Easter at the islands

Happy Easter everyone ! Easter is a very big deal here as Flores is a predominantly Roman Catholic island and Larantuka, at the eastern end of the island, is especially famous for its Holy Week and Easter weekend celebrations. This year is the 500th anniversary of the Portuguese arrivals here and so was a specially significant celebration and many people from Maumere and all over Flores made their way there for the weekend.

I, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction. West of Maumere along the north coast of Flores are the towns of Mbay and Riung. Mbay is home to two volunteers - Mikal from Ohio and Brenda from the Philipines. They were interested in travelling to Riung (a little further west than Mbay) and visiting the 17 Islands National Park so I decided to join them.

The trip from Maumere to Mbay is an eight to hour nine hour bus journey along the most appalling road imaginable. As with most Asian countries, public transport here is pretty basic and buses are usually massively overloaded.

 

As you can see, my bus was approved to carry 23 passengers, which  seems sensible as there were 23 seats. However, when the bus arrived at the pickup point all the seats were already full. However, that's never an obstacle so we all just piled in and set off with two or three to a seat, a few hanging out of the doors and about eight on the roof. Fifty four people in all, one goat, a number of chickens and too many sacks of rice to count...

After eight hours of this plunging up and down hills on mostly unsurfaced roads (with just one 30 minute stop) I made it to Mbay and met with Brenda and Mikal. The next day we travelled on to Riung on a motorbike (borrowed from the brother-in-law of a Maumere friend I met on the bus !) and found a small rather rundown hotel with a very friendly owner called Simeon.

Simeon arranged a boat for us for the following day and came us with on our trip to the islands. We left the harbour at about 8am and returned at about 4pm.We visited a few islands, one of which is home to the most enormous bat population I have ever seen.

   

 

Later we visited our own private desert island for a delicious lunch cooked on the beach by Simeon and stopped at about four separate locations for some great snorkelling.

 

Leo, our captain, cleaning the fish for lunch

Mikal & Brenda on our desert island

A house near the harbour at Riung

On Sunday we were invited to have lunch at the home of a friend (the guy who lent me his brother-in-law's motorbike) near Mbay. A very relaxing afternoon spent sitting under a mango tree chatting and being watched by lots of big eyes...

Then, on Monday morning it was back to the bus terminal for a 7am departure for Maumere, arriving home exactly nine hours later. Worth every minute of it.... 
 

     

     

Flores at last !

Last Thursday afternoon we (three new volunteers and one accompanying partner) arrived in Maumere to begin our placements in earnest. Peter & I were fortunate enough to be met at the airport by one of our friends from the hospital and were brought to our “temporary” accommodation at the hospital. This consists of a small two bedroom house behind the hospital designed for use as doctors’ accommodation – the hospital, in common with many other district hospitals in Indonesia, has great difficulty in attracting and retaining medical staff due to the perceived unattractiveness of the location and lack of resources available to do anything and needs to provide accommodation to doctors working here. The house we are in is basic enough but is reasonably clean but needs a new bed in my room so I am currently sleeping on the floor.
Although Indonesia is predominately Muslim, the province of Nusa Tengara Timor (NTT) is mainly Christian. As I have mentioned before, when Indonesians do religion, they really do it properly, especially where observance of holidays is concerned. As a result, our arrival at the end of Holy Week meant that many of the shops were closed for Easter weekend and things only started moving again on Tuesday morning.
On Saturday we moved outside Maumere to a small hotel at Gading Beach, about 10kms along the coast to the west. This was a very relaxing weekend with a total of nine volunteers from Maumere, Mbay (also on Flores), Rote (another island south west of West Timor). The resort itself is a small hotel in the throes of a slow building project but offers nice food, peace and quiet, and good standard bedrooms.

On Monday morning we turned up for work at the appointed hour to find (not surprisingly) that we were among the first to appear. After morning Appel, we attended a regular Monday morning staff meeting with heads of department at which the main topic of discussion might as well have been the price of fish for all I was able to understand ! The rest of the day was spent meeting new colleagues, assembling some light reading material about my placement, and (finally) visiting our new house. This was a bit of an eye opener as it is in a pretty appalling state inside and needs a cleaning and painting blitz. We have been promised that this will happen as soon as a tukang (handyman) can be found and we have agreed with the hospital what they will be providing for us and what we will need to buy ourselves. (VSO has an agreement with employers about certain basic requirements for accommodation – bed, table, chair, stove, etc.) Most of the other stuff we will buy for ourselves out of a household equipment grant from VSO given to all new volunteers (equivalent to about €90). At the time of writing (Wednesday) we are waiting to hear news about how long this work might take but my expectations are that we will continue to live in the hospital accommodation for at least another two weeks. As the hospital is a little way out of the town, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my promised two wheeled motorised transport from Bajawa later this week. Until then, my involuntary enforced weight loss program will just have to continue – down 8 kgs (in nine weeks) at the last count !