Just some things I Rote...........

March 2010 part 1

2010-03-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

March pt1- more bad news, more tough times

Barely had my family returned from attending my Grandma’s funeral in the Isle of Man then my family had more bad news. My dad got a call that his father wasn’t very well and he had to rush down to Nottingham. After a lot of trips to and from Nottingham over the course of a week, my Poppa suddenly deteriorated and died.
Again, this had been incredibly difficult and there isn’t much I can really say about it that I didn’t already write about my grandma. It is really tough to be away at times like this not only from a selfish side of things of being away but also not being there to support your family. Either event would have been difficult for all of us but both events coming in such quick succession have made it especially tough.
It’s going to be very strange in a slightly different way when I get back to my grandma’s death as instead of going to Nottingham and him not being there, I’m not sure I’ll even go to Nottingham as he was virtually the only person I really knew there (my auntie moved elsewhere a few years ago). So in a way, it’s hard for me to even understand he’s gone. Whereas with my grandma, I will still see my granddad and have those reminders that she’s gone, with Poppa I won’t have that. it feels like a very odd closing of a chapter for the family and he will be missed. Once again, I won’t be going home for the funeral which is tough and once again I am grateful to my family and those around me.

February 2010

2010-03-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

February- very tough
The truth is, February included a trip to Bali to meet and greet new volunteers in my position as volunteer representative (something of a significant event as they were the first new volunteers we’d had in a year) and a variety of other events but in reality, February was really about one thing for me.
I was in Kupang working on the new database for the hospital with Sam as well as trying to hand over a load of immigration documents. I suddenly, out of the blue I got a call from my dad, now it’s not uncommon for him to call me to give me an update as to how rovers have got on, but this was quite early on Sunday morning (UK time) which was unusual. Anyway, he was calling to let me know that my Grandma on my mum’s side had died suddenly at home.
She been in hospital the week before for surgery however she was apparently doing well and a week on there were no signs of infection and she was recovering well so I (and others as well) felt she was out of the woods. She had just gone home from hospital and my mum was in the Isle of Man visiting her. Then suddenly on Saturday night she collapsed and died.
Now I’m not going to pretend this wasn’t incredibly difficult, it has always been my biggest fear about being out here. However, there is one thing that was very important to me, shortly before I left the UK I went to visit my grandparents and they were really enthusiastic for my trip away. This meant a great deal to me as I knew that coming away for two years, meant that they may not be there when I got back. Back in the 60’s they had spent a few years out in Tanzania working on grasslands farming and so they had been very supportive of me coming away.
They have also been great since I came; writing to me and sending me care packages. As I mentioned in my explanatory note, one of my regrets is that I didn’t write to them more often or indeed keep this blog updated as I know she loved hearing about everything that was going on.
Things were especially difficult as I was due to hand over my passport to immigration less than 24hours later for a visa extension. The whole thing was incredibly complex so we had to make a quick decision as to whether or not I would go back (it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare).
In the end, after significant discussions with my family we agreed that I would not come back although not because of the visa scenario (paperwork can always be done somehow) but because we didn’t want to cause any additional stress for the rest of the family of me trying to make it back in time for the funeral, travelling from a small island in Indonesia to a small island in the UK is fraught with potential problems.
It has been immensely tough really but I’ve got through it. It’s very strange to think of coming home and not being able to go and see her and tell her all about my time away.
But I just wanted to say, thank you to everyone around me (although I have no idea who reads this but I mean VSO staff, other volunteers, the hospital in Rote) for being helpful and understanding and to all those people who have sent me messages, called and generally been supportive especially my family who have understood the decision for me not to come back, it has all meant a lot to me.

January no2 2010

2010-03-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

January no.2-something interesting actually.....

Half way through writing that immensely dull post for January, I realised that on the last day of January there was one event that was of note but I didn’t want to include it with the rest of those dull things!
On the 31st of January, Anna Joy Parker and Hope Rachel Parker were born. Now as you will see from their surnames they are clearly not my kids so why write about someone elses? Well these are the daughters of my best mate Ben who I grew up with and who in fact I was best man for.
Really, I just wanted to mention it because they are quite close (plus Ben’s mum will give me a good kicking when she sees me if I don’t, I love you really Nadine but you did once give me an ultimatum of ‘you’re not coming into my sons wedding with hair like that!’ so forgive me if I fear you a little at times!) and it was quite significant for me.
Now obviously, when such close friends have kids is weird but I guess in a way this is extra strange for me for a number of reasons. Ben and I grew up there and so it’s very strange to think that when I get back he’ll be a dad, I mean I was stood next to him when he got married (actually, due to a slip of the tongue by the guy doing the marrying, I was dangerously close to being the one being married!) and it’s just strange to think of him being responsible in some way and maybe not heading off to music festivals and alike but staying at home looking after the kids.
It now brings to six the number of kids I’ve missed being born or will miss (off the top of my head, sorry if I’ve missed anyone!) in addition to all sorts of other things. Now I know this sounds really self obsessed (well it is my blog after all, surely the whole notion of a blog is to be self obsessed? If it isn’t you may not want to read any of this blog and I apologise for the misunderstanding) but really it just keeps making me think how things will be different when I get back. I am pretty young for a VSO long term volunteer (I’m not exceptional; I just took a very strange and fortunate route in) so most folks are older than me and I think your life changes a lot in your twenties. Whereas later in life when you are more settled, the things around you become more settled so being away for two years sees fewer changes.
Further to all of that, it’s just strange to think how long I’ve been away now, I mean I left nine months before Sarah (Bens wife) was even pregnant which is weird to think about and by the time I get back, those little girls will already be over six months old! Not to mention other friends babies who will be like a year or 18months old, so strange. In fact, two friends weren’t even ‘seeing’ each other when I left and now I think the first time I’ll see them when I’m back will be their wedding! (I should point out for legal reasons, that is in no way shape or form linked to pregnancy! Just a ‘weird things about being away connection) So weird.

So anyway, congratulations to the parker clan and all my other friends who have had/awaiting babies (Steve and Hariet, Jacqui and Jim, Becki and Chris, Debs and Lachy and anyone else I’ve missed!), well done, you’ve all suitably freaked me out! and to all the rest of you who are due to be married or I’ve already missed it!

Looking back, it’s quite amazing how I’ve managed to spin it so that massive events in my friends’ lives suddenly become all about me, it’s an incredible skill......

January 2010

2010-03-15T13:23:00.001-07:00

January- An incredibly dull post about Rain, Photos/skype, Rain, mould, harassment by a financial institution, Rain, cruise ships and Rain

Firstly, this is just general, some months ago Rote’s internet connection (singular) was ungraded and we have evolved past the worlds slowest dialup to the world of what is branded ‘speedy’ internet here in Indonesia. This means that I can now webchat with people on skype and even use a webcam. So if anyone wants to talk to me (that isn’t a desperate plea!), just let me know and we can arrange a time for me to travel down to the internet place for a chat and it’s free for you (although I have to pay for the internet time but it’s pretty cheap). You will also have notice the addition of photos to the blog, unfortunately I still have problems actually logging into my blog here but it’s now a fast enough connection for me to send photos and entries to my mum who uploads them for me.
So I returned from my holiday to be greeted by mould and rain. I had been away for nearly 3 weeks (a few days in Kupang for police and work then about two weeks kicking back in Bali) and it is a simple fact of life that no matter what you do, if you leave your house untended for so long due to the high level of humidity at this time of year, everything even things like shoes will become mouldy. So the first few days are spent cleaning and washing. Washing clothes was incredibly difficult as I arrived the day before a very long and heavy rainstorm.
Essentially, that was most of my January; it was spent hiding in my room from storms. I have to walk along a balcony to get in and out of my room which for most of the year is great however during storms, it means I tend to sit in my room watching DVDs. One of the things that Ba’a really lacks is sheltered areas in which to commune. If you just want to ‘hang out’ there isn’t really anywhere to go aside from places to eat (who can eat all the time?) and peoples’ houses and as most people live with extended family and that can be a bit intense. If you think about most cities in England there are all sorts of places you can go and things you can do when it’s raining, not in Ba’a
SO not really much to report in January to be honest, I’m sure you don’t want just a list of stuff I watched and what I thought of it all?
One major battle I had in January was with a certain financial institution (I don’t want to mention who as this is the public domain but you can see what a slow month it is that this is just about all I can think of). When I was in Bali I picked up my mail from the office which is my address for official mail (things get ‘lost’ on the way to Rote). I had a number of letters that had arrived the week before from the said company which were postdated some time in October.
Now as someone who is overseas I am able to suspend payments and I already had a large argument with them just after I arrived (or rather my mum did as my proxy) because before I left I sent them evidence that I was going to be away which they denied all knowledge of. Now, despite me send them an official letter as evidence (twice, they lost the first one) I was legitimately going to be away for TWO YEARS, they decided they wanted a 12 month ‘reassessment of my overseas status’ which is annoying. The really stupid part is that I already told them post takes far far too long to get to Indonesia (if it arrives at all) so to send it to my home address, my e-mail address or indeed to call me and they do have all of this contact information.
So as I open my mail that they sent me that took about two months to arrive what do I find? I find one letter demanding my reassessment within a month of them sending me the letter and then a subsequent one informing me I missed their one month deadline and they now want to enforce all sorts of penalties and that I should sign and return the included form with evidence of my status ASAP and if there are any issues I should ring them. A few things:
1) Why, after I told them post takes so long, would they still snail mail me forms? Especially as they have all my other information and why ask for my e-mail address if they won’t use it?
2) Why set a one month deadline when I’ve told them post often takes two months or so to arrive?
3) Why do they not understand that even if I fill in their form and return it ASAP then post takes about the same period of time to get to England as it does from England?
4) Why must they reassess when they clearly have evidence that I have a two year job?
5) Why can’t I e-mail them? Phoning them and being on hold for 45 minutes (the period of time they put me on hold before I came away, apparently Wednesday 11am was a particularly busy time for them, why?) is annoying when in England but here would most likely cost me two days allowance.
I’m sorry, I know this is an incredibly dull post but just it really wound me up! Hopefully I have now sorted out the wretched thing and a pox on them all.
January also saw the arrival of two cruise ships within a week of each other full of tourists getting out to have a wander around Ba’a. Now I would encourage anyone to visit Rote, it is a wonderful, beautiful place, however organising a visit for people for several hours, I would probably think some of the beautiful beaches somewhere may be a little more appropriate? Anyway, they came, they wandered, they left and the whole thing was somewhat underwhelming for everyone here and I suspect the tourists. I felt sorry for the people in Ba’a who were organising the welcoming committee, they put so much effort in organising so much only to have heavy rain on the day which made it difficult.
I personally was hoping the boats would be full of beautiful young heiresses to fortunes, who were taking a break from their PhDs to go on a cruise. Instead it appeared to be a gaggle of older folks from England. I don’t really know why I expected anything else however despite this is was quite a disappointment to me.
Seriously, from the hype it got on the island, I was expecting some great things to write about and instead you have a post so dull I’m not even sure I would read it, a very dull and dreary month...

Top 5 driving tips

2010-03-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Top 5 driving tips for bali

Over the christmas period, I had a holiday in Bali and a large part of it was spent driving round the island. Now I’ve done plenty of driving in Indonesia however it turns out, going round sleepy old Rote on a motorbike is quite a different experience to driving a car all around Bali so I thought I’d share some wisdom with any volunteers thinking of driving a car round Bali:

1) When there is a single, unbroken, white line in the middle of the road and a sign depicting overtaking with a large red line through it: that means absolutely no overtaking..... that is of course unless you really want to in which case that is okay.

2) Overtaking manoeuvres should only be done when you can see the road ahead is clear, blind corners and hills you can’t see over the top of are excellent places to do so. If a car does come the other way mid-manoeuvre, remember you can always swerve back into the correct lane regardless of if there is already a car there so long as you hit your horn hard enough.

3) When using full be headlights, always be aware of the potential of dazzling other drivers. To ensure you achieve this, they are best used when facing oncoming traffic. Remember, your headlights can reflect into drivers’ eyes in their rear view mirror or wing mirrors so always be sure to have those lights on when behind someone.

4) Remember that the dividing line in the middle of the road dividing the two lanes is simply a guide and is not intended to be taken literally; the best driving position is to ensure you straddle this.

5) It is important that you should always leave a safe stopping distance between you and the car in front, especially if it has been raining. The reason for this is so that people can overtake you and swerve in front of you into this space, presumably because where they are going is far more important than where you are trying to get to.

If you can’t remember all of these, just stick with “when in doubt, hit your horn!”

December 2009

2010-03-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

December- A bizarre injury, the impact of being overly competitive on a small island, my brush with the law and a near death experience (okay the last is just an exaggeration but I felt awful, does that count?)
Well in December, I decided that it would be good for my health if I started playing football, this it turns out was a mistake. There is a regular afternoon game on the pitch next to my house which i decided as would start playing in again as a number of my local friends play there. Now I should explain, I went into the ‘game’ (a glorified kick around on a pitch that is more dust than grass) carrying an injury which was sustained in the most hair raising circumstances imaginable.... doing my washing.
A few days before, I had been washing my clothes in my flat and managed to slice my hand. Now, washing your clothes here is no fun whatsoever, it has to be done entirely by hand unless you have the luxury of having someone else do it, which I can’t really afford. Anyway, I was hanging it out on the large drying rack on the balcony of the penthouse. As I lifted the drying rack to move it, my wet hand slipped and a jagged piece of metal that is usefully attached to the rack, slide across my hand. This left me with a 3 inch long (thats about 8cm for the metric amongst you) deep scratch across my palm which bled considerably (I now have the scar to show it’s severity). There is a point to all of this.
Anyway, I was playing football trying to bring organisation to the defence which isn’t easy, players here have never seen a game except on TV so tend to be tactically naive which normally involves holding a defensive line which is about 10yrds into the opposition half (for the metric amongst you that’s about nine metres and for those who don’t understand football, that’s a bad way to play unless you have a defender who is quicker than Usane Bolt, and for those who don’t know who he is, he’s a very fast sprinter but it poses the bigger question of what do you do with your lives if you don’t watch sport? ). Anyway, back to the point, I was playing with my hand taped up. I went up for a corner and managed to get in front of my man and lept like a salmon and was about to slam a header into the goal when I was unceremoniously sent flying by an opposition player, landing on the hard ground, ripping off the dressing and causing more than a little discomfort (it hurt!).
Needless to say, I was not happy about this because the guy had no intention to play the ball and was taunting me. Now if anyone has ever seen me play football (or indeed watch football, or play any sport) you will know that I don’t tend to keep my feelings to myself in such a situation so things were said and there were some dirty looks, raised voices and a bit of ‘squaring up’ but nothing really to take too much notice of before I decided to remove myself from the pitch to cool off a bit. AT the end, we both apologised, shook hands (well we would have but mine was bleeding) and went home. I didn’t think anything more about the whole thing until a few days later.
Now this is the point of this entire tale, I went out to eat the following night and someone asked me about me arguing with someone whilst playing football, I explained it was nothing, that it’s was fine and finished, that it wasn’t a big deal and that we’d both apologise. Anyway, by the time I went to the shop opposite my house the following day, I was asked if it was true I’d got into a physical fight with the other player and that I really didn’t like the guy! In the following days I was asked by a great number of people about the ‘physical fight’ and was even asked if I had punched him by a variety of people when I went to eat or into shops. So the moral of this story would be; be really careful if you a noticeable person playing football in a small Indonesian town, minor events can be wildly exaggerated! I’m sure that is a lesson that so many of you will find useful at some point in the future...
By mid December I was heading off to Bali for Christmas. I was staying a few days in Kupang to do some work with Sam (okay getting him to help me with some work) and then a trip to the police station for some administrative stuff then off to Bali for a holiday. The police station visit is part of VSO’s new agreement with the government, we have to now all register for a sort of a police registration at a regional level whereas previously we just had to register at the local level. Another volunteer had got theirs a few weeks before and it was a 45 minute, in/out sort of task so I wandered along to the police station with my bundle of documents and a full days plans lined up for afterwards, it turned out it was not that simple.
Having filled out all the paperwork in triplicate and submitted the photocopies of various letters and documents, I sat there expecting to be given the green light and carry on my day. instead the officer took out a book and flicked through it before stopping on a paged and showing it two me. Now I will admit that my Indonesian isn’t great but do have the ability to be able to read “a fine of 5million rupiah (about £350 but on my income it’d be over two months wages) and/or up to two years in prison for both the individual and their sponsor”. It turns out, I had missed my window of opportunity to do this by some eight and a half months and they didn’t seem to share the viewpoint of ‘better late than never’....
SO what followed were a number of slightly worried phonecalls between myself and VSO! Eventually the police agreed that they would meet with VSO as we weren’t in the wrong, it was all to do with it being a new agreement with lack of communication between agencies and it was all very complex but was eventually sorted but it did mean my programme manager had to fly out to Kupang at short notice which didn’t make me popular in the office! Apparently it was just a different policeman to the one the previous vol had seen who was more familiar with the technicalities.
So after that stress, I headed off to Bali for a well deserved break. Truth be told, I was in need of the holiday and more than anything, the anonymity. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rote and I love NTT as a whole, but it is quite intense in a lot of ways, as the only white guy in the town and as far as I know, the only white guy to have worked long term in the town, you are constantly watched and observed and talked to. You sort of live your life under a microscope in a lot of ways. So it’s nice to disappear to Bali and just not have people stare as much as they are far more used to having white folks around although it does mean you have to put up with a huge volume of holiday makers, which can be a little tedious at times. I have no problem in general with tourists it’s just Bali is to Australians what the Costa del Sol is to the English. Need I say more?

It was a really nice holiday filled with a lot of not much! eating western food, hanging out with folks, generally just having a nice relaxing time. That is aside from climbing a volcano! It’s called Gungung Agung (spelling?) Now climbing a volcano sounds like great fun but if you ever choose to do it, here is some useful information
1) don’t turn up in the town that you are starting from at 10pm if you have to get up to leave to walk up the volcano 2am, sleep beforehand is useful
2) make sure you have food already bought to eat, not many places are open at 10pm in a small village and even fewer are open at 2am and like sleep, food is a good idea beforehand.
3) Volcanoes (well this one anyway) are steep all the way up, there are no plateaus or flat bits on which to rest and resting on a slope is itself tiring.
4) Do not pick a day when there is a religious ceremony happening on a religiously significant volcano, although interesting it is somewhat demoralising two blokes overtaking you as you feel like death who have no shoes but are carry a goat/cow/other animals up for sacrifices at the top.
5) Don’t forget when you get to the top and admire the fantastic views and you say things like “wow that was hard but worth is for such a spectacular view of the entire island” that you still have to walk all the way back, which strangely enough is the same distance and the same steepness. I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, but just remember you’re in reality only half way through your journey and the sun is on its way up making the walk back down sweatier.
6) Make sure when you park your car that you do it in a spot which will not be blocked in by people coming to the huge ceremony at the temple. Otherwise, you will return to your vehicle after a gruelling 9 hours only to discover you have to wait another 2 hours before you can shower and eat because you’ve been blocked in!

Also went to a couple of other places in Bali around the island. It’s nice to get out and actually see some of Bali, when I stayed there for language school, it was almost entirely in the hustle and bustle of Denpasar. But it really is a beautiful island however there weren’t too many funny tales! I did recently write a top 5 tips for driving in bali though for our volunteer magazine which I will post separately (so any of my volunteer friends can skip past it!).
New years eve was a bit of a damp squib to be honest, there was a bomb threat against Bali so VSO said we should all stay away from places with fun parties! Not only that, I was exhausted after the volcano (started at 2am on the last day of 2009) so wasn’t exactly rock and roll exciting!
2009 ending was a little strange in a way for two reasons for me, firstly it was the only year of my life when I did not spend one second in the UK which is kind of weird. The second reason is that now when people ask me when my contract here finishes, I have to say ‘later this year’ instead of ‘next year’, bit scary really....

November 2009 supplementary

2010-03-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Supplimentary- Oops I forgot an interesting tale from November!

I just realised, that I made a mistake when I said nothing interesting happened in November, there was one thing but it shows you what a slow month it was that the one thing there was, I actually forgot.
I was in my penthouse indulging in an activity which takes up approximately 80% of my free time, washing my clothes when suddenly I hear a very loud ‘thud, thud, thud’ noise. Now normally, living right by the seas front, this is just a particularly decrepit fishing boat with diesel engine circa 1915 making it’s away across the bay, until I realised it was a small helicopter.
‘The penthouse’ where I stay is the tallest building in all of Ba’a by some way so as I looking out I saw the helicopter come right over the town and then hover over the town. Now Rote doesn’t exactly have a great deal of air traffic and although in England you get the occasional police helicopter flying over your house (how close depends on the level of criminal activity you indulge in) however in eighteen months on the island, that is the first and only time I have seen a helicopter here.
Suddenly from its hovering position, and I am really not exaggerating when I say this, it started heading straight for the penthouse. I was, I will admit desperately thinking whether something had happened that I hadn’t heard about and the embassy was evacuating me or more worryingly, if it was packed with commandos who would abseil onto my balcony and mercilessly shoot me (I have a paranoid , self obsessed and overactive imagination). In the end, it actually swooped over my house close enough that had I been so inclined, I could have thrown a stone at it as it passed by before landing on the football pitch next to my house.

Unfortunately, my relief at not being assassinated, evacuated or victim of a suicide attack by an insane helicopter pilot was short lived as the football pitch is incredibly dusty (we were waiting for rain to actually re-grow some sort of grass on it) and the spinning helicopter blades whipped up a sand cloud which quickly engulfed my washing.
This felt especially unfair as I’d already panicked as it passed so close it had already almost blown half my washing off the drying stand. Thankfully I had pegged it down due to some advice given to me many years ago by a family member who’d said ‘John, always remember; if you’re living on a small tropical island and a group of commandos comes to assassinate you in a helicopter, always make sure your washing is pegged down otherwise it’ll be blown away by the force of the rotor blades’, which turned out to be sound advice....
Anyway, having cursed at my now dust covered washing, I went down to the football pitch to find out some answers (the question was more ‘why is there a helicopter here?’ rather than ‘why did you cover my washing in dust’) as to did half the town.
It turned out there had been some sort of scuffle between a military bloke and a police man and some big wig had to come to mediate. I personally thought that spending a great deal of money flying by helicopter seemed a little excessive when he could have waited 16 hours and come by ferry. Or if he didn’t want to wait until then at least just jump on a military boat and come that way, it would most likely have been as quick and considerably cheaper to the tax payer.

It was also a little strange that they flew and landed right in the centre of town (30-45 minutes drive to the police and military headquarters or the governor’s office in one of which the meeting took place) having gone across the entire town not to mention that they had flown past the ‘airport’ ( a mere 5 minutes drive from said locations) and indeed any of the countless huge fields and open spaces right next to those possible meeting locations. Strange really, I mean it’s almost as if the individual wanted lots of people to see how important he was arriving in his expensive helicopter, although I would never make such an accusation....
I should say, I have just deleted about a page of self righteous ranting from this entry because I decided that there are things that may be better unsaid in the public domain.

november

2010-03-08T11:20:00.001-08:00

November- a nothing month

As you will all doubtless know, I am doing this retrospectively. So as I’ve been sat in my house, I’ve tried to think of anything interesting that happened in November and failed.

SO I sat down and looked through the e-mails I sent in November and it turns out that actually..... nothing happened!

See! And now some of you wonder why I don’t update often! To be honest, I think it’s actually the only month since I’ve been here that really there wasn’t anything to report.

Blog expanatory note

2010-03-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

Blog- explanatory note

Well as I sit here in my house writing this, it’s been a long time since I updated for which I can only apologise. I’ve basically decided to put together a summary of each of the many months that have passed since I last updated.

I’m sorry it has been so long but I just wanted to explain why I haven’t got round to doing it as well as why I have decided to restart.

To be honest, I think the main reason my posts have become more infrequent leading to this huge hiatus is because as I have settled in, there have become fewer and fewer examples of me acting ineptly so there has been fewer anecdotes to share. But then if you’re reading this, you must have at least some interest in what’s going on in my life.

But the main reason I’ve restarted has been the events of the past few weeks here. As some of you may know, at the start of February, my grandma died quite suddenly at home. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it home for the funeral and it was generally very difficult time for me. But one of the regrets I had is that I know that she very much enjoyed sitting down at breakfast and my granddad would read a print out of this blog for her. When she died I felt very guilty that I had let my updates slip and that she hadn’t kept her updated with all that was going on in my life.
So it is with this renewed vigour that I am updating.

October blog

2010-03-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

October: VSO giveth and VSO taketh away.....

Well October was a very strange month which was a result of two messages from VSO which both came somewhat out of the blue. Firstly, I got an e-mail from my manager saying that the love of my life here in Rote, my lovely shiny megapro which I loved, had to be returned. It turns out there was a clause in a contract which VSO had with another organisation which meant that the bike had to be returned to the local NGO where it had originally been placed. It was a very upsetting experience; we had become very close over those few months. We had been through a lot together; in august we even hit our first cow together after it had been hiding at the side of the road and then in what can only be described as bovine suicidal rush, jumped out right in front of us, thankfully neither of us were injured, not even a scratch on her beautiful shiny wheels. Add to that on the ‘hit’ list, 4 chickens (they few into us) and on the ‘near miss’ list there were- numerous dogs, herds of goats and a fully grown sprinting pig....

But alas, those days of freedom were over. I should point out I still had access to a bike as I would then be sharing the GL Max with Suzanne. now the sharing wasn’t so much as the bike itself. It’s a perfectly fine bike, but it’s a push at 6’2” (and let’s face it, fairly solidly built even after the weight loss) to comfortably ride a 160cc bike, so then trading it in for a 125cc bike is going to be tough. It’s possible but not especially comfortable. It also means sometimes overtaking uphill can be quite tricky. It is however still preferable to and (just about) quicker than walking.

However, VSO had not finished ‘taking away’ (I’m not blaming them for either problem incidentally!). It emerged that in fact under the new rules of our visa agreement, Suzannes job was no longer viable. This meant that at the end of her visa (in March), VSO was not able to extend her VISA. Now this was quite a blow for her really, when you consider that she wasn’t able to be in Rote for several months due to her medical dog related problems, then she had just started to feel settled and get some good work done when she was told she would have to leave early. She was, understandably upset by this.

So she started looking at alternative jobs and options, but generally not fun. In one way however, she was very fortunate; she still had to 6 months to run on her visa. There was a volunteer couple working over in Flores who only had a few days left on their VISA when they discovered it could not be extended. After some negotiation with the government, VSO managed to get them an additional two weeks in which to pack up all their work and belongings and leave the country.

October also saw my parents come to visit me in Indonesia. We had a week in Rote and then I took a week off and we went over to Maumere in flores for a week. It was great and they actually did really well as it was insufferably hot even for Indonesia, so to go from an English October to the hottest time of the year in Indonesia and survive was quite an achievement.
We didn’t actually do that much whilst we were away, I really just needed some time off so it was a lot of time spent on the beach of our hotel sipping juice and enjoying the food! As well as being able to enjoy the company of my father, someone who not only likes but actually understands English football, it had been a long time since I’d been able to talk to such a person at length!

One day however we did hire a driver and head off across Flores. Our main destination was the ‘three coloured lakes’ which are... well.. three lakes which are different colours

INSERT photo

Well actually, when we were there, it was only really 3 lakes, 2 colours. They are on top of a volcano and it’s some mineral that changes their colours. After a somewhat slow start to the day (our driver was actually about two hours late because as it turned out, he’d been up late in/losing a fight with someone) but after that we headed across Flores. It was several hours drive but when you get there, it is amazing if not really really weird. The whole thing just feels completely surreal.
After that we toured around one or two other places nearby. We went to one town well known for its weaving of local cloth (Ikat) and the driver asked if we wanted to stop and buy some my father and I shrugged and looked at my mum who said no. by this point, being off season and there being a dearth of tourists, women from all around had started to bring their cloth out. so we drove through the village until my mum suddenly said ‘actually I really would like some, can we go back?’.

So we returned to the market/selling area. Now by this point we had just driven the length of the village TWICE allowing every would-be seller to see us and come out. Now I had already told my parents this village was well known for really harassing you into sales so wasn’t overly chuffed at giving plenty of notice of our prescence!

BY the time we made it back to the buying area, the whole village had become like a scene from ‘night of the living dead’, scores and scores of women walking towards us with their arms outstretched in front of them (with ikat hanging off them) all calling out ‘cheap cheap, special price and other such slogans’.

I should also point out, although I love my mother dearly, she is a nightmare in such situations. All of these women are independently selling and my mum takes a long time to decide about purchases, in which time the crowd is getting steadily larger. When she does decide on what she wants, she then asks me to try and negotiate “X amount for these three” not realising that each one belongs to a different woman. Eventually after an eternity we return to the car with purchased ikat, as I get to the car I see that my father is stood there joyfully pointing every seller towards me.

But anyway, aside from that, it was a really nice week, it was nice to catch up with them and they even brought me loads of gifts, including a fedora which I love although I’m fairly sure most of those around me are yet to be convinced.

September blog

2010-03-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

Blog September

Now I’ve been thinking back to September and couldn’t remember much so I looked over some old e-mails and it turns out, not that much happened to tell you all about!
However, at the start of the month I did, with my ever dependable Batman, Sam, organise a weekend conference for all the volunteers in NTT. At the time this was about 20 or so and we had to organise the entire weekend (accommodation, food, sessions etc) at about 3 weeks’ notice and on an incredibly small budget. Just to give you an idea of the scale of this, in 2008 they started planning nine months in advance of the same event!
Firstly, I should explain about the nature of volunteers. Although I love them all dearly, they can be a little difficult to organise. One of the qualities they look for when recruiting is being independent minded. You have to be to survive working in such odd conditions plus it actually makes them very good company and they are great to have around because they are always up for doing things/going places etc. However, it does make events such of this a little difficult.

I should further explain, I know that people do this because I have been one of the volunteers being organised at an event. But at such things, the majority of volunteers will, at some point in the day:
1) Criticise some element of organisation
2) Tell you how they would have done it better
3) Make some sarcastic joke at the organisers expense
Now I should reinforce, I know this because I have been someone who has done exactly that and truth be told, it’s not that bigger a deal on an individual basis and actually is normally pretty helpful and even if it isn’t, you have to be used to a bit of light ribbing. However what you forget is that when you say these things, you are just one of 20 people saying them which means even if everyone only says two out of these three, that makes forty comments a day, which kind of wears you down a bit!
Like I say, it’s really not a criticism, just a fact of life and I think is probably the same whichever group of people you get together!
But all in all, it went pretty well and people seemed to have fun and enjoy it which was the important thing. It did wear me out quite a lot though because we had to do a lot of organisation ‘on the hop’ plus just the two days solid of facilitating various sessions would have worn me out a fair bit! So all in all was ready for another holiday (having barely got back from Alor) but instead got to go back to my office and sit and read yet more medical records.......

August blog

2010-03-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

Blog- August

So august saw the departure of the my visitors but not before the football competition. This was the under 15s competition for the island (opposed to the adult one in flores I mentioned in the last post). My team was fairly awful, which was possibly to do with the lack of quality players and partially the manager. I was coaching the football school team whereas the other coach from the football team was managing the team for the local area. It was him who decided who played for the area team and who played for the football school. As a strange coincidence, all the players who appear to have hit their teenage growth spurt as well as being technically gifted were in the locality team whereas my team was made up of the seven dwarfs plus two hobbits (it was nine aside).

Anyway, my lads were physically bullied by the opposition who were all far closer to the fifteen years old cut off age and drew two games and lost the third meaning we didn’t get out of the group stage.

I was, as anyone who has seen me watch or play football, the stereotypically overly vocal football manager. Although, as I found out, this is far far harder in a second language. At one point, I was incensed by a foul on one of my players and shouted at the “kartu pirring” when what I meant was ‘kartu kunning’ as a result, instead of telling the referee to give the opposition player a yellow card, I just shouted out ‘plate card’ (as in a plate you put food on) which makes about as much sense in Indonesian as it does in English. There was a very strange moment as the referee, all the players and the crowd which was probably 100+ all sort of stopped and just looked at me in a very confused manner....

As you will see from the pictures, I shunned the ‘crombie’ manager wardrobe and instead pose as a player in the hope that I could pass myself off as being a freakishly tall albino 14 year old who had already developed a great deal of facial hair, my plan was not a success......

Some of the crowd became prepared for my teams wayward finishing

WOMAN WITH HELMET photo

The end of august brought a nice holiday in Alor. Alor is a small island in the north west of NTT. It’s a beautiful small island famed for it’s diving (which I had my first ever try at). Had a really good time, was just so nice to get away from the hospital for a week and try something new. I should say, the diving instructor was a german guy called Tomas, he was cool but also just reminded me of the shark hunter in Jaws, he really did seem like someone who just wanted to get into the water and go mono et mono with a giant shark. Although having said that, the only photo I can find of him (with a dashing young man in the background) he looks decidedly like Bill Murray in the life Aquatic.

PHOTO OF MAN WITH FISH

And some evidence I did actually go diving

DIVING PHOTO

But I will I do look far from graceful in this photo!

I should say, I really needed the break from work. As part of my job in the hospital I had been auditing old medical records within the hospital in order to find any that were still current. This mean I had to go through all the records over five years old and see if any had been used in that time. Some of these had various drawings from when some of the doctors had become bored during appointments (a bird, a house and one time what looked like a camel) but also the always useful description of an appointment, just two words- ‘orang sakit’ which translated as ‘sick person’.

Anyway, at that time my basic day consisted of- get up, go to work, read medical records, go home, sleep, repeat. By the time I’d gone on holiday, I think I’d looked through something like 10,000 which was only about a fifth of all the records. Fun times.....

week 56 ish

2009-10-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-07T12:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-02T23:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T01:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T01:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Posted by John's secretary aka Suzanne

2008-12-12T00:33:00.001-08:00

Well firstly I must apologise for the slightly rushed nature of that last post, I tried to write some before I left for kupang but then didn’t get as long online as I had wanted when I was in Kupang.
Hopefully this should be successfully uploaded by proxy in that Suzanne (thanks Suzanne!) is in Kupang this weekend doing a big shopping trip and I’ve asked her to upload it.
Life here pretty much plods along really. It was really good to be in Kupang last weekend and just see some other bulay (derogatory term for white people) and hang out for a while. Rest assured thats not me being racist, it’s just nice to be able to talk to more than one person (Suzanne) who has the same cultural background as you every so often and make contact with the outside world, although a little less partying and a little more sleep could have been advisable, I came back feeling more worn out than when I left!
In fact Suzanne is getting a nice full weekend in Kupang which it appears is going to be a rarity for us. I was there for three days (Friday to Monday) which was due to me working extra hours last week and then it being Ede (or is is Id, I don’t know) so having Monday off. The issue is we work 8-11 on Fridays and 8-12 on Saturdays. The ferry leaves Rote at about 11 (Indonesian time, could be anytime in the day) and leaves Kupang at 8 in the morning so full weekends are something that will be tricky and without some flexibility, weekends away at all without taking annual leave would be impossible.
On Saturday night, a group of us went out to play pool and I got to experience my first ever Indonesian drugs raid! Drugs here carry the threat of the death penalty so you can imagine a raid is fairly draconian. The police just turned up to the pool hall, with no reasonable suspicion or search warrant or other such trivialities. They simply walked in out of uniform assured us they were police and claimed they could just do a raid.
It was interesting that they actually made a beeline for our table and the other table with a white person on it, thinking about it, I guess it’s the first time I’ve ever been racially discriminated against by the police, it doesn’t happen often in England as a white middle class male! We were frisked and made to empty our pockets and have the contents of our wallets emptied. Thankfully we were saved the indignity of a body cavity search however there is a fine line between frisking and fondling and that policeman came a little too close to that line for my liking.
However this was less awkward for the guys in the group who were just forced to empty the contents of our wallets which were more disorganised being a mess of old tickets and receipts than embarrassing. I got a little bit of hassle as my temporary driving license expired in a week, although even if it had expired, there is no law against having an expired licesnse so long as you aren’t driving. Having said that, police don’t need excuses like laws to hassle you here. It was slightly different for the women though.
They were forced to go into a separate room by female officers and empty their handbags, i learned a long time ago I just don’t want to what’s in womens handbags and this was a real invasion of privacy. Further to this they were forced to lift up their tops so their underwear could be checked to see if drugs had been stashed there. All in all, I htink it was a bit of a grim experience.
This Saturday is a public holiday here because it is the Bupati election, hence why Suzanne is able to leave Friday come back Sunday. I’m not exactly sure how the word Bupati translates other than big boss of the island. This is the office who decide most public affairs for the island including who the new director of our hospital will be, budgets strategy etc for all hospital life and public life in general. There is a real hope for change here I think, we will have to see. When we first arrived there was a big rally for the opposition. SO the election is on Saturday, I don’t think it’ll quite have John Snow (or whoever it is) and his swingometer but it should be pretty interesting and judging from the rally the other day, noisy. Then again, everything in Indonesia is noisy even on a sleepy island like Rote.
Being the rather sad politics graduate I’m actually looking forward to seeing all of this and in fact, I’ll even have someone to observe it with. Rich, my university friend who currently is living in South Korea is the first person to come visit doubling the current population of white males in Rote at the moment (even the hotel owners in the south have left as it’s currently rainy season), certainly in Ba’a. He’ll be staying for about a week and a half then he’s heading off to Bali for Christmas. Living in the urban sprawl that is Seoul, I he says he’s glad to just have a week doing nothing here the slower pace of life, which is good as there isn’t much else to do here!
Suzanne and I have decided to spend Christmas here, it will be a quiet but it should be a nice change. The truth is, Christmas will be so unbelievably different from anything we’ve experienced before, I guess we don’t really have anything to miss because it just won’t be like Christmas anyway.

Days 61-84

2008-12-07T04:20:00.000-08:00

Well apologies that it has been so long since my last update, it is one of the problems of living on an island with no internet access! Suzanne went to the only local internet cafe type place the other week. Apparently its status as an internet cafe is somewhat misleading: they didn’t have any food or drinks and their one connection (Yes one! they don’t have any computers, you have to take your own laptop) wasn’t working so I can’t help but feel it is false advertising to call itself and internet cafe.

We’ve been on Rote for almost 3 weeks now so we are beginning to settle in a bit. When we arrived there has been a complication with our accommodation, the house Suzanne was due to live in with some doctors was no longer really available so we had to live in the small two bedroomed house for a week or so. After much discussion as to who would move out (not in a bad way, we just didn’t want to live together) we agreed I should move into the other accommodation on offer which is a room in a boarding house type place just opposite the hospital.
One of the real plus points thus far has been the fact I appear to have acquired a motorbike. I borrowed it from the hospital and when I tried to take it back they told me to keep it for the moment and they have not, as of yet, asked for it back. To be honest it is more bike than motor. It is 100cc of pure unadulterated power and I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t be road worthy in the UK.
For starters its horn doesn’t work and in Indonesia a horn is about as important as wheels on a bike however that isn’t the main problem. If you hold down the clutch for more than about two seconds then the engine cuts out which as you can guess if you are waiting to make a turn is a bit of a pain leaving you stranded in the middle of the road and with no electric starter you are forced to kick start it each time after you have found the ever elusive neutral. Add into this the fact I keep forgetting to turn on the fuel valve thing which has lead to many occasions of getting about 100 yards before it cuts out.
So all in all, not an ideal bike however I am really grateful for it as it gives me so much more freedom on the island. A after a week I ventured out around the island for a bit on the bike, you have to be careful as there appear to be no road signs and no maps available so you have to memorise where you have gone or face being stranded forever in the wilderness.

The bike also has no fuel gauge so I am always keen to keep it fairly full so I went and bought some petrol. Now petrol stations here are not as they are in England, when I say petrol station I mean a bloke in a hut with glass bottles of fuel outside which he will then empty into you petrol tank, rather worryingly, normally whilst smoking. Having filled up I remounted my bike, checked I had opened the fuel valve, checked my side stand was up (a volunteer left it down a few weeks ago and was badly injured when it caught on the floor as she went round a corner, so it’s my new paranoia), eventually after much trying found neutral and prepared to set off. Now all of that takes a few minutes with the man in the hut watching. So when I tried to kick start it, it would start, I tried a few times but nothing. I started to get that pressured feeling of people watching, had I put the wrong fuel in? Is there a wrong fuel here? By this point the man in the hut had been joined by his friend who were watching with some mirth so I was really starting to feel the pressure of embaressment and avoided looking at the two men. Several minutes passed with no success, I was starting to wonder if I’d have to push the bike back to the hospital in defeat. Then a voice came from the hut saying “hey mister” as I looked up I saw the man making a turning motion with his hand which at first confused me until I realised I had been sat for five to ten minutes trying to start the bike without putting the keys in the ignation as they were in my pocket. I rode off with my tail between (if that is physically possible)

of course many other things have happened but haven't had enough time to write them! will try to update again soon

Days 54-61 (Back to bali)

2008-11-14T05:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry for leaving it another week for a post, i know you all can't survive without my regular mumblings!

Well last weekend we went to a very nice house warming party at the house of one of the office staff who had a swimming pool, it's a tough life. After sam and i went to a bar to watch rovers vs chelsea, my first match in two months, i walked in just in time to see chelsea score a very lucky goal, so annoying.

ANyway, anedotes as my last few posts have been a little dull.

I went to get my tourist license on tuesday, i need this becuase i didn't bring my international license and in oreder to be able to ride a bike out here i need to do the internal training which i can only do in bali, so need tourist license to do this.

Anyway got picked up form the office and went to the police station arriving at about 1. When we got there they bloke looked at my passport etc and talked for several minutes before revealing that i would have to come back the following day as they only issues licenses in the morning. He sat there, smoking heavily (this appears to be a key element to being an indonesian policeman) and told us it was impossible to get the license. HE had everything he need except the inclination to be helpful. We have been warned of this, it's a very bureaucratic country and so we went away empty handed.

We returned the following morning (i left language school early much to my teacher and classmates delight) and went up in time. When we got there we had to see a different policeman again with my details and fill in many forms which all appeared to be very similar. The man regarded me with some disgust (he too was smoking) until he saw my shoes (a birthday present from my parents, nothing spectactular, not like 8 inch platforms or anything) which he refused to believe were not bought in indonesia, at one point i was worried he wanted them as some sort of bribe leaving me to return home shoeless however he did not.

He instead handed me my theory test, this was a bit of a shock but was fairly straight forward and in english and i even refrained from correcting the grammer as i was worried that these 18 stone, chain smoking, revolver toting (one kept on putting his hand on his gun when he scowled at me) policemen may be sensitive and burst out crying if i did.

Having givcen my test a cursory glance and lighting another ciggarette they told me i would now have to do my practical test. This too was more than a little surprise. The guy who was sorting it out said the rules are at the whim of the director so change frtequently.

When we got to the test area my intermediatory (for want of a better word, the bloke who the office had got to sort it out) asked if i was okay and i didn't really have an option. He explained the bike won't have a clutch but will have gears as they are semi automatic. i had never heard of such a thing (hey i know nothing about bikes) so when we got there he went and talked to the bloke in charge who was sat in a booth (smoking).

The bike was there and it was a small thing barely bigger than a scooter and there was an obsticle course. My intermediatory came back very pleased as he had specially got them to let me use a bike with a clutch as thats what i was used to.

Then out of nowhere another large (and again, smoking) policeman appeared on this huge bike. It looked like somehting out of mad max and was probably like a million cc engine size (i told you, i don't know anything about bikes). In all honesty, it was big, behemoth big with a siren sticking up, a suge pannelas ( spelling) radio etc etc, basically a full police riot van on two wheels. He got off and gestured to me to use it. Now i wouldn't mind riding such a big bike given two things:

1) have more than 3 seconds to get used to it before being tested on it (it's like turning up to your driving test and being given an HGV to drive)

2) the course was designed for the ant sized bike now completely covered by the shadow of this monster. it was barely possible to visualise this monster fitting between the cones.

SO i reluctantly gave it a whirl being watch by another policeman with a clipboard who wasn't smoking when i started but was by the end, those two minutes must have been agony for him. Alas i didn't cover myself in glory but made it round without too many mistakes.

As we were walking away with my pass certifcate in hand, i told the intermeditary i thought i'd messed it up. NOw there only a few reasons i can think why i didn't fail:

1) the observing policeman had blinded himself with cigarette smoke

2) i was secretly, without even me knowing an amazing motorcyclist

3) the test has a very low standard to pass

4) because i am a westerner

5) because of the natural charm of my intermediatory and something he said..

Now obviously i couldn't say if i knew any of those to be true, they are all just speculation of course. Anyway, i have my tourist license and my international driving license should be here soon, if i had brought it with me i would never have to have seen the police or done any test (just some internal training you can't fail) so it's all academic really, a mere formality.

I've now finished language school which i actually finished with a B which is pretty respectable. Got my second day of motorbike training tomorrow (internal, unfailable) and then on sunday we fly to kupang before going to Rote on tuesday morning.

I won't have especially regular internet access but will still try to bring you all at least one anecdote a week.

Days 45-53 (visiting Roti for the first time and then back to bali)

2008-11-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay in general, I’ve been back in bali for almost a week now and so I’ll try to tie up the rest of the trip to rote and about my time back in bali.

The rest of the time in rote was spend doing fairly menial administrative tasks and hanging around the hospital. It was a little tricky really, Suzanne has a direct counterpart and who speaks decent English so they started looking at things they wanted to do and doing ward rounds and alike. I on the other hand appear to be a link between an administrative office and senior management so will have to take the few months that VSO recommends to settle in and survey the landscape. This was a little tricky as I think the management saw what Suzanne was doing and sort of wondered why I wasn’t launching myself in.

There is also a possibility that Suzanne will move in with some of the doctors leaving me the little two bedroom house to myself which will be very nice. It’s all a little complex and probably a little dull so I won’t say any more.

Anyway, I’lll skip to the last twenty four hours or so in Rote. On the last evening I ended up on the beach playing football with a group of teenagers which was pretty cool and trying to explain to them who Blackburn rovers are, why we are better than man united, that I think christiano ronaldo is very good but I don’t like him and that it’s pronounced Rovers not Woahvers which they didn’t grasp.

It is a little weird there as you will have an audience if you stop moving for more than a couple of minutes. We were waiting to be picked up one day and heard two people discussing us, they knew where we were from and what we were doing there without us ever having met them!

Anyway, on the last day we went to settle the bill of the hotel that VSO had put us in. It was at this moment we realised that we didn’t have enough money. We had not been spending wildly, in fact virtually nothing as the doctors had paid for most of our meals, it was just VSO had wildly underestimated how much money we needed. Thankfully we had just enough other cash to settle the bill and buy the ferry tickets and spent the next 48 hours scrounging our money from our VSO manager who we were travelling back with. There is only one cash point on the whole island and that’s normally out of order, we were seriously facing the prospect of being stranded.

Our situation wasn’t quite as bad as Sams whose hotel bill was 1.6miilion rupiah, VSO had given us about 1.7 million and there were many other unavoidable expenses such as eating (about 20,000 per meal) and aiport tax (30,000 each way), so that amount of money would never be enough. Well liveand learn I guess!

On Saturday night we went out for a meal with Dinnia our managers friends, its sort of a restaurant group although in reality I think it’s just a bunch of English speakers and those who want to learn English who hang out. They were all pretty down on Kupang and I had to keep reminding them, this will be the big weekend treat for us to visit!

The very good news if that if I pay for my own in country motorbike training, then dinnia has managed to sort it out for me to be able to ride motorbikes out here. This is really good news especially as the hospital has a bike I can use, it just gives me freedom and independence. I have to squeeze in a day and half worth of training in the next week or so. There is a theory briefing which as far as I can tell from what I have observed thus far is there are no rules on the road, just make sure you’re alert at all times.

BY this point I had a pretty grim cold, this would be the problem with having your office located near a load of ill people! By the Sunday it was pretty bad. POstive was that in the airport the plane was delayed which allowed me to watch highlights of that weekends premiership matches in the waiting room. It was the first football of any sort I have seen in almost 2 months.

After the flight I was rendered completely deaf and felt like my head would explode. I don’t know the exact medical reasons but I think it’s to do with phlegm and ears (sorry to much detail I know). Now speaking and understanding a foreign language is tough, doing it whilst temporarily deaf is far harder, there are some deaf volunteers and kudos to them, it must be really tough.

As a result I actually had to skip language school on the Monday, I went in and explained to our new teacher. I felt guilty really, we have switched teachers for the last two weeks of training and dorothia is only here for a year so has started work, sam had to stay in kupang an extra day so Suzanne and a full day of language school by herself and the poor teacher developed a complex on her first day that we were all boycotting.

Since then things have just trundled along this week. Things are really sweaty of late here with the rainy reason sort of starting so it will be nice to leave for Rote. Just in preparation mode really now. Going to a VSO housewarming on Sunday then going to watch Rovers vs Chelsea, the first live match I’ll have seen in two months and the last one I’ll see for period unknown.

SO I guess in summary, it wasn’t an island prison or a island paradise, it was too beautiful for the former and too flawed for the latter.

I promise better annicdotes for the next post, I’m wary I’ve had a few too many serious posts. The internet access is limited over there so will probably post when I visit kupang.

Talked to my parents on skpye so it does work if anyone wants to ring me and remember to get that snail mail sent, I’d really appreciate it............

Days 43-45 (visiting Roti for the first time)

2008-11-05T01:18:00.000-08:00

Well today I got to see my office, it didn’t have a desk but did have a bed and quite a few of what I can only assume were dead insects or rat droppings on the floor, I didn’t look to closely. We also met the bupati who is the local official, sort of like an MP but is very significant. The hospital were keen for us to be introduced and I managed to chat to him in fairly broken Indonesian. My office will apprarently be cleaned up by the time I get here properly and have a desk, no bed, curtains (I’m right next to a waiting room) and a lock on the door.

Suzanne and I were also shown the house on site, it’s a two bedroom little house with two sort of living areas, a small kitchen and even smaller bathroom. It’s onsite which has it’s pros and cons, the hospital is up on a hill so if you live here and have no mode of transport (still waiting to find out on that) then getting down to the market could be a little tough.

On the plus side, it definitely has a TV which possibly may have satellite. Now I know you all think it is sad to be in an exciting country and care about such things but I’ve not watched any football since I got here, that’s like six and a half weeks, I even had the DTs at times. Given the time difference, on a sleepy island like this, it’s not as if there are any late opening bars to try and catch a match in. So hey, I know it’s sad but I don’t care!

So the plan is that Suzanne and I will both live there together until we find a second house which should only take a couple of weeks. The issue with the hill also means that should you live in the town (and I use that word in its loosest sense) then you then face a battle to get to work each day. Suzanne and I both agreed that it would be much better if we didn’t live together, the houses aren’t massive and it’s just an issue of personal space. Also it means one of us can visit the other and get out of the house to somewhere else every so often. We’ll see, we’re going to ‘discuss’ who lives where when we find a second place but it shouldn’t be too bad for the first few weeks.

We also registered with the local police, well I say police I’m not entirely sure! Two blokes in normal clothes who if I’m honest, would look more suited to loitering on street corners with mopeds, came up to the hospital and we had to provide them with copies of our passports. One is a friend of my boss and she assures me he is a police man otherwise I would have thought that we had just registered with the Rote Mafia!

The rest of the day was just spent sort of chilling out really, I wandered along to the pier to watch teh sunset. This is a pretty remote island and on the whole most white folks just get off the ferry into a taxi and down to Nembrela for the surfing so in Ba’a I sort of stick out a bit. Thus far I haven’t minded it too much but I could see it getting really annoying at times. You really are a novelty and if you stand in one place for a while you can hear yourself being discussed in what I can pick up from my language skills.

The language has been much better since the employers conference, nine tenths of it is about confidence and my tail is up a bit more these days so I am much better. I’m still not great and I suspect my grammar leaves a lot to be desired but I can normally get my message across.

Another slow day really, Suzanne is able to get on with some work sitting with the head of nursing (who speaks good English really) and talk through ideas and possible changes. My job is a little more tricky, I’m going to have to be here for a while improving my language skills before I can get really stuck into making any sort of assessment of the medical records.

My boss has ideas but they are sort of far more vague so I need to make a proper assessment. Judging from the bundles stacked in the office somewhat haphazardly (I saw a dirty food plate on top of one stack) and the lack of any sort of lock on the door, it could be a challenge.

We went and opened our Indonesian bank accounts which appeared to mean signed countless forms which I didn’t full understand, most likely I now have a bank account but there is a small chance I may have bought a small property somewhere with a 200% morgage or bought into some pyramid scheme, I just signed anything in front of me, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

In the afternoon, we went with some of the doctors and drove down to Nembrala which is the area which is famous amongst surfers for its waves and beautiful beachs. I have to say, the beach really didn’t disappoint although it was a little surreal in places. That side of the island appears to have a great love of pigs, you see them everywhere wandering around on the roads and generally getting in the way. But they also wander on to the beach and seem to dig with their snouts into the ground as if hunting for truffles.

The beach is gorgeous, like something out of an advert. We walked up the beach and went and had a nosey at how the other half lives at a very expensive hotel. The hotel is apparently the most expensive on the island and rooms cost about two to four million rupiah a night which is about £125-£250 a night.

It was gorgeous and just as we were sort of loitering in the grounds then some bloke wandered up to us dripping wet with a surf board in hand. He was American and introduced himself as Greg, the manager and instead of telling us to clear off he invited us to hang out and use the facilities. He explained it was coming to the end of the season so they had no guests so we were more than welcome to use the pool etc. He was really cool and we discussed why we were here and he told us about the development work the hotel helps with in the area. So we swam and hung out and waited for the gorgeous sunset as it sunk into the sea.

Things here will be pretty tough work wise and overall I know it won’t always be a barrel of laughs here but as the sunset I just felt immensely lucky. I have been given an opportunity that a lot of the people never have, I’m just some bloke from Lancashire of no particular note and i was sat there on a gorgeous beach watching a spectacular sunset. Like I say, I’m under no illusions about how tough this will be and it won’t all be using the facilities of expensive hotels for free, hanging out on beaches and watching amazing sunsets, but I still know how lucky I am.

After that we drove back to Ba’a and went and ate in a fish restaurant. It was my first experience since I got here of being expected to eat rice and fish with my hands, it’s a tricky one I can tell you! When we got back to our hotel it was about nine and I nipped out to try to find some bottled water and see if the rather enticing looking bakery was still open. I may as well have been trying to shop at three in the morning, the place was dead. It’s not exactly an island of late night ravers. SO it looks like it’ll be two years o early nights for me, unless I can watch the football........

Days 41-42 (visiting Roti for the first time)

2008-11-05T01:17:00.000-08:00

I got home from the beach games relieved that it hadn’t rained, it had been muggy all day and felt like rain and my washing was out. I only brought with me about a weeks worth of clothes and having been at the employers conference and then going to kupang I had to do all my washing. This was great until I fell asleep only to wake up four hours later to find that it had then rained and all my clothes were wet and dirty. It meant I had a mad two AM rush to do all my washing and get it dry for the flight the next day.

Our flight from Denpasar was uneventful and then the rest of the evening was fairly laid back. We flew separately from Sam who would be based in Kupang as our employers wanted an extra days shoppiong. It turned out, he was staying in the hotel and rang us to ask if we wanted a beer. He came to our room and said he’d had an interesting experience the day before. He insisted we went out and got a beer before he told us.

When we were settled in a bar he told us when he had arrived at the hotel, he had gone out for a bit leaving his laptop in his room ( he thinks, although it may have been the lobby, but he swears it was his room) and when he returned he couldn’t find it. After mad ringing of the taxi firm, the hotel had a phone call demanding 500,000 rupiah for the safe return of his laptop, which in English money, is only about £25-30. He got someone from the hotel (who were very reluctant to call the police) to go make the pick up. It turned out that it only ended up costing him 200,000 rupiah but he was very relieved to get his laptop back.

Of course, the significant part of this story is that he hadn’t considered that making us go out for a beer to tell us the story, WE HAD LEFT ALL OUR VALUABLES IN OUR ROOMS!!!! So we quickly finished up and went back only to find our possessions enacted. I think he probably left it in the hotel lobby knowing Sam.

We were picked up the following morning at seven and went to the ferry port. The ferry was a very pleasant 90 minute journey and then we arrived in Rote for the first time. We were picked up and drove to a restaurant having dropped our stuff at our quite basic hotel. We sat there and dined with a beautiful view of the beach and tried to understand a joke our driver was trying to tell us which involved Clinton, Gorbachov, Habibi (former Indonesian president), a vicar, a priest and a Muslim cleric. It possibly lost something in my haphazard translation.

After that we came to the hospital for the first time and suddenly a lot of things made sense. VSO briefs a lot on being realistic and I see why now. The truth is, no matter how hard I work in this hospital and how successful I am, it will still be a drop in the ocean for the issues of this hospital. For a start, they have a operating theatre but no surgeon after he was recalled because of the recent decentralisation moves so they no longer had a MOU with other organisations in Indonesia. The hosipital is dilapidated in so many places and horribly understaffed. The staff seem really keen, friendly and committed to their jobs and helping people.

We went out with the doctors in the afternoon who all seem quite young and all speak some English. They showed us another restaurant (cheaper than the one we’d eaten at which apparently is the most expensive round here!) and we walked along a nearby beach. In the evening Suzanne and I just went out to eat and then played cards, not that exciting really.

I really can’t communicate how beautiful some of this island is and the stark contrast that has to some of the poverty I’ve already seen here.

Days 38-40 (approximately 0 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-11-05T01:13:00.000-08:00

Well this has been a pretty busy time. We got picked up to go to our hotel for the employers conference. Just as we got there I discovered that there was a swimming pool and I’d left my swimming shorts back at my homestay.

This wasn’t too bad as our facilitator Tjeert offered to give me a lift on the back of his motorbike to my homestay as he had to go that way anyway. You sort of feel it’s setting the tone for a fairly laid back few days when you need to fetch your swimming shorts. He typically dutch but alrightl, over the next few days he gave me a more of a first hand view of volunteer life with all it’s ups and downs. Interestingly he was actually a professional footballer up to 17 and then got realeased and realised he didn’t like being part of the football world (footballers are stupid he said) as well as admitting that he just wasn’t good enough either. He actually used to play in the same team as Jan Klaas Huntalaar for any football fans. We returned alive (barely) after I’d stuffed my oversized head into sams normal sized helmet I’d borrowed, with my shorts.

The conference was very enjoyable, I spent much time swimming and the hotel was quite posh. During the day we went through a load of VSO stuff so that both our and employers and us had heard it. My employer, Dr Rina, is really nice and speaks a little English. We got to find out some more solid details about living quarters etc. There is one, two bedroomed house available on the site and both Suzanne agreed we didn’t want to live together long term (in a realistic not nasty way) so we will both stay there until we find another place. This may end up being a little contraversal in the end, we will have to see what the search turns up in terms of other accommodation.

There are a few pros and cons each way, it’s on site which can be a blessing and a curse but there are two big issues:

1) It has two bedrooms which probably any other accommodation we find won’t and (more importantly

2) It has a TV with a satellite dish which means English football (Sepak bolah Inggris off the top of my head, apologies for spelling) will be available on.

So we’re going to have to fight that out, obviously Suzanne has no interest in the football whereas as obviously I am! I also talked to Dinnia our programme manager who is going to find out more about if I can ride the motorbike which the hospital actually has available for us to use.

The evenings were spent hanging out (jalaan jalaan) with the other volunteers, Tjeed and Steve (who was observing so he could facilitate the next one) sat out discussing everything from conspiracy theories and global warming to the rules for cricket. I actually had a couple (when I say that I do literally mean only 2!) bottles of the local Indonesian beer, bintang (which means star). It’s not exactly top class but I’ve actually not touched a drop since I arrived (about 5 weeks) so it was nice.

The whole conference was really nice although it did make all of us a little suspicious, three days in a lovely hotel with great food and a swimming pool and at the end of it they ask you to sign the three way agreement (employer, vso and volunteer) which is basically like a contract. All this before you’ve visited your placement! It does just make you a little paranoid about what lies in wait.

My mail arrived as well from the office, I unexpectedly had two peices of mail. One was from my parents and contained my new barlcay card and the other bit was a genuine surprise. It was from the Student loan company telling me apparently I hadn’t sent a letter showing I worked for VSO with a form I had to fill in so they sent me the form back. This is annoying as I asked left it to be sent along with the form (mentioning no names, mother) but what is more annoying is that they will deduct from my bank another a payment in line with my previous NHS earnings, some £250. The really annoying thing is the complete lack of common sense, they had my e-mail address on the form but instead sent a letter to the opposite side of the world which takes about 6 weeks to arrive, they will feel my wrath, I feel a strongly worded letter coming on.

I actually came away from the conference with a real confidence boost which actually helps with language as nine tenths of it is having the conviction to have a go and risk getting it wrong. When I got back to my homestay, I sat outside drinking coffee and chatting to the father of my homestay father (motorbike guy from previous posts). It was really nice and I find I can sort of get my very basic contributions across.

On the Saturday afternoon we went to the first VSO office family beach games (the asian beach games were going on Bali). We got a Bemo there which is a sort of a cross between a small bus and a taxi. The drivers showed an ineptitude I have yet not seen and we had to end up directing them to the district and then they tried to rip us off! It was really nice all the staff brought their families and we had a great time, I even got to give a yellow card for dissent to the country director (big boss!) in a game I refereed. It really was a great time and much fun.

Wanted to watch rovers but unfortunately it was a 5:30 kick off (thanks setanta, again!) rather than a 12:30 which I had thought. I couldn’t stay late as I still had to pack for my first trip to Rote and my flight was at about 11 the next morning and staying up till three felt a little risky for a morning flight.

Sorry this update is a little dull really, especially for all you sadists who wanted to hear me suffer again, but ahead lay my first visit to Kupang and then Rote, it was pretty daunting and I had no idea what it would be like, beautiful island paradise or prison island, who knows......

Days 31-37 (approximately 0.5 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-10-22T03:07:00.000-07:00

Well I guess this is the post you’ve all been waiting for, the one where my trip takes a slightly less enviable turn. I would like to think that thus far this blog has taken quite a high brow approach, this will momentarily be paused for this post.

Saturday sam and I went surfing and had a great time and this time I even managed to avoid the perils of sunburn however whether or not it was something in the 50 gallons of sea water I consumed (inadvertently of course) or something else, I obviously consumed something that did not agree with me. To misquote a stand up comedian called Demitri Martin, that disagreement was over how much I’d be crapping.

I spent all of Sunday and Monday confined to my flat not daring to move more than about ten feet from the toilet. This genuinely was not a fun experience and I felt pretty awful to boot. At one point (just as sam was trying to ring me to see if I was doing okay, poor timing) I felt sick as well so I was ‘praying to the porcelain god’ if people are familiar with that phrase (if not it means kneeling facing the toilet being, or preparing to be sick). At this point I am going to assume I then fainted. I make this assumption based on three things

1) I woke up a few moments later lying on the bathroom floor (and if you imagine what bathroom floors here are like, you can guess this wouldn’t be through choice)

2) I had no idea how I got there

3) I had rather an impressive bruise on my left eyebrow which would appear to indicate I hit something at speed, the Sherlock Holmes in me guesses it was either the floor, the toilet itself or the tiled wall.

A bizarre ten minute fever then followed and passed. Needless to say I was on the whole pretty ill. After a few days (including missing language school on Monday) I am feeling much better and Suzanne (nurse, fellow volunteer) even texted me today to say my recovery would indicate it was “nothing more than a mundane e-coli infection’ , this has lead me to two conclusions:

1) Never try to get sympathy off a nurse
2) I must save that text and send it back to her when she feels ill,

Having lowered the tone I may as well include a story I had previously decided I would omit as being a little tasteless. A couple of weeks ago I was returning back to my flat having just eaten out in the evening. There is a stray dog that loiters near my house and as I passed it’s alley about 6ft from my gate then it started barking and bearing it’s teeth at me.

This then awoke the neighbours dog who in an apparent show of canine solidarity, decided to bark at me (not the other dog) as well. This in turn brought the neighbour to the gate. Now most people in my neighbourhood are very friendly and will chat to me or say good morning, I have smiled and greeting this neighbour every morning with no response but an icy stare to date. It was this icy stare I was met with this evening.

All this excitement then caught the attention of the mumbling slightly odd man who sort of wanders the streets near me (I know it’s a long cast list) who then started to amble over, mumbling as he went. This was all fairly routine, although granted I normally only had to deal with one of these four but I just decided to take it in my stride. I went to the gate to find it locked.

After about 8 pm the family locks the gate which is fair enough however opening it is a tricky exercise. The gate and lock appears to have been designed by the creators of Crystal maze and involved reaching through the iron spikes and using the worlds smallest key to open the worlds smallest padlock which is about thigh high and due to the elaborate design of the gate this is a tricky bear hug type manoeuvre which involved pushing your face against the (obviously) less than friendly spikes.

Now whilst doing this I will admit I felt mildly threatened by the collective cast around me (mumbling man, icy neighbour, neighbours dog, stray dog) but has fumbling admirably. However then I felt what I guess is what a child birth contraction would feel like without the pain, from my stomach.

I don’t know much about the digestive system but this would appear to be a two minutes or less warning as if my bowels were saying to me “this can end one of two ways, you can make it to a toilet or you can not, either way I’m not bothered, it’s going to happen”. This then gave the whole situation a sense of urgency because should I not make it through the gate in time, the mildly threatening ensemble around me would become less threatening and somewhat worse, become an audience for the melodrama that would unfold.

Eventually I somewhat panniced made it through the gate (had considered trying to climb the 6ft gate with large spikes) only to find the father of my family was there waiting for me (obviously would have been another potential audience member) . Now I have been making a really effort to talk more to the family and practice my Indonesian and on this evening he seemed very enthusuatic to sit and chat with me. I basicly had to use a few stock indnesian phrases and make sure to keep moving so he got the idea I was in a rush. In the end I made it to my flat in time, just.

Anyway,I shall change the subject, I don’t think I’ve ever written a page and a half about my bowel movements before however I guess not many people have. I’m just waiting to get picked up to go to the hotel for the employers conference. I suspect this sounds more glam than it is, it’s not going to be the Hilton and there will only be about 15 of us in total.

I will be meeting my local employers (who don’t speak English!) today and spend the next few days with then although I have no idea doing what. Then on Sunday we will fly to Kupang, stay there for a few days (as that is central point for VSO in east Indonesia) then on about Tuesday or Wednesday, travel to Roti for the first time to have a visit. Spend a few days there (again I don’t know what I’ll actually be doing) then back to kupang then fly back to Bali for a two more weeks of language training before moving there.

Anyway, I hope everyone is well, might try to put up some photos of Roti when I get back, I’ll take them on a lower res so hopefully they will upload. Again texts, e-mails , skype etc always welcome. When I’m back from Roti I should have my postal address so you can all get your Christmas packages sent so they will be here in time.

Days 19-30 (approximately 1.5 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-10-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

Well i apologise for the lack of an update of late, i wish i could say i had been so unbelievably mega busy but unfortunately life hasn't been that exciting of late! Things have sort of settled into a daily routine now i'm struggling to think of anything amazing to write (not to discourage you from readin this and future posts!)

I have for the recent past ahd this strange feeling when i woke up in the morning that i wasn't alone in my flat. This fear was substantiated when i would role over to find a perfect life side copy of myself lying next to me made of peeled skin. The sunburn has now fully heeled and i'm fine although i did turn down going surfing again on saturday becuase i felt it foolish to burn myself just as i'd managed to stop peeling.

Well as it happens i didn't manage to get to see the blackburn vs man united match, it turns out that to get somewhere to watch it proved to complex with a general lack of public transport there and my guilt at dragging sam out till the very early hours which would be required to see ou match at the later time. Instead i went to an internet cafe to listen to it online and a rather heated arguement ensued between me and the blackburn rovers webste which eventually left me to read the incredibly dull updates on the BBC website. For anyone who hasn't done this, it is only one step above watching ceefax for the football results. Too add to my woe we lost in what in true, appeared to be a poor match.

It is very stange being in Bali, its sort of a transient phase which is nice in some ways as it allows you to have a sort of westernised experience to take the edge of the indonesian culture shock. However spending two months here is quite a long time and as a result means you can't really settle into your new life and make friends etc as you are only really passing through. It can really be quite frustrating.

Language school is going okay, i remain the dunce of the class but i've managed to convince myslef that i am only doing this as a public service to allow my fellow volunteers to feel better about their own language skills. We learnt prepositions last week which i only really mention becuase it included a number of pictures featuring the antics of a monkey and contained the phrase 'the monkey is in the tree' which reminded me of that eddie izzard rant about french ( should be the right one although youtube is blocked at the language school so i'm trusting google on this one www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sQkEfAdfY). i couldn't help but feel that me trying to explain it to my indonesian teacher in englonesian it somewhat lost something in the telling, it would appear that eddie izzard has conquered indonesia yet.

Had a meeting with the woman is is my closest thing to a direct line manager from VSO Dinnia. It was really good to actually hear some things about Roti (aside from it's hot) There are still some details to be sorted, apparently the accomodation currently on offer only has, and i quote 'limited access to running water', i don't even know what that means, is it that you can only get it sometimes or that the route to the water is blocked by something and only really small people can squeeze through the hole to get there? who knows, i guess i'll have to survey the scene when i get there. Got to see some pictures of the hospital and the office where i'll be working and read some of the staffs feedback about how they feel about a volunteer coming to work with them. So all that was quite exciting and i guess i feel like i can start to picture it a little better now.

I actually meet my employers next week which on the one hand doesn't concern me to much in that i'm sure they'll be really nice and enthusiastic. On the other hand it terrifies me as i'm all but certain they don't speak english and my language skills still ain't that hot. In fact today we learned a massive thing about prefixes which sort of blows a load of other stuff i thought i'd learned out of the water, no fun!

This evening i romanticly dined alone by candle light, this was due to what would appear to be a masisve power cut throughout this central district of the city. After several attempts the staff managed to fire up a generator which replaced the delightfully atmospheric candle light with a very load nooise of an engine. I'm writing this courtesy of the fact that my language school apepars to have huge generators especially to allow people like me to come and mess around on their internet free of charge.

Hope everyones good

Days 13-18 (approximately 3 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-10-03T04:21:00.000-07:00

Well this week has been fairly laid back, we’ve been off language school due to a religious festival to mark the end of fasting. As a result I haven’t been up to too much, we have been in the VSO office on Monday and Tuesday.

In something of an ingenious move last week I mentioned to one of the office staff that I lived near hardy’s supermarket and she quickly offered us a lift home as she was she was going to get some shopping. IN we hopped to her car only to discover she was actually going to a hardy’s at the other end of town (how was I supposed to know it was a massive chain? Apparently we were quite lucky, there is another one in the middle of nowhere!)

We now are fully equipped with push bikes and helmets so getting around is much easier. I was riding home the other day and saw two cats in a sort of crouched stalking position in front of me. As I approached I thought I could sort of scare them away and save the life of whatever poor rodent they were planning to savage. As I got closer they saw me and ran off and I turned to look at their target to get quite a shock.

It was a full on, massive, Indiana Jones, snakes on a plane style, huge snake! It was coiled up but at a guess I reckon (and genuinely with no exaggeration) about 5-6ft long and with a circumference something thicker than a cucumber, almost as big as that of a 500ml drinks bottle. I suddenly found a new burst of energy to make it back to the house! I would have taken a picture had I had my camera with me making use of the zoom function I can assure you. I realised rather than save the target from the cats I suspect that I saved the cats from rather a grim fate. On the whole it hasn’t freaked me out too much although I do think twice now when I walk home in the dark.

On Wednesday we went cycled over to Kutah which is the more toursty side of the island, about a 20 mile round trip on the bikes (well including when we got lost on the way home). I learned a valuable lesson, merely having sun tan lotion with you and putting it on in the morning does not stop you from getting burned by the end of the day even if it is factor 50. It was a really nice day, the sea is amazing with many waves to jump into and generally horse around.

In the afternoon we paid an Indonesian bloke to teach us some surfing for an hour. I didn’t do too badly for my first attempt, I managed to stand up and ride some waves although admittedly, I was much better when the teacher gave me a shove to help me get up to speed as the wave came, it turns out my puny arms are something of a disability when it comes to paddling yourself forward surfing. It was a little disappointing that as I was conquering a 15ft wave (okay, a slight exaggeration) I was forced to jump into sea to avoid being decapitated by my fellow volunteer Dorothea’s board. But on the whole a very enjoyable experience.

Having not really learnt the sun tan lotion lesson until it was too late, I have spent the last two days confined to my flat really with aftersun and paracetamol and rather vampire like only venturing out when the sun has gone down. Its mainly been spent doing some language homework (although not as much as I should) and generally reading and doing boring domestic things like washing. I managed to remain more of a pink than an outrageous fire engine red however I guess we’ll have to see how it goes.

Shopping here is rather an odd experience, my local supermarket and indeed all the ones I have been to have Indonesian sales people with megaphones trying to outdo each other by yelling though them about what I assume are various special offers despite all working for the same organisation, I can only assume they get commission. It does mean however yet another of your sense are bombarded as you shop. Also there appears to be no demand for shampoo for people with greasy hair, it’s all anti dandruff, I don’t know if there is any significance to this. However I’m guessing most of you aren’t all that interested in that, I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t if wasn’t for the fact I have greasy hair, no problems with dandruff and needed shampoo.

Tomorrow Sam has kindly agreed to come and try to watch the football with me, kindly as he’s not that into football. For those of you who don’t know, Blackburn are playing Man United at home which is one of two rovers games in the season that Rovers are almost guaranteed to be on TV here in Indonesia with the other being Rovers vs Man united away.

I have realised that I must have come to the worst place in the world to watch football, they are all football crazy however it really couldn’t be a place where all kick offs are so badly timed. This game has been moved to a 5:15 kick off (cheers sky/setanta....) which means it won’t kick off until 12:15 am local time and once you go back onto GMT instead of summer time, 01:15. This means 12pm kickoffs are okay, 3pm kickoffs are awkward, 5:15 kickoffs, difficult and evening kickoffs near impossible, if the time difference was more or less it would be easy to accommodate. Sorry for you none football fans, rant over.

Anyway, hope all is well, I have an Indonesian sim card but it doesn’t seem to like sending texts to England, however if anyone wanted to Skype me it would be very cheap, e-mail/facebook/text my English number if you want to.

Days 11-12 (approximately 4 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-09-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

well it's been an interesting couple of days, well actually thursday was pretty dull but friday was a bit, well, of an experience!

I was awoken at 5 in the morning by what i thought was the apocolypse until i got up to find it was actually a massive rainstorm which was flowing off the roof (carrying with it various degrees of muck) onto my freshly washed light coloured clothes which i had left out over night thinking, 'what could possibly go wrong?', well question answered i think.

When i got up a few hours later the rain had subsided and i departed for language school only to get to the door and it start hurling it down again. I have to say, being from the north i've seen my fair share of rain of the years and this was nothing like all of that! imagine accrington's annual rain fall all coming down in the space of 5 minutes but being sustained for serveral hours, that sort of rain.

Having managed to get possible the campest unbrella in the world from host family i set off. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas, somewhat displeased with my achievement with blocking it's efforts from above it attacked me from the ground. On my way i had to wade through calf deep puddles in just sandals of rain water and i fear to think what else (streets in Indonesia aren't the cleanest!).

It cleared up in the day and then when i had to go home again, lashed down not so much like 'there was no tomorrow' more in a way as to make me believe there would be no tomorrow. It wasn't so much puddles the second time as all streets being replaced with calf deep rivers.

The three rules of the rainy season:

1) it will start raining as soon as you set foot outside
2)don't even bother to try and stay dry, just wear things that will dry quite quickly
3) it will stop raining when you get to the sanctuary of where you are going.
4) do not, i repeat, do not, leave your phone in the front pocket of your bag, mine is currently wavering between as life being disabled with a severely damaged screen and watery grave. Sort of a 'died after a long illness' sort of affair.

I talked to the father of my host family in engonesian (it's a language people who only have a weeks training under their belt speak) and he said the rainy season doesn't even start for another month or so and described yesterday as a "shower", however today is much better so i will take his word for it.

Further to this a colleague very kindly gave me a lift from the office to hardy's ( a supermarket) and it wasn't until we pulled up outside did it occur to me that possibly there may have been more than one, alas it actually doubled my journey home!

I'm actually sat in the language school under the guise of doing independent study on a saturday however they actually have free internet which is how you're reading this. We're off for a week now but still have to go to the VSO office for some days next week. I have to say it is slightly concerning that whenever i talk to anyone at the VSO office about Rote/Roti (and indeed elsewhere) all the balinese say 'oh it's really hot there', it's not exactly chilly here so not quite sure what to expect!

The language is slowly but surely getting better each day, i can hold the most basic conversations now if the person speaks slowly, is very patient and only wants to exchange details of my name, age, martial status, where i'm from, my family members and the colour of this book (limited to hand full of colours still). LIke i say it is improving.

I am currently still facing a battle with the language which when i've won things will be much easier (not the battle to get the offical lanaguage of indonesia changed to english, that just won't happen). My language part of my brain is basically divided into two sections, english and foreignish, therefore if someone doesn't speak english i defer back to whatever is in foreignish which has always been french. It is amazing how much french i remember, i can basically construct any needed sentance out here in french whereas ask me in england and i would have no idea. This would be good if it wasn't for the fact fewer people here speak french than english.

Anyway this is already a very long post, hope all is well.....

Days 8-10 (approximately 4 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-09-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

Well i'm sure you have all been waiting with baited breath for my next post (sarcasm). To be honest, it's not that exciting here right now! I'm at language school where i have been cast in the role of a dunce (complete with D cone hat and everything). It's really quite tough in a lot of ways, it's only been four days and they already expect us to know quite a lot, which i don't! i am trying my best though and today was much better than yesterday. i can read it and understand words but it's getting it stuck in my head and nailing down sentence structure.

We are expected to do at least a couple of hours independent study after our morning classes plus homework assignments so it's a bit hardcore. We do have next week off though (the school is shut, religious holiday) but that is actually quite tough as well. Knowing we're not staying here and not haveing a job makes it difficult to meet people plus, what do you do to fill your time? i've been reading a lot which is good really (when i'm not studying of course!).

I have seen two motorcyle crashes this week in the evenings which given the general road attitude of most riders is surprisingly few but still two more than i've seen in my whole life in england! they over take on both sides, don't check mirrors or blind spots and generally buzz around cars like mosquitos normally without helmets and sometimes a whole family (5 is the record i've seen!) on a scooter.

My host family has basically left me to my own devices which in many ways i really appreciate. It's nice to have your own space to just get away from everyone. I have noticed rather an annoying trend, i had been warned of the annoying 'hello mister' from locals which on the whole i just accept. However i have now noticed teenagers doing it as a way of trying to mock me in a jeering manner. I guess wherever you go in the world, on any continent, in every culture, teenagers will be tedious.

Generally i'm fine, i do ocassionally have the made panic of "what have i done?!" but on the whole okay.

We might go to a surf school next week but we have to see how it fits in with our required trips to the VSO office.

Days 5-7 (approximately 5 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-09-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

Well on Friday we moved all of our stuff out of the hotel and went to the VSO office. We had the usual day lf briefings before the afternoon we had a fun trip to the police station to register (everyone has too I’m not some sort of deviant!) which was a subtle mix of dull form filling and general intimidation.

After this we went to a motorbike shop which was an embarrassing experience. VSO provides all volunteers with a good quality helmet even if you’re not riding in case you have to be a pillion passenger. However as many of you know I actually have a freakishly large head so this was a long process, they kept bringing out helmets and had to keep sending them back saying “no we need bigger!”. I actually had to try on quite a few before I found one that fit my giant noggin, I could see the staff sniggering in the back and pointing to me.

Having bought my XXXXXXL helmet we were dropped off at our homestay’s where each of us will live with an Indonesian family whilst in Bali. I was the last to be dropped off and as soon as I got out the car Badra charged over and grabbed me by the hand enthusiastically showing me my room/flat. My first impressions were that it was quite nice however I didn’t have long to form this opinion.

With another burst of enthusiasm, which I suspect he is frequently prone to, Badra asked if I wanted to be shown the way to the language school so I’d know when I went. I expected he would show me on Saturday but with just enough time to grab my oversized helmet and he took me outside onto the back of one of the tiniest scooters known to man. He then drove me to the language school, a 5’8” Indonesian man in his late 60’s/ early 70’s with a 6’2” blonde European with a huge head (and helmet to match) hanging on for dear life, bumping along the road with the suspension being crushed under the strain. It also allowed me to experience the terror of pulling out and turning in Indonesian traffic, I’ll admit more than a few prayers were offered each time this happened.

Most of the weekend has actually been spent on mundane tasks such as washing my clothes (by hand in cold water) and alike. On Friday night I managed to get lost and walk what felt that half way across Denpasar before finding my turning only to then get lost in the rabbit warren which is the side streets round here. Having wandered round for an hour or so I began to consider that dying alone and lost was a real possiboility, I got a text from a friend back home asking where I was in Indonesia, a cruel twist considering I had no idea where I was at that moment in time. Eventually I made it home only to find that I had to undo the most tricky padlock in the world.

Saturday night I met up with my fellow volunteers and realised that I had been making a massive mistake for the past few days. I have no shower here instead I have a mandi (strange sort of mini bath with a bucket to pour water over yourself (see picture) and I have almost killed myself a number of times climbing up to stand in it to wash myself (which is about 3 feet of ground) and I had wondered how other, shorter folks managed. The other day my foot slipped almost causing me to do a naked splits with one foot still in the mandi, something I really would struggle to explain in a Indonesian casualty ward. Alas as I’m sure you guesed, I found out from my fellow volunteers that in fact you don’t stand in it but instead next to it and then wash yourself.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re all bored of this or already stopped reading. Hopefully this should be posted on Monday when I set up my blog (hopefully). Got my first language school on Monday.

Days 1-4 (approximately 5 weeks until go to Roti for the first time)

2008-09-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

Well being the organised soul that I am I’ve only just doing this, my first post and already I’m behind! To be honest there isn’t a massive amount to tell, most of the time has been just about general orientation and getting over jet lag. It is hot and sunny here which as I’m sure you all realise, I only tollerate in the name of development. Unfortunately I was hoping that most of my orientation could be done on my back in the sand next to the sea however I am yet to make a substancial visit to the beach. The beach near us has a massive coral or breakwater or something, which means that thus far whenever we have gone down it has been inaccessible because the tide has been out.

‘We’ is currently four of us who are all on induction together. Induction is happens about 3 or 4 times a year for new volunteers and apparently this is quite a small number for this. Our little crew currently consists of-

1) SSam- from Utrecht in holland- he will be an IT manager on west timor in kupang. I’m not sure if it is simply to fulfil a stereotype but he is genuinely fascinated when he sees hills.

2) SSuzanne- from Kiddiminister- the woman who I had hoped would act as my mum when she is working as a nurse advisor in Rote unfortunately she appears to have different ideas and is hoping to be the irresponsible risk taker of the two of us (her words not mine!)

3) DDorothyiea (spelling?) (Thia or if you want to annoy her, dotty)- from stuttgart and is an IT Boffin and will be working on a 12 month placement here in Bali on a database however she works for Accenture so she may start and then decide it won’t make enough money and pull out (sorry that’s an NpfIT joke, yes I am ashamed).

I’m currently sat on my porch of my hotel, we’re going to head out and get some food soon. We are moving out of hotel tomorrow to each move in with seperate Indonesian famillies for the next few weeks in Bali.

Unfortunately the photos don't want to load so you'll have to wait until later this week when i go to the office!

Introduction

2008-09-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

Well I decided that rather than barrage people with long drawn out e-mails of my time in indonesia it would be easier for me to be a little more up to date and write a blog. The basic logic is that hopefully people can read this if they want to rather than be permentantly sending my e-mails to the deleted folder. I would however really appreciate e-mails, letters, parcels, texts and visits!

I’ll try not to make the whole thing too self indulgent but then again it is a blog so surely that is their purpose? Feel free to leave comments but on the whole please send messgaes direct to me.

Hopefully this should be updated fairly regularly however this will vary and probably dip much more when I get to Rote. Incidently it is know as Rote or Roti by most folk (apparently) however I guess the pun doesn’t really work if it’s the other spelling.