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...