Back to Bali

It’s now Tuesday at about 1800hrs and I’ve just passed a pleasant hour and a half in the company of Pak Agung, who was busy digging in his garden (from a rather relaxed seated position) when I arrived home on my sepeda (bicycle) but stopped immediately to sit down and drink tea and have a chat when I arrived while Ibu Agung was helping some of the local children with their homework. One of the most noticeable differences between Asia and the western world is the different pace of life in general and time is always taken to stop and chat, even during a busy working day.

Yesterday evening, I returned from Kupang to my homestay and, as expected, had a debrief on arrival after presenting Pak and Ibu Agung with some oleh-oleh (small souvenirs – very much expected of anyone arriving back from a trip away). I brought them some small packs of peanut and tamarind snacks which are apparently specific to West Timor.

The trip to Kupang was really interesting for many reasons – for a start, it was my first experience of Indonesia outside the relatively civilised atmosphere of Denpasar. Indonesia is divided into provinces (I’m not sure how many yet !) and the one in which many VSO volunteers are placed is called Nusa Tenggara Timur (known by everyone as NTT). The town of Kupang on the island of West Timor is the provincial capital of NTT and it is here that VSO Indonesia held their Annual Sector Workshops with partnering employers from all over Indonesia, followed by the Annual Volunteer Conference last week. I believe that the town has a population of about 150,000 and, although most of the time we were based in a hotel for the conference sessions, we did have an opportunity to see some of the town. I am told that the town is similar to Maumere in terms of facilities (but about twice the size) so it was very interesting to see somewhere with less tourism than Bali.

One of the first impressions one gets after arriving is of the bemos (small minibuses, privately owned and operated, but providing a regular public transport service, usually on set routes). In Denpasar, these are rather tatty little minibuses which trundle around picking up passengers and dropping them off as required. In Kupang, the service is at a completely different level – there seem to be hundreds and hundreds of bemos all competing for business. Business is not the only thing they compete for - they also try to outdo each other in their garishness, accessories and loudness – stickers everywhere, blaring klaxons, very long antennae and thumping sound systems that any disco or nightclub would be proud of. They also all carry a conductor hanging out of the side door whose responsibility it is to tout for business from pedestrians as they drive along and also to collect the cash – the standard fare in the town is about Rp2,000 (about €0.13). The drivers seem to have an average age of about 15 and most of them drive like 12 year olds on ecstasy.

The conference (organised largely by volunteers themselves) provided us newbies with a great opportunity to meet the more seasoned volunteers from all over Indonesia and to participate in a variety of sessions. I won’t give a complete rundown of the conference agenda but some of the highlights were sessions on globalisation and an afternoon of skills sharing workshops given by volunteers with particular expertise in various areas to their fellow colleagues. Topics covered included such diverse subjects as presentation skills, movie making, and gardening in Indonesia among others. The two which I attended were an introduction to sign language (given in complete silence by Nick, a deaf English VSO volunteer who is based in Yogyakarta on Java) and cookery for volunteers (given by two experienced volunteers who were able to offer all sorts of useful advice on how to adapt our imported tastes and customs to what is available locally).

On Sunday (the final day of the conference) we participated in a Community Day in a local village. It is VSO’s policy to contribute something to the local community at each Annual Conference and this year’s project focused on starting five small kebun gizis (gardens with a strong emphasis on nutrition) in a nearby village. So, on Sunday morning we were divided up into five groups and headed off in a fleet of the afore-mentioned bemos for a life threatening trip to the village in question. On arrival, in true Indonesian style, we were greeted with a welcoming dance and an elaborate ceremony of speeches and symbolic presentations by the community leaders and VSO’s country director (and of course, a meal), before heading off to our various garden locations. There, we were greeted by yet more food before one of the volunteers gave a simple illustrated presentation on the importance of nutrition and a balanced diet to the mothers of the area. After that, it was off to the garden where we showed some of the community how to prepare the ground for planting, how to use compost and how to prepare seed beds before planting seedlings out into the prepared ground. After all five groups returned to where we had started from, there was yet another meal (our fifth that day and this was only 3pm) and more ceremonial speech-making and presentations, followed by a dance session for all present. After a long handshaking session (it takes a long time for 60 VSO people to shake the hands of every one of 50 community representatives) we climbed back into our garish bemos for the terrifying trip home.

That night (Sunday) a real treat was in store for a few of us : one of the newly arrived volunteers had, through a friend, received an invitation for five of us to visit the home of an Indonesian concert pianist who lives in Kupang and listen to him rehearse his programme for a solo concert he is giving in Jakarta next week. So it was that five of us lucky volunteers were collected from our hotel by Teguh Sukaryo in person and taken to his home for a virtuoso performance which included Brahms’ 25 Handel Variations & Fugue and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Not content with entertaining us in such spectacular style on the only grand piano in the province of NTT, Teguh then took us for a Kupang feast of jagung roti (roast corn on the cob) at a streetside stall before bringing us back to our hotel at midnight. After his concert in Jakarta next Sunday, Teguh is staying on Java for another two weeks to record a CD so watch out for it online in the next month or two !

This morning, it was back to school again. We have all successfully “graduated” from module no. 1 and are now moving to far more complicated stuff, such as transitive and intransitive verbs. More later this week, I’m off to do my homework now.....

PS. Your language lesson for today has already been included in this post !