CatchUp

A friend emailed me about a blog yesterday and it was so nice to see where she lives in the photos and get a feel for where she lives. I realized it has been three months since I put anything up. So... a very quick run down, happily with the camera again after buying a new one.

So in November we had Simon and Erin visit. It was really great to have some family come and see us. Unfortuately we were still under a little bit of a curfew due to some security concerns and we weren't able to do a lot around Banda Aceh. However we did have a nice time chatting and catching up and also visited Pulau Weh (Weh Island) for some snorkling and Simon's first dive. The next weekend we went to Bukit Lawang and enjoyed seeing the orangutans and floating down the river in tubes.



More or less immediately after that we were off to New Zealand for Christmas. It was very nice to see all the family there. We had a great Christmas dinner in Dunedin with Grandma and Grandad, Mum and Dad, Rachel and I. We spoke with people all over NZ and also with Rachel's family in the US. The best part of Christmas is reading out the jokes from the christmas crackers. If I had a faster internet connection I'd post a video of that. The jokes are super corny, like.... what is yello and dangerous? Shark infested custard!



We had to rush back to Indonesia where Rachel and I have been on an exercise and healthy eating binge. New Year's resolutions that are being carried out. Both are going well and both are enjoyable. Rachel has got into cooking all sorts of food based on lessons from internation and local friends. Here Rachel is cooking with the neighbour and a friend from Jakarta. Delicious food results...



And finally the cats... we have acquired 4 cats now. Yes 4. Initially there was a friendly male, then a female turned up, but she was pregnant and 2 kittens were added. We found a good vet and have them cleaned up and fixed. Now just feeding them, stopping them fighting and determining where in the house they are allowed and where they are not. We most like the male, he is very very friendly



lots more photos of all of these things at www.picasaweb.google.com/mjmcwhirter

Surfing

I've continued to wake up early but now I've found something to do. I head out surfing. There is a guy called Mike Lim here who has a healthy obsession with surfing and is always available for an early morning session at the beach. We've been out four of five times in the last couple of weeks. The surf is nice here with a couple of breaks beside one another.

It isn't always big. Apparently someone wrote it up in a surfing magazine and said that it was always going and I've seen a few surfing tourists here disappointed they took their holiday and got small waves. However for someone living in Banda Aceh it is really great, even on the small days if you are patient there will be some good sets. The only draw back is the break is pretty small so it quickly gets crowded by the tourists who are surprisingly thick on the ground or should I say thick on the water.

However the early morning thing is a big advantage for us. Mike seems able to get up and we are always out there by just after 6am and we've been as early as 5:20am when we were grateful for a large mooon that gave us light.

To get there one has to drive along the main road, I took this picture to show the conditions on the roads....lots of cows in the morning.

Musang

As you know we moved into a nice new house a while ago. There was only one small issue with the house that I thought would be interesting to readers. It is the musang.

Before we moved in we were told that there was a small animal that lived in the roof space and ran around from time to time. Indeed when we arrived we would hear him scurrying around. I told Rachel we could think of him as our friend and indeed as we started to remark to people we heard that they are pretty common and they keep rats out so are in some ways good.

One day Rachel went to a building in town to meet with some people and it turned out that a musang had fallen through the ceiling there and landed in a locked room. It had torn the place up a little before a guard came and found it and caught it. Rachel saw the room in a state of disarray and saw the musang itself too. According to Rachel the animal is all teeth and vicious claws! Further investigation showed that the patches on our ceiling weren’t leaks as we thought but actually musang piss and this can weaken the roof and allow the beast to fall through!

Now we really had to get rid of the musang. Furhter inspection, and trust me Rachel inspected, showed that above our bed there were indeed stains. Now we asked around and found various stories of musangs falling through roofs. They are quite a common thing here, although not necessarily popular!

Fortunately we found out that they don’t like light and the nice people from my office helped by putting up some lights in the roof space to keep the animal away. It seems to have worked and we don’t hear it nearly as much now. Furthermore Rachel has an ongoing promise from a man to make a trap, catch the musang and then let it go in the forest somewhere nearby.

It has been an interesting issue for people newly living in Indonesia.

An enjoyable weekend - biking, entertaining and a new kayaker is born

The earthquake in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia has had some small affect on me. I’ve sent a few people from my staff to go there. One guy is from the area and I think he is very happy to be able to go to help. It may mean that I go there later, they are doing an initial assessment and if they find that we can be of assistance then no doubt I will go there to have some involvement. Everyone in Indonesia, including Rachel and I are wishing the best for the people of West Sumatra affected by the quake. At all the traffic lights there are people collecting money to help.

We have had a nice weekend in Banda Aceh. On Friday night I was tired after work. We went out to dinner at the vegetarian café, Jamboe Hijau which used to be on the other side of town a 30min drive away and is now 5min from my work or 10min from our house. After that we dropped by to visit our friends Lisa and Guido which was fun, they do live on the other side of town! Rachel hadn’t seen them for a long time due to travelling.

Saturday morning I got up really early as I woke up a little preoccupied with work and the habit of the noise from the mosque. I went out surfing which was nice in the dawn light (or lack of it). I went to the bit with the small waves so it was not dangerous or anything, but quite fun and refreshing.

Saturday, I decided to join the Saturday morning bike ride. It was billed as a 45km ride for a picnic on the beach. Lisa and Guido had prepared the picnic and Guido proceeded to carry the entire picnic the whole way there. That was probably 20kg of homemade pesto on pasta, drink, home-made bread, salad with dressing, brownies, cheese spread… the list goes on. There is a big hill on that ride and true to his superhuman cycling strength Guido proceeded to be the fastest up the hill despite carrying all the picnic! The ride was pretty tough for some of the less experienced cyclist but everyone made the beautiful picnic spot and enjoyed the delicious food. The beach by the picnic spot was wonderful and we swam a little before heading our weary bodies back.

Some of the group decided to hire a public transport (labi-labi) to get 40km back to town. We’d done 60 odd km by that stage. I joined this group to get home and help Rachel with dinner. Lisa, Guido and Tim cycled back over the very large hill and made it home at 7pm.

Saturday night we entertained about 9 people at our house which is really great for such occasions. Rachel made some delicious Indian food as did some of our guests. We had a few beers (bought from the Chinese store wrapped in softdrink boxes) and chatted. Lisa and Guido were included in the crew and they stayed the night in our spare bedroom, as you can see we are well equipped for visitors now so please come over ;-)

Sunday was a nice and lazy morning cooking up some food and talking more.

Sunday afternoon, I taught Guido to roll the kayak. He learnt very quickly and managed his first roll after an hour in what we call the cave lake – a small pond behind a dam on a river that starts in a limestone cave about 30min from Banda Aceh. Some local people were looking on and were as impressed as I was when on his first try without any assistance Guido failed his first roll attempt and then got up the second time. Lisa’s inauguration into the kayaking world should start soon…

So everything is good here in Aceh as we go into another week. Rachel is busy with her work and this Wednesday I head to Thailand to attend the last annual meeting for the American red Cross’ Tsunami Relief Program.

Back to the Asahan

Last weekend I flew out of Banda Aceh at 720am to head to Medan for a kayaking trip. Actually I arrived at the airport at 615am and then waited in a line of about 15 people for the next hour and a half. The check in process was extremely slow and I was still at the check in line when the plane was supposed to take off. Not unheard of at Banda Aceh airport so all was well.

In Medan I was met by my friend Halim who is a german man who married an Indonesian and has lived in Medan for much of the last 20 years. He is muslim and as such was on his last day of fasting for Ramadan. We drove out of Medan through heavy rain and busy traffic and headed for the Asahan river which is about 6 hours away from Medan.

The Asahan River drains lake Toba –which is an enourmous crater lake formed when Toba one of the worlds super volcano’s erupted. To give you an idea of scale, if I am not wrong the lake is at least 60km in diameter! The power of the water draining out has been harnessed by a very large hydroelectric power station which provides most of the power for the 4million people who live in Medan. There are a series of 200m+ waterfalls which are bypassed by the power station, although last time I was here I got to see them in action.

Because the river was formed recently by geological time scales it hasn’t yet finished carving out its valley and therefore it is extremely fast moving. Probably the fastest non-flooded river I’ve ever paddled and probably on par with most flooded rivers too.

Firstly we had a nice cultural moment. Halim has had a house in the village of Pahitean for 15 odd years and knows people in the community there very well. One family in particular is headed by Simatupang who Halim calls Papa and his wife who Halim calls Mama. They are also muslim so the first morning which was the biggest day of the muslim calendar was started with a lovely shared meal with the family where everyone went through the tradition of sitting in front of others grasping hands and in a very touching way asking forgiveness for anything they’ve done wrong or have failed to do during the previous year. It was obvious that the family was very close and it was very nice to be invited in for this.

The kayaking was excellent. Here comes the boring bit for non-boaters… The last time I had been to the Asahan there was twice the normal amount of water so it was raging fast. This time it was just fast! I did perhaps 4 runs down a 10min section right by Halim’s house that is a very fast grade 3/3+ run. It is extremely continuous. After several hours spent scouting I ran the next section up called Never Ever Ends. This is because it is a 3km section of river which is basically one rapid that Never Ever Ends! This is more grade 4/4+ and has a stout grade 5 rapid at the top which I didn’t really think about running this time. Maybe another time when there are a team of paddlers there as well. To give you the idea of the speed, it is 3km (2miles) long and I did it in 17min including walking around the big rapid through the jungle!

There are a couple of sections on the river I’ve yet to run. The first is called Honeymoon Canyon and looks very very beautiful. I’ve heard the rapids in there are pretty grade 2/3 but there is one hard rapid called Honeymoon Sorrow. Halim has never been down there at normal flow and doesn’t have a lot of information about the hard rapid. There was team of professionals who ran that section recently so I will check with them at some stage and again if a team of people come we can run it. The other section is called the middle section and contains one mandatory portage called Nightmare and several other very hard rapids. Again perhaps with a strong team.

Halim and I did go down and run the lower canyon which is in a deep-cut gorge with beautiful rainforest spilling over the edges of the rocks. It is a remarkably beautiful piece of river. There are a couple of grade 3 rapids at the top and then just a beautiful hour floating down the amazing canyon. The takeout was a regular holiday spot for the locals so on the biggest holiday of the year it was absolutely full of people who were splashing around in the water if young and sitting around smoking if older! It was quite a contrast to the canyon above.

We hired a passing small truck to take us back to the village of Pahitean and had an eventful ride up there as the truck broke down and our driver had to go into the closest village to find a mechanic. It is great how handy people are here though, you can break down in the middle of nowhere and there will be someone to come and fix your car for you.

After an early morning blast down the 10min run at Halim’s house and we were off to Medan again. We were worried about whether holiday traffic would be a problem but generally we were going against it as most Indonesians took the rest of the week after Idul Fitri off and were heading out of the city. There was a several mile long backup of traffic going the other way near the town of Parapat which is the tourist gateway to the beautiful Lake Toba. This included people who were standing up in the back of big 6wheel trucks. Very heavy rain storms came through from time to time so I can’t imagine that was that enjoyable!

Idul Fitri approaching

So the brave and reverant souls of Aceh have a couple of days left with their fasting. I came to the realization since I last posted that the toughest bit of the fast isn't the absence of food, but the absence of liquid, including water during the day. I actually considered fasting for a day for solidarity with people here but the lack of drink idea put me off. I think for many here the prohibition of smoking during the daylight hours is probably the toughest thing - that has more benefits than the spiritual ones for sure.

We are coming to the end of the fasting month and the biggest celebration of the year here - Idul Fitri. All Indonesian people have today (Friday) off and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are also holidays next week. The most important day is Sunday now I believe after the exact timing was finalized by checking the moons cycle. We visited our friends from the other house last night and preparations were well under way. Everyone makes a lot of home backing which is then offered to guests who cruise around on the big holidays. The plan for most people on the big days is a lot of time in the mosque, and a lot of time eating cakes/biscuits at home for the rest of the day.

Rachel and I have been keeping ourselves entertained settling into the new house and also getting our application for residency in NZ for Rachel together. This includes such enjoyable things as doing detailed medicals for Rachel and getting police records from places we've lived for more than a year. The FBI was pretty easy actually and that is on the way, unsurprisingly the Indonesian process is long, stupid, beurocratic and generally annoying. We had to get various pieces of paper together (CV, letter from employer blah blah blah and then we had to start going around the various police departments to get letters recommending we be given a letter saying we had behaved in Indo while here. First the local police in the town area wanted a letter from the head of the village which was easy. The local police were very nice too. Then the regional police needed to see all the other paper work. They were a little annoying and my application also got mixed up with the Red Cross' beaurocracy which wasn't helpful. Now we are in the process of waiting for the regional police to give us a letter recommending that the national police write a letter to us saying we have behaved... if you didn't get bored reading that try waiting in an official's office or driving across down to get every little document mentioned.... so definitely nothing will happen for a couple of weeks now as we wait for Idul Fitri and its fall out to finish.

For a bit more positive news I can report that I am heading away tomorrow for a kayaking trip on the Asahan river again and also it seems that Rachel has got a month long contract working with UNDP to evaluate a large program they have had here.

Rachel Back and a New House

Again I have to apologize that there are no photos. My camera has officially died. It was getting water in it on the Ottawa and now it just doesn’t work. Time for a new one!

Rachel has made it back to Aceh, she had a really bad trip to get here. Boston, LA, Tokyo, Singapore (6 hour stop over), Kuala Lumpur (5 hour stop over) and finally Banda Aceh. That sucks!

I went down to the town of Calang where we have a big part of the program I look after and was there for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

When both Rachel and I were back on Friday night we moved into our new house. It is a really lovely house. It has 3 bedrooms of which one is nice and big and two are a bit small and pokey. It has a lot of common space, a nice front lawn and best of all at the back is an enclosed courtyard with shade, trees, a barbeque and an industrial fan to keep the temperature down. There are two inside bathrooms (including an ensuite) and the water is cleaner than most places here and runs freely all day! Internal plumbing is something I for one had really missed. The location for the house is really nice too, it is close to the edge of town near the mountains so we can bike or run out our door straight to some off road tracks.

We have been settling into the new house over the weekend and last night we went to an opening of a vegetarian café that is opening close to my office. Things are definitely looking up.

Finally on the good news front, Rachel has received some offers of work for several months doing program evaluations for the UN. There are also positive signs from her program she has been trying to set up through the local government and the World Bank.