© unknownBu Elvi
She was just standing there, in the middle of burning land, surrounded by stumps of trees, fire everywhere, smoke rising towards hopelessly gray sky. The expression on her face was mischievous, almost girlish. I had no idea how old she was: she could have been 28, just as she could easily have been 55.
This island, this village, this charred land: it all looked like hell to me, but obviously not to her: it actually made her laugh, burst with pride. After all, it was her island, not mine; it was her land, her trees, and it was all getting royally fucked. She was personally participating in this carnage of nature - she, as well as her husband, her entire family, her neighbors.
Her name was Bu Elvi. 'Bu' means mom, or mam or Misses, in Bahasa Indonesia. Her scorched land spans near the village of Dusun Terusan, and Dusan Terusan is near Sintang, in the heart of Borneo, on the largest island in Asia, which is also the second largest island in the world, on what we habitually call 'our Planet Earth'; although frankly, this moonscape of Indonesian Borneo/Kalimantan has very little to do with what used to be the 'blue planet'.
"I follow stock exchange regularly", Bu Elvi brags, boastfully.
"I know that prices of rubber went down at least three times, lately. Now we will burn all this down, since the government refuses to give us any substantial compensation... and then, we will plant some vegetables, at least for a while.""And then?" we ask. "What if the prices of rubber go up again?"
"Then, well..." she hesitates, but for just a few moments. Regaining her bearings, she declares, defiantly:
"If that happens, we will burn the vegetables and reintroduce the rubber plantation."
Comment: To get an idea of how Western civilization has gone down this particular toilet, see: