In my village, nature is the granary of our daily of livelihood. We went to the forest collecting firewood and rattan, hunting deer, fishing for freshwater fish, and occasionally cutting down large trees to make our small houses.
Our customs teach us how to be friendly with nature. We have been taught to love the forest for generations. We are looking for what we can use from the forest, but we are also reminded not to be greedy in using forest resources. We were taught to hunt for food. We were taught to choose large trees which is good for building materials and we cut down one or two of them only to build our houses. Never more.
For centuries our ancestors lived as jungle keepers, and it has been passed on to us through oral stories, along with customary laws.
But that is our childhood story.
Now our forests have turned into fields where timber barons, corrupt governments, greedy military officials, and conglomerates destroying our forest without a break.
That all started from the word of development and investment. The government with their power plotting the forest lands behind our house to be distributed to the owners of capital.
That was such a little apocalypse for us. The forests are destroyed, large trees are overthrown, wild animals lose their homes, soil excavated, mountain rocks also dredged. An each year the river cries, the flash floods sweep away our wooden houses, destroying our crops and livestock.
While the brokers, corrupt government officials, greedy military officials and conglomerates are celebrating parties from wealth produced by destroying the forest behind our houses. However, we are often accused of being a suspect by environmentalists or activist who come every month to teach us tips to protect forests. They also distributed to us brochures containing terms we did not understand, but from it all, it was clear that they wanted to say; as if we were the ones who had destroyed the forests, we were the ones that had caused the wild animals extinct, and so forth.
Then the other little apocalypse came again, along with the first rain that causes great flood. Perfect!
After our forests were destroyed by greedy, greedy, greedy and greedy men, then we were accused as unlucky people by environmental activists. And as a complement, we are the suspects who deserve to be affected by the natural disasters such as flash flood that happen almost every year.