The Sacred Tree
A hama tree grows near Naldo Rei\'s house in Iralafai, a village on the eastern tip of Lospalos, Timor Leste. The tree stands high and leafy. The grooves on the trunk are like sculptures.
A hama tree grows near Naldo Rei\'s house in Iralafai, a village on the eastern tip of Lospalos, Timor Leste. The tree stands high and leafy. The grooves on the trunk are like sculptures. Its roots grip the ground. Hama, in the Fataluku language, means banyan. The tree has witnessed various events and losses to Naldo Rei\'s family.
At certain times, Naldo complained to the hama tree, stood looking up beneath it. At other times, she imagined herself as a hama tree.
For weak souls, hama or banyan trees are scary. However, during the Dutch colonial period, bamboo trees were most feared. The colonial government forbade angklung, a musical instrument made of bamboo, to be played en masse because it thought it could raise the spirit of people\'s resistance.
Trees are also believed to be able to absorb human emotions. In Japan, there are people who deliberately go to the forest to talk to trees for the sake of nourishing their souls.
Peter Wohlleben, a German forestry expert, wrote a book about trees titled The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, which was published in 2016. After observing the behavior of beech trees and studying other trees for two decades, he believes trees are social creatures that also have a language.
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Trees are connected via roots to obtain nutrients. The communication between trees is carried through aroma, which is linked to the security system.
He cites the case of acacia trees. When the leaves are devoured by the giraffe, the acacia tree emits ethylene gas to send a distress signal to neighboring trees of the same species so that these trees simultaneously pump poison into their respective leaves in self-defense. The fungus even functions like an optical fiber that transmits the emergency message to the trees.
Coastal forests, he says, play a role in connecting the oceans with the farthest corners of the land to channel water.
Therefore, according to Wohlleben, forests are superorganisms that have interconnections, such as ant colonies. Coastal forests, he says, play a role in connecting the oceans with the farthest corners of the land to channel water.
The indigenous people of Mollo on Timor Island, East Nusa Tenggara, interpret the forest as skin, lungs and hair. The skin is very important because it covers and protects the body. The lungs pump oxygen into the blood. Hair regulates body temperature.
When the trees on their hill were cut down by a marble company, Aleta Baun and the Mollo customary elders reacted. Aleta brought together three tribal women to stop mining activities that destroyed forests, clean water sources and natural dyes for weaving. They deliberately weaved at the mine site until the mining was stopped.
Not only Aleta, Apai Janggut also led the indigenous Dayak Iban Sungai Utik community in West Kalimantan to protect their forests from illegal logging and corporate activities.
The intense wildfire smoke that swept through our forests in 2019 migrated to the closest neighboring countries.
Protecting forests from fires is urgent. Greenpeace Southeast Asia estimates that 4.4 million hectares of forests in Indonesia were burned between 2015 and 2019. About 1.3 million hectares were located on oil palm and pulp and paper concessions. This ecological disaster had a wide impact. The intense wildfire smoke that swept through our forests in 2019 migrated to the closest neighboring countries. Several flights were canceled due to thick smoke. The National Disaster Mitigation Agency recorded as many as 919,516 people had suffered from respiratory diseases due to the smoke.
If forests were extinct, not many species would survive on earth. Juliane Koepcke\'s experience provides the most extreme evidence of the forest as a savior.
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On Christmas Eve 1971, Juliane and his mother boarded an airplane bound for Lima-Pucallpa, which was caught in a thunderstorm and struck by lightning. The plane broke apart in the air.
Juliane was strapped to her seat detached from the plane, which fell from a height of thousands of meters and landed in the forest. "Without the leaves of trees and shrubs, I would not have survived a crash on the ground," she wrote in his autobiography dedicated to his late mother, When I Fell from the Sky. She was the only survivor at the accident which took place when she was 17 years old.
Juliane\'s mother and father, Maria and Hans Wilhem Koepcke, were leading zoologists from Germany.
They migrated to Peru and took the initiative to build Panguana, a research station for biology and nature conservation, in 1968. Panguana was taken from the name of a local bird. Now Juliane leads Panguana and also works for the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich, Germany.
In her autobiography, she also thinks of us: “Rainforests are not only full of miracles, which we don\'t know much about. Its preservation as the green lungs of the earth is essential to the survival of this very young species: man. "
Forest fruit trees, such as cempedak, durian, rukam, and rambai, grow there.
When she described the characteristics of tropical rainforests, I remembered my childhood experience on Bangka Island. The soil was moist, with a distinctive aroma due to rotten leaves, and was a little dark. The people of Bangka call the forest a future. Forest fruit trees, such as cempedak, durian, rukam, and rambai, grow there.
In certain seasons, the fruit was picked to be eaten. Some were sold to the market. The harvest is often so abundant. The capacity of the stomach of humans and animals is limited.
These fruits then rot, become fertilizer. Now many of the areas where they grew have become oil palm plantations.
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A tree has contributed to protecting the future of the earth and its inhabitants. Arahmaiani, an Indonesian female artist and activist, has been involved in the ecological movement to plant 320,000 trees in Tibet which began in 2011, out of her care on the environment. When we met in Frankfurt, Germany, a few years ago,she said, about 2 billion people depended on Tibetan water.
"Tibet is Asia\'s water tower. In addition, Tibet is the largest ice sheet in the world. Imagine if there was global warming and the ice melted, “she said.
The hama tree in Iralafai is hundreds of years old. The tee is respected. Naldo\'s late father, a liurai or tribal king, called hama as a sacred tree. For his son, the hama tree is a symbol of protection and hope.
LINDA CHRISTANTY, is a humanist and cultural activist.
(This article was translated by Hendarsyah Tarmizi)