TTT - The Trumble Travels: Indonesia - 13 July 2006

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.