It just gets worse...

Today's BOR (Bed Occupancy Rate) in the hospital is 112% (220 patients for 196 beds). There are now 89 children in the hospital (the children's ward has 37 beds), 53 of whom are suffering from dengue fever. Yesterday morning (Sunday) I was awakened by the sound of wailing and crying which means that a patient has just died - I found out later that it was a four year old child who had died (dengue again).

Still on the subject of sick children, I am delighted to hear that my friends in Bray Sailing Club have offered to support my presence here by having a fund raising dinner to pay for the redecoration of Ruang Melati (the children's ward) in the hospital. Although far from being the worst part of the hospital, it's a pretty grim environment for the children and this money will go a long way towards brightening it up. The event takes place on Saturday 27th February and you are guaranteed to have an excellent meal and lots of fun, all for €30. Bookings to my sister Rosemary or call or SMS her on 087-6864322. Thanks to everyone in advance for your support !

Naturally, donations will be gratefully accepted if you would like to help but can't attend the dinner. Rosemary will accept these also !  

Musim Hujan

It's been a while since my last post, the reason for which is that there doesn't really seem to have been much to write about. Life has changed a bit in Maumere since the New Year as the rainy season (musim hujan) has arrived in earnest. What this means is prolonged periods confined to barracks listening to the torrential rain on the tin roof. Most days the rain starts at about 2pm (coincidentally and unfortunately the same time as I finish work) and it usually then continues well into the night with a few brief pauses. As my only means of transport is a motorbike, and the roads are awash with lakes and rivers everywhere, going out in the rain is really to be avoided if possible. Shopping has to be done at great speed in between the downpours – the market turns into a sea of mud in the rain – so I stock up on tomatoes and cucumbers when I can and often now my evening meal is the ever popular, but rather monotonous, mie telur (instant noodles with an egg to you). At least it's cheap, a packet of mie costs RP1.500 and an egg is RP1.000 so the whole exciting dish costs less than €0.20. Pineapples are still in abundance and two nice ripe ones can be had for RP5.000.

One unfortunate consequence of the arrival of the rainy season is that the number of mosquitoes has increased dramatically, with a big increase in the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. At today's morning report in the hospital, I heard that there are 190 patients in the hospital (95% bed occupancy rate), of whom 61 are children. Of these, 33 are ill with DHF (Dengue Haemmorrhagic Fever) and 16 have malaria. [One very sad story - on Christmas Day, the 7 month old daughter of one of the managers in the hospital died in the private ward. She had been admitted with malaria but apparently died of anaphylactic shock following an injection. She was their first child.]

My reading has accelerated again as a result of this enforced imprisonment and so I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of a long overdue book parcel sent by Ruth from Canada (posted in early November). The delivery time seems to have lengthened recently, I received a few parcels last year that arrived within about two weeks but my last one took over six weeks to turn up.

And finally, in other news - I now have just twenty more weeks to go in Maumere.

Ah, you're all too smart !

Or too well travelled, or too something....

THIS, as many of you guessed is an electric mosquito zapper, just like a handheld version of the blue light things you see in butchers' shops and kitchens. It's great fun to use as it gives a very satisfying spark and sizzle when you make contact with the offending creature. (It is not a rice strainer as suggsted in one email !)

There are two main mosquito-borne diseases in this part of the world - malaria and Dengue fever. There is currently no malaria on Bali (or so I am told) but there have been some recent cases of Dengue fever. I won't put you off your morning coffee with a rundown of the symptoms but if you want to read more, click HERE. The main risk of being bitten by the Aedes mosquito (which is the main carrier) is in early morning and late afternoon - apparently it does not generally feed at night although patterns are constantly changing in response to changes in the environment. When we move to Flores, the risk of Dengue fever will remain high but we will have the added pleasure of having to deal with the Anopheles mosquito (the principal vector of malaria). These beasties feed mainly at night so it looks like about midday is the only safe time.

While you can take drugs (as I am already) to prevent malaria (or at least reduce the risk), there is no way of preventing or curing dengue fever, other than avoiding mosquito bites, which is hard to do. Therefore, a mosquito net and a supply of insect repellent containing at least 50% DEET is an essential part of a traveller's luggage in this part of the world. I think I may be requesting some top up supplies from home in due course as it is not available here.
Last night I soaked my mosquito net (provided by VSO) in permethrin, which gives some added protection and will kill mosquitos and their eggs. As West Timor is a malarial area, I plan on taking my net and a ball of string when we go there on Thursday for the Volunteer Conference and will attempt to hang it over my bed wherever we are staying. This will be my first time using it so I'll report back on how easy it is to manage. It looks like a huge tangled jumble of polyester net so I suspect that it will take some wrestling to sort out !

Thanks for the comments about the new layout (both of you). I'll stick with the new one for a while, until I get bored with it as well.

Lastly, your bahasa Indonesia lessons start today and lesson one will cover greetings : greetings here vary depending on the time of day (just as in English - good morning, good afternoon, etc.). All greetings start with selamat (which means safe)and are then followed by pagi (morning), siang (afternoon), sore (evening) or malam (night). Pronounciations : pagi has a hard g and i is as "ee", sore is pronounced as soray, the other two are as they look.

Now, go and do your homework and selamat malam !

A busy week

I’ve now been back home for about a week and a half and it’s been kinda busy.... I spent five days of last week in Birmingham attending a VSO training course. This course rejoices in the title of SKWID (Skills for Working in Development – VSO are better at acronyms than any other organisation I have come across) and represents stage 2 in the training process. Stage 3 is in-country training which is, not surprisingly, delivered on arrival in your placement country (Indonesia in my case).
The SKWID course takes place in VSO’s residential training centre at Harborne Hall in Birmingham and takes the form of four challenging days. The session kicked off with a Health & Security workshop which included a medical briefing on such pleasant matters as malaria, Dengue Fever and Giardia (look it up, I won’t explain it here), as well as advice on personal safety and security, water filtration and food hygiene in tropical countries. The SKWID course itself was attended by 17 volunteers, all of whom are preparing to head off for such far flung parts as Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and a number of African countries. There were two couples on the course, including one of who are bravely bringing their eighteen month daughter with them to Cameroon. While we were there, a number of us were interviewed by the Independent on Sunday about the reasons why we had volunteered the interviews appeared in a big spread with accompanying photo – click HERE to read the article online.

The workshops we attended during the training course focused on topics as diverse as the identification and analysis of stakeholders, work on various forms of participatory approaches, facilitation of meetings and workshops (without using laptops and Powerpoint !) and many other useful subjects. I found it to be a great opportunity to meet other people (including two other Irish volunteers) who are in a similar situation to me and are asking the same sort of questions about their placements that I am.

So, (assuming that my passport arrives back from London in time !) next Sunday will see me dragging myself back to Dublin Airport for the last time in quite a while. I fly via London and Doha and arrive in Denpasar (on the island of Bali) on Monday afternoon local time. Then it will be straight down to language training – we will have classroom sessions from 0800 to 1230 five days a week, plus some additional sessions on cultural training and VSO’s procedures and structures in Indonesia. At the end of the first week, I will be moving in with a family in near Denpasar and will stay with them for the remainder of the training so that should be really interesting.

This week, it's been great to get some emails from other VSO volunteers already in Maumere who have given me some idea of what to expect when I arrive on Flores. I was especially pleased to hear that the hospital has wireless internet access !

Now I'm off to do some more shredding and sorting....