As I have alre.JPG)
ady mentioned there have been a lot of road laying activities going on around the island in recent months and this has often involved road closures with diversions. This is signalled by a police motorbike across the road and if you are lucky the policeman will actually indicate which track you should take. It is then a bit pot luck if you get back to the man road in the correct place or not. However as I discovered today on rural roads a few branches are laid across the road. As I approached the diversion there were three palm tree branches scattered across
the road, one or two is not unusual so I thought nothing of it. It was not until I had passed – with great difficulty the road works and came to another tangle of branches that I realised the significance of the branches. No wonder the workmen had been surprised to see me!
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Road Closed
Christmas
I went into Baa
this afternoon and it was like Merry Hill on Christmas Eve – virtually impossible to find anywhere to park; I had never seen so many motorbikes in 
Baa. I spent a very enjoyable evening sat on my porch with neighbours. John had given me a Christmas cake which his parents had brought over when they visited and we shared some of this along with whiskey or Sprite. Chilpa was playing my guitar and we had a wide ranging discussion mostly in Bahasa Indonesian with occasional resort to the dictionary.
25 December 2009
After going to 
church I went down to Delha for my Christmas present from me – CHIPS. There is a rumah makan there that does the best chips I have had in Indonesia and I had been told they were open. When I arrived they were busy catering for a funeral and did not want to do chips but offered me rice. I declined and explained I had ridden down to treat myself as a Christmas present – I obviously did a very good sob story as I was told if I would wait then I could have chips. They were well worth the wait – e
nak. In the evening everyone who lives in the complex visited everyone else in the complex to wish then a Happy Christmas. I had phone calls from the family and lots of sms and email messages from home. There was also a party in a house just behind the complex which we had all been invited to which went on until about 03:00 with lots of dancing. All in all a very pleasant Christmas.
Motorbike Maintenance
John and I have exper
ienced a number of problems with the bikes we have borrowed. I will describe here the latest couple of incidents that have lead us to visit the bengkel – local version of a garage. John had been riding up from town when the clutch cable broke. Thankfully in town there is a bengkel every few 100 yards so he did not have far to go to find help. A new cable was attached to the clutch lever and then quite literally just tied to the entrance to the gear box.
I took the bike in as the throttle was tending to stick open and the back break had
a lot of play in it. The bike was almost stripped down completely to sort out the throttle but unfortunately they failed to reconnect the fuel hose and when I turned the fuel tap on to start got covered with benzin. Not quite as dire as when John had a puncture repaired and they forgot to tighten the back brake. The standards might not be as high as the UK but prices are much more reasonable 7,5000Rp for puncture, 15,000Rp for the throttle and break problem.
Christmas decorations
At the 
moment I am based on the children’s ward and staff have been busy making decorations in the run up to Christmas – then it was necessary to get up to hang them. An assess
ment of the step ladder (see August entry on decorating) was made and decided this was not safe to use. Instead a plastic chair was placed on a desk which in turn had been placed on a bed – when the chair legs started to splay a second chair was stacked to give it some more rigidity. The bed was then wheeled along as Marlon secured the decorations.
New beds and other improvements
Before I left f
or my holiday and the study tour new blue curtains were being put up throughout the hospital. On my return to work I discovered that a lot of new beds and other equipment had been delivered as well. The new beds were a very welco
me arrival particularly in the children’s ward. The very poor condition of the cots had been compounded over the years by adult family members lying on them. Complete families come with patients bringing sleeping mats, cooking equipment etc but why sleep on the floor if there is an empty bed in the war
d? The mattresses are therefore removed from beds and cots to make this a less attractive proposition. Besides the beds there was a ventilator, small steriliser, baby warmer and two incubators.
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Study Tour to RSUD Johannes Kupang
I managed to secure two grants from VSO to assist the hospital in the work I have been helping them with. The first 10million Rupiah has been spent to buy 95 books to provide a library for the use of all the professions at the hospital to supplement the 30ish medical books they already had.
The second grant allowed two of the ward managers and I to spend a week at the referral hospital in Kup
ang. We were looking primarily at the process for ratification and implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) but also much wider at all the nursing documentation that is required for a hospital to gain accreditation – something RSUD Baa is working towards. We looked through lots of documents and had discussions with many of the senior nursing staff. We came away with a mountain of documents to use as templates and had the time to put our own SOPs into the approved format.
Five days travelling for a party
The number of volunteers in Indonesia continues to fall with another group leaving before Christmas. There was at least good news this week in that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has finally been signed between the Indonesian Government and VSO. This means that volunteers who have been temporarily at home pending visas should be able to return at the end of January and a new intake are due to arrive at the end of February.
Festus a Kenyan
volunteer who has been based in Ruteng – Flores for the last two years sent out invitations a while ago to everyone for his leaving party on 5 December. This seemed an ideal time for me to catch up with many volunteers before I also have to leave Indonesia. Flights to Ruteng are rather expensive so I decided to fly into Maumere and then travel across Flores sightseeing on route. I had to fly out of Ruteng to get back to Kupang as I was leading a study tour starting 09:00 on 7 December so there was not time to travel anywhere else for a cheaper flight.
This was a week of early starts:-
Tuesday 1 December – To Kupang
I was up early to finish packing and shutting up the house to be away 2 weeks – this includes making sure all the water reserves are emptied so I do not return to a house teaming with mosquitoes. I travelled as far as Kupang today, where I stayed with Sam.
Wednesday 2 December – To Maumere
I had to get up at 04:30 to get to the airport for my flight to Maumere. I was staying with Teresa another VSO volunteer and arrived at her house before she had eaten breakfast! I took the opportunity of a rainy day to visit RSUD Maumere and was able to talk to their head nurse and have a tour of the hospital – much bigger than Baa. In the evening four of us met up to eat and chat.
Thursday 3 December – To Moni
This was a very civilised start not waking until 06:45. A friend of Teresa’s was travelling to Bajawa in a hire car so I joined him as far as Moni. The roa
d was generally good but very steep and winding with a few places where it was narrow due to landslides. The views were amazing. My sightse
eing in Moni was also curtailed by the rain but at least I had time to do some of my studying.
Friday 4 December – To Kalimutu and Bajawa
I had arrangedto be collected from the homestay at 04:00 – yes totally insane. I had hired an ojek to take me up Kalimutu to see the three coloured crater lakes at dawn. When I had flown over these in April they had been three different colours, unfortunately at the moment two are
virtually the same colour but still fairly spectacular. There was a distinct lack of tourists and initially there were more guides, coffee and ikat sel
lers up at the summit than tourists. It was a clear morning and I had a good view of the sunrise. I eventually got back to the homestay in tim
e to have some breakfast before getting a bus for the next stage of my journey to Bajawa. This was about 4 hours away but we did get astop in Ende for lunch. I was to stay with friends of Teresa’s in a small village just outside Bajawa. Philip is a local our guide and in the afternoon took me round his ancestral village. The villages have two ancestor spi
rit homes per tribe in the cent
re of the village. The parasol – ngadhu – is the home of the male ancestor’s spirits and the miniature house – bhaga – is the home of the female ancestor’s spirits. There are also large stone slabs near the center of the village – which are used for sacrifice. The houses are arranged in two rows either side of the central
courtyard. There are high roofed thatched houses on stilts, that
have various symbols on the roofs to indicate the status of the head of the household (woman) in the government of the village. The houses with ordinary roofs are for other families.
Saturday 5 December – To Ruteng
A very civilised start at 06:00 today – Festus had made quite a lot of friends in Bajawa through water projects he had done there and two car loads of us set out on the 4 hour drive to Ruteng. Just outside Ruteng one of the party phoned a relative of his there and invited us all (10) to lunch. The meal w
as excellent and was served within 90 minutes of our arrival. When I complimented the wife on the food all she could do was apologise we had to wait so long for it. How many of us could prepare a meal for 15 in under two hours – which would have undoubtedly entailed a trip to the market as well? The sopi drinking started immediately after lunch with a litre swiftly disapp
earing. We then went to where the party was to be held as one of the group was responsible for BBQing the goat – we had to try to local Ruteng ‘gin’. We also had to deliver 25 litres of sopi which had been flavoured with cinnamon. The rest of us went to the homestay we were booked into and the drinking continued with a mixture of beer and sopi flavoured with vanilla. We did eventually go to the party to start the serious drinking and dancing.. Part way through the evening the goat was ‘served’. It was placed in a large dish with a sharp knife and you just went and hacked off what you wanted – it was excellent.
Sunday 6 December – Back to Kupang
It really was hardly worth having a room for the night as I had to be at the airport for 06:00 for my flight back to Kupang, so woken at 05:15. I did at least get breakfast three times – at homestay, on plane and at Sam’s. I then went to bed to catch up on all the sleep I had missed this week!
