laundry racks

Yes, I have been remiss in updating my blog in a timely fashion. Sorry.

All I wanted to do when I came home from my week in Yogya was sleep in, go to the gym, and shop with Dale. I did all those things but had to spend last Sunday at Eric/Dale/Robyn's house learning how to handle chickens and ducks. Fortunately, our learning included vaccinating and drawing blood, but NOT killing. Yea! I don't mind eating chickens but, as a veterinarian, I also don't need to kill any more beings than is absolutely necessary.

Yogya was nice. I like it there. I stayed at a fairly "upscale backpacker" hotel, if such a thing exists, near Jalan Malioboro - the main tourist shopping drag. The folks at the Local Disease Control Center (LDCC, remember this one) were really good to work with. On my first day in the field, we made the rounds meeting people, then had a truly lovely lunch with the PDS officers. Goat sate and an orange squash in a nice outdoor setting, with gamelan music in the background. Cost less than $1.50 per person - amazing! Then we were off to a village that had recently had a die-off in their chickens. Most of the carcasses had been buried and burned (the proper means of disposal) by the time we got there. We tested one surviving bird, which was negative for active virus shedding, and then went to look at the river where some of the villagers had thrown carcasses. While at the river, a woman brought us a dead chicken and a dead chick. Yep - positive for influenza. HPAI up close and personal!! Don't worry - I didn't touch it and I was wearing my N95 respirator mask. Got some great photos; I'll try to post those soon.

The rest of the week wasn't nearly as exciting, but being in the field is certainly better than sitting in front of my computer in a noisy office. I visited more PDS teams, chatted with a woman vet, and I attended the LDCC monthly meeting along with all the local PDS/R officers. I also indulged in some retail therapy, including a trip to a local school of batik art. Or so I was told. Not sure if it was the truth or not. But there was some lovely art that will hopefully grace a few American walls one of these days. I also found that there were 2 new Anita Blake novels (urgh!) so I had to pick them up. Doritos for the brain. Or maybe worse. Pop-tarts?

This week I've been back at Deptan preparing for the Induction Workshop we are now having at a really nice hotel called the Grand Kemang. It is supposed to be an overview of the entire project for everyone involved. Too bad so many of the higher-ups chose not to attend. We have a good crew of Indonesians involved, though. In the next few months our training team hopes to conduct a total of 93 initial and refresher trainings for PDS/R officers. Quite an undertaking. I apparently now have government clearance and, thus, official permission to work in Indonesia and travel for work. Next week I am supposed to go to visit a few of the districts under direction of the Bogor LDCC. Bogor is really near Jakarta, and the site of our "team building" workshop starting tomorrow evening, but I will travel a bit farther afield in West Java. If all actually goes according to plans...

So, that's all for now. I had to send out laundry plus do a big load of my own, so I have drying clothes all over the place. The housekeeper Ali, Jen, Stacie, and I are sharing is not quite consistent or easy to communicate with. If it weren't for the huge annoyance factor of the manual washing machine (to be explained later), I wouldn't even bother having someone come in!

E