Orang Asli staff: Salmah, Andak, Andak and Fariday with Volunteers: Arlene Craig, Care Medico; Marilyn Joseph, former Peace Corps; Ray Bryson, Peace Corps; Jane Tyas, VSO.
Oil palms are planted in rows to facilitate care and harvesting. Workers suppress seeds and insect pests with massive applications of chemical herbicides and insecticides, some of which wash into streams and poison the water.
By 1990, logging roads and plantation roads connected the upper Aring settlement and Post Lebir/Kampung Macang, the government-sponsored settlement on the middle Lebir River. Travel by road supplanted most river travel. Here two young men prepare to return from the upper Aring camp to Kampung Macang, where they had houses, on their motorbikes.
Beginning about 1980, a great demand developed for Aloes wood or Eagle woodthe dense, resinous pieces of diseased wood found inside some, but not all, Aquilaria trees. The diseased wood and resin are highly fragrant and are in great demand in the Middle East for use in incense and cosmetics. The highest gradethe darkest and densest woodwhich is very rare, could be sold for as much as US$260 per kilogram in 1990. People get the wood by cutting down Aquilaria trees and chopping them into small pieces, separating the valuable diseased wood from the worthless healthy wood. Here two traders discuss the grade of some Aloes wood with the Batek collector. They will then weigh it in their portable scale and calculate its value.
This woman is bathing her baby in the stream before fetching some water in a cooking pot. The baby has two rings and a protective amulet suspended from her neck.
The view from he top stair of the Batu Caves in Selangor, Malaysia. Several small villages can be seen as well as palm trees and a large body of water.
Batek parents and children often make toys from forest materials, but recently they have been able to buy some toys from traders or shops. Here boys of various ages play with some toy trucks.
