JOHN CONNELL meets Borneo conservationist Bonsen who has moved to a new life among the fells at Whinlatter after a jungle romance with a Keswick girl

Last updated 19:28, Thursday, 27 November 2008

POISONOUS centipedes scuttle over the forest floor and the occasional wild pig or deer crashes through the dense undergrowth of the tropical rainforest.

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In the jungles of Borneo, you may even catch a glimpse of the jungle’s most famous inhabitant – the endangered orangutan.

This is the environment that conservationist Bonsen has left behind, and it is difficult to imagine a more different world from the one in which he lives now.

Here it is cold, open and exposed with views of distant fells and lakes, but his world was hot and enclosed by a latticework of branches and dense canopies of leaves.

Bonsen moved to Britain over a year ago after an unlikely encounter with a girl from Keswick, deep in the forests of his tropical homeland where he worked with orphaned and injured orangutans.

Fiona Stott, 26, was working as a volunteer in Borneo and love blossomed in a story that reads like a film script.

Fiona says: “Communication was a problem at first but we met and fell in love. It was a whirlwind romance.”

They were married in Borneo and now have an 11-month-old daughter called Sianna. They live in a house at Little Hills in Keswick.

But adjusting to our climate has not always been easy, and when asked how he is finding the cold, Bonsen merely shudders and smiles.

And does he get homesick? There is a pause while his wife, who speaks Indonesian, translates.

He nods emphatically.

Fiona explains: “He misses Borneo and is passionate about the fate of the orangutans. It’s important for the orangutans to have their habitat but it’s also important for the people who live in Borneo to have a place where they can grow their food.

“He likes working with animals. The care centre is in his village and his mother is married to the professor who founded it.”

The orangutans’ habitat is under threat from logging, mining and forest fires. There is a problem with the illegal trapping of baby orangutans for sale into the pet trade, and sometimes trappers even kill the mother to steal the baby.

But the couple are quick to dismiss my impression of the orangutan as a gentle giant.

Adult males are territorial and four times as strong as a man – powerful enough to tear your arms out of their sockets.

Bonsen continues to work as a conservationist, and many of the skills he learned in Borneo are useful here.

He has even been using traditional tools from home in his work as a volunteer for Bassenthwaite Reflections, a programme designed to protect the lake and its surroundings through community landscape projects.

He is in a team of volunteers working to tackle issues contributing to the deteriorating water quality in Bassenthwaite Lake.

Part of the job involves clearing away unwanted trees from the lake edge – not too dissimilar from his work in Borneo where he cleared jungle paths.

Although Bonsen misses Borneo, he is enjoying life in Cumbria and has no immediate plans to return.

Fiona says: “He likes it here. It is different from his home but beautiful. In the forest all you can see is forest. It is also flat in the part of Boreno where he is from but in Cumbria there are fells and mountains.”

It is clear that Bonsen’s passion for his work in Borneo is close to his heart, and the couple, who have a house there, have not ruled out moving back one day.