Many countries have some form of anti-discrimination legislation, especially governing employment. In Ireland, for example, there are nine grounds on which it is illegal to discriminate within employment. They are :
Gender
Marital status
Family status
Age
Race
Religion
Disability
Sexual orientation
Membership of the Traveller community
So, where is this all leading? Well, I buy the local newspaper here most days as it’s a good way to practice my reading. The other day, I spotted this job advert :
For those of you whose Bahasa Indonesia is a little rusty, a loose translation is as follows :
Bank Muamlat, Kupang Branch, needs an employee with the following criteria :
1. Male, bachelor’s degree in law
2. Age max 27 years
3. Possesses a good Islam backround
Completed letters of application with a colour passport photograph should be sent to.....
I wonder how much the fine for that list would be at home?
I’ve also seen adverts in shop windows in Bali looking for employees – criteria : female, maximum 25 years old and don’t wear glasses !
I’ve been away from Maumere for over a week so here’s a bit of a catch up...
Every year VSO Indonesia holds an Annual Volunteer Conference (AVC), a gathering of all the volunteers in Indonesia. The objectives are to get together, have some fun, share some skills and catch up with friends that we may not have seen for twelve months. By definition, one of the strange things about volunteering is the rather transient nature of these contacts – you are thrown together with fellow volunteers from all over the place but most of us go home after two years so, apart from the initial seven weeks orientation course, our face to face contact is pretty limited. This year’s event was held in Bali, an added attraction and was my first time off Flores since last September. This year’s AVC also gave us a chance to meet the recently arrived new volunteers, the first arrivals since my own group just over a year ago (normally there would be three groups per year but the visa problems of last year meant no further arrivals until recently).
As part of the three day event, the custom is to include a “community day” which is pretty self descriptive. Last year in Kupang, we helped 5 local villages to plant a small vegetable garden beside their local health centre and gave some training to young mothers on nutrition and food groups. This year, we teamed up with a local community group to do two activities – a cleanup of their area followed by coral planting in the afternoon. As I have blogged before, there is no shortage of litter in Indonesia, partly due to lack of infrastructure such as bins, garbage collection facilities, etc. so this is a bout seemingly impossible task. However, the greater value probably lies not in what we managed to pick up but the small example that was set to the local community by a group of about 25 foreigners descending on their sleepy community armed with rubbish bags and picking up their rubbish !
In the afternoon, we helped the local group with one of their principal activities – coral planting. The objective is to provide additional habitats for fish, thereby increasing the capacity of local fishermen to feed their families and earn an income. I won’t give you the full blow by blow account but a brief summary is as follows: The coral is first harvested from an existing “coral garden” and taken (in a hurry) to a nearby beach. (This stage is usually carried out on the boat but some of our volunteers were looking a bit green !) Then the harvested branches are carefully cut into smaller sprigs, each of which is then cemented into a small holder. These holders are then placed into holes in a concrete frame (ours had been made in the letters VSO) which has previously been placed on the sea bed. This all sounds nice and easy - the problem was that the concrete frame was under about 3 metres of rather murky water and there was a big swell as it was a very windy day ! Anyway, we eventually succeeded in planting all the stems (125 of them) and they are now happily growing at the bottom of the sea at Pulau Serangan in Bali.
After the three days of our AVC, we were joined by employers from all over Indonesia for the Annual Sector Workshops. This is an opportunity for volunteers and employers to review VSO’s programmes, discuss future plans, meet with programme office staff (and also have a bit of fun of course). The last night of this workshop was a cultural night where volunteers and employers all provided some entertainment from their own country or region (with volunteers also joining in their employers’ display). Now there are a few more Indonesians who know a little more details about Molly Malone’s (alleged) sideline....
After the sector workshops, most people headed home last Thursday and Friday. However, Idecided to treat myself and had booked myself into a nice hotel in Sanur (south east coast of Bali) for three nights. This was a great break – a nice hotel, western food, two swimming pools, on the beach.... My stay cost about €230 - however, it was difficult not to feel more than a little guilty. This is about three months’ pay for a qualified blood transfusion technician in the hospital (and the return flight to Bali would cost another two months’ pay).
So, on Sunday I made my way back to Maumere and home. Strangely, i was looking forward to a meal in a local warung that night and spent just a fraction of what my meals during the previous days had cost. I have about ten or eleven weeks to go here but time seems to be speeding up a lot now and I have Rosemary & Helmut’s visit to look forward to in four weeks’ time so that will be another week off work as we travel from Labuanbajo (at the western end of Flores) to Maumere.
This is Philip, who is going to be our guide and driver :
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone, hope you all had a good one !
As you will have seen from my last post (pay attention at the back) Flores is a predominately Roman Catholic island and one of the principal exports (apart from bananas) is priests - there are lots of seminaries here.
Last week, I had a visit from Father Hubert. Father Hubert is (rather unusually I guess) our passport agent in Maumere and assists VSO volunteers with the tedious bureaucratic process of getting visas, fingerprints, etc. He usually just does this for the religious community but also helps us out too. As well as managing this busy office, he's on the teaching staff at Ledalero, a large seminary of the Divine Word Society just outside Maumere and is responsible for the English language course for newly ordained priests who are about to depart for foreign parts. He came to ask for some help - before the current course ends, he wanted to give his students some exposure to native speakers and so he asked the three English speaking volunteers living in Maumere if we would be willing to help out. And so it was that an Irish Prod ended up facilitating a discussion group for 14 newly ordained priests on Tuesday and Wednesday evening this week.
This was yet another new experience in my book (and a new way to spend St. Patrick's Day) and, although I went with some trepidation, it was a really enjoyable time. As with everyone in Flores, the welcome I received here was second to none, and the enthusiasm and dedication of these young men was extremely impressive. They are all about to head off to far flung places such as Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, other parts of Indonesia and (surprisingly for me (California).
One of the subjects that Father Hubert asked me to talk to them about was culture shock and my experience of moving to a new country with different language, culture, religious practices, etc. I was quick to explain to them that when I arrived in Indonesia I had the comfort of knowing that, no matter how awful it turned out to be, I would be going back home in a year and a half. These guys, however, are going forever, and as one of them remarked "Forever is a long time!".
I'm writing this in Bali on Thursday afternoon, where I arrived this morning. The next few days sees VSO's Annual Volunteer Conference, when all volunteers and staff of VSO in Indonesia will get together for a few days of skill sharing, training and updates. Our conference always includes a "community day" which this year is helping a local group with a coral planting project. At the moment, I have no idea how you go about planting coral but I hope to be able to tell you more next week !
As I've written before, Indonesia is anything but a homogenous country - one of the ways in which this is very evident is religion. Although Indonesia boasts the world's largest Muslim population, there are relatively few Muslims on Flores, where the population is predominately Roman Catholic.The figures from the 2000 census show the following breakdown : 86% Muslim, 6% Protestant, 3% Roman Catholic, 2% Hindu, 3% Buddhist and other. The geographical distribution of these different religious groups is quite marked,as this map from Wikipedia shows :
As you can see, Flores (the pink island towards the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago), and Bali (the red one a few islands further west) are almost the only centres of their respective religions.
This week (tomorrow, in fact) is a national holiday as the Hindu population marks Nyepi, which they usually translate as the Day of Silence. In Flores, we just get a day off work but in Bali, the whole island will be completely silent - with the force of law behind it to make sure. From 6 am on Tuesday until 6 am on Wednesday, the streets, beaches, restaurants, shops and bars will be deserted. Even the normally bustling international airport at Denpasar closes for the day. Everyone will stay at home with minimal use of fires, lighting and entertainment. There's an article describing the whole day on Wikipedia, to read more click HERE.
The Bali Times also has an editorial extolling the virtues of a day or reflection forall, regardless of religious beliefs.
This post is just to say a big THANKS to all those who supported the fund raising event in Bray Sailing Club just over a week ago ! I received a SMS on the night (well, the morning after for me) reporting that the target of €2,000 had been exceeded and since then, the figure has continued to rise with many very generous donations. As I write, the figure is close to €3,000 which is a staggering result.
I have passed on the good news to dr. Asep, the hospital director, who is absolutely delighted and has asked me to thank everyone involved for their exceptional generosity. As you know, the money will be used to clean, decorate and renovate the rather gloomy surroundings of the children's ward in the hospital but the work will have to wait a while longer as the ward is still full to overflowing.
So, thanks are due to :
Rosemary & Helmut who arranged the whole event (but especially Helmut who did the lion's share)
Sing Chooi who provided free labour and an excellent meal at cost price to the club so you could pay over the odds for it !
All who came to the meal, provided raffle prizes, bought raffle tickets
All who sent donations - some very generous ones indeed were received.
