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.