Word: lawis
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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Members of the Penan tribe of northeastern Borneo know that Batu Lawi, a 2,000-m sheer limestone pinnacle, is a demon-haunted place to be avoided at all costs. To Bruno Manser, however, Batu Lawi represented everything he loved about the untouched forest of the region. He almost perished trying to reach its summit in 1988. As he told friends, he spent 24 hours hanging from a rope, unable to reach the rock face. Only a desperate swing brought him within grabbing distance of the rock...
...Fourteen months ago, Manser returned to Batu Lawi at the end of a 12-year personal crusade to help his adopted tribe, the Penan, preserve their landscape and their way of life from the cancer of all things modern: cash, Coca-Cola, television, but above all the mowing down of their native forest. If he had reached the summit he would have been confronted with glaring evidence of his failure: the verdant forest slashed by logging roads, a net of wounds bleeding orange mud, the animals largely gone. Manser had lived with the Penan in their jungle for six years...
...Manser separated from two Penan acquaintances near the base of the mountain, saying he would climb it alone. With just a few days of walking, he would have been reunited with his closest Penan friends. But Manser never made that hike. After he was left near Batu Lawi, he was never seen again...
...abandon the fight for his friends. But even heroes give up sometimes. "I had wondered for a long time if Bruno would ever find peace again," says Graf. "He was so bitterly disappointed. And I'm convinced that if he wanted to die it would be somewhere around Batu Lawi." Graf continues: "There are many ways of seeking...