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...