MY NAME IS KEJORA

Meet one of the amazing students from our #OrangutanGoesToSchool program. Banyu Bening, a 5th grade student from Sekolah Bogor Raya, wrote this inspiring story about our new, orphaned baby orangutan, Kejora. We are very proud of Banyu’s work, which shows her care and understanding of orangutan conservation issues. We want to share what she wrote.

My name is Kejora. I am a baby Bornean Orangutan aged one and a half years. I was illegally kept as a pet in an oil palm plantation in Central Kalimantan, where I was chained to the door of a room that housed fertilizers and pesticides.

I did not like it there. I was starved and the people there frightened me. But I had no choice. I had lost my mother. I don’t really remember what happened to her. An orangutan mother never leaves their baby until he or she is 7 or 8 years old. It is highly likely my mother was killed by some very bad people.

A few days ago, some people came and rescued me. They brought me to a place called Nyaru Menteng. This place is nice and clean, and there are no chains. The nice people here take good care of me. I can sleep and eat well here. They introduced me to a new fruit called rambutan. It tastes sweet. I like it so much. Before, I only knew of banana.

At Nyaru Menteng, I met some other orangutans. They told me that Nyaru Menteng is an orangutan rehabilitation centre. Here, orangutans are taught to be wild. My new friends have told me that I will soon be taken to a Forest School.

The Forest School is a school for rescued orangutans like me. The nice people at the Forest School teach us to be wild again. They introduce us to a variety of foods suitable for orangutans. They also teach us how to climb trees and how to find food for ourselves in the forest. When we are ready, we will be released in the wild, in the forests from where most of us were taken.

Many rescued orangutans like me do not know how to climb trees because we have been caged or chained since we were babies. Most of us also don’t know how to find food for ourselves because we have been fed by humans or left to starve.

I am thankful to have been brought to Nyaru Menteng. I like the nice people and my new orangutan friends I have here. I am also excited about going to the Forest School. But, I cannot wait to be released back to the wild in the forest where I belong.

Hopefully, by the time I am released in the wild, there will still be wild orangutans and the forest will still be there.