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.

Ramadan in Aceh

Hi all
Sorry no pics again, pretty boring I know.

I also wanted to write a post about how much fun we had hanging out at Jon and Talia's wedding and then with friends in Boston. I might suffice to say that we really loved seeing our friends and everyone was so nice to us, loaning cars, places to stay, providing meals and generally letting us share a bit of their lives with them again. Like most things on that trip we appreciated that even more than usual. Thanks all.

Now, I got back to Aceh about 5 days into the Ramadan period here. Now Aceh takes its religion pretty seriously so I can report somethings you might find quite interesting.

All restaraunts in town are now shut during the day. People actually get fined for opening restaurants by the Shariah police. This is a bit of a blow to me as it means that my lunch is usually a chunk of bread from a litte show with an orange or something like that. Not a brilliant balanced diet that is for sure.

So people here in Aceh tend to get up at about 3am or 4am to eat before the fast starts. There is actually an alarm that goes off at about 5am here which signifies the start of the fast. I think it might be the tsunami warning alarm! I can also report that there is praying going on in the mosques over the loud speakers at just about every hour of the night. Unfortuately jetlag and the mosque itself has allowed me to know all about that with some close to sleepless nights.

The streets are noticeable quieter on the way to work. Also at lunch time there aren't very many people at all moving around. So getting around is easier than before. Also it is a little cooler at the moment which is pleasing.

Working days are very much reduced in terms of activity for a lot of people here. Our organization, The American Red Cross, actually changed the working hours so people can go home at 3:30pm or so, officially people aren't supposed to be taking a lunch break but there aren't that many around it seems to me.

In the evening the fast is broken around 7pm again the siren lets you know when. People have nice little social gatherings to open the fast and there is a good amount of praying happening although I am not sure of the details on that one.

September the 18th to the 23rd is the biggest holiday of the year hear for Idul Fitri when the fasting period ends. It is a really big deal for families getting together too like Christmas time is for us in New Zealand and Thanksgiving is in the US.

Finally a boating trip!!

Warning, this one is a long kayaking story (often boring) photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/MJMcWhirter/Canada2009# might be more fun.

After being in Detroit we flew back to the old haunts of Boston where many of our friends live. I had pre-arranged with a few of my mad kayaking buds to head up to Canada and the Ottawa River which is warm, friendly and reliable kayaking throughout the summer there.

It was in all respects a classic kayaking trip. Starting with the messing around! Due to the 10hour drive to Ottawa, we planned to get away from our various points of New England at a reaonably early time, probably around 5 but if possible before hand. I planned to do the shopping during the day. Well when it all happened Niall and I finally got in the car at 7pm and I hadn't done the shopping. Admirably Paul was ahead of us in his car but we soon found out that Jerry was probably an hour behind us coming up from Connecticut. A great start to any kayaking trip.

As always getting to the river was a good deal of the fun. We planned to all meet at Jerry's holiday home in New Hampshire and drop one of the cars. Well actually we planned to meet off a freeway near there while there was still cell reception. Niall and I put in some GPS coordinates and happily started catching up... ooopps we missed a freeway we were supposed to take, never mind we'll follow the GPS and go another way. Things went well but at some stage Niall and I tried to find Jerry's house on our own and found that the GPS didn't know the gravel roads of a small community in New Hampshire very well at all. We spent probably 30min driving around in the dark on gravel roads, in circles with the GPS telling us to turn down roads taht didn't exist. We were a little relieved when we made it back to a known sealed road and abaondoned the attempts to find the house by ourselves and headed for the rendevous point! All this adventure and we were only 2 hours north of Boston.

We all got together at a truckstop off I-91 finally and after a large amount of sugar courtesy of a HUGE piece of ridiculous sweet pie that was sold there we headed off for Canada.

I travlled that next bit with Paul and really enjoyed talking with him about the changes that two toddlers have bought to his life. The long drives of kayaking really help one to learn about one's friend's lives. About 3am we stopped a very homely freeway rest area in Quebec where I'd camped on a similar trip once before. We put up tents (Nialls tent puts itself up...seriously...) and went to sleep. Well of course Jerry just slept under a tree as that is the way he rolls.

In the morning we thanked Quebec for its high quality rest-stops and cruised on to the Ottawa river in Ontario. I travelled with Jerry that morning and again found that the last year had been busy on account of his kids. Just before I left Boston last year Jerry and I spent a lot of time in cars on our Quebec creeking trip and here I was hearing what things had been turned up-side-down in the last year. Again it was really great to get to spend time having a long chat with a close friend on the way to the river. Having these long conversations a year apart helped me to realize how much life can change in a year and looking back on my year I also saw the massive ebbs and flows there had been.

At the Ottawa we happily got a campsite at the takeout complete with hot showers and a sauna!!! Every takeout should have a place to sleep and a sauna.... We unloaded our food and sleeping gear and got down to the business at hand, kayaking.

The Ottawa is very very very large river even in low summer flow. I had been there before when it was about 10ft higher in water level but it was still big. It is reknowed for its big rapids which are great for playing in rather than being scary and dangerous and its warm water. We had a very pleasant time over the next days playing aruond on the river and planning how to run some of the harder rapids in our little playboats.

Of river the good times continued to roll. Firstly we found that the province of Ontario likes to make it difficult to get beer at night in the rural areas. They only let certain shops sell alcohol and they close prety early for disorganized and late kayakers. Fortunately we were saved (as usual) by Quebec which was just across the river and not only had beer but had beer with alcoholo content of up to 16.5% - I think we knew that it couldn't taste any good the whole time but the lovely Quebecoise lady who owned the store and her 10 year old kids were so happy and talkative about it and we had an Irishman with us so we left with it.

That night was hilarious too. I was tired after the late night driving the day before and the physical exertion of first kayaking in a year (sad very sad) and headed to sleep a little before Nial did. I laid in the bed and listened to the ipod a little. At one stage it felt like someone was pulling at the end of my sleeping bag but I thought nothing of it. I quickly feel into deep sleep. When Niall came in he seemed displeased, taking about a hole in the tent and seemed to be moving food around or something. I was too out of it to be much help and again sleep took me. Then in the middle of the night I heard what I was sure was a very large wild-bore right beside the tent, and man was it making some noise!!!! I was pretty scared and unsure about how to proceed, fortunately I heard Paul get up next door in his tent. He also thought it was a bore but when he got outside with his flash light he said 'there are three huge racoons eating our raisins and they don't seem to be scared of me'. With us (or me at least) scared of them and them not scared of us the best thing seemed to be to secure the food inside the tent and barricade entrances with bags and go to sleep. This was all pretty noisy and Niall slept happily through it all! Morning was a very funny scene, the racoons had feasted on raisins, bagels and bread, they had eaten a small hole in the tent and undoubtedly they were what had been pulling on my sleeping bag as I went to sleep. Niall reported that when he went to sleep there had been food strewn all over the tent entrance and he thought that I had become quite a sloppy eater in Indonesia! Very funny.

We packed most of the food in the car that day but did find out that while racoons are nocturnal, squirrels aren't and they quite enjoy popcorn. Ooops, that night all food was in the car!

After three runs down teh Ottawa, at widely different levels due to changes in the level by dam control we headed back towards New England. On the way we stopped off an enjoyed descending the Rouge River just west of Montreal. That was a real blast with some good grade 4 rapids which we playfull cruised down. There are 7 waterfalls at the end which can be run at much lower water and it was fun to hike around them. Also a bridge is being built for a new freeway over the gorge. The construction work on that put all our little efforts in Indonesia into perspective!

The final stop on the kayaking trip was a surf on teh Lachine waves on the mightly St Lawerence right in the middle of Montreal. The river is over a mile wide going through Montreal and in a place where it loses some gradient it makes epic surfing waves which are some of the best in the world. We got there Friday night and had a sureal time surfing these waves in the middle of the river as the sun went down. Just perfect. Paul left at 830am for another late night drive to resume his parenting duties. That evening the rest of us had a delicious mexican meal (first for a long time for me) in Montreal and plotted an early morning surf and then with rain falling in New England the possibility of getting Jon Loehrke out paddling on his wedding day.

We bivied downtown in the park near Lachine got up early and surfed again as dawn rose. Again a perfect moment. With the lure of getting Jon out boating on we did the unbelieveable and were ontime as we drove down to the USA. Fortunately we were saved from actually carrying out a plan made on a kayaking trip as the river levels dropped and we ended up just chilling out the whole day. Tired and with sore bodies it had been a great kayaking trip :-)

A Couple of Lovely Things In Detroit

We had a wonderful time catching up with family in Detroit. As I mentioned we did a lot of wonderful eating. There were a couple of things that I thought that were a bit out of the ordinary and were realy wonderful. No pictures just now but I hope to post one or two with this soon.

Firstly it was really amazing to go back to Florence's garden where we got married. When we arrived in the US we were picked up by Laura who was also getting David from the airport. We dropped David off at Florence's house and got to see how wonderful things were. Walking out the back to where we got married was really special for me. As I've noted before, coming home we were particularly partial to things like clean air, nice comfortable temperatures and well cared for gardens and that combined with the memories of a great number of our friends and family from all over the world being there was a really special way to come back to one of our homes.

Another really special thing happened when we headed downtown Detroit one day to go to the local farmers market. On the way down we stopped off to check up on the place where some members of the family (most credit due to David I believe) had organized for the Greening of Detroit -an urban environmental oganization- to plant some trees in honor of Rachel's grandfather. Quite a few of the family including Rachel and I went along to help out at the planting stage.

The site that was selected was a triangle of grasss between some roads in front of the enormous school where Rachel's grandfather, and many others in the family, went to school. The school buildings where really beautiful and very majestic. The school actually was a site for primary school all the way through to the end of high school so a lot of people in Detroit spent a big chunk of their lives there. Unfortunately the Detroit school system has been in trouble and the downtown area has soured over the years so the neighbourhood and the school are now a bit rough.

Just the fact that the trees were planted was nice and when a group of us went by we saw that the area had been recently mowed and was looking tidy. We went over to pick up small bits of trash lying around and to remember. As we were over there a lady came over towards us, we were organizing to take a picture of our little group there and she helped us out. Afterwards she started to convey her very heartfelt thanks for the improvement that had been made in the area. She lives right there and said that since the trees had been planted it had been regularly mowed and maintained. She said that she really loved this little piece of land now and gazed out every morning at it in a medatative way while she collected herself for the day. She and her family were longtime residents and really cared about the neighbourhood and were so grateful that others had put some effort into the place as well. She was tearful and hugging everyone and it was really wonderful to be there! Good work to the Greening of Detroit, David and the other members of the family who made this happen. I bet that David's father Jack couldn't have wished for any more touching moment than that one.

Back to Civilization

So we left Indonesia around 11 August and travelled back to the USA. The first 5 or so days we spent in the Detroit area with most of Rachel's extended family there. Then after a couple of days in Boston I headed up to the Ottawa river for some much missed kayaking. Then Jon and Talia's wedding in New Hampshire and finally a week in Boston catching up with friends there.

As normal with return to the US or NZ after Indonesia it was just so wonderful. The simplest of things make us stop and look for weeks when we come back. The clean air, the massive variety of food available, quiet suburbs, orderly traffic, high speed traffic, smooth roads, nice lawns, ahhh it is so nice to be back in the west. We would walk down the streets and I was always struck by how big healthy and (at face value) wealthy just about everyone looked in most of the areas that we went to. We would go into people's houses and just struggle to understand the luxury, how the finishing on everything could be so nice, how all the little comforts were there. Talking with people I also noted how with all the opportunities that life in the west offers us people had complex stories to tell which aren't so commonplace in Indonesia - although granted I might just be used to the stories there.

Another thing is that I can't tell you how much I enjoyed using the internet at highspeed! Webpages just popping up, photos loading, being able to watch videos... ahh it is so cool. I think most of us who live with highspeed internet in our homes forget just how awesome it is to have that available. Again, I just can't tell you how cool that felt.

Speaking of internet speeds. I am back in Kuala Lumpur where the internet in my layover hotel seems to be shaky so I may post this up and go to sleep.

Getting Balance Back - R&R and Holidays

 

Photo above is a lovely door at the place we stayed in Ubud called Ubud Sari Health Resort. We learnt about raw food and had a wonderful time relaxing after some crazy months at this place. It was one of the most peaceful places you could stay on holiday!


So it was becoming apparent that I needed something else to divert me away from work a little. In July Rachel and I took up scuba diving. We'd both done it before but a long time ago. We can travel 45min by boat to the island of Pulau Weh and then travel 20min by car to Gapang beach where we learnt to dive in a 4 day scuba course we did over two weekends. It is really fun to be weightless (neutrally bouyant) under sea and to see the amazing colour and variety of the wildlife under there. Also the beach has a lot of backpackers, some more western food and nice relaxing accomodation. We probably should have started going there for weekends a lot earlier.

Also in July we had a week of R&R. We had to stay in Indonesia as Rachel didn't have a multiple entry visa so we booked tickets to go to Bali. RAchel actually got a very high fever for 6 days in bed just as we were due to leave so we had to delay by a week. We think it was likely to be the pandemic but one never really knows. Anyway, going to Bali was absolutely wonderful. We completely skipped the southern beach tourist location of Kuta and went inland an hour from the airport to a town called Ubud which great Balinese dances, amazing food, wonderful rice field walks and general coolness due to a little bit of altitude. We had a wonderful time there relaxing at a health resort with massages, saunas, delicious fresh organic food aaaahhhh. We walked through the rice fields and I hired bikes and went mountainbiking along the single track or through teh towns. All in all a fantastic place. I can't say enough about the food, while supercheap it was higher quality than we've eaten anywhere else as there is a major hippie, raw food, organic movement in Ubud. Also people in Bali were extremely friendly, we were always called guests rather than foreigners and people were happy just to have a chat. It was great. We want to go back to stay!

We also took a couple of days up in the north coast where we went diving. The diving was a lot of fun. We dove on a 1940s wreck where there were a great number of fish. We also went diving twice when there was pretty strong current and got to drift along and enjoy the feeling of being gentle swept along past all the fish. We saw a couple of sharks! I don't think diving will ever take over from kayaking for me but it is fun as Rachel and I can do it together (she actually can dive longer than me as she is more efficient with air) and it is a really nice experience.

All this holidaying has helped me to get life back in balance and now I am happy again. To tell the truth I am happy right now as we are in Detroit with Rachel's family having a wonderful time of catching up and enjoying the luxury of the USA. I'll write more about that next blog.

Wrap-Up of April, May, June

Well it was a dry period for blogging apparently Apri, May and June. The short reason for this was work getting really crazy and busy. It became a little too stressful actually and I was happy to not be going to near the internet or having extra things to do on the computer so the blog fell by the wayside.

The month of June in particular was a nightmare. It was always meant to be a busy month for our program with most of our construction projects scheduled to end that month. Then our staff of four expatriots,which was already one less than it was supposed to me, dropped to just lonely old me as one person resigned early and two others got cuaght outside Indonesia by visa laws. In short the Indonesian government took a while to issue us visas and if you left the country during that time it was difficult to get back in. Anyway I quickly had to learn about the 2/3 of the program that I hadn't had anything to do with as I was now responsible for it all. I've officially been promoted to Deputy Program manager but have been the acting program manager and am likely to continue that role for the rest of the program now.

I am now on holiday in the USA and have a chance to look back. It wasn't at all pleasant for me working during this time as there were just too many demands on me. I learnt how stress affects a person! I did get great help from the management in the organization in Aceh and of course from Rachel. Also looking back I can see that the program has got over a major hurdle with the majority of the construction finished. We still have construction but it is a manageable level and we can now focus on teaching more soft skills about how to operate, adminster and maintain what we have built. For me personally I now know intimate details of just about all of the program across its very wide geographical area. There are some great people doing good things at the American Red Cross in Aceh and I am (sitting here with a bit of space) confident we can bring the program to a nice close and achieve our objectives. Seeing as it has become such a big part of life there I'll try to put a bit more about it in the blog over the coming months but for now that is probably enough.

Weekly update,

First of all I want to report that Rachel has given the kids their first swimming lesson at the pool. The pool is at a fancy hotel/longterm residence. Basically only foreigners go there and there aren't many. Admission for the pool is about $3 for us and $2 for the kids. We spent a nice few hours there on Sunday morning teaching the kids the basics of swimming. We might have to research the proper approach actually! The only downside to it all was that others stayed in the sun too long and got sunburnt :-(

During the week I spent two days visiting my sites to look at possible variations that the engineers would like to make. This involved quite a few hours walking in the bush. One trip earned me three leeches sucking my blood, yuck!! I was dirty and happy when I got home to Banda Aceh. Photos below show one of the intakes we've built to collect water from a spring, it gravitates about 3km down to the community. Basically there is a dam which blocks the water flowing forward and diverts it through the grill, through a simple "filter" and down to the village.





Final funny story. When biking to work there is one intersection which gets traffic blocked up. Rather than eat their fumes I go on the inside and wait holding onto a pole that supports a sign. It is a steel pole. However in true indonesian fasion today it snapped when I was holding it and basically fell on the ground. No trouble for me and I did laught!

Family Time

I made a whistle stop in New Zealand the other week. Literally I was in the country for 54 hours and probably 7 of that was in the airports! Rachel came too but she had 3 or 4 days more after I left. However it was completely worth it. Why?

Firstly


my cousin Alex got married - wasn't she beautiful and very happy too. This is her and her father my uncle John (looks good enough to be the groom!)



Here is the Buchan family (my grandparents are the more mature Buchan's in the picture) all together.
Secondly




It was a great meeting of the family in laws. The first photo is my cousin Lisa offereing some delicious food to Rachel's grandmonther Florence and my grandmother Joyce. It is interesting to note that Florence has a daughter call Joyce too!

The second picture is Rachel and David relaxing in my aunty and uncles house. It was so wonderful to see everyone together. While it was only a very short trip for me, my parents had a couple of days with David and Florence before Rachel and I arrived. David and Florence saw a good amount of the top of the south island and went on to Rotorua too!

It was quite a contrast for Rachel and maybe especially for me. I had been working out in one of my rural villages for a day. While the houses etc are nice and new now it is still a pretty poor area and conditions are tough. I went straight 2.5hour drive to the airport and flew to luxury, cleanliness and a lot of delicious food in NZ, and then straight back! Looking forward a 9 day trip in June to see all the family with more time available.

Here is one last photo. 4 Buchan generations together (see more photos on the picasa site) www.picasaweb.com.google/mjmcwhirter



Back into a heavy workload here but I can see the light of the tunnell and am really enjoying the work while I am doing it.

Awesome Bike Ride

So with my kayaking limited by lack of friends to surfing with a bunch of surfies around me, I’ve taken up the pastime which has become very popular with the foreigners here, mountain-biking. There are some very keen cyclist here who have been cruising around the backroads, mainroads and tracks of the area around Banda Aceh. I’ve been out with them on a few rides and have ridden with Rachel a few times.

I just got back from an excellent ride I thought was worth recounting. Most Sundays my Palestinian friend Ramadan and I bike out and have pizza at a beach about 12km from Banda Aceh. There is a place that makes the pizzas in a wood fired oven and they are very nice. We started biking out there along the main road, unfortunately this meant we were riding into the traffic of people returning from the beach into town. The pollution and danger of the roads in Indonesia is not great at the best of times and 6pm on a Sunday night might actually be one of the worst times.

Fortunately there are some backways to get to the beach. One I’ve ridden a few times with the rest of the cyclists and I had heard rumours of another way to get out there. But I was advised by one of the main cyclists that it is a better hike than a bike. I did remember one guy telling me though that it was realistic on a bike.

I did a little recky by myself. I biked and then pushed my bike up a couple of steep hills. I met a man who’d just trapped some goats and amidst the blood and the gore he made it sound like I was “only two small hills” away from the beach where the pizza was. Intrigued I convinced Ramadan one evening we should go that way instead of through the plumes of exhaust.

We were told it was a three hour adventure but with pushing it along we made it in an hour and a half. Tonight we went back with an Australian friend Angus and it was, as I said, a night worth blogging.

The climb up is just perfect. It is VERY hard but it is just the right mix of steepness, continuity and technical mountain biking to convince me that it is indeed possible to ride it the whole way without stopping. One just has to be super fit and be very focused about controlling the bike. It is the type of climb where it will be very enjoyable for many attempts as one tries to get further each time, further each time with little tricks and keys being learnt each attempt and the leg muscles also growing until they can make it. I had to stop to rest or because I couldn’t control my bike enough climbing over the rocks about 4 times tonight, I am sure I can get that down to one and maybe it might be possible to conquer it one day.

Then the downhill makes it just perfect. It is probably 5 kilometers of continuously falling single track with a variety of characteristics: gravelly path between trees, rocky slabs, clay ruts, smooth but narrow concrete path, small drop offs (3 or 4 inches only) and then it opens up to a perfectly smooth tarmac road for the last 500m. Magic.

Then one is out at the pizza place and can enjoy a very nice wood fired pizza with delicious fruit drinks as the sun goes down and the sound of evening prayers comes from the mosque.

Tonight’s adventure kept on coming too. Ramadan left and started leisurely biking through the back roads that lead out the main thoroughfare. It is dark by that time and with our bike lights providing enough light to see 5m in front on the road we cruise through a couple of villages with dogs and people looking on in amusement. Tonight is started to gentle rain while we were winding down through some rice paddies, we pushed on. The rain built and with the mosques letting out the sound of the last prayer of the day we were biking down now deserted roads with water teaming down from the heavens. We decided to push on going through it all happy that the rain would reduce the night traffic even further.

It was a very wet bike for 20min or so. Cars were driving 25km/hour and everyone on their motorbikes was sodden. I actually came across a group of people who were fishing one guy and his motorbike out of the side ditch. I helped them lift it out. The kid (15 years old say) was ok . He must have just lost control or sight in the rain and blatantly driven into the ditch. People are awful drivers and very risky here.

So then I hounded my way home to a very happy shower and then to get into bed to write this.

A Work Update

Both Rachel and I have been working very hard. I’m normally out the door at 7:30am and at work ten to fifteen minutes later. I am not normally getting home until after 7:00pm as I find the time after others have left work is good time for me to catch up on writing and planning work that I have to do.

I am starting to feel that I understand the projects that I am managing now and also the people. I’ve now met all the people in my team including those who work several hours away. I’ve been to probably half the villages that I have projects in and driven past some of the others. It is a very interesting project. As a recap, many of the other Red Cross National societies built houses and made an agreement with us to provide water and sanitation to them.

Our major partner for my projects is the Canadian Red Cross. The other day I visited 5 or 6 villages in Aceh Jaya about two hours south of Banda Aceh where we live. We have many, as many as 30, contracting firms working for us to build permanent water supplies for these houses. We have previously provided temporary water supplies to tapstands in the villages and now we are building either shallow wells in the back yard of each house or a gravity water supply to bring the water down from the hills and pipe it into their new houses. The next few months are going to be very exciting as the water supplies will be starting to run. My main task before that time is to train the village water and sanitation supply committees and the community in general how to administer, maintain and operate these systems, no short order!

In each house we have also built a septic tank, then if the soil won’t provide a good soak away we’ve built a below ground concrete box which we fill with gravel for the water to flow through. We call these structures subsurface flow wetlands and flowers and reeds are planted above the gravel to suck up the water and help dispose of it. The left over water soaks into the ground or is directed to a drain. We have some areas where the soil conditions are causing us some challenges but there are hundreds and hundreds of these systems working well. Our community outreach team has been educating people about them so they are well maintained. Below is a picture of one of the wetlands that has been planted with beautiful flowers and really makes the house look great.

 

I think the team of people I get to work with here are really great. Our programme manager is a very interesting man called Fred who has 50 odd years of experience with projects in developing countries. He provides great leadership for the program. Our engineers, site supervisors and community outreach people are all very dedicated and good at what they do. While we have a big challenge trying to maintain all these sanitation systems and water supplies I think we have a good chance of doing it.

Rachel’s work has been interesting too. She still has not received a longterm contract mainly due to a lack of organization from the outfit who would hire her. She has been working on some short-term contracts. Some of the time she gets to contribute to and be around the political happenings which is what she really wants to do. However in the short-term she has also had to sort out some finance processes at one of the agencies that is not at all organized and is too much of a possibility for misappropriation of funds or corruption. Organizing and sorting out this situation has taken a lot of energy from her but she is very good at doing it.

It is less than two months to the national elections in Indonesia which will be very important for life in Aceh. We want the incumbent president, called SBY, to win as he has been helpful for the peace process while some of the competitors are much more likely to be pressured into derailing it due to connections with the military. Fortunately most polls have SBY doing nicely at the moment. There are local parties running in Aceh which is unprecedented in Indonesia, which normally requires parties to have representatives throughout Indonesia. This was one of the provisions of the peace process. It is interesting to see who the Acehense will vote for. I think a good number of them will vote for a local party rather than a national party but we aren’t sure how many will vote for Partai Aceh which is the party that the people who were in the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) during the conflict have set up. It is going to be a very interesting time and also a time when we are all going to be very careful.

BLACKIE the cat

 

There used to be two cats that hung out at our house a lot. One is called Tompie and one is called Blackie. Blackie is a female cat and she has been pregnant for a while now. The first sign was that she was all of a sudden very hungry and very brave looking for food. She would come into the house upstairs where we eat and would have to be pushed away from the food!

Rachel and I aren’t at the stage where we want to pet Blackie, she undoubtedly has fleas. However Rachel started feeding little old Blackie some milk and occasionally eggs every now and then. Blackie now sleeps most nights right outside our door on our door mat. (See the photos below). We even went as far as getting some real cat food pellets for her the other day. It will be interesting to see what happens when the kittens are born. Maybe we’ll have a meowing pack outside our front door too.

Amazing Delivery

I got a real surprise the other day when I looked around inside our little house and saw that there was a letter there. It was from Kim and Age in California. They had asked me an address to send a Christmas card to but I had told them not to bother as there was no way that it would get there. However I did have my bank book with me that had the address written down so I sent it to them. Lo-and-behold exactly a month after they sent the Christmas card it arrived at my house.

OK, maybe not so amazing but look at the address
JL Pendidikan DSN. Tuempeun
Desa Lamjabat
Meuraxa
BANDA ACEH 23234

You'll note that there is no house number, just a street name.

What is even more amazing is that I've never seen anything that looks remotely like a postman anywhere near our house, or anywhere in Banda Aceh for that matter! Dian, the lady who lives next door to us, said that a non-descript man pulled up on a motorbike and passed the letter to 5yr old Muktadi who was standing out the front of the house. He brought it in and said there was a letter for me. Simple as that...

I don't suggest sending anything valuable via this route but feel free to try with fun things. Also I've had FedEx deliver things to me at my office. Actually I just heard that FedEx is closed for the next month or so. Apparently DHL is open though...

Michael McWhirter
c/o American Red Cross
Jl. Fatahillah No.2A,
Geuceu Kayee Jatho
Banda Aceh, 23239, Indonesia

Anyway getting back to the christmas card from Kim and Age making it here, I obviously had too little faith. Now the card is very pleasantly sitting on the fridge just where it belongs, see the photo above.

A new job

 

It has been a while since I've found the time to write in the blog. This is because I have started a full-time job with the American Red Cross. The photo above is looking down across the site of a reservoir we are about to build to feed down to the Krueng Raya area in the background.

I've been busy sorting out my personal situation here in terms of administration, trying to meet the staff and trying to understand my projects here.

I am the project manager for our water and sanitation work in about 40 villages. There are around 100 houses in each village so we are somewhere in the order of 4,000 houses which have been built by other Red Cross organizations. My team has responsibility for supplying septic tanks and water supplies for these houses. We are also providing health and hygiene training and very importantly we are providing capacity building and training for village communities to operate and maintain the facilities. We also are providing funding to IOM for a lot of houses so in addition to the houses above we oversee IOM's work with our money.

It is going to be fun. We have about 20 contractors working for us right now in villages spread over a drive of about 8 hours. We also have to work with the community, other aid organizations and the local government structures that exist.

My team is about 20 people at the moment and they all seem to be very nice and capable people. I am really looking forward to working with them more. I am also really looking forward to working with the communities and the operators of the systems we are building. Great fun.

It has been a case of long days at the office trying to get my head around all of this but I've been enjoying it. It is quite different from being the consultant. I actually have one of my old major competitors working for me so it is nice to become the client not the consultant.

Of course there are going to be challenges. Mostly issues that took place before the team that exists now had a lot to do with this. Also after the construction we have the even harder task of working to educated/encourage the communities on how to use the new infrastructure. Wouldn't be fun if it was all easy.

A New Car Indonesian Style

Rachel and I have been looking for a car to buy for quite a while. Car rental for a month is about $500 here which is pretty steep. Our plan was to buy a second hand car for around $5,000 and sell it for not too much less when we leave. I was interested in getting a 4WD car so I would be safer in the hills when looking for rivers and other adventure.

We didn’t have any money for quite a while but I spent a good deal of time looking around at cars. I probably looked at 5 or 6 quite seriously. After a while though I realized that for $5000 you just couldn’t buy a reasonable, i.e. something Rachel can drive, 4WD car. With that we reduced our requirements and ended up very quickly with a $4,000 1995 Suzuki Feroza. It has two front doors and a back door so is pretty small. I think the engine is a 1600cc and it pinks fairly badly at times. However it has good tyres, brakes and clearance and Abeng, who is a mechanic by trade, considers it a great vehicle and the price to be fair. We’ve a list of things to improve on it, important things like seatbelts in the back, roof rack on the top and reinstalling the spare wheel.

The actual transaction of buying a car here was hilarious. Insurance is a big priority for me but it seems impossible to get insurance that would cover someone elses car if I crashed into them. The philosophy is that if they have an expensive car then they will have insurance. If they don’t have an expensive car then it is cheap to fix it so we’ll just negotiate who pays. I haven’t yet resigned myself to having no insurance here but it could well end up there.

The next super weird thing is that everyone encouraged me not to change the name on the ownership papers even if to the name of a trusted friend if I can’t legally own it myself. The reasons were that it costs $70 to change them and more importantly it would fill up space in the ownership book. When that book is full they would issue a duplicate book which would immediately reduce the value of the vehicle. Everyone is pleased that it has a BL license plate which means that it is registered in Banda Aceh and things I need not worry about anything else. Abeng knows the guy who sold it to us and isn’t at all worried about him coming and claiming it is still his car. Needless to say I have several issues with all of this logic and may still change the ownership to my name!

The conversation where I was asking questions about ownership and insurance included a lot of me explaining my expectations from similar transactions/situations in NZ or the US and people telling me this was Indonesia and the system is different. I am not 100% a fan of Indonesian systems and this was borne out when the topic changed to talk of putting rearseat belts into the car (an absolute must for Rachel and I). Abeng said to us “we have a system here for that too, when you are dead you are dead, that is it!”. I invited him to discuss that philosophy about safety with my mother! I advised him to have a hankerchief ready too!

Expected resale for the car in a year’s time is about $3,500 or more if we make significant improvements. We may also upgrade if need demands and/or financial resources allow. Sounds like a good deal.

So there it is. We are mobile and going places.

Solid Waste Progress

 

We woke up one morning recently and felt that things were just too dirty/untidy around our house. We cleaned up the area that the dishes are washed in and then gathered the children and proceeded to gather all of the trash from around the house, under the house and on the road out the front. We got A LOT of trash together. Actually it completely filled the back of the people mover car that we had! While picking up the trash we kept repeating that we were cleaning the environment to stop us getting sick. After we drove the trash to the local dumpster and washed our hands we rewarded the kids with drinks and sweets from the local shop. The parents thought it was a bit strange but I think after a few times the message will set in.

That wasn't the end of the solid waste management part of the day! We have been collecting plastic bottles, cans, paper and cardboard for the last couple of months. We tell the kids about how to keep it clean and tidy so there is no issue with smell or flies or rats. We wanted the kids to value the process of recycling so we had told them that the money we get from the recycling place was for them. Just to make sure there was enough incentive we went to the recycling place beforehand and gave the guy there $0.50 and told him to add it on to whatever he would normally pay the kids. We took them in, recycled 2kg of plastic, 7 kg of cardboard and paper, two glass bottles, half a kg of aluminium and they got about a dollar which with the $0.50 we'd sweetened the deal with was enough to make the kids happy at the shop for the second time that day. They are now interested in recycling :-)

An aid organization or the local wastemanagement division of the city government has also given people training and equpiment for composting at their house too. I've had some successful composting going for a while so it was nice to see other people doing it in the houses beside us too! Composting happens really quickly in the environment here too.

The final steps are to make sure people don't try to burn their trash at the back of our house and to clean up the mini rubbish dumps that are located near our house. The later we'll wait to do until we have gloves and tools to make it a cleaner process.