Removal of the rainforest for plantations greatly increased the rate of runoff after thunderstorms, causing the water level of rivers to fluctuate wildly. Here a bridge across the Aring River at the Aring Lima oil palm plantation has become submerged after a brief storm.
Two men are dropping a few rice seeds in each hole and tamping soil over them with the butts of their bamboo seed containers. A square altar can be seen on the ground between them. Before starting to plant, they burned some incense on the smoldering log inside the altar and recited a spell to the earth spirit, a Malay practice that they adopted along with swidden farming.
Image of a young man outside with his shirt off exposing chicken pox rash (possibly same person from Gilman 049). Children standing nearby & additional people sitting in the background.
Batek sometimes keep small animals as pets, but they do not coddle them as Americans do. When the animals die, people may eat them if they are common prey species (e.g., bats, bamboo rats), but not if they have raised them and become emotionally attached to them. This woman looks on while her two children play with their pet mouse.
Logging companies were required to cut and burn all remaining vegetation after they had removed the valuable timber, taking the former forest land down to bare earth.
A man carries a wooden kevadi adorned in bright flowers and decorations. The kevadi carrier has a piercing through his bottom lip and both cheeks with connecting metal rods in the shape of a cross.
Some crude sawmills were set up near the source of the trees to saw logs into rough planks. This is the log dump at one such sawmill with a pile of scrap wood in the foreground.
