Green

Looking east to Lombok from Gili Air

We’re spending a guilty week on a mooring at Gili Air, the quietest of three small, low coral atolls off the northwest coast of Lombok, the huge island just east of the island of Bali.  In the early morning, the sun profiles the mountains of the West Lombok forest reserve and its several 9-10,000 foot mountains.  In the evening, the setting sun profiles the singular conical volcanic peak of Gunung Agung, rising 10,000 feet over the Bali landscape.  We’re surrounded by a low coral reef, with surf gently breaking, and the soft smoke of wood cooking fires – ubiquitous in these islands – hangs low over the shore line.

Jennifer, preparing for a Gili Air day

I say guilty, because Gili Air, and its two neighboring atolls, are resort islands; we’re on the quiet family-oriented island; the others cater to the younger, partying crowd.  In addition to being a bit more in our age and energy range, there are moorings here, and we’re happy to be on a secure mooring instead of the uncertain anchorages in the other islands' deep, steeply-sloped waters.  Our routine has quickly settled into a dinghy ride ashore in the morning to secure a beach cabana at the locally-run Scallywags bar, breakfast, some internet/email work, and then snorkeling and reading until lunch, followed by more relaxing until we dinghy back to the boat in the afternoon, to rest before going ashore for dinner, eating under our own personal thatch-roofed raised platform with cushions and a low table.

It’s a tough life, but we’re happy to accept the challenge and responsibility of reporting to you, our dear friends, family, and readers, of our closing days in Indonesia.  We leave in a few days for a marina in Bali, where our days will be consumed with a wide array of maintenance activities to prepare our boat for the next legs of our circumnavigation:  the 1,100 mile sail from Bali to the Australian protectorate of Cocos Keeling, the 2,300 mile sail from Cocos to Mauritius, and then the final 1,500 mile leg to Richards Bay, South Africa.  All in all, we’ll be sailing some 4,700 miles in some of the more challenging blue waters on this fair planet.  Our boat needs to be ready, and more importantly, we need to be rested.

Trash-strewn landing beach in Banda

With the free time we’ve given ourselves, I’ve just finished reading the third of three novels – all well recommended and published in 2010.  Each has as its substantive theme the issue of the environment, coupled with a dramatic theme that examines the issue of what a single human being can do to affect the course of environmental history.  As sailors, we are careful to act locally, but in thinking globally, the issues seem daunting.  One of the things that has distressed us about Indonesia is the ostensibly simple issue of garbage disposal:  we see plastic litter everywhere – floating in the ocean, strewn along the high-tide lines, in the streets, etc.  And not just the odd scrap here and there – piles of it.  We bought a few bags of lollypops to give to kids when we went ashore; I watched in  dismay as the kids take the wrappers off and discard them along the unpaved streets and on the beaches.  We see plastic bottles floating miles offshore.  We see trash lying on the bottom of otherwise pristine coral reefs. It’s not just Indonesia; on the windward coast of Margaret Bay, Australia, we saw thousands of bottles strewn along the upper edge of the tidal range.

I understand that certain aspects of environmental awareness are a luxury of developed economies; recycling demands an infrastructure that developing economies are forced to defer in favor of investments in sanitation facilities and clean drinking water.  And I would note that most of America's interstate highways, with their plastic-bottle-laden rest stops, lack recycling facilities.  But the simple act of consolidating garbage -- especially plastics -- seems within reach of every community.  It’s catching in some places in Indonesia – in Bandaneira, we gave some money to a local program designed to teach the kids not to litter – the coloring book highlighted a cultural basis for the throw-away behaviors by reminding people that food was no longer wrapped in banana leaves, and thus the new wrappings – plastic usually – should no longer be discarded on the ground.  But we see a lot of carelessly-strewn trash on the islands of Indonesia.

Wood cooking fires in Wailamung, Flores

The three books – Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, American Subversive, by David Goodwillie, and Solar, by Ian McEwan – each focus on the struggles of individuals to make sense of their adopted desires to do more than act responsibly in their personal lives, and to somehow make a bigger difference.  While motivations vary across the three sets of protagonists, and the novels are as much about the interpersonal relationships of the protagonists, I think it’s interesting that three of the more well-regarded novels of 2010 deal with the issue of the environment and the dilemma of personally driven change.  It might say something about reviewers’ sensibilities, but I also think it says something about our time:  we’re swamped with stories about global warming and environmental gloom and doom, so we buy hybrid cars and recycle and reduce our carbon footprint, but there’s a sense of futility about these efforts.  Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.  Australia – whose news we can follow on our ham radio – continues to argue over a carbon tax, while its economy depends almost entirely on exporting coal to China to fuel its economic development. Much of Indonesia – the fourth-most populous nation on earth – relies on wood fires to cook their food. 

Recycling and bicycles in Gili Air

It’s no wonder novelists, who often give voice to the intellectual angst of a time,  are picking up on the frustration.  Jennifer and I will pick up the bottle in the water, and our carbon footprint is as small as can be these days, but we too feel a sense of powerlessness as we watch our oceans rise and its waters become more tangled in the plastic detritus of a consumerist world.  As we begin to allow ourselves to think about re-entering life in America in a year’s time, we’re starting to think about how we might deploy our professional energies; my background is in healthcare, which has its own set of national and global challenges, so I suspect I’ll stay in that realm of the impossible; Jennifer, responding to some of our experiences of our circumnavigation, is considering environmental issues as one option. 

But for now, it’s the guilty pleasures of Gili Air, where, I am pleased to say, they seem to have embraced the new green imperatives – composting, recycling, and a complete lack of cars on the island.  Instead, we have horse-drawn carts and bicycles.  It’s a start.

Gili Air's mass transport system