Week 19

As I post this, it is exactly nineteen weeks since I arrived in Indonesia, the longest period in my life that I have lived outside Ireland. One of my colleagues asked me last week was I "sudah bosan" (already bored) with Maumere and seemed very surprised that the ten weeks I have spent here was not long enough already. My placement is due to end on 8^th June 2010 (exactly 50 weeks from tomorrow) but there is always the possibility of an extension (however, that's talk for another day !). Most VSO placements are for a two year period - I have never understood quite why mine is only for fourteen months (or sixteen including the in country training in Bali) but I assume that it has something to do with the fact that I replaced a volunteer who had to return home early during his placement. Apparently about one-third of volunteers expend their placements, up to a maximum of three years in total.

I mentioned recently that there has been a great deal of uncertainty about the position of many volunteers in Indonesia due to changes in VSO's relationship with the Indonesian government. These changes have meant that the previous system of volunteers holding a "social and cultural" visa which is renewed in Jakarta every month could no longer continue, and VSO is seeking to have a more formal relationship with the Department of Manpower, which will mean that volunteers will instead apply for a KITAS (Kartu Izin Tinggal Sementara – Temporary Residence Permit). However, until this agreement is finalised with the Department (which could take months), employers such as the hospital in which I am working are being asked to sponsor their volunteers for their KITAS. This appears to be working OK for volunteers who are working with government bodies – however it seems to be impossible to arrange for the many volunteers who are working for Non Government Organisations (NGOs). As a result, many of these volunteers are having their placements end earlier than planned or are being sent home until the new agreement is signed (in some cases for up to three months). You can imagine the disruption that this upheaval and uncertainty is causing. Last Friday, I received the good news that my KITAS (supported by the hospital) has been issued in Jakarta. However, the bureaucracy doesn't end there - to change from my current social and cultural visa to a KITAS I must leave Indonesia and re-enter. This will involve leaving Maumere next Saturday morning, flying to Denpasar, then flying to Singapore on Sunday night, staying one night and returning to Denpasar on Monday and finally arriving back in Maumere on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to a big fillet steak and some good red wine in Singapore, two luxuries which are not available in Maumere !

For the last two Fridays, I have stood in for a volunteer friend who has been away on holiday (and a visa trip to Singapore) and presented the weekly English language programme "English Make Over" on SONIA FM, Maumere's very own radio station. The programme is a phone in discussion show and on my first week the topic was belis (bride price or dowry). This was an interesting opportunity for me to learn a little about this local custom and I was surprised that all of the callers to the programme were unanimous in their opinion that this was a tradition which should be ended. The amounts involved are quite staggering, and usually are counted in animals rather than money but often have the effect of saddling the groom's (extended) family with a huge debt which can take many years to pay off. As a timely example of this, I was privileged to be invited to a wedding last week by a friend at work whose sister was being married. This involved two functions – the first, two days before the wedding was similar to an "at home" where friends were invited to visit at any time after 3pm, and food and drink were provided. The second was on the day of the wedding. Non-family guests do not usually attend the church wedding but that evening, about 700 guests (yes, seven hundred !) were invited to the reception. There were a few speeches (but unusually for Indonesia, not too many and not for too long) followed by a marathon hand shaking session - platform party of 8 x 700 guests = 5600 handshakes. Then we hit the buffet. The food at this wedding was probably the best I have tasted in Indonesia and was produced by the family on fires behind the house.

Earlier in the week, they had slain two cows outside the house and these were the special treat but there were about five different meat dishes (plus rice of course !).

After eating, the moke was produced and we settled into a rather fast session behind the house with some of the bride's uncles. They explained that the belis or dowry in this case had been 20 horses, with a price tag of RP2,000,000 per horse. Now, converting this Rp40,000,000 into euros seems steep enough (about €2800) but consider this : a nurse earns about Rp600,000 per month and an elementary school teacher about Rp300,000 a month. This bride's belis was about five and a half years pay for a teacher ! This really put into perspective for me the comments on the previous week's radio show about what a burden this system was for families.

On my second week hosting the radio show, the topic was cheating – I was surprised to receive SMS requests from a native Maumerian who was listening online in the Netherlands so if you want to listen in to Sonia FM live from Maumere, click HERE and follow the link that you will find down a bit on the right hand side.

What happened this week ?

Well, not much really to be honest. I've set myself the objective of putting up at least one post a week here but I have to confess that it is sometimes a struggle to stop lapsing into a daily diary which would make for spectacularly uninteresting reading and have my already tiny hit statistics falling off a cliff faster than I could stop them.

Almost as interesting as Anne Frank's diary (with apologies in advance....)

For example :

Monday :

6.30 .am Got up, .took my doxycycline antimalarial, had some bananas, bread and coffee for breakfast. Washed.

7.25 am Went to work. Slow morning, internet wasn't working very well so not able to do much.

11.00 am Coffee break

2.00 pm Home, change and out for lunch to one of three of four regular places.

2.45 pm Back home, read or snooze for an hour.

4.00 pm Maybe go out for a drive on the bike

6.00 pm Darkness, usually back home by now. Spend the next four hours sitting on the front porch with one or more of our friends, some of whom are very keen to improve their English. One of my new friends, Frid, has become my new Indonesian teacher so it's a good mutual exchange.

Tuesday :

See Monday

Wednesday :

See Tuesday

Etc. etc

So, you will be pleased to hear that I am going to spare you this ordeal. Last weekend, we had a visit from a very good friend Nick, who is a VSO volunteer who has spent the last year and a half working in Yogjakarta with some deaf groups helping them to develop training programmes. Nick was one of the welcome party when we arrived in Bali all those months ago and so was one of the very first VSO volunteers I met in Indonesia. He has just returned to Indonesia after a holiday at home and is spending his last three months before his placement ends on some roving assignments, the first of which is a two week visit to Bajawa in western Flores. Instead of going out for dinner on Saturday we ate at home and my housemate and resident chef Peter excelled himself with pizza and apple tart. Pizza may not sound that difficult to make but consider some of the challenges : tomato sauce made from scratch, dough from scatch, chicken bought in a restaurant and shredded at home, mozzarella brought from Bali by Nick, the oven is a tin box on top of a paraffin stove.... and what a spread it was, as good as you could get ! Frid, my ojek friend, had made the arrangements for Nick to travel onwards from Maumere to Bajawa on Sunday (better pricing always available to locals !) and joined us for dinner that night also. The next day I went with Frid to visit his cousin in the hospital where I work and met his aunt. Frid told her that he had had dinner in our house the previous night and explained what we had eaten. I could see the puzzled look on her face as he described what a pizza was and when he had finished she asked : "What about the rice, was it fried or boiled ?"

Above : Indra & Dewa (you don't smile for photographs in Indonesia !)

Above : from left,Kristo, Daniel, Indra and Hartadi relaxing on our porch.

Nick departs for Bajawa with Frid (with apologies for a rushed and badly composed photo !)

Lunch under the Chocolate Tree

Well, another Monday dawns on Flores and after another one day weekend (this business of having to turn up for work on a Saturday is a real nuisance), it’s time for another week. Life has been pretty uneventful since last week’s post, the week at work has settled into a fairly regular pattern and one day is much like another. I spent a chunk of last week working on an application for a grant for Health Care Worker (HCW) safety training from an Australian fund which promotes good clinical governance and am also trying to explore some avenues to see if we can get our hands on second hand bedsheets and blankets from some of the five star hotels in Bali.

Yesterday we again went with our friends Hartadi and Kristo from the hospital to visit a friend in a nearby village for her birthday lunch. The main dish was as per last Sunday’s lunch (no further details will be provided) but the music was a little different. Outside the family’s house, we were greeted by a bank of 8 enormous speakers which pumped out music at an ear-splitting volume for the duration of our visit. Add this to the language difficulty and let’s just say that, while we received a great welcome, once the music started communications were limited to non verbal ones ! While having lunch, I asked about the trees under which we were sitting. I know plenty of people who would love to have a “pohon coklat” (chocolate tree) outside their front door – we picked a cocoa pod and split it open to investigate and taste the seeds inside – not at all like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk !

I brought my pocket binoculars with me yesterday and these proved to be a great hit with adults and children alike. Most of the people there had never seen binoculars before and were amazed at the magic of being able to magnify far off objects ! I had to keep repeating warnings about not looking at the sun...

Last night, we had (another) sort of going away party for a volunteer who left Maumere this morning. The reason for it being a "sort of" going away party is that Joseph's situation is a little uncertain. Recent changes in visa requirements have meant that many volunteers are now in a sort of limbo. Joseph needs to leave Indonesia this week as his current visa has expired - however, at the moment it is very uncertain when he will be able to return (maybe not for three months). The uncertainty associated with this must be very unsettling, to say nothing of the practical difficulties involved in locking up your house not knowing when (or if) you will be coming back. Fortunately for me, this uncertainty only affects volunteers working for NGOs and those of us who are employed by government bodies are not affected - or not yet, anyway..

Pigor and Sunday lunch

Monday morning and back to "work" again....

Yesterday was our one day of rest - the hospital, in common with most government offices here, works a six day week which is more than just a bit of a nuisance as it severely restricts opportunities to see more of Flores. Travel on Flores is a major operation and to get to any of the other towns is usually a full day trip. For instance, Ende is about 150km away but is an eight hour trip by car. Anyway, yesterday started with a visit from two friends who work in the hospital and live in the dormitory building near our house - Hartadi is a nurse in the operating theatre and Kristo works in Cleaning Services. They arrived at 8am (this was a lie in on a Sunday morning after a late night on Saturday) with a large bunch of bananas and took over our kitchen to produce a huge tray of pisang goreng or PIGOR (remember the Indonesian predilection for contractions that I mentioned before ?) - fried bananas or banana fritters to you lot.

Ok, how many types of banana can you name ? You're probably thinking, well a banana is a banana is a banana, isn't it ? Well, it may be at home, but here there are plenty to choose from. This list is not exhaustive :

• Pisang susu - milk bananas, very small
• Pisang merah - red bananas, not very common but are available
• Pisang meja - table bananas
• Pisang brangah - "normal" bananas
• Pisang bugis - green bananas with three sides, fatter than other, used for pigor. Originally from South Sulawesi
• Pisang Ambon - from Ambon, not sure yet what they are like.

After feasting on our pigor, we headed off with Hartadi and Kristo to visit a village called Wololora,near Lella - about thirty minutes' from Maumere. This is where a friend of Hartadi's lives, and in true Indonesian style, it was considered quite normal for him to turn up for lunch and bring along a few friends.
We had a very pleasant few hours there, drinking coconut juice (freshly harvested by Kristo), chatting to the children of the extended family, taking plenty of photos and then we sat down for Sunday lunch.

The tables were set outside and all the men sit down and wait for the food to arrive - we had rice (of course), cooked papaya flowers, tofu, some small pieces of smoked fish, and a big plate of meat. You may not wish to know what this was, so I won't spell it out except to say that it was a meat that is not normally eaten where I come from and comes from an animal usually kept as a pet in Western society. The meat was ok, dark and quite strongly flavoured but with lots of bones. As well as the plate of meat, most meals also consist of a large bowl of soup or stock with plenty of big bits and lots of liquid to spoon over your rice. I was glad that I didn't delve too deeply into this bowl but my friend Peter fished out some distinctly recognisable parts, let's just say that they gave him paws for thought. Hmmmm, maybe vegetarians have the right idea after all...
After the food has been served to the men, drinks poured and refills of rice brought to the table, the women all disappeared inside the house to sit on the floor and have their own lunch with the children.

There are a few things that always strike me about visiting these rural village communities : the first is that the whole family lives cheek by jowl and stays together - yesterday there were three generations of thirty to forty people all living in very close proximity to each other. The next is the willingness to share - it is an honour rather than an inconvenience to have guests visit and to have foreign guests is a special treat. Some of the smaller children were a little overwhelmed by the sight of their first bulehs (palefaces) and were very nervous about coming too close - one little girl kept sneaking up behind me and stroking my hand to see if my white skin felt different from her dark one !