinction among the local workers.

"You know, white men all look the same to them," he said, and he may have been right. Anyway, his men called him Mr. Tie, and he was famous all over the area.

He had been there a few months when I first arrived, and he already knew his way around. Now, I'd been in construction sites around the world for fifteen years, and the only thing I ever wanted to learn about the places was how to get paid and how to get out when the job was over. Old James Angus was different, though. We had no more than introduced ourselves, when he said "Let's go to the prakla and get a language lesson."

"I don't know," I said, "I never did like school, and I ain't much on talking English, let alone Indianesian, or whatever language they talk here."

He laughed and said, "Come on, J.D., Prakla's the local word for honky tonk. I'll buy you a cold beer."

We rode motorcycle taxis down a dirt road that led through some pretty coconut groves. It passed between a collection of wooden shacks on six-foot stilts, before it dipped down a slope to the shore. There it led to a pier, where it continued out over the mud, two rows of shanties with a boardwalk in between.

The boardwalk was built of wooden slats so thin they'd bend when you stepped on them, but it was strong wood and didn't break. The walk was just wide enough for three people to stand side by side. There were gaps in the slats so I had to watch my step.

"If you fall through you're on your own," said James Angus, "because nobody loves another human being enough to touch him after he's slathered around in muck like that."

The shacks along the boardwalk were shops and bars and houses, and they were made of whatever scraps the owners could find. Packing crates, broken bits of plywood and old tin signs made the walls and woven cocoa mats made the rest. The roofs were thatched palm leaves.

We stopped in front of a shop that had a wooden bin full of dried minnows.

"How do they keep 'em on a hook, all dried up like that?" I asked.

James Angus laughed. "It ain't fish bait, J.D., the Indonesians put 'em in soup or just eat 'em like peanuts. They're called ikan bilis."

I frowned. "How do they gut the little things?"

"They don't."

I spit through a gap in the slats, determined to look real close at any bowl of peanuts they served in this prakla.

We came to a shack with wagon wheels nailed on the front and a sign saying "ICE COLD ANKER BIR".

"Unwrinkle your nose J.D., it ain't that bad."

By then I was dying for a beer, so we went in. The entrance was a big room with picnic tables and pew benches and small rooms off to each side. I could hear a diesel generator somewhere out back.

A crowd of girls was yakking at one table until we walked in, then you'd have thought we were flowers in a bee hive. We sat near a door that looked out onto a veranda, with girls swarming over us, touching and poking. One went off for beer while two slid in beside me and another stood behind massaging my shoulders.

James Angus had the same treatment on his side of the table and he grinned at me.

"Relax J.D., they're good honest working girls, trying to make a living."

The girl sitting next to me leaned her head on my shoulder. I wasn't expecting it, and when I turned to look, my face was buried in her hair. I jerked back, thinking of nits, but she held on and I noticed that her hair smelled like shampoo, kind of homey and nice. I let her snuggle up again, and rubbed my fingers against her arm. It was smooth, not sticky and sweaty like I had imagined.

Now Berlitz can go such eggs. The best way to learn a foreign language is to hang out in some cheap bar with the prettiest local girls you can find. Anatomy, numbers, greetings, why, in a couple of days you can pick up all you need to know. Life ain't boring if you pay attention.

A few nights later, James and I were enjoying a language lesson and a cold beer, when the back door opened. After a few seconds, in walked a baby orangutan. It was about two feet tall and wore a diaper just like a human kid. It looked around, kinda mournful until it spied Cassi, one of the girls who was fast becoming my favorite. The little critter hopped up on her lap and she gave it a hug.

"Where'd that little guy come from?" I asked.

"Sumarno," she said.

"Where's that?" I asked James.

"Not 'where', J.D., " he replied. "'Who'. Sumarno's a contractor who hangs around Bontang doing whatever he can to make a buck. He must have left it here."

It was a cute little fella, and when I reached out to pet it, it jumped onto the table in front of me, grabbed my beer and took a drink. I rubbed its head, and darned if it didn't do the same to me. I was beginning to like the little guy.

James spoke to Cassi in Indonesian a little too fast for me to understand, then he said to me, "Yeah, Sumarno left it here for Cassi to sell. Some loggers killed the mother, and Sumarno bought it from them, hoping to make a profit on it."

"How much?" I said.

"No, J.D., you don't want to fool with it. First of all it's illegal, and second, where would you keep the thing?"

By then I'd had several beers, and wasn't in a mood to have anybody tell me I couldn't do something.

"Well, first of all, I don't give a hang if it's illegal, I like it. And second of all, I can keep it in my room. It's only a little guy. Don't take up much space."

To Cassi I asked, "Berapa?" showing off my Indonesian.

"Lima puluh, Tuan," she said, which I had to admit I didn't understand.

"What'd she say, James?"

"The price is 50,000 rupiah."

I pulled a roll of cash out of my pocket and counted off 50,000. Fifty bucks for an orangutan sounded like a bargain to me, and I started out with the animal holding my hand like a little kid. I stumbled on a crack in the floor.

"Come on, J.D., I'll give you some help getting home."

"I don't need a hand, thank you," I said. But I did let him come along with us. By then it was nearly midnight, and I had a long day ahead of me at work the next morning.

We got some looks from the guards at the compound gate, but they let us through, and I took the monkey into my room.

"You're sure you're all right?" James asked.

"Yeah, I'm OK," I told him, and shut the door.

The orangutan seemed curious and had a good look at the pencils and things on my desk. Next to it was a small refrigerator, and on top were some bananas I had left over from lunch. When he spied those, he let out a whoop, and was eating them before I knew what happened.

"OK, monkey," I said. "I'm gonna call you George, and this is gonna be your home for a while."

He grunted and pulled his lips back in what looked like a smile, and stuffed another banana into his mouth.

I flopped back on the bed, and dropped off to sleep, figuring an animal could take care of himself until morning.

There was a strong storm just before dawn, and the thunder woke me up. I heard water splashing on my desk and, cursing the leak in my roof, I switched in the lamp beside the bed.

I couldn't believe what I saw. My room was in shambles! The "thunder" that had awakened me was the refrigerator being turned over. The curtains were ripped off the window, and everything had been swept out of the closet into a pile on the floor. The splashing leak caught my attention, and I followed it up to see George, hanging from the light fixture, relieving himself onto my desk.

I took the animal back to the prakla the next night and although I got my money back, it'll snow in Jakarta before old James Angus lets me forget the incident.