Indonesia - 13 July 2006 - I Project & Home

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 7:56 AM
Subject: Indonesia - 13 July 2006 - I Project & Home

Today we had the great pleasure of driving from Manado to project ID-205 Eben Haezer in Watulaney, about two hours drive from Manado. The drive is very windy and hilly and beautiful. The project is quite far off the beaten path and includes 9 kilometers on a single lane road to get to the community of Watulaney. Farming is the major source of income. Cloves, Coconut, and Corn are raised. This community is not visited by very many foreigners so the presence of a large white guy (who sweats a lot) was quite the occasion. There is a public primary school and a junior high school run by the Seventh Day Adventists. The Senior High school is 25 KM away. The primary school has about 79 children attending of which about half are involved in the Compassion project (the children in this project are all 10 years old or younger).

The community of Watulaney has about 2150 people, 633 families, and only 315 homes. There are 5 churches in the community, a Protestant, a Seventh Day Adventist, two Pentecostal, and one Baptist church. Eben Haezer (Ebenezer to us English language sorts) is at the Baptist church. The Pastor is Feri Repi and he shared with me later that the 5 churches get along well and that there are monthly meetings between the pastors. We had a lovely time talking with the Pastor and his wife. We also spent time with Michael, the project director, and other adults who work at the project. They prepared some very nice food for us including rice, chicken, pork on skewers, some noodle dish with hard boiled quail eggs, and some very nice corn.

We also had the opportunity to see some of the activities going on. The school day was over and some of the children were involved in activities at the project. A couple of groups of children were involved in classroom-like work and at some point a young girl stood and read a passage of Scripture. There were also children involved in some physical activity including walking on a balance beam.

At some point the electricity went out and a generator kicked up in a back room and soon things were operational again…par for the course.

After some time in the project we walked to a home where they had a two-day old son who was not even named yet. My suggestion was “Dan Trumble” but hopefully they don’t take that too seriously. “Daniel” is fine but “Trumble” would be downright strange. The mom and baby seem to be doing well. The house is basically a living room, two small bedrooms, and a kitchen area. The house is located up the side of a hill and there is at least one clove tree right outside the house (cloves grow on trees…who knew?).

Dogs are plentiful and dogs are food. If you kill a dog with your car you can end up paying a fine. The fine is greater for a female dog then for a male dog. They determine the amount you need to pay by the number of nipples on the female dog that is killed.

The use of the car horn is much more common here than it is in Colorado. I made the comment that on this drive, the horn had been used more than I’d used my horn in a year, and that is a legitimate statement. It is used here to inform people that you’re in their vicinity or that you’re coming around a corner and it’s really a safety device in this regard. Ronald, the man from the office who has been driving us around, is an expert at negotiating the vehicle in traffic (vehicle, human, and animal) or driving on a winding mountain road. If a vehicle is stopped in front of you it is quite common to swing into the other lane of traffic, whether other vehicles are coming or not. You honk, slow down, dodge, or whatever, and it seems to work out fine. If you know how to drive in the States I’ll give you a big “so what” when it comes to driving here.

After the home visit I ended up stopping by a home where they were preparing banana chips and I was given a little bag of them.

The Project:


Tuty (Compassion East Indonesia Country Director), Dan, and Pastor Repi

The Church is in the background




Where services are held


The Home:

Dad & Sister

Baby in one of the bedrooms

The Home from the outside

Kitchen

Living Room

12 July 2006 Trumble in Indonesia

From: Dan Trumble (US-Finance)

Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 7:13 PM

Subject: 12 July 2006 Trumble in Indonesia

Dan the botanist/biologist
(yeah, right...in college I took Energy Science I and Energy Science II to fulfill my science requirement)

Well, greetings again. This part of Indonesia sure is pretty and it sure is hot. The last couple of days have been spent in the office and a lot of the goings-on would be pretty boring to many of you.

As I write this I’m riding to the office on Wednesday morning. Traffic hear is something else but pretty typical of the third world…it’s chaotic and there are a lot of close calls but things seems to work okay. There’s lots of blue mini-buses and motorcycles. Many of the blue mini-buses have some kind of saying on the back (and some have something written on the windshield).

Yesterday on the way into work I saw a kid wearing a Ronaldo shirt (star soccer player from Brasil).

Here are some of the things on the busses. I guess I better get a picture so you know what I’m talking about…maybe later. I would guess that many/most of the numbers are related to soccer players.

Ninja
Glorya
Singleton 02
Blaze of Glory
02 Stop
01
Slank 01

We’ve now arrived at the office. Have a good day. Enjoy the below biology/botany stuff:

Frogs


Palm Tree

More Foliage




Ants




Big Leaf

Trees


Boats, Trees, Water


Dan with water and stuff


Flowers

Giant Chess Set

Sunday 9 Jul 2006 in Indonesia

From: Dan Trumble (US-Finance)

Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2006 9:32 PM

Subject: Sunday 9 Jul 2006 in Indonesia - Dan Trumble

Hey, Selamat pagi (good morning).

I’m in Indonesia and put together the little summary below.

Manado is a city of about 1 million and has a lot of Christians. The Dutch colonized this area. There are quite a few European flags flying around town showing people’s support for various soccer teams. Apparently this would not be okay in a different part of the country but it is more free here. The city was nice and doesn’t seem very dangerous. It’s very hilly and very pretty.

This morning I heard what sounded kind of like the scream of firecrackers flying through the air (but with no bang at the end). It was the song of birds…really different.

We had breakfast this morning. It was a buffet but not as nice as what we had in Brazil. There was some noodles that looked okay but sure didn’t look like typical American breakfast food. I didn’t try any of that but I did have some of the rice which was maybe like sticky rice but with quite a bit more water. Think of the consistency of kind of runny oatmeal. A lady would cook eggs and Rebeca and I each had two over easy eggs brought to us (I’m not sure Rebeca ate both of hers). Anyway, I made some toast and used it like a dippin’ egg thing (“dippin’ eggs is what I called it when I was a kid). I ended up throwing the second egg in with the rice and some toast and cheese and that was pretty good.

We went to a Pentecostal church. The service ran about 2 hours but they flashed the words up on some screens when there were songs to sing and the language is pretty easy to pronounce when you can see the words spelled out so I was able to sing along even though most of the time I didn’t know what the words meant. Yesus is pretty easy to figure out, though.

After church we went to a restaurant beside the ocean. We got in a terrible traffic jam on the way and it turned out that it was a gas station that was causing the traffic jam. The ARC won’t take our stroller for safety reasons and today I see a motorcycle with Mom & Dad and sleeping child (maybe even a baby) in the middle. There were 8 of us at the restaurant and the full bill was something like $50 before tip (if any, I don’t know). It was pretty nice stuff, too. I even had an avocado drink. Who ever heard of such a thing. It also had chocolate milk mixed in or something. It was pretty good. The food was served family style. We had prongs (which are basically huge shrimp and are a huge pain to de-leg, de-head, and de-skin). There were a couple of fish kind of flayed out. Pretty spicy but pretty good. Eyeball was still intact…I could have done without that (I didn’t eat it though, yucko!)

We stopped by Hypermarket (kind of like a Wal-Mart) and I bought quite a bit of stuff. There were dress-style shirts for under $6 and some sleeveless t-shirts for under $2 (not that I’d want one of those but the prices are pretty impressive). I apparently put my big toothpaste tube back in the cabinet before I left and so I only had a little tiny tube and needed more. I got a full tube for about 75 cents. I bought candy, pop, and other stuff. I think there is a good opportunity to take care of stocking stuffers while I’m here.

On the way out I stopped by another store very quickly and there were soccer jerseys (or something like that) for less than $5…wahoo!

I ended up taking a nap and then a bit after 7:00 PM Rebeca and I met for dinner. This place is pretty quiet. For a long time we were the only guests in the restaurant. It is quite nice but they had a TV on with some kind of local soap opera or something. Anyway, we didn’t really order and the food started coming. There was a chicken salad followed by pumpkin (or something) soup followed by the main course of rice, vegetables, and squid and for desert there were fried bananas with some kind of cheese on top. It was all quite good. My first experience with squid in Hong Kong in 2004 maybe left me with the wrong first impression…that was fairly nasty (like chewing on your shoe but the shoe would probably taste better). What I had tonight was really quite good. It was also quite spicy. Rebeca has been avoiding the seafood. I guess we’ll see whether it is safe to eat or not…I’ve been eating (which is certainly one of my gifts).

Outside (especially, but not exclusively) by the pool are a bunch of frogs or toads.

[NOTE: when I said "prongs" above what I was talking about was "prawns". How should I know about all of this seafood stuff? I have lived most of my life in Colorado! ---Dan May 2, 2007]

This is a picture of me at the place where we’re staying (I took the picture myself).

Another picture of the place we’re staying

Giant Chessboard

We had a nice air-conditioned vehicle to travel in. These folks did not.

Avocado drink (whoever heard of such a thing?)

Fish

Restaurant – Lunch on Sunday

This is the pool at the restaurant where the live lobsters are kept. These are starfish.