Erika drove the hired jeep through a pair of wooden gates and parked in a bare earth courtyard.
Bright, new wooden buildings joined to form two sides of the square. The whole courtyard was hung with colourful bunting and flags. Trees lined the fourth side and towered over the roofs all around, as if the rainforest was just waiting to take back this little space.
“The Adilah Reservation,” announced Ben. “We’re here!”
He and Zoe jumped out of the car and gasped in the humid afternoon heat after the cool of the car’s air-conditioning.
Insects buzzed overhead and they could hear exotic bird and animal cries from the forest. Two workers were fixing a banner over the entrance of one of the buildings.
It read: “Grand Opening Today”. Another man came over eagerly to greet them.
He was carrying a hammer and nails, and a heavy sign. They recognised him from the photo they’d seen.
“Hello there! You must be Ben and Zoe!” He put down his tools and sign and shook the children’s hands enthusiastically. “I’m Mat Ginting. Welcome to my reservation.”
“It’s great to be here,” said Zoe with a beaming smile.
Erika took their backpacks from the boot. “We’re so grateful you agreed to take on our winners,” she said to Mat. “I’ll pick them up at the end of their stay. Enjoy your prize, Ben and Zoe.”
“Thank you, Miss Bohn,” they replied politely. The children knew they mustn’t show that she was anything more than the organiser of the competition. They also knew that Erika was heading off north to check out reports of more illegal logging.
Zoe looked at the sign Mat had been carrying. She’d seen the design on the journey. It was a huge “O” encircling a globe and supported by caring hands. They’d passed field after field where the forest had been cleared for oil palm trees. Every one of them had displayed this sign.
“Whose logo is that?” asked Zoe. “We kept seeing it on the way here.”
“Ostrander Industries,” Mat told her. “Pieter Ostrander, the owner, has been very generous in giving donations to help us with our work. The least we could do is put up his plantation logo in time for the ceremony. He’s promised to make a speech for us.”
“But isn’t his plantation threatening the rainforest?” asked Ben. “It’s taken over a huge area. We drove for several miles seeing nothing but his oil palms.”
“And they’re not even a native tree of Borneo!” burst in Zoe.
“We have to keep a balance,” said Mat. “The plantation gives jobs to the locals and the forest must be preserved. That’s why I took this land and I’ll keep it safe. When Pieter first bought the plantation a few years ago he approached me and asked if I would sell him my reservation, but as soon as I told him what I was doing, he became very supportive. In fact, I’ve just had trouble with illegal logging in the east of my land. Pieter lent me some men to patrol the area and the loggers haven’t been back since. Pieter’s a good friend.”
“Greetings!” called a voice.
A smiling young woman came out of one of the buildings. A baby orang-utan clung to her neck, its head against her shoulder. It had soft orange hair and a round, baby belly. It looked solemnly at the children.
“My name is Yasmin,” said the woman, pushing her long, dark fringe out of her eyes. “I am Mat’s wife. And you must be the competition winners. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” said Ben with a grin.
“Who’s this?” asked Zoe, stroking the soft fur of the baby orang-utan. It grabbed her finger and held it. Zoe couldn’t help letting out a happy sigh.
“His name is Biza,” said Yasmin fondly. “He is an orphan we are caring for. We cannot resist a baby who needs help. They go back into the wild when they are old enough.”
“But they do come back to see us,” added Mat. “Orang-utans make a bond with their primary carer. Some of the females show us their babies as if we were grandparents!”
“And we are just as proud!” laughed Yasmin. “Come. Biza and I will show you your bedroom and you can unpack. In an hour we have our opening ceremony.”
Ben and Zoe breathed in the welcoming smell of new wood as they followed her through a kitchen with a huge table to a corridor of bedrooms.
“These are the guest quarters,” she announced. “When you are ready Mat will be waiting for you in his office. It is across the courtyard.”
Left alone in their cool bedroom with its two beds and shower room, Ben and Zoe quickly emptied their backpacks of everything but their essential Wild equipment. Zoe detached the translator earpiece from her BUG and stuck it into her ear.
“Don’t forget yours, Ben,” she said. “We want to understand everything people are saying, even when they’re speaking Malay.”
The children found Mat sitting in an office, working at an old-fashioned computer.
“I’m updating my records while I have a chance,” he told them, as he handed them a welcome drink of iced juice. “I make daily entries about our orang-utans…well, all but one.”
“Why not all?” Zoe made it sound like a casual enquiry.
Ben grinned to himself. His sister wasn’t wasting time in finding out information for their mission.
“One of our orang-utans has left the reservation,” Mat told them. “He’s a young male called Kawan. He’s been with us since he was tiny. He was taken from his mother by poachers who were going to sell him as a pet to some rich westerner!”
“That’s awful!” gasped Zoe.
“Luckily, they were arrested in time and Kawan was brought to me,” Mat went on.
“I had no idea where he’d come from so I couldn’t find his mother. He was the first orang-utan I raised from a baby.”
He sighed, a wistful look on his face. “I released him into the wild last year. But he still came by every morning for a rusk. Until two weeks ago, that is. He hasn’t been back since the logging scared him off.”
“Is he more wary of humans than other orang-utans are because of what happened when he was little?” asked Ben.
“It seems that way,” said Mat. “At least I know he’s alive. One of my staff, Daud, sighted him on Mr Ostrander’s oil palm plantation at the edge of the reservation when he was working on the walkway.”
He grinned at them. “Would you like to see some footage of Kawan doing his jungle training? It’s me showing him how to look after himself – being his mother in a way. I’m sure we have time before the ceremony.”
“Yes please,” said Ben and Zoe together.
Mat took them through into a larger room where log benches faced a screen. He gestured for them to sit. “You’re the first guests to see this,” he said. “Daud filmed it. He’s very fond of Kawan, too.” The screen flashed into life and the words “Adilah Reservation” appeared. Mat fast-forwarded to a scene where he was teaching a tiny orang-utan how to climb a tree. The solemn little ape had a comical tuft of light hair sticking up on one side of his head. He was faithfully copying Mat’s every move until Mat made a strange chirruping noise.
“Kawan always comes to that call,” explained Mat. “At least he did. Now he must be too far away to hear it. When the official opening is over and we’re all back to normal I’m going to go and find him. Pieter let me have a look on the plantation before, but I haven’t had the chance to do a thorough search. The plantation’s not a natural home for an orang-utan – and I fear he must be eating the young oil palm seedlings. That’s not fair on Pieter.”
They watched the footage of young Kawan responding to Mat’s call by abandoning his task, climbing on Mat’s head and clinging to his ears.
“Ahhh,” said Ben. “How cute. Do show it again.”
Zoe looked at him, puzzled. It wasn’t like her brother to go gooey over animals. That was her job!
But as the film replayed she glimpsed him slip out his BUG and hit a button. Now she knew what he was up to. He was recording Mat’s call. She smiled to herself. If they could get to Kawan’s old territory, they could play the recording through the digital super-amplifier on the BUG. Hopefully the orang-utan would hear it and come home.