Washing Feet

1/9/06       day 1 on the Island

 

Today I woke up at 4:00am due to jet lag, and because I did not want to miss my flight. I was planning on getting up at 4:30 am to pack and eat breakfast at 5am, pay for my hotel room, and then get picked up at 6am for my plane that left at 6:50.

 

Yesterday I finally arrived in the city at about 9am, with through some orientation stuff and paid my bills. It was sad to find out that I got a terrible exchange rate when I changed currency in Singapore. It was around a 7% difference than the standard going rate. After finding all that out, I checked into my hotel, and then the Volunteer Coordinator and I went to eat Satay. It was pretty good. After that I shopped some around the mall we were at. I also went bowling with some of the people out here last night. 2 women, and a married couple with 7 kids. It was awesome, and then we got Indian food afterward. I went to bed at about 10pm.

 

So this morning I woke up at 4 got on a plane at 6:50, and arrived to my island destination at about 8am. There was a white girl on the plane, it was pretty suprising to me. Theres just not that many who come to this little island, and to top it off she had a nose ring. Both are just odd things to see here. As I arrived and greeted the folks who are hosting me I started to remember all the funny quirky things about the place. It was good to see the little kids again, as well as some of the local workers of the outfit. I have pretty much forgotten all the Indonesian that I had learned when I was here before. Its ok though because they want to practice their English. I went to a Coffee shop in the local area and had some really strong and sweet coffee. I also checked out a couple of the bike shops,  parts were only a couple or few American dollars for most stuff.

 

Day 2 January 10, 2007

            Today was a long day. I woke up at about 7am, and layed around until about 7:30. I should have set my alarm clock for 6 am, but I did not. Last night I said I was going to goto the market with one of the national workers here. I failed to do that of course. I woke up and brushed my teeth, and ate some instant oatmeal. This oatmeal however is nothing like the instant or quick oatmeal in America. This was like the quick oatmeal mixed with a lot of crushed/chopped/smashed oatmeal as well. It ends up looking and feeling like porridge. I mixed it with some cinnamon and brown sugar.  After that I was about to attempt to read, but then I started to look for my wallet to put in my pocket. I then realized I could not find it and started to freak out about where it was. I searched through all of my things 3 times, and asked the American if I gave it to him to lock up with my other stuff. I had not, so I sat down for a while and tried to think of where it could be. After about 30 minutes I remembered. Where I had put it. I had left it on a side rail of the squatty potty so that it would not fall down the hole. After that I fan back to my tent excitedly, and then pitched in for the days work.

 

We turned over about a 10x 15 patch of soil to prepare it for farming. I was thouroughly exhausted by the end of it and was soaked with sweat. It was also the first time I ever had a leech suck on me as well. That was quite an odd experience. After that we ate some American style pizza that was ok in American terms but pretty awesome for Indonesians to make out here. After we ate the National (Indonesian guy who works for the Relief team) made some doughnuts. The odd ingredient was fried potatoes that I had to fry, mash up, and then put in the mix. They turned out really good, expecially after my nap in the wood chair in my tent. It’s too hot to lay down on any mattress or pad because it just hugs you're body and you start sweating all over it, even if you have a fan on you.

 

After my nap, I was woken up to get ready to goto town if I wanted to go. I did of course, we had to get some fruit, Pocari Sweat (sports drink), snacks, attempt at internet. First we went and got Pocari Sweat, and snacks. Afterwards we went to the market and got a whole pineapple, some hairy eyes ( I forgot the real name, but theyre like lychee or longan),  and oranges. Then we went to the local coffee shop which is Achehnese style. They make coffee sock filter style, which is almost like a constant French Press over steeping the beans like crazy to produce strong coffee. It is then added to a cup sized glass with lots of sugar and filled half with coffee and half with hot water. It’s served to you with a plate of simple snacks. There at the coffee shop you can catch the talk of town and sometimes conduct good business.

 

The next stop was at another NGO base to see if there internet was working. Supposedly they didn’t have internet for about 3 weeks since the earthquake. The earthquake supposedly split some line between asia and the rest of the world, disabling the internet here. The internet was really slow though and I didn’t have the patience to do much.

 

Its been fun hanging out with the National worker, he doesn’t know much English and I don’t know much Indonesian so it gets pretty funny at times especially when it comes to us cooking together.

 

I have forgotten what its like to have cold showers again. The fear of anticipation to rinse off with cold water is no fun.

 

There was an earthquake yesterday that was 5.6 or so on the scale, and we felt some tremblings of it. We didn’t find out it was big until later after I thought that it must have been big somewhere because the ocean waves weren’t acting normal.

 

There are probably about 4 or 5 NGO’s here, and it’s a bit crazy to think of the impact they will have. We would like to think they would all be positive but I get pretty disheartened when I think about it. That there is such an influx of money that’s being thrown around giving people jobs and a false sense of economy, that if they left the Island would go back to shambles. They are not really creating a self sufficient environment, nor are many of them really taking in cultural consideration, or even really being apart of the community that they live in. They pretty much stick to their sites and compounds.  

 

Day 3  January 11, 2007

            I had slept around 10 hours last night. From about 9pm to 7am. I woke up partially because it was getting hot and I couldn’t stand sleeping in it any more. The electricity is gone and was probably off  for at least a few hours. The power continued to be off for another few hours until we turned on the generator. After I made some tea, and homemade donuts with potatoes in it, I burned our trash, and some wood. It is a bit awkward, because we just don’t burn the stuff, like plastic, that we do out here. There’s not much else to do with it. A lot of it I think could be well reused like plastic bottles and thicker plastic bags could be used as shingles to shed water. It was also hard to build a good fire, all the woods are soft wood which makes it hard to manage and make good coals. We still end up with a lot of glass and foil wrapping, which I don’t think anyone would know what to do with. You can, melt the foil down in a good fire, or you can make art out of it but that’s all I can think of. As soon as I got a good fire going it started to rain really hard. So I went inside.

 

At that time our National worker was cutting an older coconut. They say they are not good for eating. I couldn’t figure out why. I ate some of it raw, and cut some of it up. We also kept saying “You Crazy”  or  “Camu Gila” to each other amidst discussing why I say “you crazy” so much. Then we just sat around while the rain slammed the place. After the rain died out one kid came with his bicycle and then 5 more of them came up on their bikes. It was a lot of work I didn’t anticipate.

 

The bikes that rolled in were in terribly bad shape. I forgot how bad conditions are for bicycles here. It’s and island so there is lots  of sand, and they are kids so they don’t maintain their bikes well, like cleaning them, and most people don’t keep their bikes away from getting rained on as well. Almost all the bikes had these problems, loose cranks/bottom brackets, loose headsets, loose cups on wheels, non-working brakes, shifters, derailures, and too long or bad chains. Each bike usually has its own set of ridiculously time bearing problems. I can’t believe these folks ride the bikes with these problems as well. The first bike I got was a kids multispeed bike. It had grip shift shifters, and one was broken. The cables were all bad as well. I ended up taking the derailure, and disengaging the shifter and put a single speed chain on the bike. This was also a bit difficult because the bike had disc brakes that were cable driven and had bad cables. With making it a single speed it was hard to place the disc correctly in the caliper. Eventually we got it running. I didn’t bring any extra shifters or derailures out here to replace any of those parts. These people here wouldn’t be able to maintain them out here anyways for it to work correctly. It was a task working on these bikes kids also just start to rummage through your stuff, so I had to be sure to defend my, tools and other equipment, so be able to continue working, and so that a kid wouldn’t think better of themselves because they stole something that cost some money. There is a bike shop in the city of this island, and I kind of went to price parts there. The prices weren’t bad according to American standards. A dollar for a chain, a couple of bucks for a open bearing bottom bracket. 10 bucks for a wheel, or something like that. Though these things are nearly the same price the quality is much less than American standards, or they are much like below Walmart standard. After the first initial rush of 6 kids, I started to pack and clean up. After I had just finished packing up a couple more kids came by to get their bikes worked on. I had to tell them “besok” which means tomorrow. Then a few more kids showed up a little while later with their bikes as well. As much as I wanted to fix their bikes I was already exhausted so they had to come back the next day.

 

The National worker and I sat around for a while talking to the kids, and they started to ask me how I pray. I was a bit dumbfounded, because I haven’t thought much of what prayer is for me at the moment. For them its mostly just reciting a prayer, that has become ritualistic for them I am sure.  All I could think of was the lords prayer, which they actually had translated into the local language. I believe there is so much more to it though than just the lord’s prayer, and I could not concieve of how to explain that to them. That it is our communing with God setting ourselves before the will of God, and that its beyond us just reciting words, but that its personal. That the only way you could have that is through Jesus. It definitely did not come out that way. But, I also asked them if their prayers meant anything to them, or if it effects their lives. They said “no.” I have been pretty shaky with my faith the past 3 or 4  months, not that I have lost faith, but I have not been growing. I have not been reading the Word, and I have not felt challenged. I guess I was complacent spiritually, and maybe valuing my works too much. The kids left after we chatted a little longer.

 

After they left we ate dinner shortly afterward. We had rice, tempeh, and green eggplant in a hot coconut soup. The dinner was spicy hot, I started to sweat from eating. I thought it was the tempeh that was spicy, but I did not realize it until I drank the soup by itself. It was so spicy it made me choke. It’s the feeling when the chili oils coat your esophagus.

 

After dinner I was supposed to goto a traditional island party, but I was tired. I told the National to wake me up before he left, but when that happened I decided to stay in and sleep. So I went to sleep at 8pm.

 

Day 4 January 12, 2007

9:30 am

Today I woke up at 7am, and went to the bathroom. Shortly afterward I started to recap what happened yesterday. So I wrote day 3 on day 4 because I was so tired yesterday. This morning at about 8am, 1 kid showed up with his bike, and since then 2 men showed up with bikes. I had to tell them “ Besok,” tomorrow, again because today is supposed to be a rest day. Since everyone else in the village takes today off, we attempt to take most of it off as well because we are earning their respect. So now I am going to read some and make some cookies I believe.

9:32pm The power is off!                              

            Well I am about to go to bed. It has been an interesting day of being mostly in the kitchen and not doing a whole lot. So I ended up baking some chocolate chip cookies, that ended up ok to my standards, and probably good to others. Their salt comes in a bag that’s wet, I believe the salt crystals are bigger so every now and then its really salty. Oh, before I made cookies I made a sandwich with sliced smoked beef that’s like deli meat but you have to cook it first. I think It tastes like pastrami. Then I made cookies, and then cooked more smoked beef with 2 eggs and rice. Not the greatest sounding meal but it did the job. 

 

After that I ended up quickly fixing a kids bicycle. His rear wheel was really wobbly because the bearings were gone. The cone nuts that hold the ball bearings probably got loose, or sand ate up the bearings so much that they just fell out after wearing down. While I was fixing his bike 2 more kids came up with their bikes. I told them to come back tomorrow, but they did not budge. While I continued to finish the first and only bike of the day, they kept pulling my tools and attempted to do their own work. I had finished my work and then proceded to pack up, and I told them to come back tomorrow again. Alas they got the idea I was for real, so they are coming back tomorrow. Many people came by today wanting their bikes repaired. The one of the guys this morning brought a bike in on a wheelbarrow because they took it apart and now probably have no clue how to put it back together.

           

I took a swim today, well not really swimming, but more water aerobicish stuff. I just couldn’t get myself to swim well out there. I was all out of sync, and sucking a lot of water through my nose. When I got back from swimming in the ocean across the street I showered, and then sat around and read some. I started to get frustrated, when the breeze stopped blowing and I started sweating. There was no air movement for at least an hour, and the power was out so there were no fans to turn on either. The power has been off all day as well. We ran the generator some this morning for a few hours, but the normal power has been off since the middle of the night until right after sunset at 6:30pm ish. So there is electricity at the moment, which means I have a fan to cool me down to fall asleep with. I am satisfied.

           

I have realized I am a lonely creature, and that I truly desire great companionship. Particularly in the sense of a wife, though I know Christ is the greatest companion. I believe my desire to be married and to have a wife, and a buddy in life is within the scope of Gods plan for me. Relationships are the craziest thing to me. There is no way I cannot take a relationship seriously. I would love to enjoy a casual date, but I cannot. I want the consistency and the commitment level to know what is somewhat to be expected. I want to know that someone wants to be near me other than God. I like the feeling and thought of a girl placing their arm in mine, or grabbing my hand to hold it. Or when they lean on you and snuggle in when you sit next to her. I like the thought of her knowing that I will be there, that she can feel safe and comforted. That she is loved and cherished. That she has value and importance. That she knows she is loved, and that I am loved.

             

 

 

Day 4 January 13, 2007

7:58pm

            Wow, well today has been quite crazy of a day. I believe I understand how farmers back in the day felt. Last night Kerbau, aka water buffalo, broke the fence and came in to our property. As I laid asleep, at 2 am I heard something like the sound of footsteps. I did not think much of it at all, and thought that its just probably one of the guys walking by my tent to go to the bathroom. I fell back asleep, but woke up shortly afterward because I realized the same sound never stopped as if someone was pacing around my tent. I glanced through the crack of the tent from my bed and saw no one out there, nor any shadow yet the sound still existed. I got out of my bed and mosquito net and peered outside, and didn’t notice anything the first direction I looked, and when I turned around I had a surprise of a big male water buffalo 6ft in front of me. I was concerned for the garden here so I knew I had to get them out of our property. So I picked up rocks and threw it at them. Surely they started to migrate to the front of the property where I had eventually had to open the gate and shoo them out. I noticed I had to open the gate, but thought they maybe could have shut it as well. I went back and hopped into bed trying to rest my mind from  bugs before I went back to sleep. As I was finally about to fall back asleep I heard the same sound again. It was the Kerbau. Once again I picked up rocks and chased them out, except this time they went out the way they came in which as a hole in the fence that they had broken. I realized that if I didn’t want to have to do this all over again I had to do something to that fence to keep them out. So I propped some stuff up there and put some obstacles in the way, but I found out that my attempt failed after I almost fell asleep again. The third time worked though. I cant imagine being a farmer and having to manage dealing with things like that happening often. I would go crazy.

           

So I went to bed at 10 last night and dealt with water buffalo’s for a few hours, and woke up at 8am. When I woke up everyone was already cracking at things. It was a bit crazy. The lady to do our laundry was rounding things up,  and there were 2 bikes and a guy waiting for me. The other 2 workers here were also already working. I did not find out until later that the guy with the bikes told one of the other workers to wake me up to work on his bike. That’s ridiculous, but it is acceptable. They don’t think of time in respect to anyone else but themselves. I had to tell him I couldn’t fix his bike because he was missing too many parts, that I couldn’t do anything with. His front wheel was missing the screw axel, cones, locknuts, and bolts. All of which I had none of. He also wanted his cranks to not wobble, which means I had to pull his cranks, and take off the bottom bracket and put in new bearings of which I did not have. So I told him that I would let him know if I am able to get those parts to be able to repair his bike. As for the other bike someone was trying to put a motorcycle chain on it, and the bottom bracket was shot. I figured that I wouldn’t put a new chain on it unless they get the new bottom bracket, I haven’t seen the owner of that bike yet to tell him that though. Its tough to put a good part on a bad functioning, or non functioning bike, because all it is doing is robbing someone else who could actually be using the part.

           

After that I made some milk from dry milk and was going to have cereal until, some kids showed up to get their bikes repaired. I worked on them and missed my breakfast. I started to get really fed up with them to where I was threatening to kick them out because one was being a smart but and not respecting my stuff, and the rest of the kids were not respecting the tools and just wrenching on something for the sake of it, and about to mess stuff up on their bikes. Many of the kids wanted to flip over their rear spring shock that had a spring that was so stiff it wouldn’t do much at all. Flipping their shock wouldn’t do anything, and probably wouldn’t even be able to mount. I had to tell them over and over that its pointless to do stuff like that and that it is good the way that it is.  Lunch time finally came around and I was feeling relieved when the Man in charge of this relief site came up and told them that it was lunch time, which means we are taking a break. So I finished what I was working on and packed all my tools and ate my cereal and reheated my odd Chicken ranch spaghetti. After that I pretty much called it a day from working on bicycles, and no other kids really came back. The national worker and I went to buy fish and got some great fresh fish that we grilled. The fish was awesome. And some kids bugged me about some work. It’s odd that they keep coming back for the same thing or something that they don’t even use or have currently on their bikes. Many have really busted up brakes that have not been operational for ages probably. This makes me weary to even repair brakes, or to put good ones on their bikes. I am sure some of the kids break some of their stuff just to get something new. Its going to be bad when the find out I don’t have every part in the world and they are going to end up with a totally un-ride-able bicycle. I am currently scheming a way to start to incorporate some values and life skills for these kids so that they can appreciate and maintain what they have. That they start to treat each other well, say i'm sorry to each other, and behave in a decent manner. Good night

Day 8 January 17, 2007

8:52pm

            I have not felt like typing anything at all for the past couple of days. Right now the power is off, and its about that time I start going to bed. Maybe the guy here will turn on the generator so my fans can run a little into the night so I can start off sleeping cool. That may not happen though. After my last post, the water buffalo came back in 3 consecutive days later. Each time I got up and chased them out the front gate. We figured out they were coming in from the back as well. I’ve been cooking a lot here and that’s been fun. Kind of making islandish food, coconut stuff and making some semi American food as well. I’ve tried making bread, and ice cream which neither turned out spectacular. Ive been missing home lately, and semi fearful of what is going to happen when I get home, as far as a job and what not. I am also fearful of Stephanie because I don’t want to be rejected, but that’s the story of my life. Ok i'm getting hot because this computer is getting hot, and its making me think to much and use too much energy. So I am quitting. Peace.

 

Day 12 January 21, 2007

12:46pm   

            Today is Sunday. Its pretty awesome, because we try not to do much and chill out. We make it a point to do that around here, or shall I say they try to make that a point out here. There was a big storm that came through last night it rained all night like crazy.  It was loud and windy, it almost sounded as if a hurricane was coming through. Right now its still pretty cool outside and its 12:53pm, which is pretty amazing. It’s sleepable weather, usually its just too toasty to nap in your tent with a fan on.  Yesterday we went to another village down the road to see if we could work on some folks bikes out there. It was a great time. We arrived there at about 9:30am and stayed until about 2pm fixing bikes. I worked on one after another until I was exhausted. There were 2 left and we told them that we would come back on Monday after school got out to fix them. These villagers are the ones that are kind of off the beaten path of life out here. They are off down the main road that isn’t traveled much. The road there is rough and bumpy.  The people there were much more appreciative of the work that I could do on their bicycles, it made me excited to see a kid with joy, because his non functioning bike now works. These bikes out here are still in terrible shape to an American extent. Most frames are rusted. Bottom brackets are not fixed and most are running on pedal spindles. I don’t have the bearings to fix their bottom brackets, nor the ½ in pedals to replace theirs with.  Most of their saddles are down to the plastic base and rails. 

 

Two days ago we took a man to the hospital. He is 23 and dove too deep, for too long, or something of that sort. Here many of the local villagers are some sort of fisherman.  There are 2 different kinds of fishermen here. One kind is a standard fisherman who goes for fishes, the other kind is Lobster/ sea cucumber folk. The Lobster/ Sea Cucumber folks, are not basket droppers but they are divers. They are also not like the standard diver with tanks of oxygen. They are old school with a hose only. Not even an air fed helmet, Capitan Nemo style. They go out in these inboard motor wood boats and have an air compressor that feeds a hose line that the diver has. The ocean here is not a shallow one like in the Caribbean. It has its deep pits and semi shallow spots. The coral is generally all down deep, and that’s where the sea cucumber and the lobster are.  Sea cucumbers and lobsters are the seafood that brings in the most money, which it is almost that way anywhere. So these divers go way deep into the ocean and are fed oxygen with an air compressor. The diver we took to the hospital, has symptoms as if he broke his spine in the middle of his back. He can move his arms, but has no bowel control. He also has a hard time functioning while sitting up, or moving, it’ almost as if he has vertigo. If you asked a villager what happened, they would probably tell you he dove for too long.  I don’t think anyone out here really knows what is really going on, or why things like this happen. There are many here in this village that this happens to, but it comes out in different ways. There’s a man who lives near by that now has weak leg, and therefore limps around now. The odd thing is, is that the symptoms, or the shutting down of the body doesn’t happen until they come back to the surface of the water. I suspect that it has to do something with the pressurization of the body, in a rapid ascent to the surface of the water.  I am not sure how this would account to affecting people differently though. I will have to look into this when I get back home.

 

This man is pretty much disabled out here now, and will probably pass away in the next month or so due to some sort of sickness, because of the lack of resources, and medical facilities out here. I realized that disabled folks in America or any non-3^rd world country is blessed. You could not operate well in a wheel chair out here. You would pretty much be totally home bound. Even though this man has functioning arms he could never pull himself up into bed, or a  wheelchair. He couldn’t do those functions because they are weaker people out here, because their nutrition is no where compared to modern places.

 

 

 

Other notes ::

As we unloaded a few thousand + pounds of wood the other day that got shipped on a ferry, the Indonesians loved watching me and the other American unload the wood because they say that we are so strong.

 

Ok, well I’m going to go try to make some ice cream with coconuts

10:50pm            

May the strong help the weak, and may the weak accept the help!

Parental discretion is advised for the following may make you lose your appetite. However, it is something one must know about life

 

            My heart is heavy, and my soul weeps. Culture and way of life out here is so ridiculous. There are so many things on my mind that makes my heart ache. The man who had the accident diving for sea cucumbers has really bad open flesh wounds on his legs. The National Worker just went over there a few hours ago to pray with him and to check on him. When he came back he told us that they were stepping on the guys legs. The thought was to massage them to keep circulation and to possibly help them recover, but this is not the case. They were stepping on his legs with shoes like high heels or wooden blocks. The pictures are horrid, his flesh is exposed and looks like its been chunked and jabbed at.

 

This raises many, many issues in my mind that are hard to grapple.

 

You cannot blame the parents for destroying their son’s body to a certain extent. The parents are believing they are helping but are actually destroying and causing harm. I think this almost can apply everywhere. In my own life, and in probably everyone’s life there are often times where parents have the best intentions to help, but end up destroying their kids lives because they have desires for their kids that they may or may not want to achieve. These parents often do these things under some sort of cover or “behind the back” or the child, which is ultimately destructive. This kid probably had no open flesh wounds to actually begin with. The symptoms were as if he was just paralyzed at the point where he lost bowel movement and below. The parents have no clue what may be going on within his body, but they know that he is paralyzed. They do not think of the parylization as a permanent one having to do with the spine or anything like that. The parents I think got the idea of massaging  the legs to encourage stimulation from the doctor at the hospital. In desperation of love for their child, they probably took that little hint of the idea of circulation too far and expanded it to blood flowing. Since this is not a very learned place or culture, many things are at face value. When you have a cut you see blood, blood is flowing therefore there is circulation/stimulation. So these parents had probably actually cut their kids skin the night before or the morning we took him to the hospital. There the hospital just did radiation therapy on it which I thought was odd, but we will get to that later. So today is 2 days later and the National Worker checks on him, and he has gaping flesh wounds. He was told they were stepping on him with high heels. That is ridiculous, of course the kid isn’t really going to react or do anything because he can’t feel it. Another issue is that a lot of this is done “under wraps” I don’t think the kid ever looks at his legs now. And the whole time we chilled at their house a couple days ago after the hospital his mom sat there and rubbed some home remedy oil stuff on his legs under a sarong. His legs were pretty much covered the whole time even when she wasn’t doing that.  He is also probably pretty deranged, and given up in his head at the moment. So he has these gaping wounds, and they will probably never heal because she will continue to massage. The onset of some kind of bacteria will start to develop, and he will probably die of something like gangrene.

 

So what the heck can we do in a situation like this. My dream would be to go steal him away from his parents right now and clean and bandage his wounds. Or, to tell his parents that they need to quit doing that and keep his wounds clean and let them heal. That he really needs to goto a hospital that will take care of him. I would love to fly him out to get help but I couldn’t do that. There is others with that as well. If they could just begin to understand or want to retain some of the knowledge that we are fed in America, or Modern Countries. You cannot really do things like that here though. They wouldn’t really listen to you, and it would take more time than the time he has left to convince them that this was the best thing. To tell someone that they are wrong or doing something bad places shame upon them, and they would think you're disrespecting them. Therefore they would never listen to you. In this culture and in a lot of places and culture keeping face is a big deal. Many people will go out of their bounds to not be wrong, or to be placed as the stupid or low man on the totem pole. The only folks I can think of who are ok with being wrong, accepting mistakes, and telling the truth even if it puts them in a bad light or offends, are often Christians. For the only reason they would believe in a savior is because they know they cant save themselves if they could. Getting outside of the mindset of Face, allows us to think outside of the bounds of appearance and really deal with the issue at the moment, and not let it linger until one passes. There is always some little thing that would have to tip the scale for things to become a movement or to create change. I think the life of this guy may be it. I don’t want to be an ass, but I think that if this kid dies it could be the thing that tips the scale. Some would hopefully become open and question what happened and how they could prevent his condition, and how to treat the condition. As well as to get beyond giving a crap about the way you look but giving all toward caring for one another, loving others, and loving life. There aren’t many here who would wash a peasants foot.

 

Another thing that stinks about this whole thing is the healthcare system. The healthcare system also reflects this Keeping Face issue as well. The low man on the totem pole does not and pretty much will not receive much of any help. This fisherman, was poorly treated, when we took him in there was no real diagnosing or treatment. He was just given lip service, to get him in and out of there. If he was an official or a white man he would have been treated totally differently. If the doctors/nurse whoever would have taken more time to talk to these parents, then maybe they wouldn’t be killing him

 

I just keep running schemes in my head of how things could play out. I try to think of ways to attack the education issues, or how to reach these fishermen to listen to a guy like me, and teach them how to dive safely. An issue that arises here is that there are so many things in life that they just do because that’s what they’ve been told. An example is a belief that if you eat a banana and honey you’ll surely die. We know that wont happen, but there was probably a man who one day was seen eating a banana and honey and died that afternoon. Someone assumed it was the banana and honey, and word spread around. Over time this probably developed some truth holding in their heads, when its actually a false belief. The man probably just had a heart attack in the midst of eating a banana with honey. They will question your proposition but not their own thoughts, this hard headedness is also stoked by the value of keeping Face.

 

This is the reason I come out here. I come to help the poor and destitute. I come to try and help because many will not, and many are afraid to come. I faced much discouragement from many fronts and many people. I was even discouraged from the parental units to come out to Indonesia.  I can understand their fear, but fear should never rule ones life especially when it comes to saving and serving others. Though there are many people out here “helping” we are barely scratching the surface. There are a slim number of us that I feel are truly concerned about the lives of these people, and those in need around the world. Many of the folks in the NGO’s out here remain fairly distant from local and village life. They don’t attempt to assimilate into local culture, develop relationships, learn the language or much of anything like that. None of these NGO folks out would probably ever find out about people like our friend who is being killed by his parents. They would remain distant and far from the suffering that is a part of everyday life here. 

 

I think its ridiculous how there are so many of us who are not willing to love our neighbors, solely because they look different, act different, or not at the same level as us. We are all neighbors around the world, an American Child as no more importance than an Afghani Child, and vice versa. A life, is a life to be lived.