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.

What happened this week ?

Well, not much really to be honest. I've set myself the objective of putting up at least one post a week here but I have to confess that it is sometimes a struggle to stop lapsing into a daily diary which would make for spectacularly uninteresting reading and have my already tiny hit statistics falling off a cliff faster than I could stop them.

Almost as interesting as Anne Frank's diary (with apologies in advance....)

For example :

Monday :

6.30 .am Got up, .took my doxycycline antimalarial, had some bananas, bread and coffee for breakfast. Washed.

7.25 am Went to work. Slow morning, internet wasn't working very well so not able to do much.

11.00 am Coffee break

2.00 pm Home, change and out for lunch to one of three of four regular places.

2.45 pm Back home, read or snooze for an hour.

4.00 pm Maybe go out for a drive on the bike

6.00 pm Darkness, usually back home by now. Spend the next four hours sitting on the front porch with one or more of our friends, some of whom are very keen to improve their English. One of my new friends, Frid, has become my new Indonesian teacher so it's a good mutual exchange.

Tuesday :

See Monday

Wednesday :

See Tuesday

Etc. etc

So, you will be pleased to hear that I am going to spare you this ordeal. Last weekend, we had a visit from a very good friend Nick, who is a VSO volunteer who has spent the last year and a half working in Yogjakarta with some deaf groups helping them to develop training programmes. Nick was one of the welcome party when we arrived in Bali all those months ago and so was one of the very first VSO volunteers I met in Indonesia. He has just returned to Indonesia after a holiday at home and is spending his last three months before his placement ends on some roving assignments, the first of which is a two week visit to Bajawa in western Flores. Instead of going out for dinner on Saturday we ate at home and my housemate and resident chef Peter excelled himself with pizza and apple tart. Pizza may not sound that difficult to make but consider some of the challenges : tomato sauce made from scratch, dough from scatch, chicken bought in a restaurant and shredded at home, mozzarella brought from Bali by Nick, the oven is a tin box on top of a paraffin stove.... and what a spread it was, as good as you could get ! Frid, my ojek friend, had made the arrangements for Nick to travel onwards from Maumere to Bajawa on Sunday (better pricing always available to locals !) and joined us for dinner that night also. The next day I went with Frid to visit his cousin in the hospital where I work and met his aunt. Frid told her that he had had dinner in our house the previous night and explained what we had eaten. I could see the puzzled look on her face as he described what a pizza was and when he had finished she asked : "What about the rice, was it fried or boiled ?"

Above : Indra & Dewa (you don't smile for photographs in Indonesia !)

Above : from left,Kristo, Daniel, Indra and Hartadi relaxing on our porch.

Nick departs for Bajawa with Frid (with apologies for a rushed and badly composed photo !)

Lunch under the Chocolate Tree

Well, another Monday dawns on Flores and after another one day weekend (this business of having to turn up for work on a Saturday is a real nuisance), it’s time for another week. Life has been pretty uneventful since last week’s post, the week at work has settled into a fairly regular pattern and one day is much like another. I spent a chunk of last week working on an application for a grant for Health Care Worker (HCW) safety training from an Australian fund which promotes good clinical governance and am also trying to explore some avenues to see if we can get our hands on second hand bedsheets and blankets from some of the five star hotels in Bali.

Yesterday we again went with our friends Hartadi and Kristo from the hospital to visit a friend in a nearby village for her birthday lunch. The main dish was as per last Sunday’s lunch (no further details will be provided) but the music was a little different. Outside the family’s house, we were greeted by a bank of 8 enormous speakers which pumped out music at an ear-splitting volume for the duration of our visit. Add this to the language difficulty and let’s just say that, while we received a great welcome, once the music started communications were limited to non verbal ones ! While having lunch, I asked about the trees under which we were sitting. I know plenty of people who would love to have a “pohon coklat” (chocolate tree) outside their front door – we picked a cocoa pod and split it open to investigate and taste the seeds inside – not at all like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk !

I brought my pocket binoculars with me yesterday and these proved to be a great hit with adults and children alike. Most of the people there had never seen binoculars before and were amazed at the magic of being able to magnify far off objects ! I had to keep repeating warnings about not looking at the sun...

Last night, we had (another) sort of going away party for a volunteer who left Maumere this morning. The reason for it being a "sort of" going away party is that Joseph's situation is a little uncertain. Recent changes in visa requirements have meant that many volunteers are now in a sort of limbo. Joseph needs to leave Indonesia this week as his current visa has expired - however, at the moment it is very uncertain when he will be able to return (maybe not for three months). The uncertainty associated with this must be very unsettling, to say nothing of the practical difficulties involved in locking up your house not knowing when (or if) you will be coming back. Fortunately for me, this uncertainty only affects volunteers working for NGOs and those of us who are employed by government bodies are not affected - or not yet, anyway..

Pigor and Sunday lunch

Monday morning and back to "work" again....

Yesterday was our one day of rest - the hospital, in common with most government offices here, works a six day week which is more than just a bit of a nuisance as it severely restricts opportunities to see more of Flores. Travel on Flores is a major operation and to get to any of the other towns is usually a full day trip. For instance, Ende is about 150km away but is an eight hour trip by car. Anyway, yesterday started with a visit from two friends who work in the hospital and live in the dormitory building near our house - Hartadi is a nurse in the operating theatre and Kristo works in Cleaning Services. They arrived at 8am (this was a lie in on a Sunday morning after a late night on Saturday) with a large bunch of bananas and took over our kitchen to produce a huge tray of pisang goreng or PIGOR (remember the Indonesian predilection for contractions that I mentioned before ?) - fried bananas or banana fritters to you lot.

Ok, how many types of banana can you name ? You're probably thinking, well a banana is a banana is a banana, isn't it ? Well, it may be at home, but here there are plenty to choose from. This list is not exhaustive :

• Pisang susu - milk bananas, very small
• Pisang merah - red bananas, not very common but are available
• Pisang meja - table bananas
• Pisang brangah - "normal" bananas
• Pisang bugis - green bananas with three sides, fatter than other, used for pigor. Originally from South Sulawesi
• Pisang Ambon - from Ambon, not sure yet what they are like.

After feasting on our pigor, we headed off with Hartadi and Kristo to visit a village called Wololora,near Lella - about thirty minutes' from Maumere. This is where a friend of Hartadi's lives, and in true Indonesian style, it was considered quite normal for him to turn up for lunch and bring along a few friends.
We had a very pleasant few hours there, drinking coconut juice (freshly harvested by Kristo), chatting to the children of the extended family, taking plenty of photos and then we sat down for Sunday lunch.

The tables were set outside and all the men sit down and wait for the food to arrive - we had rice (of course), cooked papaya flowers, tofu, some small pieces of smoked fish, and a big plate of meat. You may not wish to know what this was, so I won't spell it out except to say that it was a meat that is not normally eaten where I come from and comes from an animal usually kept as a pet in Western society. The meat was ok, dark and quite strongly flavoured but with lots of bones. As well as the plate of meat, most meals also consist of a large bowl of soup or stock with plenty of big bits and lots of liquid to spoon over your rice. I was glad that I didn't delve too deeply into this bowl but my friend Peter fished out some distinctly recognisable parts, let's just say that they gave him paws for thought. Hmmmm, maybe vegetarians have the right idea after all...
After the food has been served to the men, drinks poured and refills of rice brought to the table, the women all disappeared inside the house to sit on the floor and have their own lunch with the children.

There are a few things that always strike me about visiting these rural village communities : the first is that the whole family lives cheek by jowl and stays together - yesterday there were three generations of thirty to forty people all living in very close proximity to each other. The next is the willingness to share - it is an honour rather than an inconvenience to have guests visit and to have foreign guests is a special treat. Some of the smaller children were a little overwhelmed by the sight of their first bulehs (palefaces) and were very nervous about coming too close - one little girl kept sneaking up behind me and stroking my hand to see if my white skin felt different from her dark one !

Weather forecasts

I have deleted the "My weather" link on the left hand side of the page - for two reasons.
1) It seems to be not working most of the time and
2) Even when it is working, it always says the same thing (this is not the same as number 1)

I recently discussed weather forecasts with an Indonesian - the first difficulty was communicating the obsession that Western Europeans have with the weather and our interest in forecasts. Why do you need a forecast when the weather is the same today as it was yesterday and tomorrow will be the same again ? I found it difficult to explain that people at home will sit down and watch the television or turn on the radio specifically to find out what the weather will be like later today or tomorrow or at the weekend.

The only difference is the rain - it might rain today (less likely now as we enter the dry season) or it might not. Regardless of whether it rains or not, it will be hot - over 40 degrees in the sun if it is a clear day and about 35 degrees if it is a cool day, what is there to forecast ?

Anyway, they're usually wrong, aren't they ?

Girls and Boys Come Out To Play

Indonesia has two seasons : a wet one and a dry one. When I arrived in Maumere I was told that the wet season was over and that we could expect to see very little rain until about October or November. The last two days have proved the forecasters wrong and have given a foretaste of the delights ahead.

Yesterday, while having lunch at the harbour, we could see the rain moving in from the sea and soon the heavens opened with what my youngest nephew recently described in an email to me as a "masaf rain pore" which lasted for about two hours. Unlike at home, where everybody runs indoors when it rains, the place got busier as the rain persisted and soon a very competitive barefoot football game was in progress - using the lakes to control the ball is part of the skill set of any footballer here !

Surveys, snorkels and spuds

It seems like a while since I've updated here so greetings to all of you in recession land. At the level I am working at, Indonesia is fairly recession proof – as one person said to me last weekend "when you don't have very much, you have little to lose". People here, as in most developing countries, generally live a hand to mouth existence with little by way of luxury or treats.

Since my last post, I spent two days (last Friday & Saturday) attending a workshop in the hospital which focused on complaints from the local community. This was quite a progressive idea and is a good example of the proactive style of the hospital director. The workshop, which was facilitated by GTZ, the German aid agency, had about 80 participants representing various stakeholders – former patients and their families, outpatient clinic clients, clients of the laboratory and blood transfusion service, etc. One of the activities of the workshop was an exercise in actual gathering complaints from those attending and the principal outcome was the compilation of a draft survey for monitoring future satisfaction levels.

It was very interesting to see the very genuine complaints and concerns that former patients and their families raised – here are some examples :

• Lack of personnel available – no doctor or nurse in attendance in various clinics and departments.
  
• Punctuality – late arrival of doctors for clinics
  
• Corruption – security guards seeking bribes of money or cigarettes for allowing visitors in outside official visiting hours
  
• Poor hygiene – smelly beds, dirty toilets, mosquitoes
  
• Lack of communication to patients
  
• Nursing staff busy texting on their mobile phones instead of looking after patients
  

Does any of this sound familiar ?

After the mental strain involved in trying to keep up with this for two days (and believe me, it was a struggle) it was great to have day off on Sunday. As I've mentioned before, Maumere is the home for a number of volunteers working in various different VSO programmes so there is a good social network available. Last weekend was the occasion of Jo Marie's last weekend in Maumere as her placement ends this week. Jo Marie has been here for three years (most placements are for two years but she extended for a further year so is almost a native now) and she is returning home to the Philippines for a month's holiday before starting work with GTZ in East Timor. To mark her departure, she arranged a day trip to Pulau Babi (Pig Island) so early on Sunday morning, we saddled up and rode about 60kms north east of Maumere to Darat Pantai, near Talibura where Pak Karno, a colleague from Jo's workplace lives. Karno had arranged for a local boatman to take us to the beach on the island where we enjoyed some fine snorkelling and a great BBQ on the beach with some fish Jo bought en route. On the way back home after our day in the sun, there was the most amazing pink sunset. This volunteering in developing countries really is a tough life, you know....

After the weekend, Peter (my housemate) and I decided that the lack of any visible progress on the housing front was no reason to put off embarking on some self catering forever and we took the plunge and purchased a stove (cost about Rp180,000 = €13). Household kitchens here are generally basic in the extreme with a stove (usually kerosene but sometimes gas if you can afford it), a rice cooker (if the household is fortunate enough to have electricity) and a collection of bowls, buckets and utensils (usually no sink). We bought an oil stove, oil and some bowls and tonight (Tuesday) had our first home cooked meal at home. We decided to mark the occasion by going western (lunch had been gado-gado) and so the menu for the first meal was sautéd potatoes and fried eggs... not exactly a typical Indonesian evening meal.

Medical bulletin !

Just a quick update to all of who were concerned enough about Joseph's condition to enquire as to how he was - I'm delighted to report that he has now been discharged from hospital in Bali and is due to return to Maumere on Wednesday of next week.

Thanks for your interest !

Kelimutu

The weekend before last, we (Peter, my fellow hospital volunteer and I) had the opportunity to visit one of the "must see" sights of Flores in the company of some friends who were visiting from Kupang on the island of Timor. These are the three coloured lakes of Kelimutu, about 1650m high in the hills of Flores and about 100km east of Maumere. 100kms, I hear you say, that's an easy enough trip...

Well, I can tell you that a 100km trip with two people on a 160cc motorbike on the tortuous roads of Flores is an undertaking and a half ! We left Maumere at about 11am and reached Moni (the village near the lakes) after a trip of over 3 hours actual travelling time, with frequent stops for lunch and helmet rests. Moni is a small village high in the mountains (and beautifully cool, I needed a long sleeved top there for the very first time since arriving in Indonesia) and has a small bar with a great view over rice paddies and green hills. We stayed in a family run homestay (Rp75,000 or €5 for two people including breakfast), and spent some of Saturday night watching a local traditional dance performance before partaking of some of the local hooch.

Early the next morning, we headed further up the hills to the lakes of Kelimutu. These are three lakes in volcanic craters – not particularly unusual in an area known for its volcanic activity until you hear that they are all different colours and that the colours change from time to time depending on changes in mineral composition, making this quite a spectacular sight. When we visited, the lakes were vivid turquoise, black and a sort of murky brown. Local legend has it that this is where the souls of the departed end up, young people to one lake, old people to another, and those whose lives have been less than exemplary to another (you are probably guessing that that's the black one but it isn't).

While at the lakes, most of the other visitors were Indonesian and, as usual, I was engaged in conversation by many of them (many Indonesians are delighted to get an opportunity to practice their English language skills). One of the people I met there was Andrew from Timor. He is a student at the seminary in Ledalero, about 10km away from Maumere. As he visits Maumere frequently, I expect to see him again for some mutually beneficial conversation practice.

The worst part of visiting the lakes was the journey back home again on Sunday – another long and twisty trip, this time mostly downhill back to sea level. However, the weekend was well worth it as this was our first opportunity to see some of the spectacular countryside of Flores and experience just how long it takes to get anywhere. There are frequent bus services linking most towns on the island but I have yet to enjoy the delights of one of these journeys. Apparently, conditions can be a little cramped (the passengers' luggage is often alive) and the twisty roads mean that many passengers suffer from travel sickness so it sounds like a motorbike is a "fresher" option.

Photo update

I've used the opportunity of having access to some reliable bandwidth in Denpasar to upload some more of my photos to Photobucket.

Click for the appropriate album :

BALI


MAUMERE


MONI & KELIMUTU

These should open up in a slide show view - you can play around with the settings to speed up, slow down, etc.

To view all my albums on Photobucket and pass a completely unproductive hour or two, either click HERE or go to :

http://s492.photobucket.com/albums/rr289/markhenderson_photos/

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.

I must go down to the seas again...

One of the busiest and most interesting places in any coastal town is the port or harbour – it is here that most of the comings and goings take place and there is generally plenty of activity to sit and watch (and sitting and watching are, of course, themselves important activities in Indonesia). As anyone who knows me will testify, I have a keen interest in sailing, shipping and things nautical in general so the harbour in Maumere has a natural attraction for me and I pay the Rp1,000 entrance fee (about €0.07) most days to see what is going on. In a country of 18,000 islands where air links are relatively expensive, sea transport provides a vital link between the islands and is the means by which most freight and passengers are transported.

Maumere harbour is a busy place with both ferries and freight ships coming and going on a daily basis and is also the centre of activity for fishing and swimming - after school every day, there are lots of young boys leaping into the sea from the jetties and ships and later in the evenings, dozens of people fishing. The harbour also has some of the best restaurants in Maumere (but believe me, it's all relative !) so is also a regular haunt for lunch or dinner.

Flores has plenty of volcanic activity – the most recently active volcano is Mt. Egon, to the east of Maumere. In this rather dusky shot, you can see where the summit of Mt. Egon used to be just in front of the bow of this ship. The light grey coating below the top is the ash from the eruption about a year ago.

Every evening, there are usually half a dozen or so large trucks like this loading up and waiting for sailings later that night.

Most of them arrive at the harbour already fully loaded but there's always room for a few more bananas.

Indonesians love having their picture taken – these two guys spotted me with my camera on the jetty opposite where they were and gestured to me to take their photo.

I duly obliged but it was only after I had taken the photo that I spotted what the guy seated was holding ! (Look at the photo again if you missed it the first time around.) I hopped onto my bike and sped around to the other side of the harbour to where he was sitting and spent some talking to him. He was a policeman from Jakarta on a tour of duty on a police boat with about 20 on board spending a few weeks in the province of NTT. He had just bought this 3 month old sea eagle for about Rp130,000 and appeared to be planning to take it with him when the boat left the following day. The one question I did ask but didn't receive an answer that I could understand was "kenapa ?" (why ?). I have seen some of these sea eagles in the air and they have a wing span of up to 2 metres. This little baby was not yet able to fly and I have no idea what he thought he was going to do with it on a relatively small boat when it starts stretching its wings...

Like I said, harbours are interesting places, you never know what you'll see next !

New Seven Wonders of the World

Some of you may know that there is a campaign afoot to identify (by popular vote) the "New 7 Wonders of the World". Visit the website or slide your eyes across to the left of this post and vote for the Komodo National Park, the nearest candidate to me and the home of the Komodo dragons.
To find out why clicking on a "vote now" button is probably the closest that you will ever want to get to one of these lovable, cuddly, friendly creatures, look at this Google news search for some heart-warming stories about them.

Let me check my diary...

Another week half over and I am beginning to feel as if I'm settling into some sort of routine now. Many days start with a visit to the market at about 6.15 am – this morning I bought two huge bunches of bananas (about 30 in total) and four enormous avocadoes for a total of Rp15,000. The bananas are one of our staples here as we still have no cooking facilities other than hot water from a dispenser for tea & coffee. The avocadoes are great in a salad with diced cucumber and tomato and are also used in one of the most popular drinks here – take the flesh of an avocado (or two smaller ones), add a glass of water and a good dollop of Indomilk (sweetened condensed milk, the thought of taking an unsweetened drink is anathema to Indonesians) and whizz in a blender with some ice. Decorate the inside of the glass with some drizzled chocolate condensed milk and there you have it....jus alpukat !

After breakfast (banana sandwich and coffee) it's off to Appel for 7.30 a.m. and then into a meeting room which has wireless access to pick up my emails (when it's working). After that, the day trundles along slowly although I am starting to be little busier now. I have started meeting with some of the hospital managers to explore their areas of responsibility and their most important challenges but translation is still a major difficulty. Some days I sit through staff meetings and try to catch the gist of what is going on and I also have plenty of reading material to wade through. I usually head back to our house at about 10.30 am for a cup of coffee (one advantage of living in the hospital) and the working day then sort of fizzles out at about 1.30 – 2 p.m.

After work, many people have lunch and then retire to bed for an hour or two which is a fantastically civilised way of spending the hottest part of the day. Most of the shops in the town close at about 2pm and reopen for about two hours at about 4pm so there's not much to do then anyway.

The evenings are generally quiet but last week was unusually busy. I'm not going to let this blog thing turn into a daily diary which would make for very dull and tedious reading but (a statement like that is always followed by a but) last week's social diary contained the following :

On Wednesday I was invited to attend a mass for a girl who had died in an accident the previous week – I didn't go as I wasn't quite sure where it was and my motorbike was ill equipped at that stage for night driving on the roads around here (I have since got the headlight fixed and now I can actually see the holes just before I hit them).

On Thursday I was invited out for a birthday dinner by Yani, one of the people with whom I have worked most closely since arriving here and whose office I am sharing. Four of us had a great meal (ikan bakar/grilled fish) at a restaurant at the harbour.

On Friday afternoon, our programme support officer from the VSO office in Bali arrived for the weekend. The main purpose of Dany's visit was not to visit existing volunteers (my first formal placement review takes place about six months after the start of my placement) but to conduct a workshop with a local HIV/AIDS support group who are interested in having a new volunteer appointed to work with them later this year or next year. This occupied him for the day on Saturday but we easily managed to fill the rest of Dany's time !

On Friday evening, we headed off to a wedding reception in a village about one hour's drive away – the bride was the head pharmacist at the hospital and many of the staff had been invited to attend. The first speech at the reception was by Dr. Asep, the hospital director, who was later prevailed upon to take the microphone and sing a song !

On Saturday night a local band, Sparky, was launching their new album at a gig in the car park of Maumere's one and only department store. This was a great night out with a huge crowd and three support acts, including a three man rap group of the skinniest rappers I have ever seen (not that I have much experience of rappers).

Sunday afternoon was spent (again) at the local beach resort of Gading, which is fast becoming our regular Sunday afternoon chill out location.

Then on Monday it was back to work........

The "work" begins....

Well, it's now exactly two weeks since I arrived in Maumere to start my placement and I have to confess that I don't have a lot to report. Having got over the initial shock of being back "at work" for the first time since my life sentence with Smith & Nephew was cut short at the end of June last year, the time since then has been taken up with reading myself into my new job. This is much slower process than normal as it requires looking up almost every second word in the dictionary. Our language course was rather short on "management speak" and jargon and matters are even further complicated by the Indonesians' constant desire to make up new words which don't appear in any dictionary. These are usually formed by taking a few letters from one word, a few more from another and using them to make a brand new word. Some examples :

Department of Health = Dinas kesehatan = DINKES

Working group = kelompok kerja = POKJA

Strategic plan = rencana strategis = RENSTRA

I ask you, how on earth are you expected to figure these out on your own ?

Last week, I was based in a meeting room which had two major advantages - it was air-conditioned and it had wireless internet access so anytime I needed a break from trying to untangle more home-made words I was able to catch up on the latest doom and gloom in the Irish Times (I can't say that I'm terribly sorry to be missing all that). This week, however, I have moved to a small shared office with my own desk. There is still air-con but unfortunately no internet so I usually go to the meeting room and log on and download emails first thing in the morning after Appel and then return there just before finishing work for the day to send any mails I've written. As most of my emails come from Europe, there is rarely anything to receive at lunchtime here.

On Friday (when we normally finish work at 11 am) I was invited, along with two other volunteers, to attend a debate at the Universitas Nusa Nipa in Maumere at which the governor's wife, a very important guest, was to deliver the keynote address on the role of women in politics in the province of NTT. [A quick geography lesson – Indonesia is divided into 34 provinces, each headed by a governor. Each province is then sub-divided into Districts or Regencies (we are in Sikka District), each headed by a Regent or Bupati who is elected every five years. The capital of NTT province is Kupang, on the island of West Timor.] This proved to be most entertaining, despite not understanding about 85% of the proceedings – student debates have certain constant elements the world over. Where this one differed, however, was in the ceremony. An important personage like the governor's wife required a few speeches and a welcoming song from the college choir before proceedings got underway (only 90 minutes late which wasn't bad). After the debate, we had more speeches and more singing (including a great rendition of Cliff Richards' "Congratulations !") after which the governor's wife took the microphone and sang a song herself !

As well as not understanding much of that debate, other things that I have not understood since arriving include three very long (and hot – no air-con in that room) staff meetings, the director's address at nine morning Appels, and many other conversations. This morning, however, I had the relief of attending a briefing held in English for my benefit which made a pleasant change!

We had some housing "news" this week –we were told on Monday that the handyman who will be working on our house would start work within three days and that the work would take one week to complete. I guess we'll see........ The other good news is that I managed to get a repair of sorts carried out on my broken bed and am now sleeping (with the aid of a number of cushions) on the bed rather than on the floor beside it – what luxury !

On the road !

On Wednesday afternoon, I received an SMS from the VSO office in Bali (this is how most communications take place in Indonesia) to tell me that my motorbike had left Bajawa (another town on Flores) that morning strapped to the back of a bus and that it would be with me on Friday of this week. I was therefore rather surprised to get a phone call that same night to tell me that a motorbike had been delivered to the UGD (A&E Department) in the hospital - just eight hours after leaving Bajawa ! I went up to claim it and eventually got it started (it's some time since it has been used).
Yesterday, I took it to a local bengkel (motorbike repair place) with a pre-translated list and had the following jobs carried out :

• Tyres pumped
• Rear brake pads replaced
• Electric starter switch replaced
• Battery topped up
• Clutch adjusted
• Horn fixed
• Oil changed

Total time involved : about an hour and a half - total cost (including parts and labour) Rp72,500 (less than €5). On the way home I purchased two new rear view mirrors for a total of Rp40,000 for the pair.

I am used to the idea of labour being cheap but it is hard to understand how a pair of rear view mirrors can be made, packaged, shipped, wholesaled and retailed for less than €3 and still allow a margin to be made at each stage ! How much would they cost at home, anybody ?