I am in Bengkulu to interview farmers about local environmental and ecological changes. Farmers are the first to identify with changes as those changes affect what they can grow and how they grow crops. The best way to interview farmers is work along side them. So I pulled up my pant legs, took off my shoes, and stepped into a rice paddy–yep barefooted. When I was here in 2020, I helped plant rice. If you are interested you can see that experience on my blog post: The Village of Little People.

When I planted rice in 2020, I found these beautiful pink eggs. You can see those pictures at the same link above. The eggs are from the from the Golden Apple Snail. They are 1 of the top 100 most invasive species. They carry a nematode (roundworm) known as the rat lungworm. People infected with rat lungworm show symptoms similar to bacterial meningitis. The locals call it the gold snail because it is yellow. The eggs in the photo below are not as pink as the eggs I saw in 2020. The farmer said this is because they are ready to hatch. The farmers destroy the eggs. This time I got to see the snail. They can get as large as an apple.

Today, I worked with a farmer in Taba Tembilang. The day could not start without a good drink of coconut water and eating the juicy inside!

My job in the rice paddy was to pull weeds. Not a hard job, but it took me some time to get my footing. Walking around in mud seems easy until you do it. You cannot step on the rice, which of course, I did for the first few minutes. Once I was in it for a bit, I got much better at navigating the rice and pulling the weeds. The hardest part was figuring out what was a weed and what was rice. Rice is like most tall grasses it has a sharp edge. Glad I wore long sleeves.

After all this work, they get $.37 for a pound. This farmer does not sell the rice. The rice is to feed his family. He cannot buy rice for $.37/lb. For this kind of money, I think my rice paddy career is now complete. I planted rice and pulled weeds.

This video shows you what it is like to work in the rice field. Beautiful, hot, and wet. Listen … at the end of the video Yoga tells where he would like to live. I ask him about Texas, but he tells me where he really wants to be. He uses the state initials so listen close.

Rice farmer by morning. Rubber framer by afternoon. I spent the day with this farmer. He has a rice paddy and a rubber plantation. After lunch, we moved to his rubber plantation to collect rubber. A quick tutorial on how to collect the rubber and I was off to fill my bucket! You bend over for collecting rubber, but not as much as pulling weeds out of the rice paddy.

To collect the rubber, the farmer cuts the trees everyday for 3 days. They place a plastic cup or half a coconut under the drip. Then they collect the rubber. To keep the rubber trees producing rubber, the farmer must cut the trees everyday. By the way, the rubber stinks.

The farmer collects the rubber in bags and then takes it to a rubber collector to sell. Keep in mind this farmer has 500 trees and he does this process everyday after he works in the rice field. Watching him use his tool to cut the rubber tree is so cool. Guess what he would not let me try this part of the process!! I was only allowed to collect the rubber not bleed the tree–I think he was worried I was more likely to bleed me!

The video shows more about collecting the rubber and how he bleeds the trees.