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!
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