The Borne and Rainforest is one of the most biodiverse places in the world so to be living
here is something really special.
So here at the safe camp I cherish and enjoy every single moment here to be able to work
with people from all around the world, professionals, PhD students, researchers and also the locals
over here.
I just love waking up to the sound of gibbons in the morning, being able to shower at the
stream and I think that's something really special about the safe camp environment.
Living here has really opened my eyes to the fragility of this environment and the importance
of what we're doing.
There's nothing else quite like it in the world.
Safe camp is a jungle research station based in eastern Sabah in Calabacan in Malaysian
Borneo.
The camp provides basic facilities, accommodation, food, cars and research assistance to facilitate
whatever research is going on.
Researchers come from either Malaysia and as far afield as America, Europe, Australia
and the field season is two or three weeks, anywhere up to six or nine months depending
on the work.
Considering this is a field centre in the middle of Malaysian Borneo in the tropical
rainforest the living facilities are actually pretty good.
You can stay in dorm style rooms which have plenty of beds and plenty of space or you
can stay in the single or double rooms which are actually all privately separated and it
just depends on how many researchers or scientists there are staying at any particular time.
Everyone kind of likes to make their room their own little space, you know, they hang
things out, put pictures up, whatever.
You can really kind of personalise it.
Everyone here does their own washing and laundry, you just fill it up at one of the
taps here and it's all clean and toilet facilities here are good and again it's one of the other
things that are actually expanding it's safe.
This week we've had a whole new toilet block finish and three new showers due to the compact
nature of the camp and the dorm style rooms and that kind of thing.
Everyone's kind of in the same place together all the time and everyone goes to sleep at
roughly the same time because everyone needs to get up and work and you get used to living
together and living next to everyone who you're working with really.
The Kika Safe is really good and I think in general everyone really enjoys the food and
of course being a field camp you sort of have the same food such as rice and noodles but
they really change this up by having different vegetables which are sourced locally.
They get foods from around the forest and around camp such as ginger and chillies which
they add in the sauces which makes it really delicious.
We have three meals a day, breakfast is usually served before anyone goes out to the field
and they also provide food for those that are staying out at lunch time and throughout
the day as well there's tea and coffee and drinking water available.
One of my favourite meals is a dinner time when everyone comes back from the field and
everyone just sort of sits together and wines down and it's really nice.
Considering this is a field camp in a tropical forest it has to say the food is really good
especially since it's freshly made every day.
I guess that's one of the really nice things about being at the Safe Project is it's really
international.
I mean probably a majority of people from UK universities but you get people, you get
Finnish people, German people, you get local guys which is really cool because it's really
nice that they're getting involved with research in their own tropical forests and there's
a huge range of sort of topics that people research.
You can be if your research area is say fish or mammals then you can be interacting with
people who are commonly working on insects or gas flux and how nutrients move around
an ecosystem.
The old lab here has enough workspace just about for everyone but increasingly the Safe
Camp is expanding and currently there's a brand new lab being built up the hill, proper
lab facilities for whatever the researchers need.
The Wi-Fi often causes everyone quite a bit of frustration but you learn to live with
it the nature of being somewhere remote in the tropical forest, it's run by satellite.
Usually you can squeeze a bit of desk space to write your paper or do a bit of lab work
and look through a microscope, check traps or whatever you've done, so yeah it's not
too bad.
So the field work and people's scientific work is pretty intense so when they want to
wind down there's obviously people go down to the river and relax there, there's the
sport field, there's volleyball, there's badminton, people can keep in touch with their relatives
and friends, yeah I think we don't really want to put pressure on anyone, it's completely
up to people what they do so it's what they make of it whether they're going to devote
their entire time out here to work or spend a little bit more time relaxing and getting
to know everyone at camp.
From this camp we hope to facilitate research that really makes a difference.
Research that aids conservation of tropical ecosystems around the world.
