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.

Live on air

Apart from the BBC World Service, the other station that my radio is tuned into most often is Sonia FM, a local radio station in Maumere (very local, in fact – the station is about 5 minutes walk away from the hospital). I find that listening to the ramblings of callers to he various request programmes and the attempts of the DJs to decipher what they are saying is good practice for my Indonesian listening skills ! One hour of Sonia's weekly output is given over to the English language when Teresa, a fellow VSO volunteer who has been in Maumere for about a year, hosts a phone in programme called "English Makeover". Normally, she chooses a topic for discussion (litter, alcohol abuse, smoking, etc.) and invites callers to phone in with their views (and of course, requests for music). Last Friday night, she invited me to come along and join her for the programme but I was a little surprised when I turned up and asked what the topic for that night was. "Didn't I tell you – it's you !" was the reply.

The programme got under way at 8pm and I spent the next hour answering a selection of questions from the callers, most of whom seemed to be regulars as they were known to Teresa and her producer, Martin. Most of the questions were not about where I came from or my background but focused very much on what I thought of Maumere and the hospital. I think my honest answers went down OK. Not only were the callers well known, but the requests were all lined up in advance as the same listeners request the same songs each week - the top choices are Bryan Adams and Celine Dion.

This pic shows Martin (the show's producer) and me after the broadcast. Note the religious influence !

I am writing this post in the waiting room of BIMC, a private hospital in Denpasar, Bali. Although I have become used to being in a hospital all day, I did not really expect to be in this particular one (on a different island and two flights away) at 10 am this morning. Before my mother gets on the phone, I will explain quickly. Joseph, another VSO volunteer from the Philippines, who has been in Maumere since mid 2008 was admitted to Maumere hospital on Monday morning with a high fever and yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) the suspected diagnosis of malaria was confirmed. The decision was taken yesterday to evacuate him to Bali to the more advanced facilities available there, not so much due to an inability to deal with his current condition in Maumere but as a precaution in case he became even worse. I was asked to accompany him on the flight, along with a nurse from Maumere so we left the hospital in an ambulance at 6 am this morning and arrived at BIMC in Bali in another ambulance at 10 am. Joseph has now been admitted and I am awaiting further instructions from VSO about my return to Maumere – the first available seat is not until Saturday, three days away, but VSO will want to ship me back there sooner than that if at all possible. I'm glad I brought a change of clothes and my laptop with me just in case ! In the meantime, I'm holed up here using the wireless access in the cafe across the road from the Yulia homestay.

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....