Borneo: this is not a story – this is the truth
Aki Embah and the orang-utan midwife
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“This is not a story – this is the truth”
Dear NE-One
It’s dark out here in the jungled heart of Borneo, where a million leaves block almost all moonlight from reaching the forest floor. Great ironwoods and strangler figs stand guard around us, their branches gently stirring the noises of the tropical night.
“When people tell stories it is up to you to decide if you will believe them,” Bayang anak Penguang gazes into the night. “But this, what I will tell you now, is not a story. It is the truth – and I know this because my family has seen it with their own eyes.”
Bayang pauses to puff life into a smouldering cigarette and smoke trickles beyond the boundary of torchlight.
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