I leave my Fulbright experience Sunday April 30. Thank you to those of you who followed the blog and contacted me on the blog and other ways. Feels good to know you all are out there and care enough to spend your time reading about my work.

My last day in Bengkulu was April 27. No way the last day could have been better. Abdul and I spent the day planning our next project. A village (Batu Raja Rejang–translates to King Regang’s Stone) located in the social forest–meaning protected but run by the local community–wants to protect the small amount of forest they have not covered with farms. The village is located near the top of a mountain and close to the headwater of 5 rivers. The water is almost pure. We went to the headwater of one of the rivers to test pH and dissolved oxygen to verify the water is good for bottling and selling.

The idea is we will build a water company, bottle the water, and ship it across Indonesia. The money will keep the farmers from opening the small amount of rainforest left in the area. Maybe the next Fiji water company. Fiji water is from Fiji but their headquarters is in Los Angeles. This headquarters for King Stone Water will be located right next to the source!!

Getting to the source is only a little complicated. Skip to the video at the bottom if you are not interested in the story/pictures.

We met with the village chief (young man in the Levi’s shirt) and the local conservation group to discuss their ideas about the project and their needs. These guys know the importance of saving the water and forest from farming.

To see and test the headwaters of Air Dinging Kecil (name of river) is an all day trek into the rainforest. We rode in the back of a truck for about 3 miles.

Then we walked about 3 miles to the headwaters of the first river. This was an easy walk–OK easy is relative. It was up and down hill but mostly on a concrete path used by motorcycles. The water tested well for drinking. 7.1pH and 9.7 dissolved oxygen. We need to test for bacteria and parasites. They will use light to treat the water for living things.

The next leg of the journey was about 5 miles in dense rainforest with forest leeches everywhere. Most people think you only get leeches in water. Nope!!! There are ground leeches looking for some juicy food. If you watch the video, you can see them. They are cute little things until they are sucking on you. They liked me–as Guntoyo says in the video. “This is friend”. I pulled my pants down. One cutie pie crawled up my pants and was attached to my lower back. I did not include that picture!!! The red stuff on my pants is blood. My Bedrock shoes could not protect me from the leeches, but the guides covered my feet in wet tobacco. Leeches HATE tobacco juice. I watched them drop dead when they were covered in tobacco juice. Reminded me of the barning tobacco days! You can see the leeches in the video.

The trip was so worth it. We went to a beautiful waterfall. We ate all kinds of wild fruit including wild blueberries. They were so yummy!!! We drank water from vines the guide cut from a tree.

I can tell it was a great day by how nasty my feet were when I got home.

Below is a 3 minute video of the trek to the waterfall.