week 56 ish

July

Well hannahs departure was swiftly followed by the arrival of my motorbike. VSO has a number of motorbikes which are given to those who need them in their placements, which does not include me. However, if there are spare ones knocking about then they can be borrow and used until they are needed by the organisation. To this end I my Honda Mega Pro arrived with it’s devastating 160cc of power arrived. Now I know in England even I would mock someone calling 160cc a big bike however here it really is as big as you can get.

It makes such a difference to my life, it really open everything up. Don’t get me wrong I really like Ba’a however without a bike, you really are just consigned to the town and at the mercy of Ojek drivers. With the bike I can nip down to nembrala any time I want and generally do as I please. It was especially well timed as I had by this point moved into town into a new flat (complicated why) so it made my commute much easier. One less nice aspect was that in the first few weeks someone kindly pushed it over outside my house overnight and then a couple of weeks later, Suzanne borrowed and subsequently dropped it. It took quite a battering in those first few weeks and it took me some time to get everything fixed and running smoothly.

I forgot to add in my last post, June actually saw the departure of Jude. He’d been here by himself for about 18 months before Suzanne had arrived working in the regional health office. It was really good having him here, he had a lot of personal contacts and was always willing to help or just make you a cup of tea or coffee and sit around and shoot the breeze. The new flat I’m in is actually a different room in the one he was living in before.

The flat is basically a penthouse in the middle of Ba’a above a shop. The room isn’t massive however it does have a really nice balcony area which I have pretty much to myself. I live with three other guys but they are no trouble at all. It just makes a big difference to me having some privacy and freedom, living with the family before really was a pressured situation for me. For example every time I was ill (which is considerably less these days) I would have to have the following conversation when I stepped out of my door

'mr john where are you going?'

'I'm going to the toilet'

'oh..... but you've just been to the toilet'

' yes I know'

'you are going to the toilet a lot'

'yes I know'

'are you sick?'

'Yes'

'diarrhoea?'

'yes'

'oh do you have drugs (their answer to everything)'

'Yes (I lie)'

'good'

And it just gets a bit much every single time. on another occasion I got up craving a shower and coffee and as soon as I walked out of the door, the daughter was there with a towel in her hands. She ran up to me and thrust it right in front of my face and said:

‘Mr John, look the dog had puppies in the night and this one was born dead’

Now as a general rule, I believe still born puppies should not be displayed in public especially not about 8 inches from my face pre 7am before my bloodstream has been sufficiently caffeinated. I know they were just being friendly and concerned but I guess it’s a different culture and I needed somewhere where I can retreat to and not be harassed because I’m white. There were quite a few reasons why I decided to move which I don’t really want to go into here.

The end of June (towards the end of hannahs visit) and July was incredibly busy for me because I was made the assistant manager of the Islands adult football team for the Regional competition in Flores, it was really quite a challenge. They aren’t bad players at all however they play as what they are, people who only get to see football on TV not actually watching it live. So their understanding of movement and positioning (especially for defending) is quite poor. SO I was there to help with training and try to drill some defensive discipline into them, all of which is quite difficult in a second language.

In the weeks preceding the competition, it really was quite a drain on me. we would hold training from three until six in the evening, for six days a week. This meant I was running training for about 18 hours a week, I would have just an hour between finishing work and then starting training in which to eat and get changed. This was pretty tiring as well as difficult to actually keep the training fresh and original.

When it actually came close to the event which was to be held in Bajawa (I have no idea of spelling) in Flores, it was decided by the powers that be that in addition to the manager, coach and players that a trip leader, local doctor, a government official, a treasurer and a number of individuals (none of whom had actually been involved in the training or preparations) should be paid for to travel to the competition BUT not me. It was decided that being white, should there be any trouble with the crowd, I may get scared and run back to England which would cause friction with the hospital. This is neglecting of course that I am at least two foot taller than anyone here and have spent years going to English football matches (including away matches at leeds, being under siege by several hundred unhappy Birmingham city fans and having to run the gauntlet of Blackburn vs Burnley matches) so a little hooliganism isn’t going to scare me!

So anyway, they went without me and promptly got pummelled in all their games, which without being egotistical, I believe is because I wasn’t there. I say this because having seen them play friendlies, despite all my work with them, if I wasn’t on the sidelines bellowing defensive instructions then they were pretty frail at the back.

It did mean I wasn’t away for my birthday which was a bonus. It was pretty low key really but very enjoyable. It was picnic on the beach and then spaghetti bolognaise in the evening (another bonus of having moved, it gives much more cooking freedom). So it was an enjoyable day but it’s a bit weird having it here, it’s just not the same as it is in England with family etc, not better or worse, just different.

The end of the month actually saw my older sister Jenny and her friend Alex come to the island for a holiday. I went to meet them in Bali, partially because I’d promised Doro I’d go visit her before she left. It was really good just to hang out with them all and generally get my hit of western food before heading back.

When we were all back in Rote I think they enjoyed themselves. We had a trip down to Nembrala including having a fire on the beach one night and generally chilling out. They also went to my friend Denvers school and helped out with an impromptu English lesson which included Jenny singing ‘I’m a little teapot’, she will probably kill me for writing that and she was highly embarrassed about it, such a sterling rendition is in fact still the talk of the island. But generally I think they had fun and enjoyed seeing how I live. They were also welcomed with open arms as they brought me a handsome supply of hobnobs and other goodies as well as a load of birthday presents.

As far as I can remember that was july, I’m sure loads more happened but my brain is old and weary...

Summary for June

June

Well as I look back at my last post I realise that my ability to be reliable and update this is slipping somewhat. So what I propose, I’m going to write a summary for June, July and August so that I can get back up to date, they may not be the most interesting (I’m such a great salesman) but at leats it’s easier for me to keep on writing!

Right, to pick up hannah finally made it here after partying her way across Indonesia. It was great to see and catch up about various people best of all was that for twelve months I’d not actually heard an accent from the north of England, it was a refreshing change. She also brought with her a bountiful supply of treats from England, some editable others just practical (the essentials: kettle, hammock, dvds etc).

We went down and hung out in Nembrala for a few days which was great. We stayed at Mr Thomas’ homestay which boasts the best doughnuts available in Rote or cake for breakfast each morning and a very friendly if not slightly eccentric owner. We had a great time, there was a really good crowd staying down there who we hung out with, a birtish guy (Dave), an American (russ) and an aussie family (Danny, Tan, Leighton and jared) who were all good craic really.

So we hung out there for a few days then came back up to Ba’a. We had an afternoon in Jefri’s village which was generally hanging out, looking at paddy fields and then noticing how freakishly tall both hannah and I are in comparison to a lot of the locals when we posed for pictures.

The truth is, there isn’t that much else to tell about hannahs visit. We had a great time but we spent most of it just hanging out, chatting and chilling (which are hannahs three key life skills). But we had a good time and it was cool to just spend some time with her.

Now one slight oversight in the whole thing was the fact I actually hadn’t booked hannah’s flight back to Bali from Kupang, as I say a minor issue. So we decided that she would just chance getting a slight and we’d hope for the best, I should sya even if she missed it then she still had a day to spare. We just made it to the airport as the plane was boarding so I could run and buy her a ticket.

So all in all, not that exciting but very very enjoyable.

TO be honest, eating takeout, chilling out and chatting with hannah did take up a large part of my june, nothing else really happened aside from preparing for that and recovering from it!

week 35 to 39 ish

Well consider this the response to a broken promise, I said I wouldn’t leave it as long before my next post and that was a month ago. I do have something of an excuse, my blog was actually taken offline by blogspot for some very spurious reasons along the lines of ‘our computer told us to’, probably wise not to say too much as they can clearly read this so. Anyway needless to say it has been reinstated (as you can tell by the fact you are reading this) and they run a flawless service in every way and I’d just like to say what a wonderful service they run and how they are all amazing human beings (and computers) who I cannot have enough praise for (please don’t take me offline again, I’ve just said nice things).

I also realised re-reading my lats post I left out something that happened to me on the way back from Maumere. I was just wandering back to where I was staying from eating down a hill and for some reason I was in an inexplicable bad mood. As I’m walking along I get the usual heckling from people hanging out on the streets but just kept my focused ahead with that sort of thousand mile stare and kept walking. Then suddenly there was this one voice calling out ‘hey mister’ which I just dismissed, had I been in a better mood I may have lifted my head and smiled but not that day. As I walked the guy was being very persistent saying over and over again ‘hey mister, hey mister, hey mister’ which was really a bit annoying, I was walking along thinking ‘if I didn’t look up the first twenty seven times you say it, what makes you think number twenty eight is going to be any different’, it really was getting a bit annoying.

As I said I was walking down hill and suddenly i start sliding down the hill like I was walking on ice. I manage to avoid making a total fool of myself and falling over but I look down only to see that where the street had previously been, all there was now was a sea of semi wet concrete. I looked up to see that the man who had been yelling at me trying to get my attention was in fact stood there with a number of tools and bags of cement around him pointing at the street with rather a disgruntled look on his face. I then looked behind me to see a trail of footprints made by my massive size eleven European feet all the way through his freshly laid street. I apologised and quickly left before he had chance to tell me how annoyed he was. The moral of this story, not all hecklers and just annoying, some of them are just trying to stop you from destroying their hard work!

Life on the island is pretty straight forward really, I was in Kupang for a meeting the week before last which was really good for me as it was actually the first time I have been off the island for nearly two months straight. On the whole I have actually spent nearly all of that the one town Ba’a, due to a lack of transport. After two months in such a small town, you can understand why I was starting to get that slightly crazy look in my eyes. I did have a trip down to nembrala and beaches around there a few weeks ago with my friend jefri and some of his friends. I have to be honest, I can’t really remember how I know jefri, I think I talked to him whilst watching a volleyball match then saw him at the hospital but he’s a good bloke. He practices English and I practice Indonesian so it’s a win-win scenario really. Making local friends is a really important part of settling in and although I’m a bit slow of the start with it, I’m getting there.

Actually the other week I went to jefri’s desa (village) which is outside of Ba’a for a celebration of something, I’m not entirely sure what as that didn’t really cross the language barrier. But anyway, it was a real case of ‘awkward white man in village’ but had a great time and people seemed pleased I was there. As I was there Suzanne texted me saying could I come round she needed my help but as I knew I wouldn’t be back for some time I rang her. anyway Suzanne has a near paralysing fear of snakes and had come home to find one in her kitchen and really needed my help removing it.

I couldn’t oblige so I told her to go fetch one of her neighbours who would probably be much more used to and skilled in the field of snake removal than I. Anyway, I called in when I got back to find Suzanne recovering from the ordeal, she had actually dealt with the snake herself. The reason for this was she was too embarrassed to get a neighbour as the snake was in fact little more than a glorified worm given that it was only about 3-4 inches long and she felt ridiculous fetching a neighbour with a knife (which would have been something like five times the length of the snake) to deal with it. So instead she had seized a kitchen knife and paid her own bloody tribute to the great director Alfred Hitchcock. I think by the time she had finished, the snake had become little more than a soup which she then removed from her house. I have to say, I had envisaged something along the lines of the snake I had seen in bali whilst riding a bike (see early post) but I guess, if you have a phobia you have a phobia and any size is too big

A couple of weeks ago, the any inhabitants of Rote were treated to an interview with ‘Mr John’ coming over their radios. Rote has one radio station which I had been invited to be interviewed on about Sekolah Sepak Bola: Bintang Muda (Football school: young stars- it’s the football training I help with). So anyone who owns a radio was able to hear me butcher the Indonesian language. It’s actually really difficult because my Indonesian is improving but I realised, when people ask me questions I normally actually ask questions back to clarify what they are asking however you can’t really do that on live radio so I may have given answers to all the questions however they may not have been answers to the actual questions asked which would probably give the listener quite a ‘what is he talking about?’ sort of moment. I guess after studying Politics for 4 years at uni, I’ve just got used to that old Politian trick of not answering the question asked, just answering the one you want to. I did also have a call from a friend whilst on air which was followed by a text message saying ‘I was just ringing to say I can hear you on live radio’, now personally I would have thought that would mean that was not a good time to ring me...

I’ve also sort of half moved house, as in I’ve kind of moved out but the people I’m living with don’t really know. There are a lot of reasons which I don’t really want to go into in the public domain. I’m now (sort of) living in town which is much better for me really. My sister is actually on the boat to the island as I write this and she will be staying there and I will be sort of staying in my old house for a little bit. But then I’ll be moving back into town (it’s complex I know) when jude leaves in the next couple of days. Jude is a philipino volunteer who has just finished his placement after two years in Rote, it’s a real loss him going home as I now won’t get all the gossip about the hospital (he worked in the regional health office) and especially his cooking as he’s an excellent cook and would sometimes prepare meals for me. I also have a lot of respect for him as he was the first volunteer in Rote and was actually here for 18 months by himself which I think must have been really tough.

So I should go, I’m about to meet my sister who is staying here for about two weeks (I have no idea what she’s going to do), she’s already been Indonesia for a week and has been hanging out in Bali and Kupang with friends of mine. Will try to write about our adventures (which will probably extend to doing my washing, eating and watching DVDs) when she leaves.

bahassa indonesian

I know to many of you the thought of me learning another language is quite ridiculous, I never exactly thrived as a linguist but just thought I’d share what I think are some interesting things about Bahassa Indonesian.

I do struggle at times with the exact language but I’m becoming much better and using less englonesian as my vocabulary widens, I actually often can’t say what I want so have to doctor it to what I can say. At times this does make you feel like you are a little bit stupid because you just can’t articulate your thoughts well enough. Also to the great amusement of my friends and colleagues I often mix up words such as nurse and aeroplane which are perawat and pesawat. There have been a number of occasions when I have asked is it the doctors or the aeroplanes who write the medical records. Although often my pronunciation is so bad they just have to guess anyway. No errors of mine have yet eclipsed a friend who used a English dictionary and missed translated and instead of asking ‘how do much English people get paid per month in england?’ and instead asked ‘how many penguins are you given per month?’ which I didn’t really know how to respond to.

Probabaly the two most widely used words in Indonesian are ‘Sudah’ and ‘Belum which mean already and not yet and have a whole range of uses. Bahassa Indonesian doesn’t have tenses (such as past present or future) so they are used to help add a time element. However the most common time they are used is someone asks if you are married (very important in indoensia, people are normally married by their early 20s although when I asked they never look surprised at the answer) the answers ‘no’ or ‘yes’ aren’t accepted, you have to say already or not yet. This gives so many elements of life this sort of numbingly inevitable feel! Rather oddly it’s a linguistical quirk which ends up rubbing off on you in English, so even when speaking English. For example if you ask any fellow volunteers or development workers ‘have you been to ____’ in English they will respond ‘not yet’ even if they have plans to compared to in England where if I asked someone if they’d ever been to Indonesia they would only say not yet if they had some sort of plan to. Or take marriage again, if you asked someone if they were married and they said not yet you would expect them to be engaged or at least have something in the pipeline. Imagine if you heard someone who was single saying to someone they were not yet married, that would be a little weird.

The other word abused by people here is Kasihan which means sort of pity. So if you told someone something really bad had happened to you they would respond with Kasihan which is sort of ‘I pity you’ or ‘poor you’. It is a sincerely meant comment of consolation. Unfortunately for all of us who aren’t from Indonesia, it really is just asking to be used sarcastically. In fact I am yet to hear a none Indonesian sincerely Kasihan someone. Actually being English and having sarcasm coursing through my veins even when I hear and Indonesian saying it I can’t hear it as anything but pure sarcasm!

There are many other quirks. Quite usefully there is an inclusive and exclusive version of we which is Kami or Kita. So you can not worry about accidently inviting someone to something and be mean and exclude people. SO basically it’s like little brackets in English so kami is we (not including the person you are talking to) and Kita is we (including the person you are talking to), it really is very useful.

week 34 or thereabouts

Well I’m sorry for the long gap again in posts. Life here is really good here right now and I’m starting to feel settled, work is moving along well and I’ve actually got something approaching a social life now. I should also give an update on my bowels (I know that’s the only reason some of you read) and general health which has been good ever since I came back from Singapore and I’ve had no problems at all since the end of February, no illness at all. Basically I think I’ve managed to find out what was making me ill, correct it and now I’m fine.

So what’s been new since my last two posts, well not much really! I’ve settled into life here pretty nicely now.

A few weeks ago I decided that Blackburn Vs Tottenham may be the last rovers game I could watch this season so decided to go to kupang to watch it just for one night which costs a princely sum in relation to my meagre living allowance. I went to a cafe that advertises having ESPN but it turned out they had stopped their subscription the month before. So I went to the hotel krystal (fancy and expensive!) where they said I could watch it in my room when I told them I wasn’t staying there, they told me I was more than welcome to watch it in the restaurant.

Just before kick off time Sam (my long suffering volunteer friend who has a mild interest in football and lives in Kupang so is dragged along when I want to watch) and I sat expectantly only for a member of staff to tell us ESPN wasn’t available in the restaurant but we could sit in the staff room and watch it. Once we were sat there amongst the staffs jackets and coffee mugs, we then discovered that there are two ESPN channels, the one the hotel has which has 95% of all football on it and then the one that I needed! So we ended up watching it by abusing their free WIFI and finding a website that was showing it. I think the staff quite enjoyed seeing an English man jump up and down with excitement whilst watching a pixelated laptop which kept pausing and getting stuck, it was like watching it on sky digital during a thunder storm. It was all aright though as we won 2-1 with a last minute goal.

The following week I spent Easter weekend in Maumere hanging out with some other volunteers. With the situation with boats and six day weeks it makes it pretty tough to actually get off the island for a proper weekend but with the Easter holiday and the election at the same time, I had a nice run of a few days off so could go see some fellow volunteers. Maumere is on flores an island to the north of timor. We hd a great time chilling out, hanging by the beach, playing cards and generally having fun.

There was, by accident, a pretty good crowd there. A few people independently decided to go and hang out plus the volunteers that live there so there was about ten of us there. On the first day my friend teresa and I drove up to this huge virgin mary statue on the hill next to the city. It’s got a great view down over the valley and in an odd way it sort of reminded me of the lake district without the rain or indeed the lakes I suppose, but the hills at least. It was a great trip until we came to leave and teresa realised she’d lost the motorbike keys somewhere! So then followed about half and hour of searching through grass to try and find it. This place really is in the middle of nowhere and it was a public holiday so it’s not even like we could get a lock smith (if such a person exists there). Eventually they turned up. Suzanne even turned up from her recovery time in bali with her husband in tow.

When I was away, I was actually set a challenge, to make friends outside of the hospital. When you arrive it’s kind of difficult to meet people and expanf your social circle outside of your work. So with the gauntlet having being firmly thrown down, I donned my football kit grabbed my football and headed off to the local football pitch in search of friends (that sentence looks so pathetic when I read it back!). it went really well aside from the excessive sweating and what I suspect was sunstroke several hours later. It was really cool and got to hang out with the guys and start to feel a little more integrated. I’m actually looking to move my accommodation, currently I’m up near the hospital which is about half an hour’s walk from the town centre. I’m trying to move so I can meet more people as the only people I see around at the moment are hospital staff.

One of the guys denver (named after the city, I have no idea why his family have never been to the states!) invited me to start helping with his football school that he runs. Basically about 40 under 15s come on Mondays Thursdays and Saturdays and we coach them for about two hours. I was hoping to be helping but it turns out Denver had other plans, we have now split the group and I now coach about twenty 12 to 15 year olds by myself. Now my language is improving but I realised, football has a whole new vocabulary for me to learn and as you can guess the kids are none to patient! But we have fun although I realise a great deal of this is at my expense but it’s good for me. I should add as well, my main coaching qualification is that I’m white and like football which then makes me an authority.

We are actually currently organising a competition next month for under 15s which should be good. Unfortunately there is no adult league for me to play in. In fact I’ve not been able to play (but still coach) for the last couple of weeks, I have injured my left thigh muscle. I wish I could say I’d done this playing sports but actually I strangely did it walking out of my front door so now every time I kick a ball I’m in agony but hoping to start playing again in a couple of weeks, want to play twice a week in addition to coaching three times a week. We actually went to see the Bupati (sort of ruler of the island, governor or mayor type thing) about some financial help for the competition, it’s strange sat there with an important man talking about football and the utter lameness of ricky hatton.

Things have been pretty quiet without Suzanne here, she’s actually been sent back to the UK just to make sure she is fully over her operation but is expected back in the next couple of weeks. Despite her going away my boss from VSO came and we had our first quarterly meeting. It was very late as she’d hoped to do suzannes at the same time so we were sort of hanging on but then when it was clear Suzanne wouldn’t be back for a bit we decided to have it.

It was really good as it was good opportunity to get some real clarity about my work here and redirect me as to some more specifics of what they wanted me to do. work has been pretty slow up to now but I kind of feel things are really starting to move now. The meeting is fairly brutal at times, they got loads of people from the hospital there and they all had to score me on a 4 stage smiley face to sad face scale of how well I was settling in not just work wise but also more generally here including things like my social life, some of it is really awkward at times but on the whole a very useful experience both socially and work wise (and VSO don’t make me say that for anyone who is wondering or suspicious!).

So life is busy now organising the football comp, doing much work, having a social life, trying to co-ordinate maybe moving house as well as sorting out stuff for when my younger sister visits next month (feel free to send her things to bring to me although she won’t appreciate me saying that, older sister coming in August). I’ve been feeling a little worn out of late, I think I need some time off, been here 8 months working 6 day weeks with only one day off in that time but it’s actually not that. Fundamentally it’s a little bit draining living somewhere like this. Everybody sees you (I do kind of stick out) and wants to talk to you (like being famous without the fun parts!) and trying to live life in a language you are still learning is pretty draining too. So starting to think about a holiday, I know lots of you think I’m on a two year holiday but I actually do need some time off!

I promise I won’t leave it so long for the next post!

Supplementary - travel in Indonesia

Well I’ve actually been here a quarter of my total time now and having just done that huge post which contained far too many details of my bowel movements I thought I should probably tell you some more details of what life is like here for anyone who doesn’t know (sorry if you do, please don’t feel patronised, I know nothing I am saying is original or insightful and common all over Asia and all developing countries, I in no way think I am the first person to discover all of this, I just thought some people may be interested) and I thought I’d tell you about transport.

Basically it varies from island to island what is available, most have taxis, some have trains, others you can hire cars, others rely heavily on ojeks and bemos In terms of getting between islands there are (unsurprisingly) ferries and Aeroplanes. It is the last

IN rote it is pretty much just Ojeks and bemos in terms of on island transport. A bemo is sort of a little mini bus similar to one of those little ‘Rascal’ vans in the UK (made by ford I think), they have a door in the side and two benches running the length of the back and they run set routes depending on their colour and in some places their numbers. You simply hail one you want as it drives past jump in and then pay whatever you think is fair when you get to where you are going. All this sounds fairly straight forward and the idea is however it is a little more interesting than that.

It would appear that every bemo in NTT (my region of Indonesia) has been inspired by a certain TV programme and look like something off ‘pimp my mini bus’. The first requirement is a good sound system, by good I don’t mean good quality I mean good as in able to make the ears of your passengers bleed uncontrollably for the duration of their journey. The bass should obscure all other noise on the planet including the possibility of a nuclear weapon going off. Next you must decided on what stickers you want to plaster the outside with, these range from various musical artist to messages to the world, it is sort of like one giant bumper sticker to the world. Some have religious messages others just obscenities although the strangest I has seen just had ‘Hitler’ written down two windows. It is also required that said decorations should also obscure as much of your windscreen as is physically possible to make driving even more challenging.

There are of course a few optional extras, however seatbelts never fall into this category, they are never an option. Most have ludicrously long (6 or 7ft) Florissant bendy aerial type things sticking out the back which hurt if they hit you as they go past which I can say through personal experience, a novelty horn which plays a tune or just makes a strange and annoying noise is a must though. Also a great number of cuddly toys and plastic love shaped handles also help. These are an interesting mode of transport however not the most comfortable when they are crowded and difficult if you are 6’2” which means you need to learn to dislocate your knees on command and develop a thick skull for when you keep banging your head as you get in or out.

If you are feeling a little classier than or want to go somewhere that the bemo doesn’t run you can use an ojek which is basically a motorbike taxi. I say taxi that sort of misleadingly makes it sound like there is any sort of regulation of them. It’s basically just a bloke with a bike and sometimes a license (he may not have had time to buy one) who isn’t doing anything at that moment in time when he sees you and fancies making some money. I’ve had ojek drivers who are policemen in their spare time. The quality of driving is often far from desirable so if you find a decent one you tend to get their number and they become your ojek guy who you can text when you need to go somewhere. If you find a good one then you can rely on them and also know they won’t overcharge you, I recently just tried to get one from the street who tried to charge me 15 times the fair price. You tend to have them more in bigger places as put simply, there isn’t really THAT many places that you can go in Rote that aren’t either walkable, bemoable or too far to want to go on an ojek.

There is a bizarre phenomena with ojeks though, you will spend your life being harassed by them (‘hey mister you want ojek???’) and then when you need one, there are never any to be found and you just wander the streets.

Taxis aren’t big here but in bali everywhere you walk they will pull over and try and see if you need them unless, like ojeks, you actually do need them.

Boats and planes are pretty similar in a lot of ways as they are both governed by three simple principles in Indonesia

1) Never, ever, ever expect one to leave when it says it will unless of course you’re late in which case it will have left promptly.

2) Every passenger, although allotted a specific seat should try their best to all enter and exit at the same time, at speed. It is crucial to make it on as quickly as possible for reasons unknown.

3) You should always take as much as you can with you, less than 3 pieces of hand luggage is just plain embarrassing. You should aim for about 7 trying your best to include items such as

a. Suitcases the size of which should really be hold luggage

b. Some variety of livestock, normally bound or caged in some way as to cause maximum discomfort to the animal

c. At least one cardboard box tied up with black plastic bag wound into a rope like binding.

d. If on a boat, some minyak tanna (stove fuel, they don’t allow it on planes) or other flammable liquid which you should then position next to the heaviest smoker on the vessel.

e. A motorbike helmet although it is best to wear this for the entire jounry to save carrying it, this isn’t a safety thing it’s just what some people do.

So anyway, that was just some thoughts about transport in Indonesia, like I say sorry if you know it all.

Week 27

Well I here is a long awaited blog post, it’s been quite a long time since I last wrote a post but things have been mega busy. My aim is to write this post basically outlining what I’ve been up to in brief and then resume my normal detailed posts.

Well having finally making it back from kupang after my last post, I was stranded there for just short of a week due to high seas. I finally managed to book a flight back which was then cancelled as I arrived at the airport and was rescheduled for a 5am the following morning.

However I finally made it back to the island and settled back into life. It didn’t take long to resume normal service however and what we initially thought was a flair up of my typhoid again turned out to be much worse. It would appear that I contracted amoebic dysentery (AD), although the tests didn’t come back positive, I responded to anti AD medication and the symptoms were consistent with it.

The tests I mentioned were ordered by a doctor friend of mine, Meli, who I went to see about it. Straight away she ordered a stool test which is a test I have to say I have never ‘sat’ before (very bad pun I know). Now working in the hospital makes such things a little awkward as you have to give a sample knowing full well that the following day you will have to look someone in the eye who has poked through your excrement. I waited until I thought there would be no one around and went to the lab to give my sample and thankfully it was empty except for the lab bloke.

When he saw the test ordered he reache for a bottle and gave it to me, I should explain that this bottle had a neck about the size of a 5p peice and I was directed to the toilet. I never thought when I was in language school that I would ever need to work out the phrase for “there is no way I’m taking a dump in that” but I believe through broken Indonesian and the art of mime I managed to get my message across. So I went and got my sample only to come out and find that the guy had gone walkabouts which left me with a difficult choice, I didn’t want to leave my sample there and just run off, it would appear like some sort of dirty protest if he came back and likewise I wouldn’t wander round the hospital looking for him with sample in hand. I ended up having to stick my head out of the department with my arm inside holding my cup trying to find him and eventually did.

A couple of days later I had to give another sample so again I waited until I thought no one would be around and went in, unfortunately I was not as lucky this time. Instead just about the entire male population of the hospital was there on some sort of blood drive and welcomed me thinking I was there to join in. When I said I wasn’t they said ‘oh so you’re here for a blood test’ when I said no they said ‘oh it must be for a urine test’ I said no, they looked confused. They then took my peice of paper and looked at it, they then proceeded to discuss at great pace (which I couldn’t understand) and then pass the test order around to anyone who was interested. Incidentally I recently found out that there is actually literally no word for confidentiality in Indonesian. I eventually saw the lab person who wasn’t the same as the previous time who once again offered me a similar sized bottle and the same conversation ensued. This time however, it was more a case of smuggling my sample back into the lab to avoid this to being examined and passed around.

Eventually after a raft of heavy antibiotics I was feeling okay again although a word of advice, try and avoid it if you can. i feel fine and healthy now but I have decided I’m basically working my way through the alphabet of illnesses and symptoms basically right now I’m on

Amoebic Dysentery (clinical presentation)

Bacterial Bowel infection

Conjunctivitis (see later)

Diarrhoea

E-coli

Fever

Then also had

Insomnia (anti malarial side effect)

Mosquito bites,

Sunburn,

Typhoid,

Paranoia (anti malarial side effect),

Vomiting

So thats 12 out of the 26 covered off in just my first 7 months, hopefully I should have filled up the rest after two years! Already got D covered so hopefully won’t get dengue plus I’m hoping by putting Mossy bites at M I won’t have to go through malaria as well.

During this Suzanne returned to the island having received treatment in Bali on her leg. Whilst at the ‘airport’ in Rote, I got to witness another peculiarity of that service, when passengers are checking in, they do not weigh the bag but they do weight the passenger and record this. an odd move I know. I have actually over the last 7 months as some would know, lost a total of 17kg (but managed to out two back on) from 95 down to 78kg. In old money thats about 15 stone (I was a bit of a porker) down to about 12.3 stone (I think) so I would have done well on this form of weight testing now although I have stabilised at about 80kg now.

Having said this I went to a restaurant the other week and went to sit down on the patio furniture plastic chair (as just about all establishments have here) and the waiter rushed over and stopped me. He then slotted one chair on top of another explain it was needed for extra strength. I explained one would be just fine and he replied ‘how much do you weight? I think it will be more than 100kg?’ and that is AFTER I lost all the weight.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I recovered from the AB and a week or so later in Kupang, went to the Sector workshops and AVC. This is basically when all the volunteers and staff from Indonesia get together and have some days working and then some days fun. It was really great to meet everyone and had a brilliant time. The theme for the AVC was globalisation and I was even asked to present my undergraduate dissertation on the effects of globalisation on English football, contrary to what some of you may think this was part of the fun part of the week.

The only downside of the workshops/conference is it that the paperwork I brought with me from my boss for my new special 12 month visa was wrong. Well it wasn’t wrong it just one didn’t have an official stamp, you must understand that everything is worthless here without an official stamp and another didn’t have a money stamp under the signature. The latter is ludicrous, basically for a lot of official documents here you have to go to the post office and pay a money for these thing that look like postage stamps, you then stick it on and sign over the top of it and this makes it ‘official’. To be honest it just sounds like a plot by the government to make a lot of money for nothing. Anyway, eventually this was all sorted.

Towards the end of the conference I managed to contract conjunctivitis probably from the sector workshop hotel’s pool where I managed one day to go for an early morning swim, I guess it’s my own fault for trying to be healthy. This meant for a week or so I was rendered virtually blind twice a day when I had to have cream administered to my eyes. I also took to wearing sunglasses even at night, believe me I know it looks silly but it feels much sillier.

Having finished in kupang Suzanne and I went to Bali with all of the staff in order to go to Singapore for a new visa. When we were at passport control leaving Indonesia the man asked me to remove my sunglasses, he took one look at my bloodshot red oozing eyes and quickly asked me to put my glasses back on. When I got to Singapore the passport man looked at me looked at my passport, looked at me and then said ‘is this your passport?’ to which I said ‘yes’ he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘okay then’ and let me in. This is obviously a fool proof way of making sure people don’t use other peoples passports, just ask them, how many illegal immigrants I wonder have been caught with a sudden moment of honest: “no........ wait a second I mean yes!”. Although it sounds quite glamorous to have to make a quick trip to Singapore it really isn’t.

I basically only got to see about one street of Singapore. I got into the cab at the airport, went to the hotel, got some food nearby, slept (although they had something called the football channel in the hotel, pure bliss of watching reruns)and gave our passports to the agent. At this point Suzanne had to go to hospital for a check up with a specialist about her leg which appeared to have become re infected o I was left at the hotel, I checked out of my room but had to hang around with her stuff in case she would need to stay and keep her room so basically I went to the coffee shop across the road and camped in there with a book and coffee for several hours. It turned out Suzanne was going to need surgery so returned and kept her room at the hotel, the agent redelivered our passports and I got a taxi back to the airport and left. Very very dull.

I returned to bali and as it wasn’t worth proceeding onto kupang, where I would have to go to the immigration office, due a couple of days public holiday I had an enjoyable couple of days in bali and then flew back to kupang. Then followed some frustrating days in kupnag basically getting up, finding out I wasn’t able to go to the immigration office, then loitering for the rest of the day (nearly all my friends were out of town) and the same the next day, after about four days of this VSO just told me to go back to the island, I had a few days at home and then back to Kupang to the immigration office then back to rote. So that is my visa now all sorted for another 12 months.

I have now been back on the island for coming up two weeks just getting back up to date with stuff like washing and generally recovering. Work is really starting to get going which is good but all of that meant I was off the island for about 4 weeks in total. So I’m a bit behind on where I wanted to be. Suzanne has been in Bali recovering and getting regular treatment and I chomping at the bit to get back, she’ll be returning in a week or so with husband in tow who is hear for a holiday which is good because hopefully it means plenty of treats from the UK.

Right mammoth post out of the way, normal service will now be resumed.

Weeks 19 and 20

Well i sit here and write this from a cafe with free wifi in Kupang where i have been stranded since wednesday night due to high seas, why am i in kupang in the first place? well that is long tale which i will write in an edited form on here.

Last week (which feels like an age ago) as i was just getting over my bout of typhoid bacteria, suzanne's dog bit suddenly became infected. it swelled up and was generally quite nasty. that was on wednesday and by thursday night we decided we should ring the VSO emergancy phone. The reasoning for this was that although not serious at that point, if things got worse we had no way of getting her off the island, the ferries were conintually being cancelled and the treatment on the island was limited.

By friday after a great number of phonecalls with various different parties the insurance company agreed to send an air ambulance which would arrive on saturday. I got a phone call from Suzanne at 4am on saturday morning saying that she was now suffering from Septicaemia, which carries a high likelyhood of mortality. We managed to get introvenus drugs antibiotics from the hospital which bought us time.

BY the afternoon we headed up to the 'airport' in Rote which consists of about three small buildings and a tarmac strip. being aware of the obvious massive threat of terrorism the tarmac has a 9ft tall barbed wire fence around the landing strip, well i say around it continues for about 20ft and then just stops so any would be assailants would simply walk round it. we also had to go through a x ray machine to ensure we didn't have anything dangerous whereas all the onlookers simply walked round that building to get a better view.

As the radio crackled to tell us the plane was nearby, i looked up and pointed out to suzanne a slight problem with this, the man not understanding what i said, followed my finger to see approximately 50 cows just hanging around on the landing strip. he quickly jumped on his bike to chase them off (hence the video on the previous post).

I have to say travelling in such a small plane is a strange experience. For starters you can see right into the cockpit. This actually mean i could see their 'navigation' system which appeared to be like a sat nav from a car, with a plunger onto the windscreen and all.

Once airpbourne this apparently wasn't adequate so the co-pilot was forced to produce a ring bound map of indonesia which had pages falling out of it (it was basically like a road atlas) and much discussion followed. as well came into land, the supervisor, the nurse and the co pilot all started to talk to people on their mobile phones and in fact it transpired suzanne and i were the only ones who actually turned off our phones! As we made our final approach the pikot was concentrating hard on the runway which is more than can be said for the co-pilot who was taking pictures of Bali through the window!

Eventually we made it to the hospital in Bali and Suzanne got treatment which although gruesome at times has been very helpful and she is well on her way to a full recovery. She will have to stay in bali for another 1-3 weeks depending on how well it goes.

I hung around for a few days in bali to debrief with VSO and it was quite clear from the weather reports of rough seas i would just be stranded in Kupang anyway. To be honest i needed a few days to relax anyway, thursday and friday night had only afforded me about 6 hours sleep in total trying to co-ordinate things as well as running round for Suzanne cooking and running errands and alike.

All in all it was a very stressful experience but thankfully it's over now. There are a lot of details i have ommitted that for various reasons i don't want to put in the public domain, however i should say it's not as smooth as it appears above.

I would also like to say VSO were fantastic and very helpful and can only come out of this with my highest praise.

SO flying back to rote from Kupang tomorrow after a week that has felt like a lifetime....

It'll make no sense now, wait for the next post

This is just for whilst i've got good enough connection to do it! all will become clear in subsiquent posts.

weeks 17 and 18 (if you've not guessed, days are just too hard to keep track of

Well i've had a bit of an internet nightmare of late with regards to trying to actually update my blog hence why a glut of posts all at once. i'll try and sum up the last couple of weeks into a bite size post.

Suzanne had a whale of a time in Bali shopping and generally chilling out between injections, it has even transpire that apparently we don't even have rabies here in rote but VSO wanted her to have the injections regardless. I had a nice week of house sitting for her, generally hanging out and abusing the priviledge.

When suzanne returned she actually went to the post office and brough back with her EIGHT packages for me!! we celebrated our delayed christmas with some pasta, cheese and pesto, all rare commodities here which we had been given by friends. Thank you so much to all who sent cards and gifts. if i haven't thanked you individually it may mean it hasn't arrived yet and i have it to look forward to. post varies from 3 weeks to two and half months and there appears to be no consistancy at all, sometimes things arrive before others that were sent before!

I will fast forward to last week as actually that is far more interesting to you all. i decided to that as the sea is getting increasinly rough, i would try and brave the sea to visit kupang: i had been on rote for about six weeks straight and was starting to suffer a little with island fever. so off i trotted to the ferry port however i soon dicovered that the sea was too rough to actually travel from the nearby Ba'a harbour and instead they had decided to go from Pantai Baru (which translated means new beach which is daft as there isn't actually a beach there) as this is a more sheltered port.

I actually ended up getting a lift in an ambulance with a patient who was being transferred to kupang. after much fussing and confusion about tickets we made it to the ferry and then had a very rough crossing, i took travel sickness tablets provided by suzanne, popped in my ipod and managed to drown out the collective noise of about 40 people vomitting and finally made it to kupang with my stomach fully intact.

I had a great weekend just hanging out with friends in Kupang, there is quite a nice little group of folk to spend time with. However i got a text message on the saturday from suzanne saying that the ferry had been cancelled on saturday so i should book my ticket ASAP as it would be crowded, it turned out the office was already shut which meant getting up about 5 on sundayto try and avoid the rush. when i got there i was told the ferry was again cancelled.

This meant that there was no way i could make it back for work on monday, on top of which i was starting to feel increasingly rough with Nausea and general roughness. On monday morning, having learn from the long and expensive trip to the ferry office, i rang in advance only to find it had been cancelled yet again. i later found out i in fact got the last ferry that went and no more are expected till next week.

So eventually i decided it would be less expensive to just bite the bullet and pay the three times the ferry price for an aeroplane ticket which is amazingly expensive to say it only takes ten minutes but still cheaper than staying in kupang for a week.

On the tuesday i was en route to the airport on an ojek which is a motorbike taxi. well i say taxi, it's basically any bloke on a motorbike who wants to make some money, taxi implies some sort of regulation or system. as we were riding along i felt worse and worse, until eventually my stomach decided that 5 days of nausea was quite enough and it wanted to empty it's contents.

Now not only are we travelling at 40mph but i am also wear a full face helmet. I have to quickly tap the driver on the shoulder and remember the word for stop and then jump off the bike (with a huge rucksack) tear off my helmet so i can empty the contents of my digestive system on the side of the road.

You need to understand that white people generally attract attention and the sight of one vomitting is just too big a source of entertainment to be missed in Kupang. suddenly i had a crowd, other road users were even pulling over to watch (please not the use of the word watch and not help or assist or see if i was okay).

Then they all started asking me if i had been drinking beer last night or today (it was 11 in the morning) to which i had to reply 'no i'm just ill' in the brief respite i had between heaves. on the bright side a number of them did compliment me on my indonesian skills.

eventually i made it back to rote feeling thoroughly awful. i've had some blood tests done and i have Typhoid bacteria in my blood stream although not enough to be considered actually typhoid fever, i'm on about one third typhoid fever. Believe me, i am not keen to contract a full blown case. There has also been some suggestion of dengue due to an odd blood test result but I'm slowly feeling better and have even staggered into work which doesn't seem to tally with dengue.

I should say, even though i have felt like death, i've still not hit that massive 'what am i doing here' type low yet, i'm sure it'll come at some point. It's more of a 'i'm here and oh, now i'm ill' sort of thing.

anyway, i shall go, i have some other posts to write which i will try and update with soon.

Weeks 13- 16

Well apologies to all that this has taken so long to actually post, things have been hectic since I last wrote. I actually wrote below almost two weeks ago, will explain in next post

I was very fortunate that my university friend Rich was able to pop down from South Korea for a bit of a holiday. He was spent a week here and then was meeting up with his girlfriend in Bali for a holiday. It was great to see him and we generally hung out. It wasn’t anything exciting that you’d all want to hear about, he enjoyed being out of the hustle and bustle of Seoul and I enjoyed the company. We headed down to Nembrala for the day on one day which was nice. IN fact if any of you are thinking of booking a holiday and want good company, beautiful beaches and the chance to experience e-coli first hand, please let me know.

One difficult thing about Rich visiting however was how much better he is at languages than me. In less than a week here he had already picked up some Indonesian and by the end, he was actually correcting my pronunciation on occasion! But it was great to see him and he supplied me with much audio and reading material which was a very welcome gift.Well I guess the main thing since I last write was actually Christmas. Things here are very strange around the festive period as I just don’t get it; it’s not cold and just not Christmassy in the sense that you would normally think it.I was awoken on Christmas morning by that very festive sound of a pig having it’s throat cut and being literally bled dry (I forget, is eight or nine ‘stuck pigs a screaming’ in the twelve days of Christmas song?) about 10ft from my room. Believe me, it really does mean you can’t have a decent lie in. When it had finally finished convulsing, the men of the family (thankfully I wasn’t expected to join in as although fully awake, still only half conscious) set about with great glee first shaving then hacking apart the recently deceased in what would appear to be a rites of passage type experience.Wishing to escape this whole thing with some speed I headed over to Suzanne’s house. We had two other volunteers staying with us, Sam and Jo. Sam is the Dutch volunteer who we did our in country training with and Jo is another volunteer who just fancied tagging along for the trip and was most welcome. Their journey on Christmas eve had taken close to twelve hours (plus quite a long bus ride on the 23rd for Jo) and had involved managing to get a ticket and getting onto the fast boat only to be rather unceremoniously removed a short time later due to the boat being over crowded in an unprecedented move by Indonesia’s health and safety brigade. It was clear who made this decision but it was certainly out of kilter with most aspects of health and safety here.This meant instead there were sort of roughly gestured to another port half an hour away to the slow ferry which, as the name suggests, takes much longer and also arrive a 45 minute drive from where we live in Rote. However all of this didn’t dampen their spirits and they came well supplied with various foods and treats.We packed up quite a feast and joined by Justine (a doctor from one of the Puskamas’s or local health centres) we walked down to the beach. We made ourselves a fire and barbequed fish, sausages, aubergines (don’t ask me why) which we ate with cheese (the most valuable commodity to any westerner here) and then bananas with melted chocolate inside.

It was a beautiful day and we soon found ourselves being the main source of entertainment for about fifteen to twenty local children who sat for about six hours just watching us. I guess that sort of shows the level of entertainment on offer here in Rote. In the evening with enjoyed some whisky sent over by rich with Sam (Cheers rich) Whoever said that ‘Christmas comes but once a year’ obviously never encountered the Indonesian postal service! I know a number of people have sent me Christmas presents however they remain in transit so I have made the decision that I will be celebrating Christmas each time a package arrives. I make a weekly trip to the shambles that is the post office.

The first time I went it was closed and it looked as if it was actually shut down indefinitely, as I looked through the misted window it appeared to be full of that junk from when people move out. When I returned, I discovered that actually it is just complete chaos. When you ask for a package they just wander over to one of the huge piles of stuff and rummage through it until they find your desired item. So it may well be that many of the packages have arrived it’s just they have yet to be discovered along with a load of Japanese soldiers who still think the second world war is going on. It is another demonstration of the wonder that is Indonesian organisation!New Year was pretty quiet and as this is already a mammoth document so I’ll not write about it, needless to say it was nice if not unspectacular.

What is quite nice is that here we get two days off for new year then went back for one day (Saturday) then off again which is generally quite confusing. What did occur to me, when I look back in the future it is likely that 2009 will be the year I didn’t spend any time in England at all, will be back in time for some of 2010, just an odd thought.Since New Year, life has been quite unsensational until Sunday. Of late it has appeared that every dog on the island has gone absolutely insane. I have been informed that it is their mating season. Now I have to say, this made something of a fool of me, I didn’t know dogs had a specific season. Certainly however naive it makes me, I thought it varied from dog to dog. Certainly that’s the impression of what happens in England, maybe our dogs are just individualistic and don’t have the same sense of community as Indonesian dogs. Perhaps it is just more evident here due to the fact that there are many stray dogs and even those with owners are never neutered.Anyway, on one of her wanders a dog decided it didn’t like the look of Suzanne and decided to bite her quite nastily on the calf.

If I’m honest, it shouldn’t really be a surprise, two dogs have tried to bite me and in fact the onlooking owner of one took great acceptation to me aiming a kick one’s head as it attempted to bite me, the outrageous cheek on my part to attempt to protect my legs.Anyway, as a precaution VSO said she had to go to Bali and get rabies injections and alike. This involves two injections four days apart so Suzanne is currently enjoying an expenses paid break in Bali. Having noted this, I have now taken to walking round with sausages strapped to my calves. That’s clearly a lie actually; if I could get sausages then I wouldn’t waste them on my calves! It is appealing when I have been told there isn’t even rabies on Rote but apparently she has to go, it’s an insurance/health and safety precaution.

This whole post is very long, so needless to say I wish you all Selamat Hari Natal and Selamat Tahun Baru.