Deep in the forests of Papua New Guinea, part of the Paradise Forests that stretch across South East Asia, Greenpeace has established a Global Forest Rescue Station. It's purpose: to help the clans and tribes of the region to mark out their lands which are theirs by law but are at risk from the unscrupulous activities of logging companies.
Many of those working at the Station are volunteers from all over the world, including Reza Hossain, a doctor from Blackburn, who is spending several weeks mucking in with everything from demarcation to cooking. Read about his experiences in a forest that is disappearing faster than any other on Earth.
Flying down to Lake Murray
The flight to Lake Murray where the Station is based was a grueling, four-hour flight on board a very small and scary propeller plane that took off and landed on several remote grass airstrips on its way there.
After the flight, we took an amazing boat ride across the lake to reach Camp Kewe, the Greenpeace camp. Along the way, we sailed through grassy wetlands, not unlike the Everglades in Florida, and we could also see the tropical forest stretching right down to the shoreline.
The local Kuni tribesman helped construct the camp with local materials and traditional building techniques, including a thatched roof and an open timber first floor where we all sleep under mosquito nets. At night all you can hear is the sound of insects and birds in the forest - when it's not raining, that is. I hope for rain every night because the rain brings with it a cool breeze, and a good night's sleep.
The first things you tend to notice are the comforts of home that are not so easy to come by over here. For example, there is no running water so we have to catch rainwater from the roof which is funneled into buckets - this becomes our drinking water.
We obviously don't have a washing machine or shower either, so we have to do all that in the lake. We do have a toilet, an ash one in a pit, at the back of the camp and we do our cooking over a camp fire, but more on that later.
Leeches, leeches, everywhere
My first trip into the forest proper was part of the eco-forest training, but I spent most of my time watching my legs for leeches. More often than not, when I looked down, I would see small dark blobs moving like caterpillars on my socks and shoes, trying to reach a piece of exposed skin. This despite the fact I was wearing walking shoes, thick socks, and trousers.
I was not allowed to sit down anywhere or put down my bag in case they were waiting to stick to my bum. You would think you'd be able to see them, but some are tiny and really well hidden so you can't avoid them all, and they make a beeline for you if you are anywhere nearby.
Of course, there are other pests to watch out for and after being ravaged by mosquitoes and other unknown assailants, I'm literally itching all over. When I'm working in the skin clinic as part of my job, I usually tell people that no matter how itchy they are they should not resort to scratching, in case they damage their skin further.
But my itches were so bad I just thought, "To hell with any that, I'm need to scratch," so I could have just a millisecond of relief. I've resisted scratching since then because, as I discovered, it does really make your skin a lot worse but I'll be more understanding of my patients in future! But then I heard ABBA playing on a local radio station which made me feel a lot better.
Annoying though mosquitoes and leeches are, they're just part of the unbelievable biodiversity of these forests. There have been no thorough biological surveys of many areas and on one of our walks into the forest, I saw at least 15 different species of ant. My guess is that at least some of these would be unknown to science.
The spice of life
It's a bit difficult to be vegetarian in camp as most people seem to be omnivores. I'm not the only one as Cally and Luke are both veggies and fortunately Cally makes a dish from onions, garlic, local chillies, runner beans, milk and tins of baked beans, which was a great success and has become known as "Cally's jungle bean surprise mix"!
We're supposed to have only local foods to try to make us have a "more authentic local experience", but that tends to mean dishes that are not cooked with a lot of spices. But we would do anything to get our hands on contraband stuff like curry powder, just to give the veggies a nicer taste. I am going to go totally over the top with spicy foods when I return to England.
We cook all our food over wood fires and it's a real skill not only to get the fire going in the first place but to keep it going afterwards. You also have to put it out so you can restart it when you have to. The perverse thing is that, even though it's boiling hot all the time, we have to have a camp fire which just makes things even hotter.
And when you're cooking, the smoke seems to follow you around, stinging and irritating your eyes. I can't believe our distant ancestors had to use camp fires all the time - I would have walked off in protest about all the smoke!
