We're off to Bonny Doon! Oops... I mean Lake Toba

Ahh yes, one of the reasons I love this country: lots of public holidays. The Eid ul-Adha holiday started on the 20th December, and went right through til the 26th – so with a couple of leave days thrown in, you can get a good week or two's holiday! (which is what I’ve done – in fact I’ve taken the 31st as well as the 2-4th Jan off, so almost 3 weeks in total. Yah!)

Anyhoo, so given that the plan was to spend Xmas Day in Medan with my boss Paul, his wife Popi and a few work crew, it was a good opportunity to get over to Lake Toba with the four day break.

So after a few too many drinks at the Aryadutha Hotel with Popi & Paul, Steph and Jon, Natasha, Kiki, (all Simeulue staff) Chris and some of the other Susi Pilots on the 20th, the next day Natasha and I boarded a bus headed for Prapat. Ahh yes, 4+ hours sweating our arses off, crammed into three seats when we really needed four. Not to mention the old man smoking right next to us and dropping ash on Natasha! Boo!

Still, once we got going it wasn’t so bad, and the scenery was interesting, especially as we got closer to the lake and the elevation increased (and the temperature dropped!). It’s a beautiful view of the Lake when you first come over the mountain and see the water – and it’s a surprising environment that you encounter. It’s cool (first time I’ve felt cold in Indo), there are many pine forests on the mountain slopes, and the town of Prapat looks almost European. In fact the whole region reminded me a lot of Europe, particularly with the churches dotted around the place. Amongst rice padis mind you, but still…

So once we hit Prapat, it was on to the ferry to get across to Samosir Island, in the middle of the Lake. Technically it’s not an island – it has a narrow peninsula that joins the mainland – but it seems like one! We got targeted straight up by a couple of local touts looking for business for their hotel. We had a couple of places in mind, but given that it was the end of the day and dark by the time we landed, we agreed to stay at Lekjon hostel for the night. In the end we stayed there the whole time; it was cheap, located in a beautiful spot by the lake and we ended up spending a lot of time hanging out with our new buddies Romano and Juan. They were great fun, and ran a nice hostel with a restaurant, pool table, good tunes and a nightclub nearby – what more could you want?

They also convinced us to cruise around the island on the first day on their motorbikes. It was cool fun, a good way to learn about the Batak culture of the island, get to know the guys, see all the touristy stuff and check out the scenery without having to watch where you’re going! The island is a beautiful place, churches dotted amongst rice padis surrounded by pine-forested mountains cloaked in cloud, all surrounding a huge blue lake; reminded me a little of Lake Geneva. It was strange to think this existed in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world.

The next few days were spent riding bicycles, eating and drinking, relaxing by the lake, playing pool, and hitting the nightclub down the road. We met some cool people from Korea and Finland (a hot firey, hello!), as well as some of the other locals who hung out at the hostel. All up it was a really fun, relaxing time, a perfect lead up to Christmas. I didn’t want to leave!

And while Paul and Popi’s first baby was due New Year’s Eve, he came early – 23rd December. So I was very excited when I went to the hospital on Xmas Day and met little Adrian for the first time. Such a gorgeous little tacker (so small!) and such proud parents. After spending the morning in the hospital, Paul and I went out for lunch and gorged ourselves on the things we can’t get here: a decent steak and bottles of red! We thought we would be joined by a few work crew for lunch, but this didn’t materialise, so we got pissed together and then cruised down to Sun Plaza, a huge shopping mall, to check it out, eat ice cream and drink more beer in the food court. Mmmm…. ice cream…

That night we went out for more drinks with the work crew and some of the Susi Pilots, went to the local pool hall and nightclub. In the end it dragged on, and I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, especially because the Susi boys were all chasing Indonesian skirt (I really don't like the whole white man - young Asian girl scene ... it's a bit disgusting!) and I was pretty tired from a day of drinking with the boss!

Off to Singapore for Boxing Day, yah!

hooray for holidays

I like the fact that the Christmas break starts here on the 20th December.

Here's the plan:

21st: fly to Medan, hang out in a big city and do some shopping! (most important: Shop for baby presents for Paul (my boss) and his wife Poppy; get a new weights machine cable - I broke the other one; and get my tennis racquet restrung)
22nd: Bus to Lake Toba, biggest crater lake in SE Asia, with Natasha, our logistics delegate.
24th: Back to Medan
25th: Christmas, yah! Gorge on wicked food and wine with Paul, Poppy, Yankie and Chris (my colleagues from Simeulue)
26th: Fly to Singapore to hang out with my cousins and spend New Years Eve
27th/28th: I'm not working, yah!
2nd Jan: Bus to Malaysia to check out the beautiful old colonial city of Malaka
5th Jan: Back to Singapore, to spend my last day of holidays with the Simeulue expat crew, who will all be there, yah!
6th/7th Jan: back to Medan.

Talk about a wickedly long holiday.

Then I get my RandR at the end of Jan.

Fun times!

Jacqui in absentia

I seem to have gone MIA from this blog of mine. Probably been too lazy. So now that I'm having an unproductive day at work, it's a good opportunity to add some more bits and pieces.

I'm knackered today - I have spent the last 7 days in Salang, and it's tiring! Not just the work but the travelling conditions as well. It's about 3 hours driving each way on horrible pot-holed roads, and you arrive at your destination feeling pretty shabby.

Last weekend, the manager of tsunami operations for Australian Red Cross paid Simeulue a visit and wanted to see all the projects in Salang over the weekend. So, somewhat reluctantly, we played tour guide for him; I wasn't all that keen on spending my weekend 'at work', and two of my staff - who had already spent the entire week there - were required to attend. Not surprisingly on Monday they were pretty tired, and then had to go to Salang again this week (as did I). Lucky it's Christmas soon - they'll get a break!

Anyway, the weekend turned out to be quite fun, explaining all of our projects and cruising around Salang. I learned a lot about the other programs. We spoke to community members who had been recipients of first aid, hygiene and agriculture training; toured agricultural plots; traipsed around rice padis; as well as visiting households where the WatSan team has built dunnies and wells.

On Monday our Monitoring delegate (and fellow Adelaidean) Marty arrived. We headed off to Salang to undertake a week of activities to evaluate our Indonesian Red Cross volunteers, discuss the program with them, and interview community members about the training program we run with them as part of the WatSan activities.

Staying in Salang for a week can be very trying, particularly as the base camp is usually stuffed to the rafters with ARC Staff and Indo Red Cross volunteers; it reminds me a lot of school camp in Port Vincent (year 8 for the record!). Dormitory accommodation; two mandi (bathrooms) to be shared between around 20 people (I can't believe how long Indonesians spend in there - considering all you're doing is pouring water over yourself with a ladle!! Let's just say that you're waiting a long time to get your morning wash!); the call to prayer by the mosque across the road at 5am; a noisy fan in the room; phones going off at random times of the early morning; and having to sleep with the light on: one of my staff is scared of the dark. NOT good for a decent bout of shut-eye! I'm always really tired after a week in Salang due to lack of sleep.

Then there's the food issue. The staff here are REALLY stingy when it comes to spending their valued per diem allowances. They get around 80,000 Rp a day ($10) on top of their salaries, but only spend around 35,000 (about $4) a week on food in order to save truckloads of money.

This is the typical contents of my stomach during a week in Salang:
- rice (and shitloads of it)
- fish (often salted to the hilt, and fried)
- fried eggs (or omelete)
- chili
- tomatoes
- cassava leaf (often the only other vegetables you get)
- (sometimes) cabbage, carrots and/or beans

This week we actually got chicken, but as it's 'expensive' for staff we usually don't have it. Let's just say the meal consisted of a scungy chicken in an oily coconut curry-like sauce, with rice. No vegetables, unless you include chili! Metamucil would probably do a roaring trade in this place, were it available... hehe!!!
Whatever other ingredients you provide are at your own cost and end up being shared, much to the delight of the staff. Marty is a legend in this regard, because he always brings delicious goodies over from Banda Aceh: cheese bread, bacon, cheese, capsicum, pasta - things you can't get here on Simeulue. He even brought ham this time! Both of his recent visits have involved one night of pure joy food-wise, as well as a carton of beer. Normally I don't take beer because I don't have anyone to drink with. The staff love it too - they get the left overs! While the Muslim staff can't drink alcohol or eat our pasta creations due to the inclusion of piggy products, the Christian crew think all their Christmases have come at once.

A lighter moment was provided by our attempt to consume ham sandwiches for lunch on Thursday; considering we were in a mosque with almost all Muslim colleagues, we had to be content with eating outside, but still in the mosque compound (which isn't really kosher) because it was raining. It was all very secretive.

The other bad thing about all of this is that unless you go for a run, swim or regular walk each day, there is no exercise to be had. So you're sitting around all week, eating lots of rice and oil, and getting a beer gut. Our main form of exercise so far seems to be playing frisbee with the local kids. We are in the process of building a badminton court on the compound, but so far we only have the court itself - no net or poles yet. Hopefully soon.

Work-wise this week, we sat through a whole bunch of very similar and often monotonous hygiene sessions, which while not really 'action packed', were quite taxing. By Thursday afternoon we'd had enough and decided to go back at the end of the day; Marty also had to get a flight back to Banda Aceh this morning (Friday) and considering potential delays in travel time due to the roads, it was a good idea - just how good we were yet to find out...

All was going well; we'd begun our bumpy trek back to Sinabang and then we arrived in the village of Kampung Aie which is notorious for its bridge being dodgy. They have been building a new bridge there since August, but it's not even half finished. So the old rickety bridge has to suffice. No problems if you're on a motorbike, like 75% of the population; but try driving a truck full of sand or a landcruiser full of people over it, and you're likely to run into trouble.

So when we got to the bridge it was already 5pm, and as was expected, a truck was stuck on the far end of the bridge, it's back tyres firmly wedged between two planks of wood, where a rotten plank had given way. It wasn't going anywhere fast, attested by the fact that there were about ten trucks, pickups and NGO vehicles piled up behind it waiting to pass, and they'd emptied all the sand out of it. Given the time, and that we are not supposed to drive in the dark due to security reasons, we decided to go around the obstacle. This involved driving back into town and down to the beach, where, according to the driver, the Landcruiser would be able to go around the river and then back onto the road.

It was smooth sailing - literally: the beach was the smoothest section of road in all of Salang! - and we had a great time dodging the waves. Then we took a tiny little bush track through palm trees to cut back to the road. Half way through we reached a swamp, which at first glance looked a bit dodgy - but after ditching his jeans and shoes and traipsing through the water and mud to check it out, our driver Sarwin declared it safe to pass, given it was rocky on the bottom and not too deep. But it was his approach to the mudhole that got us into trouble.

He roared the Lancruiser right into the hole, way too fast, which meant the car fully nose-dived straight into the water, and after smashing up and down a few times and water washing over the bonnet, we got properly stuck! The exhaust was fully submerged and bubbling away under the water, and we weren't going ANYWHERE.

So after a bunch of wheel spinning, trying to chock up the wheels with rocks, coconut branches and anything else half solid we could find, I decided I should walk back to the bridge to try and get help. Somehow the snap cord, shovel and any other items that should have been in the car for situations like this had mysteriously disappeared, likely sold by the driver for a bit of cash on the side ...

Our friends from the NGO CordAid had been waiting at the bridge when we first arrived there, so I figured we could get them to help. But when I arrived I couldn't find anyone I knew, let alone was I very able to communicate my problem! But eventually I tracked down the CordAid driver and his assistant, and between us we had enough Bahasa Indonesian/English to work out what to do, and they had a winch on their car.

In the end, after about 6 of 7 tries, we eventually pulled the Landcruiser out ... a tough gig considering it was much bigger than the CordAid Ranger, and most attempts resulted in a lot of wheel spinning and the Ranger being dragged toward the mudhole! I was waiting for the winch cord to snap!

So it was around 7pm by the time all this happened and we got ourselves out. Let's just say we owe a great debt to CordAid, we need to restock all our vehicles with emergency equipment, and we were totally knackered when we got back!

Ahh adventures in the mud, reminds me of Liberia. Makes life interesting though.

So in our wisdom, after dropping in on the boss to pick up my house keys, we decided to have a few beers. Paul, the head of office, goes a bit balmy during the week as he is the only English-speaking staff member when I'm in Salang, so come Friday he is gagging for an Aussie to speak to! We finished off Paul's 6 beers and some scotch before cruising to my house to drink the beers we had left over from Salang and to watch the Simpsons movie. For the record, it's the 6 time I've seen it! A 1:30am bed time was the result, not the best idea considering how tired we were, but a good wind down after a long week. Today has been a bit tougher due to it, but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time...!

Bring on the weekend!!!!

Knowing my luck it will be raining the whole time...

an article on the current situation in Aceh

Far Eastern Economic Review
November 2007

The Rebirth Of Aceh
by Oakley Brooks

Just three years after the tsunami turned much of downtown Banda Aceh, Indonesia into a wasteland, the city has swung to the other extreme. Today it has the feeling of a boom town, thanks to$8 billion in aid from the Indonesian government and foreign donors. The question remains, however, whether this money can jumpstart the province's return to its historical role as one of the key entrepots of the region. After the construction dust settles, Aceh should emerge with the best trading infrastructure in Indonesia. Across the province, foreign-funded work crews are busy upgrading ports, airports and roads. A four-lane, United States-funded highway will run down the devastated west coast. Spread across Aceh's four million inhabitants, the aid is three times larger in per capita, inflation-adjusted terms than that spent in post-World War II France, the largest beneficiary of the American Marshall Plan.

None of this would be possible, of course, without the 2005peace agreement between Jakarta and the Free Aceh Movement. As well as bringing stability, the deal will provide the province with upwards of $3 billion a year in special disbursements from oil and gas fields now controlled by the central government. Also on the plus side of the ledger is Aceh's rich volcanic soil, which should give it an advantage in agricultural exports. And it sits in a strategic trading location at the tip of Sumatra, a maritime crossroads between India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The obstacles to development are considerable, however. The 169,000 lives lost to the tsunami may have captured the international community's attention, and loosened its purse strings, but the 30-year separatist conflict left deeper scars by preventing investment in both infrastructure and human capital. Remedying these long-term deficits will take sustained effort.

Healing the Wounds

Aid money can build infrastructure, but it also creates its ownheadaches. The huge influx of donor cash has led to localizedinflation and a culture of handouts. Educated, English-speaking Acehnese are in high demand at NGOs, and so enjoy generous salaries. Less-skilled workers can also take lucrative posts driving sport-utility vehicles for the NGOs. But these jobs will not last forever. Investors will be watching to see whether the animal spirits of the local economy begin to stir.

The conflict, as it's called in Aceh, killed an estimated 15,000 people, and systematic terror by government and rebel troops after 1999 left large swathes of the province traumatized. The situation sent business people scurrying for Jakarta and Malaysia; in rural areas, workers and small tenant holders fled their land. Some of the best Arabica coffee country in the world, in Aceh's central highlands, went to seed, along with oil palm, rubber and cocoa plantations throughout the province. Oil and natural gas installations serving fields in the eastern part of the province were often under siege. People who stayed tended a subsistence economy; any substantial business moved 500 kilometers east, to the North Sumatra provincial capital of Medan.

One indicator of problems is that Acehnese are not taking up construction jobs, forcing firms to hire migrants from North Sumatra and Java. The unemployment rate in the province has helds teady at 12% during the boom as the workforce expanded by 5%. Analysts worry about long-term worker participation, especially among ex-combatants. In a World Bank survey among veterans of the Free Aceh Movement, most said they preferred "trader" over roles like "laborer."

Others have visions as grand as Aceh's economic planners. "We're waiting for an industrial company to invest here," says Hasan, a former rebel. He and some friends occasionally sell crushed gravel to construction sites in Banda Aceh to make ends meet. But they also spend a lot of time sitting in the local coffee shop.

The 5,000 or so former rebels, along with much of Aceh's youth, remain poorly educated. The former group was living in the jungle, sometimes burning schools to retaliate against the Indonesian government. And as the economy worsened in thep rovince, fewer people could manage fees for schools that were left.

"The priority is definitely how to improve the quality of our human resources," says Rahman Lubis, head of the planning arm of the Aceh government, who ticks off projects to map skills deficits and send students abroad for university. Close to one-third of Aceh's bulging budget is to be dedicated to education.

Whatever their shortcomings of talent and education, Acehnese have a unique pride and resilience, grounded in a strong Islamic faith that came to the fore during a harrowing last few years. There's an ongoing debate in the province and throughout Indonesia about whether conservative Islamic social norms in Aceh (adultery, for instance, is sometimes punished by public lashing) will hurt the business climate. It's impossible to answer definitively, short of some multinational admitting it skipped the province for its Shariah laws.

But so far the Acehnese brand of faith seems to have helped the province more than hurt it. "These are copers," says Sasha Muench, an economic development specialist who spent two and a half years working in Aceh. Today, with the Indonesian army and rebels behaving themselves(under the scrutiny of the aid community) fear has subsided.

But economic dysfunction remains and it presents in myriad ways. A post-tsunami packaging and branding program aimed at rebuilding local products specified that packaging had to come from Medan, the only place a quality wrapper can be sourced.

"There's still so much trouble involved in doing business here,"says Tarmiyus, the principal in Pt. Pontia Agro Pratam, a construction supply firm which he has been operating from Medan since the tsunami.

"The biggest problem is the lack of capital," he continues. "The banks are so tight." Banks in Indonesia have been notoriously stingy since the Asian financial crisis, and in historically volatile Aceh they are even more conservative. The loan-to-deposit ratio, expressed as a percentage, is hovering around 25% in the province (up some since the tsunami), compared to 65% at the national level last year.

In the plantation agriculture sector, which many development and government officials are pegging to lead Aceh back into the export market, growers are at a stand-still because of the credit situation. They suffered wide-scale defaults as workers left plantations in fear. "We're all basically blacklisted by the banks right now," says Sabri Basyah, a palm-oil plantation owner who is the secretary of the estate growers association in Aceh. Other residual realities from the conflict era include extortion by ex-Free Aceh Movement members and armed highway robberies. The local paper, Serambi, tends to amplify their chilling effectby splashing cartoon re-enactments across the front page. Meanwhile, proceeds from Aceh's oil and gas fields - shared by the province and Jakarta - continue to dip as the reserves there are exhausted.


Optimism Returns

Nevertheless, the development community has seeded a broad return of basic family businesses - roadside convenience shops, cafes, farming operations - and helped spawn new service companies, such as automobile rental companies and Internet providers. And in the traditional Islamic spirit, the money has spread through family and friends throughout the city.

Now, herds of brand new buzzing motorbikes clog the streets, where bulldozers once ploughed the piles of post-tsunami debris like huge drifts of snow. The new look and feel of Aceh has some well-placed leaders dreaming of a bright, cosmopolitan future - a 21st century economy to complement Singapore and Malaysia, just across the Straights of Malacca.

"The origins of Aceh are as a trading hub; Acehnese pepper went to Boston," says Said Faisal, the economic chief of the Indonesian government's reconstruction agency in Aceh. An Acehnese by birth and trained in the insurance industry in America, Mr. Faisal recalls the Acehnese glory days before Dutch colonial meddling, when the sultanate was a key locus of IndianOcean trade, and European emissaries curried favor in Banda Aceh. "The roots are there. And I don't see any obstacles to bringing it back. In five years, the Acehnese will build back the ability to make relationships with the international community."

Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf, who's had a dizzying two years of his own, rising from imprisoned Free Aceh Movement leader to democratically elected executive, is juggling a bevy of economic initiatives, from stamping out corruption to halting illegal logging to courting international investors. Meetings with him are punctuated by aides seeking his signature on letters ofapproval for myriad causes and ventures.

Talented Acehnese who fled the province are also returning to win reconstruction contracts and provide consulting work. Achmad Fadhiel worked as a consultant with the International Finance Corporation after the tsunami. He's stayed on to be the CFO of government-owned fertilizer firm Iskander Muda.

"I had mixed feelings," says 42-year-old Mr. Fadhiel, who worked as a corporate banker in Jakarta for 18 years. "It was the same airport terminal building in Banda Aceh as when I left [in 1973,at the age of eight]. But it's about social responsibility. After many years in the banking industry I can give people some advice about financing. I'm having a lot of informal chats."

Everybody seems to be watching the movements of the talented and wealthy among the Acehnese diaspora-pegged at around one million people spread from Malaysia and greater Indonesia all the way to an enclave in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The re-entry of expatriates will send a strong signal to international investors about the health of Aceh. And, equally important, it will spur local businesspeople to take the leap into industries like agricultural and seafood processing and packing, a logical first step in adding value to the Aceh economy. "The question is will the spirit of entrepreneurship come back?" says Paul McMahon, a consultant with the Indonesian reconstruction agency who is organizing an Aceh venture fund for small and medium businesses.

The closest thing to a 21st century reality in Aceh is the port of Sabang on the island of Weh, which thrusts out of the ocean15 kilometers northwest of Banda Aceh. It's the best situated harbor in the province, deep, sheltered and facing the open ocean at the mouth of the Malaccas. Established as a free tradeport by the Dutch at the turn of the last century, today a steady stream of container ships cruise to and from Singapore, Malaysia and China, tantalizingly close but still out of reach.

Sabang promoters are looking to change that. Last October, Irish outfit Dublin Ports agreed to spearhead a major upgrade of the port to accommodate container ships. With modern docks, Sabang could theoretically grab a piece of the trans-shipment trade in Asia from the backed-up gateways in Singapore and Penang, Malaysia and Shanghai. Sabang officials, including new Mayor Munawar Lisa, a former Free Aceh Movement official educated in the U.S., would also like to restore the island's free-trade zone status (which led to steady car imports as recently as 2003).

And island leaders want to redevelop Sabang's whitewashed, Dutch-era stucco shops into a brand-name shopping mecca, centered around a new high-rise hotel. That would complement the island's international backpacker tourism at beach bungalows tucked away in some of Weh's sleepier coves. Already, downtown Sabang has a whiff of international flair, the colonial architectural lines melting into a gold-accented mosqueon the hill above town. There's wireless Internet in the central business district. Divers first discovered the island's reefs in the 1980s and with only light damage from the tsunami, Weh has hosted NGO workers and adventure travelers since early 2005.

Aceh's international connections got a further boost this fall with a new direct flight to Kuala Lumpur. But more than a year after the Irish announced they would build the port, they've still not been able to hash out an agreement with local authorities that will allow Dublin Ports to begin work on the international docks.

It's an indicator of the pace of business in Aceh, as the democratically elected government put in place early this year finds its legs. Still, a Dublin Ports official maintains the limbo period is comparable to other international deals he's worked on, and the company is committed to investing in Aceh. "We're prepared to wait," he says. Asking that his name not be used, he says he hopes docks to serve local Acehnese trade will open at the end of 2008.

So far the only notable trade item of late in Sabang has been a late-model, red Ferrari, which mysteriously showed up in August and led to some wild speculation among locals about the owner. Right now, the port still isn't duty free and with the taxes not paid on the car, it sits in hock with customs officials.

It, even more than the hustle of downtown Aceh, is an apt marker of the hopes of a place emerging from a dark period, and the realities it is slowly overcoming.



Mr. Brooks is a free-lance journalist based in Aceh.

A weekend in ... Bali. yay!

I just spent the best weekend in Bali - nothing like escaping one beautiful, little under-developed tropical island for another beautiful, bigger, overdeveloped one.

My mate Rob, from Adelaide, told me a month or two ago that he was attending a wedding in Bali for his friend Greg, who was marrying an Indonesian girl. So I invited myself along as his hot date and was the official gatecrasher for the day.

I arrived Fri night and went to a gorgeous little resort in the rice paddies around Legian, where we had some nice food and drinks with the group of Aussie friends and family. Spent half of the night in the pool, which was wicked :)

Saturday morning Rob and I headed for a lovely spa resort and got ourselves a Balinese special spa and scrub treatment, to relax ourselves for the celebrations of the afternoon ... while the massage and scrub were relaxing, we arrived late back at the hotel and had a mad rush to get ready (in about 15 mins) to leave for the wedding. But made it in time, and from the hotel we caught a bus up the hill to the wedding venue.

The venue was somewhere north of Kuta, on a hill top overlooking the sea. You could see down to the beach over the top of beautiful pink and orange beauganvilleas. It was an amazing traditional West Javan wedding, and the wedding costumes were beautiful. Greg works in the oil industry in Kuala Lumpur, and his bride Vita is from an Indonesian oil industry family, so there were plenty of important people there, not to mention that the wedding was totally lavish]. At the entrance to the venue were about ten large, gaudy signs from a range of oil companies, wishing the couple a happy wedding. Crazy!

Being traditional, Greg had to convert to Islam and go through quite a lengthy preparation process. The ceremony went for quite some time - about 3 hours - and involved a number of important religious and family figures. There was even explicit statements of the wedding 'contract' that Greg had to agree to before signing along the dotted line. It was really interesting to witness.

The reception celebrations were great. What I liked about them were the traditions that symbolise different things in a marriage, that are missed out of a typical western wedding. There were also lots of fun things, like the couple and their parents throwing lollies and gifts over their heads to the crowd, which ensured a mad scramble!

The logistics of the wedding were perfect, with the arrival of the bride and groom (in a new costume, #349302) time perfectly with the beautiful sunset. Once they were seated on stage (it really felt like watching royalty, and the wedding seemed like it was mostly for show and status - but I think this is normal in Indonesian culture!), there was a traditional dancing and drumming show which was great as well.

...and the wedding was alcohol free... which for us Aussies was a bit difficult to handle given that the wedding was at 2pm and didn't finish til 6:30. So by the time the food came out we were starving and really in need of a beer... I was just happy with the food - so many things I can't get here in Simeulue: mushrooms (4 types), capsicum (all colours), lasagne, red meat, not to mention ICECREAM (4 flavours, fudge sauce and SPRINKLES!). The only alcohol we had was the rum in the rum 'n' raisin icecream!

Afterwards we headed out on the town in Legian, we were a group of about 10 people. Hit up a couple of bars before the remaining crew (which was only 6 of us by the time we left the bar at 1am) cruised to one of the biggest clubs in Bali - the Karma Sutra. Classic name. There was a quite dodgy cover band on stage, and drinks were expensive but it was good fun getting out on the dance floor and we were a bit of a novelty for the locals! After getting home around 3:30 we jumped in the pool and had a few more beers before turning in around 5.

Unfortunately the fun had to end Sunday afternoon, and the day disappeared due to sleep and a late breakfast!

Bali was ok, but just as I expected. If I ever go back there I'm getting right out of Kuta and Legian and all that crappy touristy stuff. The reason I haven't been to Bali is because there are so many Aussies there, and I can drink in a pub with Aussies back at home. The other side of it is that many of them are old (50+) and gross and picking up hot 20 year old Indonesian girls. Yuck! What surprised me though was how empty the place seemed - I guess it's still a hangover from the bombings, plus it's not quite peak season yet - that's in December. The club we went to was probably only about 1/4 full. Still, I was happy with that - the less drunk Australians the better.

So anyway Rob, if you're reading this, thanks a bunch for a great weekend and letting me gatecrash Greg's wedding. Next time you'll have to make it to Simeulue.

f*@$#(g indonesian airlines, again!

If you thought I'd had enough stuffing around in airports, here's another tale.

I spent another 5 hours on Sunday coming back from Bali... first I had to fly from Denpasar to Jakarta, then Jakarta to Medan before a short flight on Monday morning back to Simeulue (a lot of travelling considering it's not actually that far. About 4 1/2 hours flying).

Surprisingly I made it to Jakarta without incident. But then...

My flight from Jakarta to Medan was delayed by 2 hours, so I paid $40 to change my ticket to another airline and earlier flight. Then when I went to the boarding gate, they told me THAT flight was delayed by 2 hours due to mechanical problems, and wouldn't leave til 10pm - an hour after my original flight. Talk about pissed off! I was ready to swing a punch...

Then, to top it off, considering I had so much time on my hands and didn't want to sit in the boring, dark lounge for another two hours (well, had already been waiting for ages), I went for a wander for a while - and almost missed my plane! In the meantime they had rectified the mechanical problem early, called the flight (in the lounge only) and the plane left an hour early... I had to sprint to the plane, and was the last to board... bloody hell!

I'm sure there will be plenty more tales like this to come!

Good weather for ducks.

Ahhh it's just started PISSING down again, welcome to my life!

It's always raining here, and it doesn't just rain, it buckets down. Good thing is they are intermittent showers most of the time... although it's the rainy season now, so it can set in and rain heavily for a good hour or even a whole morning.

There is so much water lying around, the island has a really high water table and not very good drainage, so it's sodden all the time. Amazing. Some of the houses that have been built for people are constantly surrounded by water.

Not surprisingly, malaria and dengue are a problem in this place.

My usual ramblings

Well thank god it's not raining today. It has been pouring down in this place almost all of last week and the entire weekend, making it very difficult to get outside and do things.

I spent last week in Salang doing a monitoring and evaluation of our WatSan program. Marty (our Monitoring and Evaluation delegate) came over from Banda Aceh and we had a week-long program of beneficiary surveys, GPS-ing of the location of our latrines, meetings with field staff and compiling information. It was good fun, especially going around to the households and interviewing people in the pouring rain, and teaching the field officers how to use the GPS. And playing frisbee with the local kids on the road. In a few weeks we'll compile all our info and make a pretty report for the big wigs.

This week we've properly kickstarted a revamp of how we procure, warehouse and deliver all our WatSan materials, in conjunction with our Logistics and Finance people. The reason behind it is to be more efficient, in order to meet our December 08 finishing deadline. Currently we're only building about 15 latrines a month; to finish on time we have to build close to 60. So lots of work to do.

So in logistics terms, instead of sending over septic tanks and cement and other goodies by the very unreliable Sinabang ferry, and getting a lot of other materials locally (either through suppliers here in Sinabang, or supplied by the community which is cheap but really slow), we're going to get everything from Medan in much larger quantities and stick it on a landing barge that can deliver it directly to our field site, where we'll build a big new warehouse. Then we don't have to truck everything from Sinabang on crappy roads, which takes forever. We only have to truck it from the port to the warehouse and to each household. Should be much faster and more cost efficient. I'm pretty excited at the prospect of it actually, hoping to have it up and running by January.

But what I'm more excited about is going to Bali on Friday - yay! I am gatecrashing the wedding of my friend Rob, well it's not his wedding but he's going, so I'm gonna be his hot date. Should be great fun. I've had lots of fun and games getting tickets back though, because my original return flights were cancelled, bastards... so it's ended up costing me a lot more! Still, it will be worth it for all the good fun we're gonna have, plus getting off this island is always a good idea, and I'm also looking forward to wearing shorts, and just bathers to swim in. Hoorah!

Not much else to add really. Bye.

2nd Nov ramblings :)

I came back from a day trip to Salang last night. Japanese Red Cross organised a big handing over ceremony for their housing and health centre projects, which are now finished there. They invited all the big wigs from JRC, the Federation (or IFRC, which coordinates all of the RC societies), the local construction authority BRR and even the governor of Aceh. The NGOs on Sim were also invited, as well as the locals.

They set up stalls with activities for kids, food to sell, beautiful crafts from Salang to buy and even a stage for local dancing and a singing contest at the end of the afternoon! It was a good day and it went really well. Chigusa, the Japanese delegate who organised all the festivities, has been stressed for the last month, and was looking pretty tired yesterday by the end! But I think she was generally happy with the result.

Unforutnately the govt also organised the official opening of the new Lasikin airport terminal (a very fancy building for such a little island with hardly any visitors!), which meant that all the important people didn't arrive until 4pm (was supposed to start at 2), so a late start meant a late finish.

We are not supposed to travel at night here, becaues the roads are so dodgy, but I just wanted to get home - and I'm glad I did because we have a teleconference with Melbourne office this morning that was organised yesterday! - and by the time we left, which was 6:45 - it had already started to get dark. Luckily we made it back in under 2 hours - which is a record, our driver Misbah went a bit faster than normal!

The head of IFRC is a New Zealand bloke based in Banda Aceh, and he and his daughter (who was visiting on holiday) came to dinner with us Wed night at my boss' place. So it was good to meet them and have some nice Indonesian food and a few bevvies.

We have a week-long Monitoring and Evaluation of our WatSan program next week, which will really help us to know exactly where we're at and how things are going. We have an M&E delegate, Marty, coming here specifically for this purpose. He's a champ too, he's from Adelaide and I did my Red Cross training with him back in 2005. There will be G&T!

In terms of my health and well-being (as you're all very concerned), I'm feeling fine. Not overly tired or anything, just back to normal I think. I've been out and about in the field, active on the weekends, and so far it's all good. Everyone is BA is getting sick though - when I was there this week people were sounding terrble and half of them were working from home (or just trying to sleep it off!). I really hope I haven't picked up something from them, as I've gotta be here next week for this visit to Salang.

Rah! that's all.

F*$#(ing pissed off!

I have had it. Today has gone to shit. I am sick of sitting around in airports. I was supposed to fly to Banda Aceh today, and booked it way ahead of time, Tuesday last week – leaving it with our admin person in BA to sort out. So I went off to Salang, and was away for the whole week. Got back about 6:30 Friday night.

But apparently our admin person didn’t get the email (although its in my Sent Items) and so it wasn’t organised. So after going into the office on Saturday and just checking to see if it had been confirmed, and it wasn’t, I tried to reach her – and couldn’t until Sunday afternoon – and by then the UN flight was full, as was the Garuda Indonesia flight from Medan to BA. So they had to do a rushed ticket purchase of the only available flight – Simeulue to Medan – on Sunday. The plan was then to rock up at the Garuda counter (and if they were still full, then try other airlines) in Medan and try and get a ticket.

So that’s what I did. I arrived in Medan at 9am, and have been sitting around trying to get a ticket all day. It’s now 1:45pm. And I had to fork out over 1 million Rupiah to a tout who probably took a massive commission, but it’s the only way I seem to be able to organise a ticket. The normal price is only 500,000 Rp. And the final straw is that I don’t board the f#&$ing plane until 4:30pm!

I think I’m destined never to attend one of these WatSanTechnical Group meetings in BA, the reason I’m trying to get there. The last two meetings, which are a month apart, there were problems with planes not flying. This time we’ve got an incompetent admin assistant.

Anyway.

So we’ll see how much longer my computer battery lasts. I feel like just catching the next plane home. It’s so bloody frustrating.

Apart from all of THAT SHIT, I am actually enjoying being back. On the weekend, Paul (my boss) and I went for a mammoth 4.5 hour mountain bike ride around the island – and I can tell you, this place is NOT flat!!! So many steep hills, and with dirt roads laden with trucks, bulldozers, buffalo, cows, people and motorbikes, it makes for an interesting trek. I guess now I definitely know that I am not fit. I was walking up most of those damn hills! But it was great fun. About an hour before we got back (after getting a bit lost trying to do a round trip and instead turning around and going back the way we came!) it started raining, so it ended up being very muddy. I was covered from head to toe in the stuff, not to mention the bike I was riding! We got laughed at all the way home. I don’t think it is used to being taken off road – it was pretty clean before I got my hands on it, and the gears weren’t very good – they were really difficult to change when your hands are slippery (instead of the ones you ‘click’ up or down a gear, you turn a piece of rubber that is attached around your handlebars…blergh), which isn’t good when you’re trying to change gears quickly going up hills!

So after completely dying, I went home and slept! Early Sunday morning I went for a kayak on Sinabang Bay, which was great. It’s really beautiful, there are lots of little bays and islands to cruise around, and a few ships to check out in the harbour. Unfortunately there is a bunch of rubbish in the water, which is really sad, and I only saw one fish, so I’m not sure how clean the water is! But you can see where the tsunami came through. Usually there would be mangroves growing along the shoreline, and they are absent in most places. But it was a pleasant two hour trip, waving and yelling out to the local fishermen who are cruising around, following the coastline, checking out the little islands. It was really nice.

I also took a drive around the coast to Simeulue Resort, aka Willie's, which is accommodation for surfers about 20 mins away on a terrible pot-holed road. I was picking up a surfboard for a friend in BA. The woman that runs Willie's, Nina (his wife), is lovely. The resort is a beautiful wooden 2-storey place overlooking a nice bay, and is a relaxing place to hang out.

If I ever make it back to Sim (although it seems a hell of a lot easier to get there than to leave it!), I am going straight to Salang on Wednesday after I get back, as Japanese Red Cross is holding a Red Cross festival there all week, where they are handing over their housing and health centre projects. So they’ve invited a heap of JRC bigwigs, Head of Indonesian RC and other NGOs on the island. Should be fun.

Ahh I’ve had enough of typing. I’m getting out of this smoky café (although the mie goreng was great) and paying my $10 to sit out the rest of my waiting time in the rich people's lounge. Only 2.5 hours to go. Hoorah.

Dinghy fever for dummies (ie me!)

For those wanting to know specifics of this bloody dengue business:

Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are acute febrile diseases, found in the tropics, with a geographical spread similar to malaria. Dengue is transmitted to humans by the Aedes aegypti (rarely Aedes albopictus) mosquito, which feeds during the day.

Signs and symptoms
* A sudden onset of fever, with severe headache, muscle and joint pains (myalgias and arthralgias - severe pain gives it the name break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease)

* Rashes; the dengue rash is characteristically bright red petechia and usually appears first on the lower limbs and the chest - in some patients, it spreads to cover most of the body.

* There may also be gastritis with some combination of associated abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.

Some cases develop much milder symptoms, when no rash is present, be misdiagnosed as influenza or other viral infection. Thus, travelers from tropical areas may inadvertently pass on dengue in their home countries, having not been properly diagnosed at the height of their illness. Patients with dengue can only pass on the infection through mosquitoes or blood products while they are still febrile.

The classic dengue fever lasts about six to seven days, with a smaller peak of fever at the trailing end of the fever (the so-called "biphasic pattern"). Clinically, the platelet count will drop until the patient's temperature is normal.

Diagnosis

The diagnosis of dengue is usually made clinically. The classic picture is high fever with no localising source of infection, a petechial rash with thrombocytopenia and relative leukopenia.

There exists a WHO definition of dengue haemorrhagic fever that has been in use since 1975; all four criteria must be fulfilled:

* Fever

* Haemorrhagic tendency (positive tourniquet test, spontaneous bruising, bleeding from mucosa, gingiva, injection sites, etc.; vomiting blood, or bloody diarrhea)

* Thrombocytopaenia (<100,000 platelets per mm³ or estimated as less than 3 platelets per high power field)

* Evidence of plasma leakage (hematocrit more than 20% higher than expected, or drop in haematocrit of 20% or more from baseline following IV fluid, pleural effusion, ascites, hypoproteinaemia)

Dengue shock syndrome is defined as dengue haemorrhagic fever plus:

* Weak rapid pulse,

* Narrow pulse pressure (less than 20 mm Hg)

or,

* Hypotension for age;

* Cold, clammy skin and restlessness.

* Treatment

Increased oral fluid intake is recommended to prevent dehydration. If the patient is unable to maintain oral intake, supplementation with intravenous fluids may be necessary to prevent dehydration and significant hemoconcentration. A platelet transfusion is rarely indicated if the platelet level drops significantly (below 20,000) or if there is significant bleeding.

The presence of melena may indicate internal gastrointestinal bleeding requiring platelet and/or red blood cell transfusion.

It is very important to avoid Aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications. These drugs are often used to treat pain and fever, but in this case, they may actually aggravate the bleeding tendency associated with some of these infections. If dengue is suspected, patients should receive instead acetaminophen preparations to deal with these symptoms

Prevention

1. Mosquito control
* Eliminating or reducing the mosquito vector for dengue.

* Public spraying for mosquitoes is the most important aspect of this vector.

* Application of larvicides such as Abate® to standing water is more effective in the long term control of mosquitoes.

* Initiatives to eradicate pools of standing water (such as in flowerpots) have proven useful in controlling mosquito-borne diseases.

Promising new techniques have been recently reported from Oxford University on rendering the Aedes mosquito pest sterile.

Recently, researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, have developed an world awarded new technology to monitor and control the mosquito, using traps, chemical attractants, handheld computers and GPS georeferenced maps. The MI Dengue system can show precisely where the mosquitoes are inside the urban area, in a very short period of time.

2. Personal protection
Personal prevention consists of the use of mosquito nets, repellents containing NNDB or DEET, cover exposed skin, use DEET-impregnated bednets, and avoiding endemic areas. This is also important for malaria prevention.

Finally, back in Indo.

Well. Wasn't that a fun little jaunt back to Australia?

I have to say, I don't really think I needed that long to R&R from dengue fever, but I'm not complaining - the last month or so back in Radelaide has been great. While I haven't done a lot, went insane due to lack of exercise, and was pretty bored during the week when everyone was at work, it has been great.

It was a nice time to be back in Radelaide too - the weather was great, and lots of things have been happening: My boss from my life at DWLBC had his first child; I watched the AFL Grand Final (sucked in Port Power!) and the Rugby World Cup; I went to visit my parents back at home in Jamestown; and I got to catch up with a whole bunch of people that realy I miss while I'm here in Indo. Not to mention downing a few Pale Ales to make up for lost time :)

Some f&%#ing w&$#er stole my bag while I was out at Mojo's one night, so I no longer had a phone, keys or anything of value from my wallet. I think the most annoying part was the loss of my keys, which meant I couldn't lock up my bike, which is normally my main mode of transport. So it was on to the bus I went. Good for reading or listening to music, but no form of exercise and not half as enjoyable!

And THEN, a blood test at the travel doctor revealed something very curious: apparently I didn't have dengue fever at all. I had dengue antibodies from a past occurrence (news to me! it must have been VERY mild as I have never suffered symptoms of dengue), but it was another mysterious virus, not dengue, that had me in hospital on a drip. To be honest, I didn't believe it. All the classic symptoms were there. I would think that Jakarta would deal with dengue cases a hell of a lot more than Radelaide. So I'm sticking with the Indonesians on this one.

Anyway, seems like it was much easier to get out of Jakarta than it was to get back here! Firstly, Aust Red Cross booked me a return ticket from Jakarta, so I had to go back through it - when normally I would fly directly to Singapore from Radelaide and then to Medan. Plus, being the end of Ramadan (Idul Fitri), and everyone on holidays, I had to go to Banda Aceh because no-one was working in the Simeulue office; yet the expats are working in the BA office 17-19 Oct. So here I am. And annoyingly, instead of booking me on a flight from Jakarta to Banda Aceh (a direct flight) they booked me in at a hotel in Medan for a night and then a flight the next day to BA, when the same flight continued on. It would have saved them the cost of a night's accommodation, and me another leg of the journey and f$*#ing around in airports. Stupid. Not sure why the Melbourne office is so illogical. Adding insult to injury I now have to fly back to Medan to go to Simeulue, because to get back before Monday, I have to fly with Susi Air (which only flies from Medan); the UN planes b/t BA and Simeulue don't resume til Monday due to Idul Fitri. So ANOTHER two flights to go on Fri and Sat, before I even get to Sim. Bloody hell!!!

Ok, enough complaining. I'm back. Finally. And it has been a cruisey few days in hotels, even if the airport thing is a pain in the ass. And today after 'work' - which entailed a few hours in the office catching up with the other expats here - we went to the 'cement factory beach' (so called because of the massive, ugly cement factory built right on the beach there! boo!!!) for a surf. I can't surf to save myself, but I was out there giving it a go. It was pretty hard work, but nice to get out amongst it, and also to get some bloody exercise! I'm looking forward to that part now that I'm well enough. Feeling pretty knackered tonight though, I can tell you!

Scarily enough 5 Indonesians died at that beach last week. The current, waves and rips are quite strong and unpredictable, especially since the tsunami so I've been told, and it's hard work swimming there. When we first went out I got dragged a fair way on my board and ended up barreling straight towards the rusted out hull of an old tanker shipwrecked there. Not somewhere I'd like to be, to be honest. Managed to avoid that obstacle and get back on the beach, so we moved further up. Still got pounded by those waves. They're dumpers!

So, will see how things go at work next week. Looking forward to arriving in Sim, and getting back into it.

Dinghy fever

ok. So I had dinghy fever. All I felt like doing was fishing all day. Har Har! Well, kinda - I feel like sleeping. Apparently that's how you're supposed to feel after getting dengue.

Seriously, all the crap I had to go through with this bloody dengue fever. Stupid mosquitoes! What I can't work out is how the little bugger managed to bite me - dengue-carrying mozzies apparently come during the day (malaria-carrying ones come at dawn and dusk). They do like my blood though. A lot. I am always covered in bites.

Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.... well my last post was actually the beginning. The results of the second blood test showed no malaria, which was good, but what was actually wrong with me?

Still feeling shite, went and slept at home, and then with my temperature fluctuating left right and centre and achy muscles continuing, they decided that I needed proper medical care and so put me on a plane to Jakarta. Flying business class for the first time would have been way better if I could enjoy it! D'oh! Oh well. Garuda's business class wasn't that different from the economy anyway :(

So, straight to the emergency department at the hospital in Jakarta and straight onto a drip. The doctor took one look at my results and other symptoms I'd developed since then and said, quite matter-of-factly, 'you've got dengue fever.'

Thank goodness my colleague Sue was with me, she was great. Not that the hospital staff didn't look after me, in fact they were great too, but it was nice to have someone there who was an Aussie, and great company. Not to mention willing to get me nice food and drinks and chocolate! Sushi beats hospital food hands down any day.

Well, being on a drip for 4 days was kinda boring. And a pain in the ass to try and carry the drip around everywhere. My one foray down to the cafe (in order to break the boredom of lying around in the same room/bed all day and night) was an adventure in itself ... everyone had a good stare at the bule (foreigner), plus getting myself + drip in between all the tables in the cafe was fun ... I made people get up and rearrange themselves.. hehe! I should have got myself one of those white gowns and had my ass hanging out the back, that would have been more authentic! :)

Anyway, a hundred blood pressure, temperature and blood tests later, I was finally discharged on Saturday night, once my platelet numbers had reached the safe level of 100,000 (in fact I made it to 101,000). It had got down to around 50,000 (the normal level is 150-400,000) which meant I managed to avoid the need to fly to Singapore for a blood transfusion. Hoorah! So they put me up in the flashy Park Lane Hotel where I could relax by the pool :) A couple of days later another blood test saw my platelet levels at 213,000 so I was ready to get out of there - on a plane straight home to recover.

So now I'm just enjoying being home, it's almost like a holiday... apart from the fact I feel tired. All day.

So who knows when I'll go back to Simeulue. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Think I could scam time enough to see the AFL Grand Final? I'll work on it.

Layin' low...

Being sick SUX!

Especially when you don't know what the hell is wrong with you.

Well, the good thing is, after 2 blood tests, I know what's not wrong with me: I don't have malaria, so it seems that i just have some weird viral infection. Still doesn't make me feel any better.

There are no clinics on Simeulue, so I stayed in Banda Aceh after my weekend here (which mainly involved not sleeping, lying on the couch and slamming down drugs to try and make me feel better ... so much for a break from Simeulue) so that I could access the UN clinic. Interestingly, there was no doctor there, so they referred me to the hospital up the road to get the blood test. And they took my blood in the waiting room, with no gloves and no alcohol on the swab! boo!!! Dodgy... hence the decision to get a second opinion and go to another lab for a second test.

There's only so much tv i can watch!!! I can't concentrate very well, and get tired easily... so I can only read or work a little. So motivation is low, and boredom high. Anyone feeling like calling up is more than welcome! :)

The practicalities of Simeulue

Ok, so people have been asking me about every day things. So here's the go for food:

• Nasi goreng (fried rice), mie goreng (fried noodles), in fact everything goreng... I'm gonna be rolling out of this place! (how can Indonesians be so healthy when everything they eat is fried?)
• LOTS of chili....
• LOTS of rice ... it, or noodles, are served with everything...
• Lots of fish... lobster and shrimp easily available. It's an island after all...
• Eating out is pretty cheap, you can get a good meal of rice, fried eggplant, tofu, tempei, shrimps, chili, cassava leaf, fish, sometimes chicken or beef rendang, for a few bucks. "Bungkus" (takeaway) comes wrapped in a banana leaf and brown paper secured by a rubber band :)
• You can get most veg easily - pumpkin, eggplant, cucumber, carrots, tomatoes, avocadoes, bok choy (but no capsicum, boo!). Although it's all imported from 'the mainland'.
• I love the buah (fruit) here too: pineapples, mangoes, rambutans, mangosteens, mandarins, bananas... apples are expensive and come from Thailand. I don't eat them; there are lots of other, better choices!
• Bread is McDonald's-sugar-loaded-style. Sweet, fluffy, white high-GI stuff.
• Western food - anything like pasta, pesto, olives, cheese, yoghurt, olive oil, meat, proper sliced white bread, in fact all the yummy stuff, we need to get from Banda Aceh.

For the all-important alcohol, our main man on Simeulue is Ranu, who sells it under the counter here at his little Bule (foreigners) shop - he can get tiger beer, Johnny Walker (Red or Black, there's even a choice!) and gin... but it'll cost ya, and you're not allowed to drink it publicly. The other option is to go to the Chinese shop for a more limited spirit selection! I miss a good Australian red.

Other drinks - fruit juice easy to get, and the best of all: avocado and chocolate juice. Like a thickshake - delicious! (sugar hit)

They have a packet drink called 3-in-1; it's a coffee-sugar-powdered milk concoction that has you bouncing off the walls for hours....gross.

Hmm... that's all.

Eight people die by wild animal attack .. ?!

hmmm.... another interesting one!

Harian Aceh, Banda Aceh.

Andi Basrun, Head of BKSDA, a government conservation agency, said that from January to August 2007, 8 people died by wild animal attack.

"It is recorded that eight people died because of elephants, tigers, or crocodile. Several people also suffer injuries," he said on Wednesday (22/8).

Relevant extracts from the Qanuns on Sharia Law

this is a worry...

ARTICLE
Perda 5/2000 on The Implementation of Islamic Shari’a requires everyone to respect the implementation of Sharia Law in Aceh.

Qanun 14/2003 on [The prohibition of] Khalwat (usually defined as close proximity between a male and female who have no marriage or kin relationship, in a place or situation where intimate contact is possible) prohibits everyone from committing Khalwat.

PUNISHMENT
To commit Khalwat: Caning between 3-9 lashes, and/or a fine of 2.5 to 10 million rupiah.

ARTICLE 22(1)
Prohibits everyone, community group, government apparatus and business/enterprise from provide facilities to people committing Khalwat or protecting people committing Khalwat.

ARTICLE 6
To provide facilities or to protect people committing Khalwat.

PUNISHMENT
Imprisonment between 2-6 months and/or a fine of 5 to 15 million rupiah.

Community Khalwat Raids:

Community raids on Khalwaters are frequent across Aceh... These are rarely initiated by WH but public spirited 'neighbours' who often beat and humiliate alleged offenders before handing them over to WH. Think it won't happen to you? Think again:

1. In the last 7 day period 2 BRR (govt construction authority) partner organisations have reported incidents of raids by communities on suspected 'khalwaters' in our community. Neither of these incidents made the press - many others have done in the past 6 or so incidents of 'khalwat' motivated raids by communities on the staff of BRR partner organisations have been logged over the last 2 years - doubtless there are many more which aren't reported by staff members. Each incident has the potential to become violent and may lead to legal proceedings against muslim staff. At the very least 'raided' staff members will be traumatised and your community acceptance strategy in tatters (not to mention that any incident wil have a global effect on province wide acceptance).

The recent incidents were:
a. A national male staff member was suspected of co-habiting with a female national and was beaten by the community.
b. 3 international male staff members and a national female were hauled out of their house and subjected to an unpleasant ordeal by over a hundred aggrieved neighbours. The 4 had overnighted once in a communal guesthouse in an entirely innocent (to them) fashion. In this incident the female national staff member was a Christian and therefore, technically, not subject to Sharia law. But note that once a community's interest in your living arrangements has been aroused it is too late to point this out as they will fall back on the fact that the law enjoins all to 'respect and honour' the implementation of Sharia law - as they did on this occasion.

Musings

What I find amazing is all the money being spent here unnecessarily - there are plenty of other places that need it a lot more (take Liberia for example). Everyone has a tv, electricity, motorbikes - I even saw a guy cutting his lawn with a whipper snipper this morning. This is not poverty. It was a natural disaster, but here casualties were minimal and the people weren't starving before it happened.

The money pouring in has provided plenty of additional wealth which will continue into the future as what was donated to this cause MUST be spent here. Still, the money is not being spent all that efficiently. For example, in some places the local (and very corrupt) govt construction agency, BRR, is building houses for people, and then Red Cross societies have also promised houses, so there is double-up. I don't even have a house - let alone two (ok, so its all relative but you get the idea)!

Plus it has created a false economy: people are leaving their traditional subsistence farming activities to take up brick manufacture or construction work, which will cease as soon as the NGOs move out – when this business dries up they will have to go back to what they did before, and will have twice as much work to do to re-clear and re-cultivate their land, which will have laid dormant for all this time… sometimes I wonder if we are doing more harm than good.

It's Tuesday morning and I'm not motivated.

Things have been good here on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. Last week we had the new program manager, Virginia, come for a few days to check out some of the programs. It was good having another female in the house, and one who likes good food! (and she brought real bread and pesto with her, rare treats on this island!).

As I never got to BA last week due to the UN plane having engine troubles, I went with her and one of the Livelihoods field officers for a drive around the island to have a look at some of the projects they are doing. There are some small-scale microfinance projects going on, such as vegetable plots and fish farms. The fish inside were amazing - blue and red spotted coral fish, colourful lobsters and sea cucumbers. They catch them as fingerlings and then grow them in standing net cages just offshore. You take a canoe out to them.

It was great to drive to a different part of the island - although it was slow going with all the potholes in the road. We skirted around a big bay, through some beautiful scenery; the rainforest is gorgeous. I let out a gasp though when we came over a hill to a view of total destruction: a government-owned, 10 hectare palm plantation. They had clearfelled 10 ha of beautiful forest, as far as the eye could see, to plant palm trees for the palm oil industry. I was extremely saddened to see it. There is all sorts of raping and pillaging of natural resources here. Whole mountain faces destroyed for the rock and gravel to build roads and make cement. We even mine sand and coral from the beach to build our latrines and soakaway pits. The coral is dead mind you, but its still not sustainable. The cost of sourcing materials from elsewhere is very prohibitive, so it's a tough one to get around.

This week our head of office, Paul, came back from R&R and so i'm no longer acting in his position (and having to sign a million forms more than usual)! We also have Marty visiting from BA to do some monitoring and evaluation work. He's from Radelaide as well, and I did my Red Cross training with him in 05. Things are so exciting here that we polished off half a bottle of johnny walker red last night and then watched the Simpsons movie (third time! it still cracks me up). Not a bad effort for a school night.

I'm going to BA tomorrow afternoon and staying over the weekend, so that's something to look forward to. Apparently they are having a party at one of the Red Cross residences (and hopefully it's where I'm staying!). They play touch footy on wednesday nights at the stadium, so it will be good to get out and do some exercise with a new group of people. :) Then the week after I plan to head out to Salang, so it will be good to get out of the office.

The weekend of 13-14 October is Idul Fitri, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, and a looong weekend (Fri - Tues holiday). So I've booked a flight to Medan, planning to go to either Lake Toba, a big crater lake on Sumatra, or to Sabang to the north, for some snorkelling/diving. Should be nice whatever I do. Some of the staff are going to Toba, so I might join them. It's a mass exodus during Ramadan - most of my staff are taking leave during this time because its the quiet period while the locals fast over Ramadan, and then celebrate during Idul Fitri - and as most of them are not from Simeulue, they want to either go home to visit family and friends or go on a short break away from here. I can see why - I may have some mental health issues when I come home :). It's such a small quiet place. You get a bit bored after a while. The expat community is shrinking, and soon I will be one of the few left. I would liken Banda Aceh more to Monrovia than Simeulue, in terms of a big expat community with lots of activity going on and money pouring in.

Still, life could be worse - on the weekend a small group of us spent a night at Alus Alus, at the beach house. More reading, sleeping, eating, relaxing and swimming in the washing machine of a beach. Ahhh... being stuck on a tropical island has its perks :)

Surf's up!

So I just spent an awesome weekend at Alus Alus beach. This is an hour's drive east from here to a great little place known as "Jock's shack", which is right on the beach near a tiny little village. Currently it has no running water or electricity, because last week it was broken into. Everything was stolen, including the kitchen sink! The expats on the island have rented it for a few months from Jock, who has now moved to New York to take up a position with the UN. Works for us :)

The beach is beautiful, but swimming can be likened to throwing yourself into a washing machine. Rips, strong currents and big waves are the norm. I think any surfer would love it, but also find it frustrating - the waves are big and look surfable, but then they crash and burn pretty quickly! There are some good waves around each end of the bay, where the reef is (or was?!) though.

It's funny seeing the water buffalo come down to the beach each night... almost like the migration of the wildebeeste in the Serengeti!

So we spent a lovely couple of days swimming, boogie boarding, chilling out, reading books, testing out the local rocket fuel, eating and sleeping. Kyle, an Aussie visitor, and I tried our hand at cracking open a coconut... let's just say a machete would have been very handy! Smashing it on the concrete of the water tank stand, followed by some deft knife-work, did the trick.

My arms are dead from fighting the waves on my boogie board, and from the workout I got on the tennis court with Nam (an expat with CordAid) and the locals this morning at 6:30. Any exercise you do on land needs to be done in the cool of the morning or evening. It's just too hot and humid otherwise!

Life is tough. I'm not looking forward to going back to work next week!

A week or two in Simeulue

Well a week and a half has passed in Indonesia. It has just started pouring with rain, and my engineers are just about to head to Salang - it will be a slow, wet drive for them this morning! I am finding things hard to adjust to in some ways. Simeulue is a beautiful, quiet island, with not a lot going on. The people are very friendly, but being an ignorant Australian with very little Bahasa Indonesian, I can't communicate very well except to say "hello" and "how are you", plus buying a few things at the shop with my limited numbers! This is what is most frustrating.

The other expats here are nice bunch, and organise dinners, yoga sessions, games of tennis and bike rides to the beach. It's good fun. Mark, the Aussie I live with, has a kayak which he lets me use. Trouble is, taking it out on my own is a bit tricky, so I haven't done it yet!

I live in a nice house with Mark (Community-Based First Aid delegate), Paul (Head of Office) and his Indonesian wife Poppy (she works for Japanese Red Cross). They are all great. Paul and Mark like a drink, and when they get together they easily finish a bottle of Johnny Walker... Poppy is 4 months pregnant, and her and Paul are looking for their own place. Which will leave Mark and I to our own place (although Mark leaves in a month's time), and soon we are apparently getting a Livelihoods delegate for 4 months. Natasha, our Logistics delegate, plus other visitors, will come and go, but it looks like I might be living on my own a lot.

Actually one thing that worries me is the shrinking pool of expats on the island. Almost everyone is leaving in the next few months. I get the feeling I may be doing a lot of things on my own unless I can get some good local friends, or hang out with the office staff!

I'm still adjusting to the work situation. Being in charge of a program I don't know enough about yet is really frustrating! Luckily Sarah, the previous delegate, set things up well and the team is very capable of going about their activities with limited supervision. Helps me a lot.

I am in the office this week, in an attempt to get my head around all the managerial tasks I must perform. All the fun things associated with project management: directing staff, planning, keeping on top of incoming and outgoing materials, monthly and quarterly reporting, managing a $3m budget and working out what the hell engineering is. Fun and games at the moment, when I'm signing things without much knowledge or experience. Still paranoid about getting ripped off and not sure who's trustworthy or what things are worth in Rupiah. (it's about Rp8000:1AUD)

I'm hoping next week to fly to Banda Aceh for a WatSan Technical Group meeting, in order to meet all the other WatSan staff involved in projects around Aceh province and to get a handle of the various issues associated with our work. Apparently it's usually a shit-fight meeting between NGOs and the Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) that's a waste of time, but I at least want to meet everyone. It will be nice to get back to BA for a bit more civilisation too...

Independence Day and a week in Salang

Today is Indonesia's Independence Day: 17th August. Hooray for public holidays in my first week ! There are flags everywhere and a real sense of anticipation, but driving around this morning, we were unable to find anything going on. The streets were busy, with the usual motorbike traffic, and a lot of people sitting around seemingly waiting for something to happen... the cops had cordoned off a street or two and kept driving around looking important, but I'm still at a loss as to what actually goes on for Independence Day...

Anyway, the usual 2 hour 'lunch break' that restricts trading and movement for prayer at the central mosque still occurred. Since then it's been pissing down so I've been at the office just familiarising myself with a few things and stuffing around on the internet.

I spent 4 days in Salang this week. This is the small district about 3 hours drive from Sinabang within in which we undertake our WatSan program. It's amazing driving around the island because it is now surrounded by up to 100m of exposed coral reef. It looks like rock now, because the coral is dead. But it really shows the geological change caused by the earthquake. The island is really beautiful, palm trees fringing the beaches and rainforest inland. The villages are quite small and close together, and the houses line the road. Many of them are a result of NGO construction projects and look quite new. Interestingly many of them are built from timber that is sourced from New Zealand pine plantations. Makes it a lot more expensive, but thankfully saves the rainforests of Indonesia!

I went to Salang with the 2 engineers, 2 hygiene promoters and 4 construction supervisors and spent the week finding out what we do. To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to construct latrines from brick and cement when wood is more flexible for earthquakes, but bricks are apparently the most easily produced in the villages and therefore we use them. Each household builds their own latrine after an assessment of need, participating in 5 steps of a participatory health/hygiene program and a demonstration of how to construct the latrines. The latrines are a squat plate design and have a mandi (small 'bath' filled with water which is used to flush the latrine) inside. Then a fibreglass septic tank is built behind the latrine with a soakaway pit for the liquid, which is filled with coral and sand and plants are planted in the top to absorb the nutrients. It seems to work well. I was amazed that they use coral for the soakaway pits, it doesn't seem a very environmentally sustainable thing to do - but when the coral is dead, I guess it's not really as vulnerable to damage any more! It's mainly habitat for crabs now.

One problem with the latrines is that there is currently no fully developed method to empty the septic tanks once they are full of sludge. This is something I'd like to solve while I'm here. Apparently some pump designs have been trialed but I'm not sure of the status yet. It's definitely not practical to get a sewage truck in and around the houses to pump out the sludge! A septic tank typically takes 5 years to fill with sludge, so hopefully that's enough time to sort this out...

The component of the WatSan program that needs the most work is the health/hygiene promotion program. We follow a tried and tested participatory method called PHAST, which in itself is an effective method of achieving behaviour change and ownership of infrastructure (and which I used in Liberia), but the problem is the way in which it's executed.

We currently use Indonesian Red Cross "Palang Merah Indonesia" or PMI volunteers to assist in running the sessions, but they are not necessarily highly skilled despite having received some training, and there is currently a shit-fight going on between the volunteers that come from Salang district itself, and those that we carry to the field every second week from Sinabang (here, where we live). This is because they get different per diem rates: 35,000 Rp for Salang volunteers compared to 80,000 for Sinabang - all because they are going outside of their district to do the work. As you can imagine, the Salang volunteers aren't very happy about it! Something I need to sort out.

In addition, I can't really judge too well just how effective the volunteers are at delivering the hygiene sessions, because I don't speak Bahasa Indonesian! So I can only go on speaking style, body language etc. Makes things challenging... I am hoping to really get the PHAST side of things ramped up so its more effective.

I'm spending next week in the office, hopefully this will give me a chance to work out what the hell is going on.

A weekend on a tropical island

Ok, so I've arrived in Simeulue. A lovely little island, only about 100km long, but from the air it looks massive. Still a lot of forest intact, and most people live in villages around the coast. Nice beaches etc - in fact I went for a swim yesterday! We live in the main town of Sinabang, on the eastern end. The main street is a busy place, and you can get most things from the little shops that line it. There's a fruit and veg man just around the corner from our house.. You can't get much bread (well you can get the sweet kind, but it's just wrong!) or other 'western' stuff like cheese or yoghurt, but you can scam some alcohol from the Chinese shop.

Our house is a bit limited: no running water (but there's a pump), a squat toilet (standard), and the shower is a 'mandi' - the traditional bath set-up where you bathe yourself with a ladle from a water basin. It's fine though, we don't need hot water in this weather - it's really hot and humid. We have pay tv though so we can see what's going on in the world and keep up with all the latest hip hop from the states...

There are only a few ex-pats here - I met most of them last night. We had a bit of a bonfire and dinner bash last night at our place. Mark, Paul and Natasha work for ARC (although Natasha leaves in a week for BA), Chigusa and Noriko for Japanese RC, Nam for Cordaid, and John & Jolene for Care. There are apparently a couple of others who live here too that I'm yet to meet.

Our neighbours like putting loud music on at 7am every morning. This morning was a techno version of 'happy birthday'. boo!!!

Before I left BA I went on a driving tour of the place. The path of destruction from the tsunami is definitely still there! A whole swathe of countryside and houses totally wiped off the face of the earth. We saw a boat, and a barge that is a power station, left loftily on top of people's houses... mangroves ripped out of the ground.... whole areas of houses totally destroyed. The infamous mosque you saw on the news that was the only building that survived is almost repaired and back to its former glory. A guy that works for ARC lost his entire family. Really sad but also completely amazing. There is a cement factory near the beach that is about 30m high, and apparently the tsunami totally washed over the top of it. I think I had my jaw dragging along the ground for most of the drive.

What makes me mad is the terrible workmanship involved in the construction of new houses in the areas worst hit. Terrible construction (concrete structures, one brick-width walls), half of them look totally shabby and falling apart already, some are built in the swamp (and won't need a tsunami to flood them, just possibly a high tide?!) and most of them are painted bright orange or pink (this could be ok by the residents, who knows...).

Here in Simeulue they have a brand new airport and there is also much construction going on around Sinabang. I will see more of it on Monday when I go in the field with my WatSan team to Salang, the subdistrict in which I'll be working. On Friday I met 3 of the 4 main staff I'll be managing: Denden and Aduma (senior engineers, one of whom has very limited english!), Anton and Frida (Hygiene Promoters). We also have 4 construction supervisors. We have a newly built, and unfortunately newly vandalised house in Salang that everyone stays in, including the Community First Aid team as well (that Mark manages). They are about to build a badminton court for it, to give staff something to do!

This arvo "the expats" are going for a bike ride down to the beach. Crazy s$&t in this weather, but at least i'll get some exercise! Mark also has a kayak, so I'm hoping to get out on that sometime, the bays here are beautiful.

Juice me up!

At lunch I discovered something totally WONDERFUL.

Avocado juice, with chocolate.

Oh my god.

Weekly security report 6/8/07

"Two reports of Tiger attack for the last 5 days, 1/8, one man from Alue Baro village South of Aceh, found dead in the afternoon with the head split from the body after being attacked by Tiger when he`s working in his land 500 metres from the village.

At the same day the remain of one person living in Lhoong Aceh Besar found by the people after missing since 30/7, he last spotted by his wife searching for bamboo in the hills around Mount Paro, Lhoong Aceh Besar.

Local authorities with TNI now in searching of these Tigers, they will try to trap them to be send to the zoo or if necessary to kill the Tiger since a man-eater Tiger is a threat to the peoples."

Apa khabar?

Which, for the uneducated amongst you in the Indonesian language (which definitely includes me!) - Bahasa Indonesia - this means 'how are you?'

It's the second day in the office, and I'm supposed to be up to the hilt in briefings, but there's a managers' meeting on, so there goes that idea. That’s ok, it’s given me time to get my laptop sorted, get to know some of the other staff and go out to a local place for lunch (Indo food ROCKS, I’m growing a chilli garden when I get home).

Monday I flew to Medan from Singapore. The capital of Sumatra was a lot bigger than I expected, with neon signs, traffic, satellite dishes, markets, smog everywhere. I arrived in Banda Aceh yesterday. When you fly in over the mountains it's breathtaking, endless forests and valleys on the horizon, and it all appears a deep blue from that height. Little white clouds straddle the mountain tops, many of which are volcanic. I saw one that looked like it was recently active, with a path of destruction evident on its cone. Unfortunately the fingers of civilisation are carving their way through the valleys and clearing the low-lying forest, revealing the braided rivers below which now have become conduits of silt due to erosion. Hopefully someone is doing something to halt this destruction and preserve this beautiful wilderness. You can really see where deforestation has occurred, and it’s all the more evident the closer you get to towns and cities, because the trees disappear, little spirals of smoke curl their way up into the atmosphere and the mosaic of rice paddies with their water buffaloes and nearby houses appear.

Banda Aceh is a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains and forest, and the beach is not far away. Palm trees all around, rice paddies, dogs and cows walking down the street alongside the many motorbikes and big NGO cars.

Who would have known a tsunami destroyed this place? It's a hive of activity, a bustling "metropolis" with construction going on everywhere. The roads are paved, people cruise around on motorcycles, the schools are full of kids and fruit stalls exist on every corner.

The grand mosque is absolutely stunning, a regal monstrosity of a building with beautiful black domes and the remainder pure white. Aceh province is the most strictly Muslim in Indonesia, and hence all the women wear headscarves and prayers occur 5 times a day. I must say the call to prayer at dawn is a bit of a bugger when you’re trying to get over a heat-induced sleepless night! I guess I’ll get used to Sharia law … as I will the 'mandi' bath (Simeulue here I come), and covering up my arms and legs even though it’s horrendously hot, including at the beach.

The ARC office is part of the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) compound, which houses all of the other Red Cross societies (and there are plenty here, 10 at last count: Canadian, Japanese, German, Hong Kong, Norwegian, Irish...) except for American RC, which has its own (typical). All the offices are air-conditioned shipping crates! They are more than adequate though, and quite suitable if you're hasty about setting up an office.

It's a bit strange being amongst all Aussies, it's almost like being on a holiday OS. It’s probably not helped by the fact that I can't really "do" anything until Friday when I fly to Simeulue and kick off work.

The two houses that the expats live in here in BA are amazing monstrosities with shiny roof tiles, spiral staircases and big rooms; beautiful to look at, with pay tv, open spaces, tropical gardens, Indonesian woodwork and temple-like architecture, but up close it's dodgy workmanship! We rent them from local families, which makes me feel better that loads of aid money wasn't spent on building our accommodation. The street in which they are built is lined with big houses, mostly for aid agencies. Seems wrong to me. I've been told not to get used to it; Simeulue is basic in comparison!

The humidity is exhausting but you're not in it most of the time. The house gets quite hot in the middle of the night when the electricity cuts out or the backup generator goes off. Nothing like the familiar buzzing of mosquitoes to drum up all sorts of dreams about malaria...