week in review

hi,
it is saturday afternoon and i just returned from a acehnese wedding celebration. (aceh is the area we are in). the bride was wearing to be what looked like a 15 pound headpiece, and has to sit on a little throne and greet people all day. she was very gracious!! hundreds of people come out for the party and it goes from 1000 to probably 1-2 in the morning. they have already been married in the mosque several weeks ago, and had a party on her side. today was the party on his side of the family. we were served plates and plates of food, given a little tour of how the food is cooked, all the little ladies washing the dishes. once we ate, we left. apparently that is what you do here. it was great to be able to go to an authentic indonesian wedding.

so... what has been happening this week...
monday - we (being laura, kevin, matt and i) attended a staff meeting at the Genassist office (the local NGO we are with), met all the managers and leaders. they had to have a further meeting, so laura and i went next door for coffee and quickly had several men willing to teach us indonesian and ask us if we were married (no, i am not picking up "hot indonesian men, unit 112). after the 15 minute meeting took almost 2 hours (indonesian time), we spent another hour running errands before heading out to lhong.
it was 2 hours on a pretty sketchy highway of switchbacks but with amazing views of the indian ocean. once in lhong, we had to wait another hour for the intepreter who then took us to where each of us would be staying.
i am staying with a 63 year old widow named nuriah. her husband died several years ago, and all her children live in other cities. she proudly showed me her possessions - a calender of tsunami pictures and a clock in the living room. my bedroom is the most furnished. i have a bed, a fan and even a ghetto blaster! she sleeps in the other bedroom/storage room. there is a small bathroom and kitchen. she was showing me all her identifcation for some reason and showed me her monthly paycheck/pension - equivalent to $35 a month. so she is quite poor - but rich in hospitality, laughter, and smiles. she prepares my breakfast and supper - which consists of rice, and usually soup, fish, a fried egg and sweet tea. it is actually all quite tasty. i lied and told her i was allergic to the stinky fruit! i just don't think i could bear eating it in front of her! i would make too many faces trying to swallow it!
we had one word conversations using my small indonesian phrase book. a young guy doing a census or something came by and starting asking me when i would go with him to the waterfall, go around town etc. i told him i was going with my boss. then i said i was tired and got up to go to bed. i didn't know how to end the conversation!

tuesday - there was a symbolic strike in sumatra because the people are not happy with the slowness of a peace process. up until the tsunami hit, many people in sumatra wanted to separate. there has been conflict for 30 years with alot of rebel activity. indonesia didn't want them to split because there are too many resources in this province. so it is only recently that there has been peace.
so we toured around the work site in the morning and went for a walk on the beach. it is a beautiful stretch of beach - it looks great to swim in except there are still houses and tree stumps under the water which one could easily get impaled on by a wave. they lost about 1/2 km of land in the area, and it has totally changed the currents etc so much that even the seasons seem to be mixed up.
we finally started working in the afternoon, levelling off dirt piles that will help provide a base for house foundations. i drank through about 5 litres of water and only went to the bathroom once the entire day - that is how much i am sweating!
after work we drove up to a lookout point where you can see the coast line, islands and monkeys. was refused entry to the actual lookout point because i am female...
finished off my birthday with black forest cake...

wednesday - we shovelled some more today... working on those arm muscles and farmers tan... also pulled nails out of boards for a few hours. ate some rice for lunch...
it started to downpour at 330pm so we had to head home. we were totally soaked after the 20 minute ride in the back of the pickup truck (that's how we get around - illegal at home, but no other option here). lots of dry indonesians laughed at us as we drove by. i didn't find out until 2 days later that there is some indonesian belief about absolutely needing to go home and have a shower if you get wet in the rain.

thursday - it is supposed to be dry season here, but it rained all day long . we tried to go out to the worksite to check it out but one of the bridges was covered in 2 feet of water and half the road under more. we ended up hanging out at mike's house - the rest of them played yeuker (sp?) while i read "the pilots wife". a pretty boring day...

friday - finally no rain, until we got to the worksite... it rained on and off all morning. got soaking wet again... i stood under a tarp with a bunch of guys for awhile but all they did was talk in indonsian about me and laugh. so i decided to work in the rain instead. one of the female indonesian managers said they had probably never been that close to a white woman before (and women and men generally don't mingle in this culture because it is muslim), so she thought they were probably just nervous. there were never any tourists here before the tsunami due to armed conflict, so it is still pretty new to have white people around.
nobody works on friday afternoons between 1200-1400 because they go to prayers. so we had an extra long lunch - sitting in wet clothes...
went back to the worksite and it actually did not rain all afternoon! i half dried off...
we headed back to banda aceh in the early evening.
that is about it!! it is the very basic of what i have been doing... so many details, i don't know where to start!
i.e. i share my bedroom with a mouse. i don't like mice but i figured it poses less of a threat than the 8 foot crocodiles that have been sited only a few hundred metres away, or the wild boars with horns...
we have electricity from 7pm to 7am or whenever the guy controlling the generator decides we will have electricity... but the only electrical things in the house are the lightbulbs and the lone fan. light does come in handy when trying to shower though - otherwise it is by the light of my headlamp.
there are still people living in mildewy, moldy UN tents - for over a year and a half now. the red cross initially said they were going to build 20,000 houses but all i have seen is a few metal latrines on the side of the road. (the red cross expats in banda aceh live in the rich area and have reportadely have waterfalls and fountains in the foyers of their houses). i am proud to be with an NGO that has actually done something and lives no better than the locals. (well i guess we could go live in a moldy tent...)
anyway. i don't think we are coming into banda aceh next weekend. i will be hanging out with mama nuriah, learning more words, building more things, shovelling more dirt, pulling more nails...
it has been great so far! thanks for reading! and i love your comments!!
peace alida