Weather forecasts

I have deleted the "My weather" link on the left hand side of the page - for two reasons.
1) It seems to be not working most of the time and
2) Even when it is working, it always says the same thing (this is not the same as number 1)

I recently discussed weather forecasts with an Indonesian - the first difficulty was communicating the obsession that Western Europeans have with the weather and our interest in forecasts. Why do you need a forecast when the weather is the same today as it was yesterday and tomorrow will be the same again ? I found it difficult to explain that people at home will sit down and watch the television or turn on the radio specifically to find out what the weather will be like later today or tomorrow or at the weekend.

The only difference is the rain - it might rain today (less likely now as we enter the dry season) or it might not. Regardless of whether it rains or not, it will be hot - over 40 degrees in the sun if it is a clear day and about 35 degrees if it is a cool day, what is there to forecast ?

Anyway, they're usually wrong, aren't they ?

Girls and Boys Come Out To Play

Indonesia has two seasons : a wet one and a dry one. When I arrived in Maumere I was told that the wet season was over and that we could expect to see very little rain until about October or November. The last two days have proved the forecasters wrong and have given a foretaste of the delights ahead.

Yesterday, while having lunch at the harbour, we could see the rain moving in from the sea and soon the heavens opened with what my youngest nephew recently described in an email to me as a "masaf rain pore" which lasted for about two hours. Unlike at home, where everybody runs indoors when it rains, the place got busier as the rain persisted and soon a very competitive barefoot football game was in progress - using the lakes to control the ball is part of the skill set of any footballer here !

Surveys, snorkels and spuds

It seems like a while since I've updated here so greetings to all of you in recession land. At the level I am working at, Indonesia is fairly recession proof – as one person said to me last weekend "when you don't have very much, you have little to lose". People here, as in most developing countries, generally live a hand to mouth existence with little by way of luxury or treats.

Since my last post, I spent two days (last Friday & Saturday) attending a workshop in the hospital which focused on complaints from the local community. This was quite a progressive idea and is a good example of the proactive style of the hospital director. The workshop, which was facilitated by GTZ, the German aid agency, had about 80 participants representing various stakeholders – former patients and their families, outpatient clinic clients, clients of the laboratory and blood transfusion service, etc. One of the activities of the workshop was an exercise in actual gathering complaints from those attending and the principal outcome was the compilation of a draft survey for monitoring future satisfaction levels.

It was very interesting to see the very genuine complaints and concerns that former patients and their families raised – here are some examples :

• Lack of personnel available – no doctor or nurse in attendance in various clinics and departments.
  
• Punctuality – late arrival of doctors for clinics
  
• Corruption – security guards seeking bribes of money or cigarettes for allowing visitors in outside official visiting hours
  
• Poor hygiene – smelly beds, dirty toilets, mosquitoes
  
• Lack of communication to patients
  
• Nursing staff busy texting on their mobile phones instead of looking after patients
  

Does any of this sound familiar ?

After the mental strain involved in trying to keep up with this for two days (and believe me, it was a struggle) it was great to have day off on Sunday. As I've mentioned before, Maumere is the home for a number of volunteers working in various different VSO programmes so there is a good social network available. Last weekend was the occasion of Jo Marie's last weekend in Maumere as her placement ends this week. Jo Marie has been here for three years (most placements are for two years but she extended for a further year so is almost a native now) and she is returning home to the Philippines for a month's holiday before starting work with GTZ in East Timor. To mark her departure, she arranged a day trip to Pulau Babi (Pig Island) so early on Sunday morning, we saddled up and rode about 60kms north east of Maumere to Darat Pantai, near Talibura where Pak Karno, a colleague from Jo's workplace lives. Karno had arranged for a local boatman to take us to the beach on the island where we enjoyed some fine snorkelling and a great BBQ on the beach with some fish Jo bought en route. On the way back home after our day in the sun, there was the most amazing pink sunset. This volunteering in developing countries really is a tough life, you know....

After the weekend, Peter (my housemate) and I decided that the lack of any visible progress on the housing front was no reason to put off embarking on some self catering forever and we took the plunge and purchased a stove (cost about Rp180,000 = €13). Household kitchens here are generally basic in the extreme with a stove (usually kerosene but sometimes gas if you can afford it), a rice cooker (if the household is fortunate enough to have electricity) and a collection of bowls, buckets and utensils (usually no sink). We bought an oil stove, oil and some bowls and tonight (Tuesday) had our first home cooked meal at home. We decided to mark the occasion by going western (lunch had been gado-gado) and so the menu for the first meal was sautéd potatoes and fried eggs... not exactly a typical Indonesian evening meal.

Medical bulletin !

Just a quick update to all of who were concerned enough about Joseph's condition to enquire as to how he was - I'm delighted to report that he has now been discharged from hospital in Bali and is due to return to Maumere on Wednesday of next week.

Thanks for your interest !

Kelimutu

The weekend before last, we (Peter, my fellow hospital volunteer and I) had the opportunity to visit one of the "must see" sights of Flores in the company of some friends who were visiting from Kupang on the island of Timor. These are the three coloured lakes of Kelimutu, about 1650m high in the hills of Flores and about 100km east of Maumere. 100kms, I hear you say, that's an easy enough trip...

Well, I can tell you that a 100km trip with two people on a 160cc motorbike on the tortuous roads of Flores is an undertaking and a half ! We left Maumere at about 11am and reached Moni (the village near the lakes) after a trip of over 3 hours actual travelling time, with frequent stops for lunch and helmet rests. Moni is a small village high in the mountains (and beautifully cool, I needed a long sleeved top there for the very first time since arriving in Indonesia) and has a small bar with a great view over rice paddies and green hills. We stayed in a family run homestay (Rp75,000 or €5 for two people including breakfast), and spent some of Saturday night watching a local traditional dance performance before partaking of some of the local hooch.

Early the next morning, we headed further up the hills to the lakes of Kelimutu. These are three lakes in volcanic craters – not particularly unusual in an area known for its volcanic activity until you hear that they are all different colours and that the colours change from time to time depending on changes in mineral composition, making this quite a spectacular sight. When we visited, the lakes were vivid turquoise, black and a sort of murky brown. Local legend has it that this is where the souls of the departed end up, young people to one lake, old people to another, and those whose lives have been less than exemplary to another (you are probably guessing that that's the black one but it isn't).

While at the lakes, most of the other visitors were Indonesian and, as usual, I was engaged in conversation by many of them (many Indonesians are delighted to get an opportunity to practice their English language skills). One of the people I met there was Andrew from Timor. He is a student at the seminary in Ledalero, about 10km away from Maumere. As he visits Maumere frequently, I expect to see him again for some mutually beneficial conversation practice.

The worst part of visiting the lakes was the journey back home again on Sunday – another long and twisty trip, this time mostly downhill back to sea level. However, the weekend was well worth it as this was our first opportunity to see some of the spectacular countryside of Flores and experience just how long it takes to get anywhere. There are frequent bus services linking most towns on the island but I have yet to enjoy the delights of one of these journeys. Apparently, conditions can be a little cramped (the passengers' luggage is often alive) and the twisty roads mean that many passengers suffer from travel sickness so it sounds like a motorbike is a "fresher" option.

Photo update

I've used the opportunity of having access to some reliable bandwidth in Denpasar to upload some more of my photos to Photobucket.

Click for the appropriate album :

BALI


MAUMERE


MONI & KELIMUTU

These should open up in a slide show view - you can play around with the settings to speed up, slow down, etc.

To view all my albums on Photobucket and pass a completely unproductive hour or two, either click HERE or go to :

http://s492.photobucket.com/albums/rr289/markhenderson_photos/

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.

I must go down to the seas again...

One of the busiest and most interesting places in any coastal town is the port or harbour – it is here that most of the comings and goings take place and there is generally plenty of activity to sit and watch (and sitting and watching are, of course, themselves important activities in Indonesia). As anyone who knows me will testify, I have a keen interest in sailing, shipping and things nautical in general so the harbour in Maumere has a natural attraction for me and I pay the Rp1,000 entrance fee (about €0.07) most days to see what is going on. In a country of 18,000 islands where air links are relatively expensive, sea transport provides a vital link between the islands and is the means by which most freight and passengers are transported.

Maumere harbour is a busy place with both ferries and freight ships coming and going on a daily basis and is also the centre of activity for fishing and swimming - after school every day, there are lots of young boys leaping into the sea from the jetties and ships and later in the evenings, dozens of people fishing. The harbour also has some of the best restaurants in Maumere (but believe me, it's all relative !) so is also a regular haunt for lunch or dinner.

Flores has plenty of volcanic activity – the most recently active volcano is Mt. Egon, to the east of Maumere. In this rather dusky shot, you can see where the summit of Mt. Egon used to be just in front of the bow of this ship. The light grey coating below the top is the ash from the eruption about a year ago.

Every evening, there are usually half a dozen or so large trucks like this loading up and waiting for sailings later that night.

Most of them arrive at the harbour already fully loaded but there's always room for a few more bananas.

Indonesians love having their picture taken – these two guys spotted me with my camera on the jetty opposite where they were and gestured to me to take their photo.

I duly obliged but it was only after I had taken the photo that I spotted what the guy seated was holding ! (Look at the photo again if you missed it the first time around.) I hopped onto my bike and sped around to the other side of the harbour to where he was sitting and spent some talking to him. He was a policeman from Jakarta on a tour of duty on a police boat with about 20 on board spending a few weeks in the province of NTT. He had just bought this 3 month old sea eagle for about Rp130,000 and appeared to be planning to take it with him when the boat left the following day. The one question I did ask but didn't receive an answer that I could understand was "kenapa ?" (why ?). I have seen some of these sea eagles in the air and they have a wing span of up to 2 metres. This little baby was not yet able to fly and I have no idea what he thought he was going to do with it on a relatively small boat when it starts stretching its wings...

Like I said, harbours are interesting places, you never know what you'll see next !

New Seven Wonders of the World

Some of you may know that there is a campaign afoot to identify (by popular vote) the "New 7 Wonders of the World". Visit the website or slide your eyes across to the left of this post and vote for the Komodo National Park, the nearest candidate to me and the home of the Komodo dragons.
To find out why clicking on a "vote now" button is probably the closest that you will ever want to get to one of these lovable, cuddly, friendly creatures, look at this Google news search for some heart-warming stories about them.