Week 27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amoebic Dysentery (clinical presentation)

Bacterial Bowel infection

Conjunctivitis (see later)

Diarrhoea

E-coli

Fever

Then also had

Insomnia (anti malarial side effect)

Mosquito bites,

Sunburn,

Typhoid,

Paranoia (anti malarial side effect),

Vomiting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weeks 19 and 20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weeks 13- 16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by John's secretary aka Suzanne

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

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