Still not legal...

In my naivety, I thought that leaving the country last week to go to Singapore and returning to Maumere was all that was required to validate my new visa. It turns out that I was mistaken; this was only the means of switching from my previous "social and cultural" visa to a new single entry visa. After returning, I then embarked on the process of applying for my temporary residence permit. I met VSO's passport agent (Father Hubert, a local priest !) in Maumere last Wednesday immediately after returning and handed him my passport and a stack of documents so that he could start the process. Since then, I have visited his office on four further occasions with yet more bits of paper, most of which have to be signed by the hospital director as my employer. The latest visit (Monday morning) brought the news that I am to stand by and wait for a summons to be fingerprinted (for the third time since arriving in Indonesia) but that the lady who does the fingerprints was sick on Saturday so we're not sure when this will happen ! There must be only one person in the immigration office who can do fingerprinting.... As with most things in Indonesia, there are no prescribed forms to be completed for the visa application, just a bundle of miscellaneous documents certifying this, that and the other.

My burgeoning radio career has reached new heights since last week with the successful (well, adequate anyway) completion of my first solo broadcast on the newly established hospital radio MEDIKA 107 FM. Last Saturday, I was persuaded to present a one hour English language programme – the big difference between my previous SONIA FM broadcasts and this one is that there is no producer on hospital radio so it really is a solo effort ! I think it went ok, I even received one or two SMS requests during the programme so it looks like being a regular feature – one of the things about hospital radio, of course, is that the audience changes from one day to the next so the concept of regular programmes is not as important as on a local station. MEDIKA 107 FM broadcasts to the town of Maumere (about 10km range) but nobody knows that yet as the official licence has not arrived so it has only been publicised within the hospital! I suppose that makes me a pirate broadcaster....

On Saturday 4th July we "celebrated" Independence Day with Mik & Jess at their beachside house at Gading Beach, including mokehitos, a new take on the local hooch which went down very well !

This week is being interrupted by the presidential election which takes place on Wednesday 8^th July and means a day off work. The run up to the election (in Maumere at any rate) has been extremely low key compared to the hoop-la that I witnessed in Bali for the general election in March but it will be interesting to watch. Anyone I have asked expects the incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known as SBY and the country's first directly elected president) to be re-elected even though they all also say they won't vote for him themselves (I'm not sure how that will work). As this is only the second ever presidential election here, I think that many people are not completely au fait with the system. SBY has two opponents for office - Megawati (former president Sukarno's daughter) and Kalla (the current vice president).

Week 19

As I post this, it is exactly nineteen weeks since I arrived in Indonesia, the longest period in my life that I have lived outside Ireland. One of my colleagues asked me last week was I "sudah bosan" (already bored) with Maumere and seemed very surprised that the ten weeks I have spent here was not long enough already. My placement is due to end on 8^th June 2010 (exactly 50 weeks from tomorrow) but there is always the possibility of an extension (however, that's talk for another day !). Most VSO placements are for a two year period - I have never understood quite why mine is only for fourteen months (or sixteen including the in country training in Bali) but I assume that it has something to do with the fact that I replaced a volunteer who had to return home early during his placement. Apparently about one-third of volunteers expend their placements, up to a maximum of three years in total.

I mentioned recently that there has been a great deal of uncertainty about the position of many volunteers in Indonesia due to changes in VSO's relationship with the Indonesian government. These changes have meant that the previous system of volunteers holding a "social and cultural" visa which is renewed in Jakarta every month could no longer continue, and VSO is seeking to have a more formal relationship with the Department of Manpower, which will mean that volunteers will instead apply for a KITAS (Kartu Izin Tinggal Sementara – Temporary Residence Permit). However, until this agreement is finalised with the Department (which could take months), employers such as the hospital in which I am working are being asked to sponsor their volunteers for their KITAS. This appears to be working OK for volunteers who are working with government bodies – however it seems to be impossible to arrange for the many volunteers who are working for Non Government Organisations (NGOs). As a result, many of these volunteers are having their placements end earlier than planned or are being sent home until the new agreement is signed (in some cases for up to three months). You can imagine the disruption that this upheaval and uncertainty is causing. Last Friday, I received the good news that my KITAS (supported by the hospital) has been issued in Jakarta. However, the bureaucracy doesn't end there - to change from my current social and cultural visa to a KITAS I must leave Indonesia and re-enter. This will involve leaving Maumere next Saturday morning, flying to Denpasar, then flying to Singapore on Sunday night, staying one night and returning to Denpasar on Monday and finally arriving back in Maumere on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to a big fillet steak and some good red wine in Singapore, two luxuries which are not available in Maumere !

For the last two Fridays, I have stood in for a volunteer friend who has been away on holiday (and a visa trip to Singapore) and presented the weekly English language programme "English Make Over" on SONIA FM, Maumere's very own radio station. The programme is a phone in discussion show and on my first week the topic was belis (bride price or dowry). This was an interesting opportunity for me to learn a little about this local custom and I was surprised that all of the callers to the programme were unanimous in their opinion that this was a tradition which should be ended. The amounts involved are quite staggering, and usually are counted in animals rather than money but often have the effect of saddling the groom's (extended) family with a huge debt which can take many years to pay off. As a timely example of this, I was privileged to be invited to a wedding last week by a friend at work whose sister was being married. This involved two functions – the first, two days before the wedding was similar to an "at home" where friends were invited to visit at any time after 3pm, and food and drink were provided. The second was on the day of the wedding. Non-family guests do not usually attend the church wedding but that evening, about 700 guests (yes, seven hundred !) were invited to the reception. There were a few speeches (but unusually for Indonesia, not too many and not for too long) followed by a marathon hand shaking session - platform party of 8 x 700 guests = 5600 handshakes. Then we hit the buffet. The food at this wedding was probably the best I have tasted in Indonesia and was produced by the family on fires behind the house.

Earlier in the week, they had slain two cows outside the house and these were the special treat but there were about five different meat dishes (plus rice of course !).

After eating, the moke was produced and we settled into a rather fast session behind the house with some of the bride's uncles. They explained that the belis or dowry in this case had been 20 horses, with a price tag of RP2,000,000 per horse. Now, converting this Rp40,000,000 into euros seems steep enough (about €2800) but consider this : a nurse earns about Rp600,000 per month and an elementary school teacher about Rp300,000 a month. This bride's belis was about five and a half years pay for a teacher ! This really put into perspective for me the comments on the previous week's radio show about what a burden this system was for families.

On my second week hosting the radio show, the topic was cheating – I was surprised to receive SMS requests from a native Maumerian who was listening online in the Netherlands so if you want to listen in to Sonia FM live from Maumere, click HERE and follow the link that you will find down a bit on the right hand side.

Live on air

Apart from the BBC World Service, the other station that my radio is tuned into most often is Sonia FM, a local radio station in Maumere (very local, in fact – the station is about 5 minutes walk away from the hospital). I find that listening to the ramblings of callers to he various request programmes and the attempts of the DJs to decipher what they are saying is good practice for my Indonesian listening skills ! One hour of Sonia's weekly output is given over to the English language when Teresa, a fellow VSO volunteer who has been in Maumere for about a year, hosts a phone in programme called "English Makeover". Normally, she chooses a topic for discussion (litter, alcohol abuse, smoking, etc.) and invites callers to phone in with their views (and of course, requests for music). Last Friday night, she invited me to come along and join her for the programme but I was a little surprised when I turned up and asked what the topic for that night was. "Didn't I tell you – it's you !" was the reply.

The programme got under way at 8pm and I spent the next hour answering a selection of questions from the callers, most of whom seemed to be regulars as they were known to Teresa and her producer, Martin. Most of the questions were not about where I came from or my background but focused very much on what I thought of Maumere and the hospital. I think my honest answers went down OK. Not only were the callers well known, but the requests were all lined up in advance as the same listeners request the same songs each week - the top choices are Bryan Adams and Celine Dion.

This pic shows Martin (the show's producer) and me after the broadcast. Note the religious influence !

I am writing this post in the waiting room of BIMC, a private hospital in Denpasar, Bali. Although I have become used to being in a hospital all day, I did not really expect to be in this particular one (on a different island and two flights away) at 10 am this morning. Before my mother gets on the phone, I will explain quickly. Joseph, another VSO volunteer from the Philippines, who has been in Maumere since mid 2008 was admitted to Maumere hospital on Monday morning with a high fever and yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) the suspected diagnosis of malaria was confirmed. The decision was taken yesterday to evacuate him to Bali to the more advanced facilities available there, not so much due to an inability to deal with his current condition in Maumere but as a precaution in case he became even worse. I was asked to accompany him on the flight, along with a nurse from Maumere so we left the hospital in an ambulance at 6 am this morning and arrived at BIMC in Bali in another ambulance at 10 am. Joseph has now been admitted and I am awaiting further instructions from VSO about my return to Maumere – the first available seat is not until Saturday, three days away, but VSO will want to ship me back there sooner than that if at all possible. I'm glad I brought a change of clothes and my laptop with me just in case ! In the meantime, I'm holed up here using the wireless access in the cafe across the road from the Yulia homestay.