Bali and back....

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, I decided 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 :