Life & death in Flores

This last week I have been at a VSO health conference in Ende in the south of Flores. Around 20 representatives from local NGOs and government health services met with VSO staff from Bali and the four other health volunteers.

For me, one of the most interesting discussions was about the use of traditional medicines. This wasn’t actually a discussion in the conference… it was taken for granted by all of the participants that traditional medicines are a perfectly appropriate method to deal with most medical conditions. However I raised the question with fellow volunteers whether they agreed with this, and on the whole, they did.

making traditional medicine

I argued with them that although I appreciate traditional medicines are better than no medicines, as western medical practitioners their first response should always be to refer people to the appropriate medical service. They responded that traditional medicines, in many cases, are just as effective as clinically tested medicines and patients can not / will not attend government health services (for a range of reasons including the cost of transport to reach health services and then the cost of medicines and health care once they get there).

I understand the need to be sympathetic to traditional beliefs and that there are factors that prohibit people from taking these courses, but is it not our responsibility to advocate them all the same? Do you change a system by jumping in feet first and condemning existing knowledge, or is it more effective to condone this knowledge in a softly-softly approach even if it does lead to mixed messages in the short term? I don’t know the answer, and it is something I am going to have to get to grips with in order to provide recommendations from my research.

The conference may have been more interesting for me if we had have been able to discuss this with all the participants, as it was my greatest learning from the week occurred on the journey to Ende.

Just an hour outside of Ruteng the bus I was on had a crash. I was sat at the front and witnessed a motorbike coming towards us loose control on a corner and skid across the road. There was nowhere for the bus to go. I covered my eyes with my hands but it didn’t stop me hearing the thump and then feeling the impact as the bus went over the motorcyclist. No-one on the bus was hurt but the motorcyclist was killed.

Horrific as this was, perhaps the thing that impacted on me most was that there was no ambulance, no police, no witness statements. I just got on another bus & continued my journey.

Teenage kicks

As I mentioned in my last post, I am starting to make friends in Ruteng. These guys are all about my age, but you wouldn’t know it. They live with their parents, they rarely work, and of an evening they hangout at each others houses or all pile into a car and cruise around town – you would think they were 17 not 27.

I felt this most strongly on Valentines Day. My friends had a party – on the surface this was quite cool, there was party food, a bar, and dancing. But it was (as ever here) quite a surreal experience. Rather than buffet style food that one could pick at as they got slowly inebriated there was proper sit down food (well I guess it would be hard to stand & eat rice with your fingers off a paper plate!). Oh & we couldn’t eat it until the priest (yes the priest came too) had led us all in prayer. The bar, looked the part with an array of spirits & liquors, but it turned out that these were actually just old bottles filled with coke or lemonade!

The strangest thing though was the dancing. It was true school disco (& I don’t mean the Camden club). Everyone sat round the edge of the room, boys on one-side, girls on the other. The boys (men?) would then approach a girl (woman?) and ask her to dance. For upbeat songs, the dancing was conducted in two rather neat rows (boys on one side, girls on the other) with a good foot between them. For slower songs or ones that could be walced to there was more formal (Come Dancing) style moves. Every now & then there was a traditional Manggarai dance, which is kinda like line dancing (or perhaps the English version would be the birdy song!).

But perhaps the main difference between this and the teenage parties I remember is the lack of embarrassment on behalf of the guys – all felt confident asking a partner to dance – there was no social misfit maliciously left out. Also the dancing was very restrained & non-sexual. Oh, & of course there was no snogging at the end of the night!

What this really makes apparent is the third age that we now have in England – the ‘twenty-something-agers’. Rather than moving straight from a teenage mentality to the adult responsibilities of getting married and having a family (as perhaps my parents or my grandparents generation did) I have time to be an adult & enjoy it. Time where I have a disposable income and disposable commitments. A time when financially I can afford to have fun and society permits me to have it. Things here are entertaining, but perhaps if the twenty-something-agers had the freedom I have in England, they would be just that little bit more fun!

the 'bar'

traditional dancing

partner dancing

With friends like these…

One of my reasons for leaving England to work abroad was to prove to myself (& maybe to others) that I could do this alone; that I could be self-sufficient; ‘me time’ to use American talk-show phraseology. So on one level I was a little disappointed when I found out that Zoe, a fellow VSO volunteer was not only going to be working with me but living with me – how could I prove myself if there was always someone else to share the burden?

Well I realise now that being alone wasn’t really my aim – at this level I proved myself when alone I boarded that plane from Heathrow back in November. But since then I have never been alone, in fact rather than being a lesson in self-sufficiency, this experience is turning into a lesson in friendship.

Firstly of course there is Zoe. Living & working with Zoe I have become part of a couple again! Flippantly I could say I couldn’t have done it without her, but probably I could, the more important point is that now I wouldn’t want to.

Zoe & I

Then there are all my friends back in England – the ones who phone & text, the ones who post books & chocolate, the ones who email, & you guys who read & respond to my blog.

Receiving post

Also now I am starting to make friends in Ruteng. This is tricky as my language is not good & it feels like I am constantly calling on them for help – but they don’t seem to mind & I guess that is where friendship starts.

new friends in Ruteng

But the one place I feel I am not receiving friendship & support is from VSO Indonesia. VSO is proud that it doesn’t nanny it’s volunteers (like the US equivalent – Peace Core – is alleged to do by the bitchy NGO in-crowd). But I think I would like a bit more support (not much, just perhaps a monthly phone-call, and a friendly welcome when I go to their office) and I have told them so. VSO is a huge organisation, and so like all other large businesses has a baffling amount of procedures and protocol that seem specifically designed to make my life hard. My friend Michael left a comment on my blog last week telling me that the VSO link from my page was going through to Vermont Symphony Orchestra (oops!). But sometimes I feel would get more help & support if I were sponsored by them instead!

Black, white & green all over

They say that England is a land of green rolling hills – well whoever said that had never seen the highlands of Flores. The colours are amazing. In the far distance the mountaintops are covered in dark green trees, and in the foreground invariably there are rice paddies. The rice is grown in small patches so there is always some to plant and some to harvest at any given time. The youngest rice is a pale yellowy green and sparsely planted letting the water beneath reflect the blue skies, whilst the full grown rice tightly fills the paddies with the brightest neon green. This plethora of colour is reflected in the water the rice grows in & makes the whole vista shimmer & shine like a leprechaun attached to the national grid.

Speaking of leprechaun, I saw the end of the rainbow the other day! Driving alongside a gorge a huge rainbow filled the sky and swept down into the gorge & I could actually pinpoint where it ended. Amazing.

Colour is also important to the people here, but not in such vivid tones. The local weaving (ikat) is dark with just the odd splash of colour. But more importantly to them, it seems, is the colour of skin. As a white person, I am a bulai (meaning albino) and my friends and colleagues are most concerned when I get a suntan (“why do you do that to your lovely white skin”). In fact white skin is the grail here & the people take many measures to achieve it from skin whitening moisturisers to skin bleaching. Indonesians on other islands can regularly be heard to say that the people of Flores are “very black”, and even within Flores individuals will often be described as “the black one”. I am not sure if this is racist – it certainly isn’t spoken or taken as a negative – but grouping people by the colour of their skin is surely a bad habit that needs to stop.

Cock Hoppers

Flores lies across the Wallace Line, meaning that the island’s topography, flora and fauna is more similar to Australia than the rest of Asia. However there are no kangaroos here, no large mammals at all in fact. In some of the lower lying areas there are monkeys, but up here in chilly old Ruteng the most exotic mammal you see is the odd stray dog (but someone’ll catch it & eat it soon!).

Technically then I guess the scary killer bugs of Australia should also be present in Flores, but I think (hope) that the altitude of Ruteng means that it is too cold for anything too nasty, I certainly haven’t been warned about any particular insects. However, I must admit that regardless of how dangerous they are, if they’ve got more than four legs I am not keen. On the whole I am coping well (& the spiders can be mighty big!) but my least favourite is an insect that Zoe and I have named ourselves. They look like a cross between a grasshopper & a cockroach, therefore if you come to Flores beware of the giant cockhoppers!

cockroach

grasshopper

cockhopper!

Sex and the city

Before I left the UK, one of the things that my friend’s thought I would find hardest was dressing modestly. And now, 3 months in, I admit it is a strain.

Back in England I was well known for my love of stiletto shoes, I frequently wore low-cut figure hugging tops, was always accessorised, often made-up and I had an intimate relationship with my GHDs. But here I dress like I am going to a Young Conservatives’ tea party – flat shoes, baggy tops with a neck line up to my collarbone, no accessories, no makeup & no hair straighteners.

On the one hand I acknowledge that this is for the best – I get enough attention (& complements) as it is and certainly do not want to encourage more. But on the other hand I feel like I am loosing a little bit of myself… my heels gave me a bit of a swing in my step, I gained a certain confidence from flicking my straightened hair – here I go for days without looking in a mirror at all. Maybe this is a good lesson against narcissism, but I’ve had enough already.

This weekend Zoe and I are going to the beach, so as well as looking forward to the sun, sea and sand I am also looking forward to wearing a bikini and feeling (just a little bit) sexy.

The 'Ruteng look'

The 'beach look'