My day begins at 5.30.am, well that is when I get out of bed but really the day begins at 4.30 with the penetrating call for prayers from the local Mosque.
That is when I stir and dream a convoluted story which is a mixture of the previous days events and the issues that are on my mind. One of my dreams or prayers was answered. I prayed for the noise to stop and it did. I became completely deaf in one ear. I caught an ear infection from a hotel swimming pool.
Living in a world where the local peoples’ lives are controlled by spirits I don’t want to push my luck too far.
Not long after I am awake and making coffee the Jugga comes into the house with ‘Salamat pagi’ ( good morning) and proceeds to open the curtains, the doors and all of the 18 windows of the house to allow the early morning breeze In to the house now that night has dissolved into day an the evil spirits are no longer a menace.
With the first sip of coffee I carry my cup upstairs to the office and begin preparing for my day at work.
The motor bike ride to work is always interesting, weaving in and out of the traffic with the morning cool air in your face watching people preparing for work. The main roads carry thousands of people and small stores line the road. You can buy petrol, dispensed in glass bottles, have your tyres pumped up or repaired on the spot, have bowl of soup, buy a T-shirt or a new pair of sandals and
have your clothes washed. There are food carts called kaki lima (the man with the five legs) sell in all kinds of hot food from beef roles to fried banana. Today I saw a blind boy with a white stick being escorted by he sister, a legless man crossing the road in a wheelchair and a variety of people begging, a deserted mother with an young baby, an old woman and an old man with a disability. Some are genuine but for others it is one of their many small jobs to get enough food for the day.
The office is on the edge of the city an when I leave the hustle an bustle of the early morning markets and cross the southern ring road
Another world appears.
parking attendantI arrive at the office, a two story building plonked between a rice field and a grove of banana trees and greet the old lady across the road in her food stall and park my motor bike. I am the first to arrive, the office is closed so I go around to the back verandah and sit at the large table and begin working on my computer. Gradually over the next few hours the staff arrive and we begin chatting.
Gathering food for goatsI work for an organization that provides information to village people that will improve their livelihood. This a networking organization
That is trying to many things on many different fronts;
from setting up radio stations, websites to publishing magazines and books. These alternative media channels tackle problems such as, improving farming incomes, finding markets for village handicraft products to transparency in local government and inclusion of women into the economy as active players.
The organization applied for a grant from the Australian government for help and they got me.
We have not quite worked out what my role is as I am getting to know what the organization does.
The staff comprises young graduates who are busy beavering away on computers and holding meetings with villagers, while I am trying to get a handle on the structure and function of the organization.
At a staff meeting this week I asked the group what was the vision of the organization ….apart from blank looks on peoples’ faces one person said “we spent a whole day last year trying to work that out” Still blank faces and somebody else said “we had so much fun but we forgot to write down the conclusions.”
I was asked to join a team working with farmers where they are introducing goats as an additional income stream. I began asking lots of questions about goats and the level of knowledge local farmers had about keeping goats and found that either the team did not know much or they could not explain what they knew in English. However as time passed I realized that both the farmers and the staff actually knew a lot.
How to make compostI am trying to understand Javanese thinking. The quiet exterior of Javanese masks a complexity of thinking driven by obligation, care, understatement and experience of spirits which will take some time for me to unravel
So I too have began beavering away at my computer on Google finding out every thing I could about goats and now I am quite enthusiastic about goats.
For example “when looking for a good Buck make sure the animal has good teeth and big balls” ..” ( it seems obvious when you think about it). In developing a herd you need one buck for 25 Does’. I now know how to tell when a doe is on heat. Of the 12 or more symptoms the one that got me was “Yelling for no apparent reason”
I actually know some women like that but it never occurred to me that they might be on heat.
Lunch seems to occur at any time between 12 and 2.oopm. Some kind of non verbal communication seems to sweep through the group and they rise a say coming for lunch.
Road collapseWe straddle motor bikes and zoom off down the road to a bamboo road stall and have whatever the specialty is. Some times it is fried white bait
Other times it is rice with spicy bits of cow fat followed by ice tea all for 50 cents.
I leave the office about mid afternoon and weave my way home through
The occasional afternoon rain storm for a cool beer on the verandah.
Big deal
