Along the Lojing Trail

The following black and white photo series is from a recent trip to the Pos Brooke orang asli (Malaysian Aborigines) settlement in Lojing. I was there along with a group of people ranging from orang asli specialists, researchers to geologists and experts in the highland ecology. Having able to spend a day with them, we have come to realized that because of our aim for fast economic growth, we are affecting a lot of things around us.

For instance, for the settlement in Lojing, their source of natural food and water comes from the river which ran from Cameron Highlands. As we know, Cameron Highlands is an agricultural area where most of Malaysia’s tea grew from, in the highlands also we have other farming activities from the strawberry farms to the typical vegetation farming which provides us in the city fresh daily supplies of vegetables to cook. Now, all is good in this sense, but from all this activities, as it gets more widespread and abundance, the ecological problem also start to arise.

Trees get destroyed, beautiful stretch of lands get flatten to be turned into farming area and when the question of why isn’t our highlands not getting cold anymore? Well, look around you when you next go up there, there isn’t much trees surrounding the little towns you visit anymore is there? The trees there help keep the temperature low so as we destroy more area, where provide more area to the sun to be heated. This is not the only problem that we should worry about.

The rivers that started it’s path from the highlands also get polluted from all these agricultural activities. As more farming activities get formed around the area, more drainage was created to tape the natural water supplies from the river thus killing the natural flow of the waterway. In reaction, freshwater fishes that lives in it also suffer as it’s population dwindles. Not only that, plantation taps the water from the river, and it also create a path to allow the dirty water to flow out of the plantation, especially those that also has animal farms where faeces from these animals get deposit off into the river. Yes, easy for the farmers there to clean up their shit but what about those that lives down river?

Within Lojing itself, we held a session to talk to these orang asli and what we found out is that, with growth of towns surrounding the Lojing area, the orang asli settlement is in effect being slowly killed off. River pollution was so bad that they don’t even dare to fish from the river anymore and this used to be their main source of food aside from their little vegetable farms. Clean water is hard to come by and as the place they lived in is quite a distance (both ways) to the nearest town, it’s also a problem when they have health related issues as it’s a good 2hours drive out to the nearest clinic.

The rampant illegal logging also poses a problem as they witness first hand how the ecology around them get stripped on a daily basis. Weather from being nice and cool turn hot and on the day we were there, it was really hot as shades from trees no longer exist don’t help anymore. These people have lived there all their lives, they don’t know where else to go if large corporation or even the government come knocking on their doors and chase them out of their ancestral home. These people was here even before the first ‘civilization’ come taking over the area, they’ve been here and survived through the wars and they are still here today. But how long more can these people survive in the current modern world with development growing everywhere destroying everything they know?

Do you want these people to move out of those places just because of development? I for one, do not think it’s fair for them. Why deny them of their rights? Just because the Malay Sultanate came in, took over the land and form the government of the day, doesn’t mean that these orang asli gets their rights and their lands stripped away from them. Yes, they might not be as highly educated than most of the people in the city and towns but they are learning and growing. A School was build for the children to study there, yes, the school only runs on generators to help power the rooms and all the necessity, it is still a good start. But is that enough? What about what these people’s needs for survival? Is there any way our current government can help these people and stop polluting the very source of food that they need to survive?

I love to go camping, I used to go camping a lot but these days, not anymore. There used to be so many camping spots that I love to visit and bring friends along but these days, those very spots has been turned into tourist attractions. With no proper care of the area, these spots also has turned into rubbish dumps as tourists (especially the local ones) would just go in, camp/have their picnic and leave whatever junk/rubbish they brought along. Bit by bit, these rubbish will turn from a mole hill to a big pile of rubbish. It not only drives away future eco-tourists that wants to check out those spots, but it also destroys the environment. It’s a chain reaction that we need to realize. What we do upstream will affect whatever that is downstream. We might live in the city and feels that all is good, but do you realize that the river that run across your city comes from the highlands? it’s all interlinked!

Gosh, from the intention of wanting to show some photos I took from the trip to being a rant on being the friend of the environment. I better stop here before I get too worked up over this issue. By the way, what’s your thoughts on this issue?

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