Back home again

Another month begins and what I have got to report ?

Well, last Tuesday I took an English class for a friend who was away for a few days. The class consists of a group of ten year olds who are the children of, or related to, a local hotel owner. I was surprised to find that their vocabulary was better than expected – however, they had lots of problems with word order and sentence construction. From my own bitter experience, the temptation when learning a new language is to try and translate directly from your native language - this is almost always a recipe for mangling ! One example where this is particularly obvious in Indonesian is when speaking to someone older or of higher status (e.g. to a teacher, doctor or parent). In Indonesian, it would be perfectly normal (and very respectful) to address the person to whom you are speaking in the third person and refer to them as Ibu (for a lady) or Bapak (for a man). So, it is quite in order to say "has Bapak eaten yet ?" rather than the less respectful "have you eaten yet ?". However, many Indonesians when speaking English then translate this literally into English and also translate the work bapak into the literal translation "father". This resulted in an interesting conversation recently with a group of students at a local seminary who were keen to find out what I thought of Indonesia but kept asking me questions like "what does father think of the food in Maumere?". I eventually managed to explain to them that I was not a father of any sort !

On Saturday, Peter and I left home bright and early to head to the airport for our visa trip. This was a rather protracted business which involved spending four nights away from Maumere, one of which was in the bright lights of Singapore and three in Sanur (a suburb of Denpasar on Bali) on the way there and back. The time spent in Singapore was short (less than twenty four hours) but long enough to meet the passport agent twice, have a few big meals and a couple of glasses of red wine. Yesterday evening (Wednesday) we arrived back home in Maumere (writing that felt a bit weird !) and met the local passport agent who today starts the process of applying for my KITAS (temporary residence permit. This simple matter looks like it will take about a week to achieve as one of the documents needed has to be signed by the hospital director who is at a conference in Bali until the weekend. The pile of paperwork needed to support the application is very impressive and includes my CV from home (in English) and no less than fourteen photographs in three different sizes ! I can report that bureaucracy is alive and well in Indonesia....

On the work front, the last thing I did before leaving for Bali was to hit "send" on an email enclosing a completed application to an Australian foundation for a small grant to fund a project to promote Health Worker Safety. I received a quick acknowledgement saying that they've received the application and that it appears to fit their criteria so all I can do now is wait until the committee reviews applications. In the meantime, the work of gathering information on how to set up an Infection Control Committee in a "resource constrained environment" continues and I must thank all my friends, former colleagues and especially customers who have provided me with tons of useful information. One of the main priorities of the Infection Control Committee will be to establish policies and guidelines about hygiene (especially handwashing). However, one of the biggest challenges is lack of money (and therefore, equipment) so anything that requires spending money just ain't going to happen !

For instance, something as simple as a proper mop is an alien concept here – floors are mopped with water (no detergents) and a torn up bedsheet pushed around with a bamboo pole. Forget about the questionable hygiene aspects of this operation, the efficiency isn't great either as the area of the end of the bamboo pole must be only about 3 or 4cm square !