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.
Friday, 23 January 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 12 December 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
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
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
Friday, 14 November 2008
Days 54-61 (Back to bali)
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.
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.
Friday, 7 November 2008
Days 45-53 (visiting Roti for the first time and then back to bali)
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............
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Days 43-45 (visiting Roti for the first time)
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.
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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........
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