“Duck, Duck, …Broken Toe”
There it is, the secret’s out.
You may have heard through Instagram or various TracingThought social media's that a few months ago, I broke a toe while filming. When I say broke, I mean my poor toe was obliterated. I was in Borneo, Indonesia filming three different documentaries about the corruption inside palm oil plantations and other natural resources. Villagers are being taken advantage of and their land is being illegally stolen in the dead of night. The culprits are foreign palm oil companies and crooked policemen. You can watch my documentaries on these topics at TracingThought’s Youtube (or Vimeo) to better understand.
But this story is about the adventure of a broken toe… the first time I broke it, it was funny… 2 weeks later (I broke it AGAIN), not so much. But there is always a bright side to situations such as these. The road to healing included natural remedies from the forest, tribal rice wine, and 10 mile walks to illegal gold mining fields.
If you read the blog before this one, I shared the story of how I was adopted into a Dayak family….
Who is my dayak family?
In October 2019 a sacrificial ceremony took place inside the village of Tahak, West Kalimantan (West Borneo), Indonesia.
The ritual lasted hours. Among chanting, singing and praying, there were chicken sacrifices and much more- I was ceremonially bonded to the most gracious Dayak family, forever.
In this ceremony we vowed to always be one, now and forever: share, protect, correct, and love. We were bonded by blood and became one cohesive unit. A family.
West Kalimantan, Indonesia 10/16/19 1:04pm-7:23pm
The members of this family are the founders of Sakolah Adat Arus Kualan- an indigenous school that teaches youngsters the traditions and culture of their ancestors and generations passed.
Which means, they have children at their house 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. When I visit I teach them all of the American games I know (from my recess days) and also do my best to teach them English in the evenings. However, the most popular American recess game we played was…
“Duck, Duck, Goose!”
In the beginning, explaining the concept of the game was relatively simple, the difficult part was having to explain the characters of the game, the duck and the goose. This was hard to do and so funny because I myself didn’t even know the real reason why! To them the words “duck” and “goose” was just jibberish but luckily my Dayak sister, Dessy was able to translate the words to the animals they know and laughter filled the room. Finally after being able to explain that the “goose” was the “odd” person or just the person you choose to pick out of the “ducks”, it was time to play!
Instead of playing in the large activity room of the Sakolah Adat school, we moved the shenanigans to the kitchen which was a wooden floor instead of concrete floor. Oh yeah, much safer! To no surprise, every time a new rugrat would be “it”, I was ALWAYS was picked as the Goose.
Round and round and round and around we went, the kids were dying with laughter and everyone wanted a chance to be chased by the Master Goose!
The raucous we were making attracted more and more children to our kitchen circle, which was causing the room to fill fast. Every revolution was wider than the last, making the task of catching the running children even harder.
Life lesson-Don’t play this game around objects! …which I thought I already knew not to do.
SMACK! During one of my rotations around the sun, I managed to make friends with the lone wooden table at the far end of the kitchen. My toe and the table leg, that is.
Immediately I fell to the floor wincing in pain and the massive gaggle of children were hovered over me saying my name and asking if I was ok. It was like a scene from a movie where the camera is down low looking straight up and all you see are faces looking down at you! Amidst the pain, this moment was one to treasure and was so comical.
“Asli” “Ashwee” “Ashlei” “Asli are you okay?!”
Dessy soon arrived to asses the situation which was also extremely funny. My whole foot started to swell and there was a hilariously crooked look to my foot now. We all new it was broken but the barrage of denials was all I heard. “It’s ok! No broken!” says Dessy. “Yeah Asli (Ashlei), no broke!”, says a squeaky voice in the group of kids.
The game dispersed and a few of the children stayed behind with Dessy and I to make sure that I was being taken care of. It was like the doctor and all her little nurses were there to help me.
Dessy being the amazing human that she is, knows just about every single remedy in the book when it comes to jungle medicine and knows exactly who to contact to administer such medicine. The local healer was summoned and she came by to asses the damage of my crooked friend. Words were exchanged between her and Dessy after the examination and I was told that the healer would return later that night with a mixture of forest leaves and herbs.
pictured right
The natural remedy to a broken bone. Although, i’m not too sure exactly what it was.
pictured left
A few of the hoodlems that I love so dear;
Ichel, Nata, Lista, Yumi, and Meme
Fast forward one week,
I was on my way out of Tahak village on on my way to my friend Timo’s village to start the filming of another video, A Day in the Life of An Illegal Goldminer. My toe was getting more crooked by the day and putting on shoes was a task let alone walking. Tape was nowhere to be found (Tyler [my husband] told me to “buddy tape” the injured toe the next one in line), but I couldn’t find tape!
So instead I tied two toes together (one broken, one not) using a small piece of a cloth torn from a shirt.
When I arrived to Timo’s home, his mother who is also a healer confirmed that it was broken and wasted no time in gathering some special oil she had and began massaging it.
She did this for a week in an attempt to make things better and slowly we saw results. The swelling had gone down monumentally and you could start to see where the bone wanted to poke through.
But the world knows people have had worse.
So, I zipped my mouth and powered on.
We left for the mining fields right before sunrise. Every step was more painful than the last but it just about got to the point to where I couldn’t even imagine what life was like, before breaking my toe. Painless. Has that ever happened to you before?
The journey takes around three hours one way, tromping through the jungle, climbing over logs and balancing across sticks with running water underneath you. It was myself, Timo, Timo’s brother, and Timo’s brother’s business partner. They were taking no pity on me and expected I keep up with them. Duh. This required me to forget I had a broken toe. More and more numb it became…
Finally after an approximately 2 hour walk, we made it to the stark white mining fields, dripping sweat balancing all of my camera bags, flying a drone in my hand and it was only 9am. Historically, I LOVE these kinds of mornings, but this time it was rough.
….I was also making an intense behind the scenes Instagram story this morning.
We were crossing the white quicksand-like holes patched over with small stick bridges. If you haven’t seen this sand or the fields I am referring to, I’d suggest anyone to watch my video just to simply see what the world turns to when we use it up and spit it out.
Anyways, my balance to begin with is like that of a drunk squirrel and then having a bum foot on top of it didn’t make things any better. There were so many tiny bridges made of miscellaneous materials the men had left behind out here. The fall, was into a rather large muddy pit.
I had already busted my ass on a log going across a river hours prior. And Timo let me know that someone had messaged him from town saying they heard that I fell on a log? HOW did people in town already know? I had no idea. But I can’t wait until they see my toe! Ha. They get a kick out of the inexperienced human in their natural habitat.
So finally, of course, the predestined stick that fate placed over a hole in the ground, gave way and snapped. I shot down into the muddy hole like a bowling ball and had landed directly on my toes.
Broken …again.
Fiery pain crept up my entire foot and into my leg. At this point, amputation was looking like a decent option?
After continuing on for weeks of work past this day, my toe is permanently bent. And proud.
related film to this article
To see the places I am referring to, watch my video on the illegal gold miners and see exactly what I am talking about! Aside from the damaged piggy, it was an extremely successful day and one I won’t soon forget. Gold…Gold.
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