equipment failures

Hello, hello

Yes, I have not posted in a while. I really have an excuse, though, and it was not for a lack of desire. My satellite modem died this past Monday while I was in the field, so I am very painfully at a loss for communications with the world outside my head and outside Jakarta. I had a little time at the office on Friday but it wasn't nearly enough. To check email and write this blog, I have sucked it up and come to the "Cheetos" mall. [I have no idea how to really spell the name of the mall, but everyone knows it by Cheetos - as long as it is pronounced properly. I had a dumb taksi driver who couldn't understand my American pronunciation of Cheetos, so I panicked and called Cipu, one of our translators. Apparently this idiot wanted me to make the "chi" sound more harsh so I sounded like an Indonesian. How annoying.] So now that I know how to properly pronounce Cheetos like an Indonesian, I took a taxi out here to get my internet fix. This means I have to sit at the mall and be assaulted by the sounds of the Indonesian "rock" band playing nearby. I'm talking covers of Celine Dion, people, and other songs you haven't heard in 20 or 30 years. Add in speaker feedback and children screeching songs like a nightmare of karaoke in hell. Not to mention the cigarette smoke. I hope you understand how desperate I am to be in touch!

After my last posting, we spent 2 more days in the induction workshop. Funny how the audience got smaller and smaller as the Tamrin bigwigs would put in an hour of "facetime" and take off. The FPFs (field program facilitators - Stacie, Jen, and me, plus Ali until she is promoted) stayed behind one evening to have a glass of wine at the hotel. Ah, good wine. Y'all in California have no idea how spoiled you are! Then we piled into buses and drove out to Bogor, where we checked in to a pretty decent hotel. Friday night was our cultural presentation evening. I was shocked at how Ibu Ade - the head of the avian flu Campaign Management Unit (CMU) - belted out the songs, played the guitar, and danced. Lots of dancing to Indonesian pop songs that never seem to end. Of course I got dragged into the dancing, which seems to have made an impression on people. I caught them off guard with my skills - hahahahaha. We spent the next day doing team-building challenges in the jungle. For the most physical challenges, my team turned out to be all petite women and one short guy. Needless to say, we did not excel at any of the physical feats, but our guy, Ata, sure loved the attention he got in the trust circle!

Then I got one day back in Jakarta to recover by the pool, and then it was off to the field. Because the Bogor area is very close to Jakarta, we took Unang, one of the staff drivers, instead of hiring an outside driver. I get along pretty well with Unang, but they sent us in the sedan, which isn't exactly an ideal field vehicle. Especially when we have a pickup and an SUV driving people around Jakarta, looking cool. Efa was assigned as my translator, and Ibu Mundi from CMU was my government chaperone. All in all, we had a pretty good trip. The PDS/R team in Sukabumi City had never been visited by anyone from FAO, and I liked them a lot. I think they are doing a darn good job, given the circumstances. That first night was my birthday. We went out for dinner to celebrate. One big difference between home and Indonesia: when you go out for your birthday here, you are expected to pay for everyone. I wasn't prepared for that, so when the bill came... Not expensive, of course. But it would just have been nice to have something feel like home on my birthday. Instead, dinner was more like being licked by a cat. It's a nice gesture and is meant to feel good, but it really doesn't. Thanks to everyone, though, who sent e-cards!! We'll just have to celebrate extra next year.

The next day we were off to Cianjur, where the PDS/R teams are mostly male. I told them a refresher training is coming up, and they told me to make it as long as possible. Why? Because they are still single. I guess PDS/R trainings are good places to meet potential mates? Geez, maybe I should be going to more of them! Another day observing PDS/R officers at work, and then we spent the night high up in the hills near Bandung. The hotel was pretty ok but the traffic noise was terrible. My mom would have loved the area, though. There were tons of plant nurseries with some really neat plants. The higher we went (= cooler climate) the more familiar some of the plant species looked. Wednesday was Ciamhi City, where, again, we have a pretty excellent team working hard for us. And a military academy. We returned to Jakarta Wed night and headed back out again for the day on Thursday to neighboring Bekasi, where they are reporting lots of avian influenza.

What made Thursday remarkable is that it was the start of Ramadan. Indonesia is mostly Muslim, so people fast from sunup to sundown through the month of Ramadan. On the first day, no one is used to it, so they get tired quickly and don't want to do much. They must get dehydrated to since they can't even drink water. Unang explained to me that they can't drink because maybe a morsel of food stuck in the person's teeth would get washed down the throat, violating the fast. I suspect that explanation is just a silly Unanag thing. Anyone know for sure? All the lunch places at Deptan close for Ramadan, and non-Muslims have to bring lunch from home or order in. One must eat and drink somewhat discreetly so as not to "offend" those who are fasting. It is a "slow" month in the office and everywhere in Indonesia because people go home early and haven't much motivation to work to the usual standards. That meant we went out to a village in Bekasi on Thursday morning, where the whole village turned out to talk with and learn from the PDS/R teams, and were back in the office just after noon because no one wanted to take me out to see another team. Ah, well, thus is life during Ramadan, I suppose. However, it seems to make Jakarta traffic a bit better, which is surely a blessing.

Nice, the band has taken a break. My ears are pleased. In addition to my dead modem, the last 2 DVDs I have tried to watch - all pirated, of course; they cost <$1 each! - were apparently bad ones. I was maybe 30 min from the end of "Breaking and Entering" (sigh, Jude Law) and 40 min into "Motorcycle Diaries" when they just really couldn't be read anymore, either by my DVD player, which is tuned to handle pirated DVDs, or my laptop. Maybe tonight I will be a bit more lucky. I left early from Deptan on Thurs to recharge my electricity account, and the bloody office had closed at 2:30pm. Mind you, this was a day after my nearly-fruitless search for coffee at a decent hour of the morning. On the island of Java. (But the coffee experience here is a topic for another day.) Ali's housekeeper, Ikrab, seems practically impossible to communicate with. I really needed her to come last Friday after I had been in the field, and she came an hour late, after I had already left for work. Sadly, I am giving up on Ikrab and trying someone new. Maybe nothing here works - modem, DVDs, lunch during Ramadan, the gym during the month of November, the office that dispenses electricity, the postal service - but at least I can keep trying to find a housekeeper who shows up when she is supposed to!

The smokers have moved in behind me, so I may need to migrate soon. I am borrowing Jen's laptop later so I can Skype my family tonight before my parents leave for Peru. I'll also grab a bite to eat here at the mall so I can take a break from chicken and rice. I love rice, but once per day is enough. Although, I have found this really yummy, organic red rice...

More to come this week! Planned topics for future blogs include: apartment living, java on Java, malls/shopping, food & food safety, and fashion. I hope to get to the apartment topic this week, since I will be in Deptan.

Love to all, Edie