Miko forced Nonong’s legs open. She tried twisting her body so that he could not get inside her. He grabbed her by the throat and banged her head up against the side of the metal bars.

It was going to be easy for Miko. Nonong lost the total use of her right arm and the partial use of her left leg through cerebral malaria when she was younger. But she is spirited. While Miko concentrated on penetrative tactics, she managed to struggle loose and escape her assailant. But it was only for a second.

Miko sprang on her again, pinning Nonong on her back. She gripped his arm with her functioning left hand making it difficult for him to manoeuvre her into the desired position. Miko opened his jaws and bit down hard, teeth clenched against the nape of her neck. She let out a deafening yelp as he pushed himself closer. He struggled his way into position. He was in. Nonong continued to scream violently.

The above rape was the result of my first mistake in the clinic since arriving. With the help of one of the rangers, Dusain, we were able to get Nonong out of the orang-utan enrichment cage and back to the safety of the treatment room before Miko had finished. Lesson of the day: don’t put any of the returning ‘Platform 4’ males into the enrichment cage with Nonong. She has my word that it will not happen again.

Straddling the equator and dominated by luxuriant rainforests is Borneo. Most of you will know that it is the third largest island in the world, my fact of the year before I left. Its territory is apportioned unevenly between the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. It is a tropical wilderness, its virgin forests acknowledged by scientists and pig-hearts alike as the most biodiverse habitat on Earth.

I am working for two months at Sepilok Orang-Utan Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Centre, a reserve of 43sq km of lowland primary rainforest set up to protect the orang-utan from extinction. Quick infomercial: Orang-utans live only in the wild on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra and will be extinct potentially as soon as ten years time. They will be out. Forever. The latest research estimates perhaps as few as 15,000 orang-utans are left in the wild, compared with 250,000 a century ago.

To understand the extinction of this species, you must understand the increase in palm oil plantations on Borneo. The rainforest is being destroyed and orang-utans’ habitats are being wiped out. Many are killed by oil-palm planters because they eat the young oil palm trees.

It is, however, not a case of the evil palm oil planters versus the old man of the forest. This is the oversimplified and naive outlook adopted by those annoying ‘save the world’ hippies who live in trees and smell like dung. Palm oil is an unbelievably useful produce. It is used in shampoos, food stuffs, and even petrol. And it is cheap. Taking palm oil out of the system would increase the price of thousands of products we use everyday ten fold.

The subject has been broached sensitively with most global governments (including in the UK). The ‘save the world’ dung-smelling vegetarian hippies demand that the evil ‘suits’ get their fingers out and either ban palm oil or make sure it is clearly labelled so people can make an informed choice. Fair enough?

All efforts have been resisted. Governments see any increase in prices as an almost certain loss of votes in already depressing economic times. The hippies also fail to take into consideration the plight of the honest palm oil planter trying to feed his family in a developing country. In short, the orang-utan is f*cked.

Then Sepilok comes along. Sepilok takes orphaned or injured orang-utans which have become too dependant on humans through captivity and rehabilitates and protects them, eventually returning them to their natural home. It is the first and largest of only four orang-utan sanctuaries in the world and now has 40,000 visitors a year, sometimes as many as 800 in one day during the high season. It is the most popular place on earth to see Asia’s great ape in its natural habitat, and second only to Mount Kinabalu as Sabah’s favourite tourist attraction.

I have just finished a 9 day volunteering stint working in the clinic, where I fed, bathed and exercised the infants, juveniles and quarantined orang-utans and cleaned their cages and nurseries twice daily. It has been an experience I have really enjoyed and one which has drawn a sweat from my body of frightening proportions.

After an initial period of quarantine at the clinic, or when they have reached five years of age and are able to climb/build nests etc, the orang-utans are released from the clinic to Platform 4 into a semi-wild environment. The key is for clinic volunteers not to humanise the orang-utans so much that they are unable to adapt to the Platform 4 lifestyle. Often, this is not the case, and the Platform 4 orang-utans return to the clinic from the Platform 4 rainforest to search for food, sex or just some human TLC. This is not to be encouraged.

Having been to the tourist area, where visitors merely take a stroll over a wooden walkway into the jungle and look at orang-utans in the eye with ridiculous ease, the opportunity for me to trek into the jungle and see the orang-utans at Platform 4 in their natural habitat is really a privilege. I begin volunteering on the husbandry module tomorrow where we will deliver supplemental food and drinks to the orang-utans at Platform 4 twice a day. I am excited.

The final stage of rehabilitation by Sepilok is release to Tabin Wildlife Reserve, an area of jungle to the nth degree. Here, it is hoped the orang-utans will return to their wild ways.
The friends I have made over the last three weeks include the orang-utans who as I am sure you can imagine are freakishly human in their nature.

Everyone at Sepilok has a special place in their heart for Nonong (see above). She will be in the treatment room for the indefinite future given her disabilities and at times she still gets stressed and is prone to seizures. She is tall and graceful and has a calm air about her. She will even walk upright if you hold her by the right wrist. We have learned that, surprise surprise, she doesn’t like having her left hand or arm touched or held at all.

She is a big fan of the sweeter electrolyte rather than the formula milk and is one of the slower drinkers so when feeding we have to be patient. She is better on ropes than in the trees but I admire her for her ‘balls’ in having a go at everything.

A big no-no, as described above, is taking Nonong out to exercise when the larger Platform 4 males have returned to the clinic area. Oscar, Tiger, Toby and especially Miko are all big fans of Nonong and for the sake of her sexual security it is a good idea to keep her in when the boys are about. Rape alert.

One other thing we have learned is to take Nonong out to the enrichment cage first as if she is put in last, the more playful juveniles like Tambi and Sen will take advantage of her lackadaisical ways and try to escape.

As you can imagine, we all love working with the babies. They are unbelievably cute and each has their own distinctive personality. Kalabatu is the Sepilok ‘poster-boy’. His images, with cheeky face and smudged lip, are used on a lot of the centre’s literature. He is more comfortable on the ropes than the trees and when in the jungle gym tries to make the occasional break for freedom. I have noticed that he is starting to bite and play-fight more and more each day. Kala is going to be a cheeky b******.

Tara is the smallest of the babies but by far the most adventurous and confident in the trees. When we let her out to play we throw her up the tree and don’t see her again until the end of the exercise session. The most noticeable thing about Tara is her head. It is tiny. Some of the volunteers call her pinhead. I call her ‘peanut-head’. She goes absolutely crazy if she doesn’t have a comfort towel to play with in her night cage or day exercise cage. Given that she is prone to diarrhoea, I have to change her towel a lot so I have to make sure that I have a fresh one ready before I take the doirty one or she will throw a tantrum as intense as the Kevin Keegan outburst at the climax of the 1999/2000 premiership. ‘I would love it if we beat them’.

Wulan, another of the babies, is the attention seeker of the infants. She whines constantly and has a disturbing habit of crawling on the ground and continually falling on her right arm as if she has broken it. We have learned from previous volunteers, from the nurses, Ibri and Rufinah, from the vet, Cecilia, and from the rangers that this is a ploy for attention and that we are not to rise to the bait.

I would probably consider Tambi to be my arch-enemy. Many of the female volunteers leave me to deal with him due to his physicality and ‘come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough’ attitude. He is more ginger than the other juveniles and with his scrunched up pikey face enjoys nothing more than rubbing his caked on regurgitated banana or some of his hardened sh*t on me. Unpredictable, moody and playful, it is at the mouth of Tambi that I have suffered most of my bites.

I have to make sure I have not been drinking the night before I take Tambi out to exercise on the jungle gym and that I have had a good night’s sleep. Effectively, he beats the sh*t out of me. To him, of course, it is all a game, and if he were to bite me seriously it would be ‘goodnight Irene’. I try to encourage him to play fight with other orang-utans, particularly Alain and Selamat who are the ‘boys’ of the juvenile group, but it would be easier to teach Amhrain na Fhiann to the executive members of the DUP.

Finally, I must mention the fascinating Ampal. He is so unique that he lives halfway between the clinic and Platform 4; a category unto himself.

Ampal has got problems. He is a skinny and bald orang-utan. He has a protein deficiency and so looks as close to J.R.R Tolkien’s Gollum as any creature can. On top of this, he has recurring rectal prolapse. That’s right, a prolapsing arse. Most noticeably, however, he has a masturbation addiction. He loves playing with himself in front of the rangers and volunteers. Some of the female volunteers have had surprises in the face when observing. This endearing trait has earned him the original nickname ‘the W*nker’. I love Ampal.

On top of these problems, Ampal has a bizarre personality. When being washed the other orang-utans either scream and kick and try to escape, or splash and play in the water. Ampal, however, curls into a ball, silently, and holds on very tightly to the taps. He is special.

When being exercised he uses his lightweight frame and quiet demeanour to sneak off into the trees. He seems to have an obsession with the Sun Bears being looked after at Sepilok and will disappear quickly in this direction. At the minute he is kept in a large cage between the clinic and Platform 4 for his own safety until his medical condition improves.

He hates milk. He just won’t drink it. He goes crazy instead for electrolyte, and he is the only orang-utan that the nurses and rangers will allow to have double strength electrolyte drinks. Sweet boy. The W*anker. Ampal. A category unto himself.