FAJAR: THE ORANGUTAN TELLS A STORY

My name is Fajar. I’m a female baby orangutan from Unggang Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan. Now I live and am being raised with my friends at the Nursery Group of the BOS Foundation at Nyaru Menteng, the largest orangutan rescue and rehabilitation organization in the world.

Do you want to know why I’ve ended up in this rehabilitation center?

I remember that day vividly, the day I was separated from my mother, my home and my friends. It happened not long ago, only about a month ago.

That afternoon, I went with my mother and some adult female orangutans who also brought their children out of the barren woods where we lived. We headed to the oil palm plantations that surrounded our little forest. We had to do because there was no more food in the forest. More and more trees were cut down and burned by humans to clear land for oil palm plantations.
Our mothers were busy foraging, while I pulled away from my mother and had fun playing with a palm fruit that fell on the ground. I did not realize that I strayed further and further away from my mother. Therefore, I was shocked when all of the sudden a group of villagers appeared around me. They were all screaming loudly.

My mother and the other orangutans panicked and quickly ran to the forest. Being a baby and quite a distance from my mother, I got left behind and was caught by the villagers without a fight. I was put into a wooden cage and that was the last time I saw my mother’s face, crying in a distance.

I was also crying and screaming in fear as the villagers took me to the village. The plantation owner kept there me for a month. Placed in the wooden cage, I always felt hot. And I was given food that was foreign to me. I was so sad being separated from my mother and I thought about her all the time. I was only 1 year old and I still very much needed my mother. Now, I became a spectacle for the villagers. My owner named me Fajar. I didn’t know why.

My owner, though, became more and more worried hearing about the orangutan slaughter cases on the television. He finally decided to give me to a policeman on duty at the Unggan Village Police Station to be submitted to the orangutan rehabilitation center at Nyaru Menteng, Palangka Raya.

Not long after, the policeman took me on his motorcycle to Nyaru Menteng, where I was warmly welcomed by a veterinarian who immediately checked my health condition. I was treated very well by the babysitters who also welcomed my arrival. After the handover process between the police officer and the BOS Foundation, I was taken by a babysitter to a room where – as it turned out – there were already some orangutans my age! Here, I will undergo the quarantine process and will soon go to forest school with my new friends.

Hopefully I will stay healthy and will be able to learn everything I need to know to become a wild and independent orangutan, so one day I can be returned to the forest, to my real home. These lessons I will not get from my mother, but I can still learn them from the babysitters and my friends in Nyaru Menteng.