From Yenbuba, we moved the Kalabia over to the village of Kaliyam, near the Westerly end of Sagawin Strait on a full day 11 hour steam. This was to be a joint program involving the villages of Kaliyam and Wailebet, as supposedly the numbers of students were quite small… (it’s a whole other programmatic story, but they were not as small as we were informed, and so we ended up with a 40-student program!)
The Kalabia moored at Kaliyam and the team immediately began the socialization and coordination of the joint program. The view of the forests from the Kalabia was incredible, and every morning as we prepared to receive the students I took a few moments to appreciate the lush green, literally littered with the white dots of sulphur-crested cockatoos. I mourned in advance for them, since during our time in Kaliyam, we were surrounded by the sounds of chainsaws ripping down their homes.
Snorkeling at Pulau Sagawin was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, with very good coral coverage and fish variety. After becoming aware of the situation with the forest and the turtles in the village, I hadn’t hoped for much in the water… And in fact, if we had been just around the corner, I would’ve gotten what I expected – shattered reefs blown apart by bombs. But the bomb fishermen don’t come from here… they zoom by the village with their fancy prows, the villages hear the bombs, and then the prows zoom back toward the city of Sorong, their coolers full, leaving death and destruction in their wake along with bewildered villagers wondering why no one is doing anything about their evil influence on the local food security issue. When I ask why they don’t deny the illegal fishers access to their reefs, they don’t have much of a response… in general this is the way of non-aggressive, humanistic people.
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