Meet Epeng, one of the orangutan orphans in our care, and see through his eyes how he navigates our soft-release programme with his best friend Gunawan by his side.
Epeng and Gunawan playing together in the treetops
Hi everyone. My name is Epeng, and yes, before you ask, I've heard all the words people use about me: lively, spoiled, a little bit whingey. I won't argue with any of it. I live at Camp JL, deep inside the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve in Central Kalimantan, alongside five other orphaned orangutans. None of us have a mother anymore. What we have instead is the forest, a patient team of humans, and each other, and every single day, we're taught how to survive out there on our own. It's called the soft-release programme. I still haven't decided whether I'm grateful for it or just resigned to it. I only know that somewhere beyond these trees, there are infants far less lucky than me, who never got a second chance at all.
Out of everyone in the programme, there's one orangutan I'd choose over all the rest. His name is Gunawan. We're the same age, roughly the same size, and if you'd have told me in the beginning that we'd become inseparable, I don't think I would have believed you.
We didn't start out close. In fact, we were about as different as two young orangutans could be. I move fast, I swing branch to branch like the forest owes me speed, restless, loud, everywhere at once. Gunawan is the opposite. He climbs like he has all the time in the world, settling into the canopy to forage quietly for hours, unbothered by anything I do below him.
It was the training that brought us together. The staff would take us out most days to practise the skills we'll need out there, climbing, foraging, building nests, trusting our own hands and every so often, my session and Gunawan's would overlap. That's how it started. A shared patch of forest, a shared hour, and slowly, without either of us deciding to, a friendship. Now, training days feel less like lessons and more like a party. We climb together, steal bites of each other's food, and sit shoulder to shoulder in the branches, watching whatever the forest happens to be doing that day.
Here's the thing about me though, I don't like being alone out there. Not even a little. Once we're out of our night enclosures, I want Gunawan beside me the entire time, and if I'm honest, I expect it. I have energy to spare, more than I know what to do with. Gunawan doesn't work that way. His patience runs deep, but his tolerance for my chaos has a limit, a kind of battery that quietly runs down, and once it's out, it's out.
Epeng and Gunawan playfighting with each other during forest training
So sometimes, mid-play, mid-laughter, Gunawan simply turns and climbs back toward his own cage. No warning. No goodbye that I can understand. Maybe he's had enough of me for one day. But I'm still buzzing, still wanting company, still not remotely ready to be by myself in a tree that suddenly feels much too big and much too quiet.
I won't come down. And I won't go back to my cage alone either, why would I, when going alone feels like losing? So I do the only thing that makes sense to me: I cry. I cry and cry, high up in the branches, making sure the whole forest knows exactly how unfair this is.
And then footsteps. Someone's coming. Could it be Gunawan, having a change of heart? Has he come back to play?
No. It's one of the camp staff, walking toward me with that familiar, unhurried patience, arms already open to scoop me up and carry me home for a rest I insist I don't need.
It happens more often than I'd like to admit. But watching the two of us together. However our days end, I'm told, one of the quiet joys of life at Camp JL. Two very different orangutans, growing braver and more capable by the week, learning to share both the forest's small pleasures and its harder lessons. One day, and everyone here believes it, Gunawan and I will carry these lessons back into the wild for good. Until then, we've got the trees, the training, and each other, even on the days I make him carry a little more of me than he bargained for.
