Coffee beans on the island of Java

Can you talk to orangutans?" the young Muslim woman asked me, in Bogor, the old Dutch capital of Indonesia on the island of Java.

I could see the dragonflies hovering as the clouds gathered to pour rain.

Yes, I said, giving the simplest answer. She listened with large intent brown eyes as I explained that I had met the orangutan Princess in Tanjung Puting park in Borneo and that Princess had been taught sign language.

Then I talked about how intelligent orangutans are and how much they have in common with us and how they can understand us and we them.

The young woman seemed truly interested. That's good, because she has a role to play in saving the rainforest.

We were at the botonical gardens in Bogor where she was being briefed to be an auditor for the Rainforest Alliance. The auditors ensure that tea and coffee and palm oil plantations adhere to the ecological standards that win certification by the Rainforest Alliance, which is an economic advantage in selling products to consumers who want to help the environment.

The briefing was done by Peter Sprang of the Rainforest Alliance, based in Bali, and by his colleague, a drowsy Leif Pedersen, who had just come off a long flight from Costa Rica, where he is based.

It started to pour rain, so we lingered under a roof in conversation about the difficulty of helping coffee farmers and using better ecological practices.

I was very naive, of course, talking about how the coffee farmers would benefit if the slew of middlemen who move the coffee to the coffee companies could be trimmed down, with more of the price of coffee going directly to the farmer. And I pointed out that there were savings to the farmer of organic farming.

But nothing is that simple, right?

The young woman explaned to me how the structure of middlemen is so entrenched that everyone, including the farmer, depends on it.

And Leif explained that organic farming required training and a slow process of implementation to work.

I would prefer that things be solved quickly and everyone be happy, but maybe I'm not living in the real world. But then I appreciate even more the work that the Rainforest Alliance does through dedicated people like Peter Sprang and Leif Pedersen. I'd call them practical optimists.

We talked about these matters and after a while the rain stopped. The travel-weary Leif fell asleep in the taxi on the way back to Jakarta.