Madeleine Habib: Captain Courageous

I had imagined Madeleine Habib to appear older, unapproachable and hardened by years of sailing. But hers is a kind, easygoing demeanor.

(GREENPEACE/RANTE)

She greeted me with a “Selamat datang” and a string of other Indonesian words. I was surprised, the standard amazement of an Indonesian hearing a bule slurring Indonesian words.

For a second I even forgot that she is Australian: I always underestimate how many Aussies are proficient in our language.

Madeleine picked up the language when she was living in the country for six months. After studying journalism, she was wondering what to do with her life.

“I was lucky enough to go sailing on a yacht for a week and then I realized that’s what I want to do,” says Madeleine, 42. “It’s the right combination of physical and mental challenge, it’s exciting, it’s outside, and I wanted to sail around the world.”

She packed her bags and went to sea, working on boats to earn money and then stopping off in a country. She says she was lucky to learn the ropes on yachts, which required doing a bit of everything, from work on deck to preparing meals. All the while she held the dream of working for Greenpeace one day.

“In 1994, I flew into Kupang and I wanted to learn to surf. In Kupang, I saw an Australian guy with a surfboard. I asked him where he’s going and he said he’s going to Rote, so I went there.”

The Tasmanian native learned firsthand about daily life in an Indonesian community.

“I stayed with a family who lived on the beach at Nambrela. For me it was a very interesting insight into village life in Indonesia and I really enjoyed going with the women every day to the well to get the water every day and learn to balance the buckets on my shoulders on the bamboo pole,” she says.

“They had a beautiful place that they would go. It was like a freshwater spring inside a cave; there was where the ladies use to go to bathe. I had very long hair at the time and the young girls always liked to brush my hair and they called me Rambut Mie or noodle hair because I had curly hair.

“I was there during Christmas that year. We were invited to go to church on Christmas Eve and I said it would be nice if we could sing a song so we learned to sing ‘Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baru’, the Indonesian version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.”

She stayed there for a month and continued her surfing quest to Nias in North Sumatra. She ventured out to the small islands off the coast of Nias and stayed for three months, surfing every day.

“I was speaking Bahasa every day and really enjoying the company of the local people,” she says.

After breaking her surfboard for the second time, Madeleine bought herself a bicycle and decided to cycle through northern Sumatra.

“Sumatra has a mythical quality around the world; it’s like the Amazon, the wild jungle place that people hear about. I was fascinated with the idea of traveling through Sumatra.”

She started from Sibolga, rode up to Lake Toba and found her way up to the Gunung Leuser National Park.

“I met the ranger and asked directions for the next village, and he invited me to stay at the ranger station. There was another person there, a scientist who was studying apes.

“I went with the ranger and the scientist up to some remote places in the mountains for three or four nights. They were doing a wildlife survey and I was part of that. It was raining a lot.

“One morning I looked up to see an orangutan spread-eagled in the canopy of trees that bridged the road. It was silhouetted against the sky with a halo of orange fur glowing in the morning sun. I stood for ages watching the true ‘man of the forest’ moving thought the trees and vines. It made me realize how precious these forests are.

“The hike was tough, lots of leeches, muddy and wet. There was little food and it was difficult to light a fire. I was quite glad to get back at the ranger station.”

Madeleine continued her journey up to Banda Aceh and cycled back south, down the coast back to Medan and then up through Malaysia into Thailand.

I asked her whether she had encountered any problems traveling as a lone woman.

“You have to be conscious of the fact that you are outside your own culture, and respect that culture. It was quite surprising for local people to see someone on a bicycle by themselves. But I found that as long as I tried to approach family groups or women, people were always hospitable.

“I usually stayed with families because I was in places that were too small to have any kind of accommodation. No, I didn’t have problems. I tried to dress respectfully. I had a sarong on the back of my bike, so whenever I stopped even for a minute, I put on my sarong,” she says.

“I would say that the reception was much more friendly than dangerous on every occasion.”

Later, in Thailand, Madeleine worked for a private yacht that was a replica of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior. The skipper, Peter Willcox, was captain of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed by French agents in 1985.

“Finally, after maybe eight years of applying, I got a job with Greenpeace,” she says. “The Rainbow Warrior was my first Greenpeace ship; I started as third mate on that ship.

“We were going to Mururoa atoll to protest nuclear testing. My first action was to drive an inflatable boat into a nuclear test site in the middle of the Pacific. We’re surrounded by French navy, a really powerful military force. I had to set out in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, 20 miles from the nearest land and the nearest land is a nuclear test site.

“I drove a boat off into the darkness, found my way across the reef and climbed up on a drilling rig where they were going to do a nuclear test. It was totally my childhood fantasy. Although we didn’t stop every nuclear test I think it certainly brought the nuclear testing issue to the front pages of the world news.”

The surfing and cycling trip was the last time Madeleine was in Indonesia but she was later involved in the tsunami relief effort, based in Langkawi in neighboring Malaysia.

“I was working for a group called Waves of Mercy. We were sending supplies to Pulau Weh where there was a very large refugee camp. Because it wasn’t on the main island, Pulau Weh had a massive population of people and it wasn’t getting very many services.

“We were sending supplies directly from Malaysia. That made me feel very close to Indonesia again.”

Now she is crossing the country on the Esperanza, from the very eastern tip of Indonesia all the way to Sumatra.

“I’m very happy to be back in the country.”

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