Pesta in Ruteng !

As the number of VSO volunteers in Indonesia continues to dwindle (see earlier posts about the long running saga of visa negotiations that has led to the suspension of VSO's health programme), this weekend sees another departure as Festus, a Kenyan water engineer, comes to the end of his two year placement and heads home to seek paid employment in Africa. Of course, no departure would be complete without a pesta (you can guess the translation !) so I'm heading westwards on Friday to bid farewell and also visit two Dutch friends who were in the same intake group as me all the way back in February.

Mark & Anouk (and also Festus) live in Ruteng which is about 400 kms west of Maumere. I plan to make this marathon journey by motorbike with an overnight stay in Bajawa about 280 kms from here en route (that 280kms should take about 10 hours to accomplish). This will be my first time travelling past Ende (which is about 150km from Maumere) so I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to see more of Flores and hoping that the rain will hold off.

Bajawa is near the site of the 2003 discovery of the Flores "Hobbit" which still divides the scientific community as to whether it is really a separate species or not.

I've been told that the party preparations are well underway and that 40 litres of moke (as the local hooch arrack is known here) have been prepared and that a suitable goat has been identified for our dining pleasure.

On the return journey,leaving on Monday morning, I'll try to make it from Ruteng to Ende on the first day, and then the final 150km from Ende to Maumere on Tuesday.

 

A Very Important Visitor...and why not to eat mango for breakfast

Not a lot to report last week really, it's still mango season here so there are enormous delicious mangoes available in the market (about RP5.000 or €0.30 for four or five of them). They make for a great breakfast but apparently it's a well known fact among Maumereans that eating mangoes first thing in the morning is not a good idea. I can now report that there appears to be a sound basis for this wisdom as Tuesday was spent at home instead of in the office (fortunately home is only about two minutes from the office..).

Saturday saw two more party invitations, this time it was graduation day at UNipa, one of Maumere's third level institutions and I was invited to two family celebrations for newly qualified nurses. At the first of these, we were seated indoors (quite unusual for here but this was obviously a well-off family as was evident from the house construction and the furniture). The wealth didn't extend to air-conditioning unfortunately and the heat was unbelievable so I would have preferred to be seated outside in the gentle breeze rather than in a pool of my own seat on a squeaky sofa !

So, on to the VIP..

 On Sunday, the hospital was gripped with excitement as we awaited the official visit of the newly appointed Minister for Health, all the way from Jakarta. The new minister (who is a doctor) worked in Maumere for three years when she was newly qualified and her husband is either from Flores or also worked here (I couldn't figure out which) so she was keen to pay a visit to her old home. She was due to arrive at the hospital at 12 noon and spend two hours visiting three wards and meeting staff and patients, followed by a tree planting ceremony and a bunfight. She turned up bang on time at 2.15 p.m. (which is about normal) at the head of a cavalcade of at least twelve official cars all crammed with hangers on, was greeted at the front door by some traditional musicians and dancers and Dr. Asep (the hospital director) and whizzed around the three departments, including the ICU – I'm not sure what the still unwritten infection control policy will have to say about one hundred visitors all marching in there ! - in double quick time. Unfortunately the long awaited rainy season decided to start just as the tree planting ceremony was about to take place so that was quickly shelved and she was then running so late that the bunfight (carefully prepared by Dr. Candida, Dr. Asep's wife) in the conference hall was left to the staff to fight over after her departure.

Dr. Asep and the newly printed organisation structure in the main entrance hall of the hospital.

The musicians and dancers preparing for the Minister's arrival.

Dr. Candida (left) preparing the snacks

Dr. Asep greets the Minister

The hole is filled by the rain rather than the tree...

Everyone turned out in their best bib and tucker including my friend Petrus, who I suspect designed his uniform himself as he is the only security guard in the hospital who dresses like this (and he is really proud of it as you can see !)

Duck and chips !

It's not all rice here, there are quite good potatoes available also for about RP10,000 (€0.65) per kg. Last Saturday evening I bought 1.5kgs of big spuds, Peter made them into chips and our friend Teresa arrived with three portions of bebek bakar (grilled duck) from a local rumah makan. Enak sekali, as they say around these parts !

 

Corruption update

I see that Transparency International has just published the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (see this earlier post for more on this). It's interesting to see that Ireland has moved up the table to 14th place with 8 points (formerly we shared 16th place with the UK on a score of 7.7). The UK is now in 17th place, still with 7.7 points.

However, I'm also pleased to see that Indonesia's position has improved slightly too - up from 126th place with 2.6 points to 111th this year (2.8 points).

Somalia still languishes at the bottom in 180th place with 1.1 points while (rather surprisingly to me at any rate) New Zealand is in 1st place with 9.4 points.

Gestation Period ?

This is the beginning of my fortieth week in Indonesia, a duration which the same as the gestation period for humans. I could get very allegorical about what my 40 weeks here has produced (apart from the loss of about 13kgs !) but I'm not going to do that.

Last week, an Indonesian friend asked me whether I was enjoying living here and what were the biggest differences between my life in Ireland and my life here. I listed off a few of the obvious and easier to explain differences (weather, food, motorbikes etc.) but the question did prompt me to think about some of the larger contrasts between living in a rich country and living in a poor one (and believe me, for those of you in Ireland who are dreading the budget on 9th December, Ireland is still a very rich country).

The big obvious one of course is money, but more importantly access to money. You need money to get money. Everybody that I have met here so far, whether living a hand to mouth subsistence existence in a village or working as a government employee on a regular salary, operates with practically no savings and therefore no backup in the case of emergency. There are government owned pawnshops in most towns and as most people don't have bank accounts, this is the first port of call in an emergency. The credit union movement is also quite well established here and VSO is planning to place a volunteer with the Credit Union head office in Maumere next year to help them develop their management skills. Of course, access to finance and seed capital is recognised as one of the biggest limiting factors in preventing people from becoming self sufficient in even the smallest ways - if you want to open a small kiosk selling cigarettes or a sewing business, you need some start up money to buy your initial stock or your sewing machine. This is why micro finance or microcredit operations are proving to be so important in helping to break the poverty cycle.

Another big difference between life in Ireland and life here is connected to lack of infrastructure. This one is pretty significant and affects many aspects of life, here are just a few examples :

Transport
Transport in Flores is privately provided and not subsidised. By Western standards it is cheap (a trip to Ende, about 160 kms away, will cost about Rp70.000 or less than €5 for one seat in an 8 seat car and will take about 4 to 5 hours) but for a poor villager this is a huge sum of money.   


Roads
Are not great (this is why the trip to Ende takes so long). In the rainy season many are impassable except by truck so connections between towns on the same island are difficult. 


Electricity
I am lucky to be living in the hospital as we rarely experience power cuts. However, another volunteer living in Maumere can now predict when her electricity will be off - every fourth night from 6pm to 10 pm. A volunteer in Ruteng (western Flores) tells me that they have no listrik every day between 12 noon and 4pm. Part of the problem is infrastructure - Maumere has expanded in recent years and more houses now have electricity but the power station can't keep up - but availability of fuel (diesel) for the generating stations is also a problem. As the rainy season approaches, there is a higher risk of sea tankers not being able to dock and unload and road tankers not being able to make it through the landslides.
           

Water
Again, I'm lucky. I have plenty of running water for washing which has been available almost without interruption and I can afford to buy 20 litre bottles for drinking. However, villagers who do have water have to collect it from a communal well or tap, drag it home and then boil it. Access to water in some villages is almost non-existent and the focus of many development projects is on providing access to clean water. The link between water and health does not need to be spelled out.   


Healthcare
Two of the biggest contributors to the stark difference in life expectancy between developed and developing countries are access to healthcare and education about healthcare. There is lots of reading material available on the WHO's site (HERE for example) and you can also contruct interesting comparisons between selected countries using chosen indicators HERE.


There are of course lots of other differences which I guess are really the luxury aspects of living in a rich country : entertainment options, internet access (with obvious implications for educationand business), nice restaurants, access to more than ten things to eat (but think of all those food miles), refuse collection services - ah, the list is endless but is often what your tax is spent on (apart from servicing the growing national debt of course !).

Anyway, that all got a bit serious, I'm off to do some  work now. For further reading, look up the UN's Millennium Development Goals here. 


   

Corruption

One of the topics covered by VSO's pre-departure SKWID (SKills for Working In Development of course !) training course is the issue of corruption, which is a major problem in many developing countries. From the distant remove of pure, umblemished Ireland (ha ha) I used to think of corruption in developing countries as being related to vast sums being siphoned off foreign aid by corrupt government officials and politicians. When I arrived in Indonesia, the first seven weeks was spent in language training every morning with local orientation taking place most afternoons. One of the topics covered in this orientation was corruption in Indonesia and this opened my eyes as to how widespread a problem this is. There are many ways by which corruption is measured - one of the most well known indices is the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) produced by Transparency International, about which organisation you can read more HERE.

In the latest index (2008) Indonesia is ranked at number 126 out of 180 countries. Somalia is at the bottom of the table and Denmark at the top. Ireland is at number 16, the same ranking as the UK.  

When I started hearing more about corruption in Indonesia, and after living here for a while, I began to realise how endemic it was and how it affects every level of society. Here are three specific examples from my own very limited personal experience :

1. Booking airline tickets here is a rather haphazard affair. Recently some friends (fellow volunteers) who were leaving the island but couldn't get seats for the next four days eventually managed to get tickets by buying them at their hotel from an airline employee who happened to have some "spare" tickets which had "originally been bought for some family members who were now unable to travel" (yeah, right - a nice easy one to swing for an airline official). The tickets were of course in the wrong names but for an "administration charge" (paid in cash at the hotel) this was all sorted out.

2. When someone dies here (and there are usually between 1 and 3 deaths a day in the hospital) the remains are brought back to the home village almost immediately for burial the following day. This removal is done by the hospital hearse and the family have to pay for the transport. However, in many cases, the money is paid directly by the family to the driver and it never makes it into the hospital accounting system.

3. The lack of systems and controls means that it is very easy for cash payments to quietly disappear (and almost all payments here are cash, credit cards and cheques are non-existent for ordinary people). Medicines sold from the hospital pharmacy are cheaper if you don't want a receipt - now, why would that be do you think ? 

There are many other examples but there are a few fundamental problems :

1. Systems  - most organisations have very simple or almost non existent accounting controls in place.

2. Money  - salaries for most employees are very low, making the opportunity to supplement your income quite attractive.

3. Cutlure - unfortunately, this is now so much part of the system that it is almost seen as an entitlement by many and as a semi-legitimate means of supplementing your meagre salary. Add to this the Asian reluctance to tackle problems in a face-to-face confrontational way and it is easy to see how these situations are allowed to continue.

 

The recently re-elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (commonly known as SBY), has pledged to do his bit to improve Indonesia's corruption problem and things do seem to be improving with the establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission. However, this topic has hit the headlines here again this week with the uncovering of an alleged plot by senior police officials aimed at weakening the commission by falsely implicating commission officials in bribery allegations. This has now led to the resignation of a deputy Attorney general and a senior police officer and more fallout is expected.

You can keep up with this story at the Jakarta Post (story HERE) or at the BBC's South Asia site HERE.

Athletics display outside my front door

Catching up...

I seem to start a lot of posts recently by apologising for the length of time since my previous post so this time, please take it as read this time ! In my defence, all I can say is that there hasn't been very much to report recently. Things at work continue to trundle along slowly, especially as Yani (the colleague with whom I work very closely) was out sick for almost two weeks and returned to work just in time to go to a meeting in Jakarta (which will take about a week by the time you add in transit time, shoppping time, etc.).

Add to that the fact that our internet connection has been very unreliable recently and that half of the buttons on blogger.com seem to be missing most of the time so sometimes I can't change fonts or upload photos...

Last Sunday week we visited the village of Kristo, a friend in the hospital for another long day of sitting around on plastic chairs doing nothing much but drinking moke and eating RW (as the K9 delicacy is known). RW stands for Rintek Wuuk which is Sulawesi for "fine hair" and is the euphemism by which the meat of our four legged friends seems to be universally known. Nobody has yet been able to explain why they don't just call it daging anjing (dog meat). Another of those mysteries which will remain a mystery I guess. One of the most welcome parts of that particular visit was being offered es kelapa muda (young coconut drink) as soon as we arrived, it's deliciously refreshing and there is something special about enjoying a drink like this while sitting under the tree from which it has been plucked 5 minutes earlier. We're also in mango season now so there are plenty of mangos to be had everywhere, I bought three huge ones at the side of the road this weekend for Rp5,000 (about €0.30).

Another recent highlight was the visit of Geoff, a previous VSO volunteer who I more or less replaced in the hospital here. Geoff unfortunately had to return home early due to personal circumstances but came back on holiday to visit Lamalera on Lembata (the whaling village I wrote about HERE) and also, after visiting Flores, went to see Krakatoa. By coincidence, I was just finishing reading "Krakatoa : the day the world exploded" by Simon Winchester while he was here so was able to give him the book to take on his onward travels. I recommend this book very strongly to anyone who wants the full story of what happened in 1883 with a good introduction to the story of the geology behind the eruptions.

Here's Geoff, what film star does he remind you of ?

Lastly, some of the kids who hang around outside our house in the afternoons trying to destroy a wasps' nest (despite at least one of them getting stung every day).

 

   

   

 

Moving house again, on video this time

Kimang Buleng

Yesterday I joined a group from the hospital on a motorbike excursion to the top of one of the nearby mountains (Kimang Buleng). Ten of us altogether made the rather steep ascent with only one puncture (a rarity as most tyres here are long past their best and the quality is rubbish to start with so you never have to go more than about two miles without passing a "tambal ban" or tyre repair place).

On  the way, we had to pull off to the side of the road to make room for someone who was moving house (literally) !

This morning the working week kicked off with a meeting in the hospital which was a followup to the complaints workshop and survey that I wrote about some time ago. Today's meeting consisted of a  few speeches (as usual) and the public signing of a promise by hospital management, department heads and local government officials to make some very specific changes, many of which I suspect will be difficult to implement as they will involve spending money, a resource which is in very short supply. However, it's interesting to see how a country which is tied up in miles and miles of red tape still has institutions which adopt a very inclusive and open system of trying to deal with their problems. This is largely down to the enthusiasm of the hospital director, Dr. Asep, who engages lots of stakeholders in the wider community about decisions in the hospital.

Here Marlena, one of the finance team (renowned for her voice, she belts out Celine Dion numbers at weddings !) formally reads the complaints, promise and recommendations while the Bupati (regent) on the far left and Dr. Asep listen in.

 Next, Dr. Asep takes the stage and outlines the hospital management's response (using the analogy of a large ship for the hospital !).

 

 

 

Following this, the promise and recommendation is formally signed by representatives from the hospital, local government, Department of Health and other stakeholders.

 

While Dr. Harlin and Dr. Mario look on and enjoy themselves...

       

Tick, tock, tick, tock....

I found out very recently that the long running saga of negotiations about agreeing an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) between VSO and the Indonesian government (which finally seem to be getting somewhere, what is hoped to be the final meeting takes place today, Saturday) will have one significant implication as far as I am concerned. The new way of working is likely to be quite different from current arrangements and the health programme (of which I am part) in particular is going to look very different in the future. As part of the move towards these new arrangements, the news came out last week that there would be no possibility of extending existing health programme placements. As my placement here is only for fourteen months (or sixteen including the introductory in country training) I had always had in the back of my mind the likelihood that I would probably consider extending my stay here for a while longer, if for no other reason than to feel that I was getting some value out of the investment that I have put into learning a new language at my advanced stage in life. Now, however, it looks as if this will not be possible although there may be the possibility of applying for a new placement, which would probably mean committing to a further two years here, making my total stay at least three and a half years. Hmmm.....

If I leave at my original end of placement date I will leave Indonesia in early June 2010, meaning that I am now more than halfway through my stay in this extraordinary country. This realisation has had the effect of suddenly focusing my mind on what I have done (very little) and what I feel have left to do (an awful lot).


Hmmmm again......

Litter

Maumere is not the cleanest place in the world. When I have showed Indonesian friends some of the photographs on my laptop from my hometown of Bray or of my travels in Australia and London, the initial reaction is always the same - "wah, bersih sekali" (very clean) !


As well as cash income, one of the big obvious differences between a rich country and a poor one is infrastructure (or lack of it) - which of course covers just about everything from transport to healthcare. In Indonesia, the smelly issue of refuse disposal is generally "self managed". When I moved into my house at the hospital, I asked a colleague here what I should do with my household rubbish. I received a rather surprised reply along the lines of "Well, burn it of course !" which is what everyone else does. There aren't any bin lorries making regular household collections although there is a skip at the back of the hospital which is emptied regularly. Where the contents end up is anybody's guess – I intend to follow the truck that empties it someday to see where it goes. This practice of burning everything means that there are little fires everywhere every day and would probably be all right if everything was harmlessly combustible but of course, it isn't. In particular the use of plastic bags here is quite staggering and reminds me of the days before the levy in Ireland (by the way, I see that the levy is soon going up to 44c per bag, probably about the only 100% tax increase which won't raise an uproar). As well as millions and millions of plastic bags, the littering habit here is quite something. Part of the problem, of course, goes back to the lack of infrastructure - there aren't any rubbish bins so if you want to be a good citizen, you have to take your rubbish home (and burn it there). It's much easier to just throw it away on the street so that's usually what happens.

There is however, one form of recycling taking place which I haven't yet quite managed to figure out. This consists of a group of three children, very dirty and ragged, who traipse around the town sifting through piles of rubbish to salvage empty plastic bottles which they stuff into sacks and drag off to somewhere. I don't know what happens them after that but I'm going to try to find out.

Strangely, this offers a strange contrast with the cleanliness of all the houses that I have visited. Dust is everywhere (especially now in the middle of the 8 mont dry season) so the women of the household spend large portions of every day sweeping up and so the areas surrounding houses are usually spotlessly clean.

Another of the major causes of litter are these :

These small plastic "glasses" hold 240ml of drinking water, and have a sealed plastic lid which you have to stab violently with a pointed straw (provided). They are available in every shop and kiosk for about Rp500 (Rp1,000 in Maumere airport though, some things are the same the world over !), are included in every snack box handed out at meetings and are given to guests at home. When you're finished with it, you just throw it on the ground - or burn it, causing all sorts of unpleasant and dangerous fumes....  

Wha' ?

Firstly, apologies for the recent lack of posts. My laptop had an emergency trip to hospital last weekend due to the charger getting fried after the last repair fell apart. Thanks to Rudi in Toko Digital, his hacksaw, soldering iron and friendly expertise, I am now back on the air again.

Following that, I was confined to barracks (or at least a radius of about 10 metres from my bathroom) due to a rather vicious attack of mencret (translate it HERE if you really need to) for three days but thankfully that now seems to have passed.

When I came back, one of the things I have been working on is a grant application to a Portuguese NGO for funds for the hospital. All of their paperwork is in English (thank goodness as my Portuguese is non existent) and the application documentation is rather formally worded. For example :

a) Principal Objective (general condition, desired in a long term, that a Project may help to achieve. The concretization of the specific objective facilitates the materialization of the principal objective)

I will try to write my proposal in simpler English ! 

Corrections & clarifications

I got my blue and yellow boxes mixed up yesterday on the earthquake map - the size of the box (not the colour) denotes the magnitude, the colour will tell you how recent it was. Look below the map for a more coherent explanation !

Earthquake update

I came in to work this morning and logged on to receive a few emails asking if I had been affected by the earthquake. I have to confess to asking "what earthquake ?" until I looked at the BBC News website and found out that Padang in Southern Sumatra had been badly hit yesterday. Latest estimates of the number of deaths vary from 75 to 200 depending on which news service you look at but there are also thousands trapped so the toll will have risen even further by the time you read this.

Since I arrived here, I have felt two very slight tremors although I managed to sleep through the most significant quake here (it happened at about 2 am). If anyone is interested in keeping an eye on things in my part of the world, bookmark this link :   http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/10/125_-10.php To find Maumere, look for Ende (about 150km WSW of here) on the map. Maumere is on the north coast in the large bay at the thinnest part of the island (just where the red arrow in the copy below is pointing to).

Recent earthquakes (if any) are indicated by a yellow square (or blue for larger quakes - there's an example of a yellow one on the top right of the map above ) which you can then click on for further details. I've added this site to my list of "favourite sites" which appears on the left hand side of your screen, just scroll down a little to find it. 

On a different note, today is 1st October so I took a quick look at my blog hit statistics this morning and was pleased to see that in September it had a new monthly record of exactly 1400 (the previous highest was 858 in February). I am guessing that this is related to my decision to try and post more frequently (16 posts in September as against 7 in August) rather than a huge influx of new readers ! So, thanks for keeping on reading and I'm sorry if your inbox is being filled up by alerts from Feedblitz. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, you'll find a place near the top on the left hand side to allow you to "subscribe" - this means that you will receive a short notification by email whenever I add a new post.

PORDAFTA 2009

You can't beat a good acronym – and I've mentioned before how much Indonesians like using them. PORDAFTA (Pekan Olah Raga se-DAratan Flores & LembaTA or sports week for the region of Flores & Lembata) is on this week in Maumere and has brought an influx of between 2000 and 3000 visitors from all over the island and the neighbouring island of Lembata (where I still haven't got to..)

Yesterday afternoon I watched a Takro match. This is played on a volleyball court with a lower net but with only two players on each side. The main difference from volleyball is that you can only use feet or heads – no hands ! This makes for some spectacular bicycle kicks, which I hope you'll be able to see if my first attempt at uploading a video clip is successful (there have been two power cuts already this morning while I'm trying to do this !)

Lastly,some more great diving displays were going on in the harbour yesterday afternoon.

 

Party season

Well, I may have had to miss out on the celebrations for my parents' golden wedding anniversary in Bray on Saturday night (although I did get up at 5 am to interrupt the party with a phone call) but that doesn't mean that I got through the weekend without a party as First Communion season continues unabated here ! I weaselled out of one on Friday afternoon after work but one of the first friends I met in the hospital, Kristo, invited mycolleague Peter and me to his kampung (village) on Sunday for his nephew's Sambut Baru celebration. This was a little quieter than the Maumere parties mainly due to the remote location, the family live about 30 minutes drive from Maumere but on a hilltop in a well scattered village and, as usual, with only close family living nearby. Apart from the local family members and Kristo, there were 5 guests from the hospital, one of whom had to leave almost as soon as we arrived as he is a nurse in the operating theatre and was called in for an emergency Caesarean Section (of which there seem to be a lot here, incidentally).

Thankfully, this family had not set up the enormous bank of loudspeakers which most Indonesians feel is an essential part of a good party so we had a very pleasant and peaceful day sitting around with the family in their home. Shortly after I arrived, I was invited to witness the formal ceremony which was another example of how Flores mixes and matches traditional animist ceremonies with Christianity. This ceremony preceded the meal and involved the laying out of most of the dishes that were to be served on the floor in front of the family while one of the family members makes a small offering of rice and meat to the ancestors before the meal is served. After the ceremony, a small dish is passed around for everyone to take a small taste from, very similar to the serving of communion.

After this ceremony, we all got up and moved out of the way while the food was reassembled and laid out in a buffet. Guests are always invited up first which is a little daunting the first time around but at least now I know what to do !

After eating (men in one room, women in another of course), the obligatory bottle of moke (locally produced arak drunk neat in shots) was produced along with the customary single glass which is passed from one person to another, being refilled each time by the "bandar".

Here's the young man who was the centre of attention :  

And here's the newest member of the family,just three months old (he's the one on the left) :

 

One of the highlights of any visit to a family in the villages is when the camera is produced - naturally enough, digital cameras are a real rarity here (this family doesn't have electricity) so it's a real novelty to see themselves on the little LCD screen on my camera after taking pictures. This week I am going to print a few of these pictures and give them to Kristo to bring back home the next time he visits his village. I imagine that the mother of the baby in the last shot probably does not have one photo of her baby yet, imagine how many photographs the mother of a three month old baby at home would have already !       

PS Do you like the wallpaper ?

On this day (well ok, tomorrow)

1959 was the year that Gigi won the best Picture Osar at the Academy Awards.

On 26th September, 1959 Typhoon Vera hit central Honshu (Japan) killing more than 5,200 people.

However, 26th September,1959 was also the day that Norma Pullan walked up the aisle of Rathfarnham Parish Church and walked back down the aisle a little later as Norma Henderson.

 The big party takes place tomorrow night (50 years to the day later) - it's probably the one event that will be taking place while I'm in Indonesia that I really feel I shouldn't be missing. 

Happy Golden wedding Anniversary, Norma & Gordon (aka Mum & Dad) !!!

Have a great party !