Another week, another experience

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 !