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....