When I first moved to Ubud people kept saying, “You must meet Lucy.” It was almost a year before I was able to contact you and invite you over for an interview. You exploded through my gate like a firecracker, electric hair dyed in pink streaks and framing a radiant grin. And so began a wonderful friendship. You bounced through my gate many times after that – typically clad in purple leggings with pink hearts, fluorescent T shirts and boots with lizards on them. Often you carried a bundle of flowers from your beloved garden. Usually you were too thin. But always with that luminous, anticipatory grin.
The interview that first day was about the Sumatran Orangutan Society and your work there. It took several years of casual conversation over endless cups of tea to learn more of your multi-textured story. You were a woman of glorious eccentricity and charm, and you loved an adventure. You studied archaeology and geology at university and were tour manager of bands in Europe and the United States. You spent five months at sea sailing between England and the Caribbean, where you settled for a time and started the Barbados Archaeological Society. After returning to England, you gave your brother a lift to an audition for clown school one day and impetuously decided to do the audition yourself. Both of you were accepted, and for a while you performed as a trapeze artist and fire-eater at a circus. Then you took to the road with the Mutoid Waste Company, a traveling performance sculptural group in Mad Max style famous in London and Europe during the 1980s and 90s. The group made outrageous welded sculptures from recycled cars, cranes and even MiG fighters and created performances in Italy, Spain and Germany around their metal sculptures.
For years you drove cars that had bits welded on to make them look like fish or a crocodile with teeth. You loved being a Mutoid. “But it was a hard life physically,” you told me. “We used chainsaws and grinders. I lived that job for ten years. It was very metallic, not a healing environment. Later I wondered whether that lifestyle affected my health.” The group was based in a quarry near Rimini on the east coast of Italy, which you visited again last year after a long absence. Unsurprisingly but to your delight, people remembered you. As if anyone who met you could ever forget.
In 1994 you received the diagnosis that every woman fears. For you, breast cancer started a transformation that took you beyond the physical scars left by the surgery. “After the cancer I decided to change my entire life,” you told one writer. “I changed my boyfriend, my job, my country, even the style of knickers I wore! Having cancer suggests that your life is out of harmony; changing what you’re doing is the holistic approach.”
After the cancer surgery you went to Byron Bay, where you made friends with your altered body by going topless on the beach. This was entirely within character for a woman whose humour and courage in the face of adversity set new benchmarks for everyone who knew you. On the way back to England you stopped over in Sumatra, and in some magical fashion the torch of forest conservation and orangutan protection slipped into your hands. You clasped it with great resolution for 15 years, becoming a warrior for the apes, the forests and for your own survival.
You threw yourself into a new life volunteering at the Bohorok Orangutan Rehabilitation station in Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra. Your skills as a trapeze artist and fearlessness of heights made you an excellent teacher for orphaned young orangutans who had to learn to climb trees, make nests and forage for themselves. But you soon realised that saving the critically endangered individual apes was not enough. Their plight was due to loss of habitat from deforestation, both from illegal logging and for palm oil plantations. You formed the Sumatran Orangutan Society [SOS] in 1996, and it became your life work. “I believe the passion I have for protecting the apes is what keeps me alive,” you said to many of us. “Since 1999 I’ve had secondary cancers everywhere -- bones, liver, lungs. So the message is that even if you’re faced with a severe diagnosis, don’t give up. Find a passion! Moving from a world of metal to a world of animals brought out the compassion in me.”
For five years you remained symptom-free. When I met you, the cancer had recurred and was spreading remorselessly through your body.
Cancer. Not one of us has been untouched by this disease; we have all lost a family member or friend to its dark shadow. Lucy, you engaged cancer like the warrior you were. Spirited, passionate and determined, you focused your amazing energy on two things -- your beloved orangutans and staying alive. You lived, and lived well, for 15 years after the initial diagnosis. When you first went to Gunung Leuser there were believed to be around 25,000 orangutans in Sumatra. Now there are less than 6,000. The sense that time was running out for you and for the Sumatran orangutans spurred you to ever greater efforts to save their forests.
For eight years you were my treasured friend. Every time you came to Bali I’d receive a text message soon after your arrival, “Shall I pop over for a cuppa?” And you’d come charging through the gate again, resplendent in pink. You kept your zest for life, coming to Bali as long as you could and traveling to Goa for a holiday with a new boyfriend just last year. And there was another holiday many years ago with a member of the British Royal Family who shall remain nameless. (It’s a terrific story, but you swore me to secrecy.)
Your send-off was magnificent. On a crisp January afternoon, a legion of friends gathered in Epping Forest to celebrate your life. Many wore pink wigs and silly hats. Your eco-friendly papier mache casket was painted bright pink and decorated with masses of pink feather boas, butterflies, orangutans, lizards and hundreds of sparkles. After a brief and touching service inside, the casket was tenderly handed up onto a Mutoid Waste company-created hearse truck, which led a procession into the bluebell woods to the voice of the Mutoid preacher and the beat of drummers.
You would have loved it.
In Bali friends remembered your life at Legian Beach, and at the Os River in Campuhan. Several of us gathered at your house to share memories and add some plants to your garden. I brought an aerial fern, an orchid and a bromeliad. As I tied them to an old frangipani in front of the patio, I reflected that these are plants that don’t need to have their roots in the earth. Like your gallant spirit now, they are nourished by the wind and rain of the jungle you loved so much.
Lucy, your courage and grace has been an inspiration to me and the many others who loved you. What a privilege it was to have known you. Farewell, dear Warrior. I miss you so.
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About SOS
Lucy’s hard work, passion and determination put SOS on the map as a foundation internationally respected for the valuable conservation work being undertaken in the Gunung Leuser National Park. Lucy was recognised as Ethical Businesswoman of the Year 2009 and Hero of the Month by Marie Claire magazine. These awards reflected the work undertaken by SOS, which employs 15 full-time staff in Medan, North Sumatra, to oversee the organization’s many on-the-ground projects. These include orangutan guide training, community tree planting, community education, tree nurseries, rehabilitation of degraded forest zones, conservation scholarships, palm oil plantation tours into lands that were once prime forests and information dissemination on the plight of orangutans to the global community. Lucy achieved charitable status for the organization in Indonesia, the United States, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom. She was especially proud that the SOS Medan office was among the very first agencies to deliver emergency aid to Banda Aceh after the tsunami, beginning December 28th 2004.
The Sumatra Orangutan Society Lucy Wisdom Fund has been set up to provide a scholarship for an Indonesian Postgraduate to study orangutans, and to buy land in Sumatra as a wildlife sanctuary. Details on how to make a donation to this or other SOS programs can be found at www.orangutan-sos.org
Lucy’s family has turned her Facebook page into a memorial page, where friends can leave comments and photos http://www.facebook.com/people/Lucy-Wisdom/621932307
View a video of Lucy at www.globalvillagefilms.com
Dragons in the Bath, a collection of Ibu Kat’s stories, is available in Bali from Dijon in Kuta, Ganesha Books at Biku in Seminyak and Ganesaha Books and selected shops in Ubud. It can be ordered nationally and internationally through www.dragonsinthebath.com <http://www.dragonsinthebath.com>
