Its a bit long but this is an interesting article I read about Alor online. Thought I would share if anyone is interested!
In Pursuit of the Dragons of Alor
Traditional belief, myths and legends in Alor, Nusa Tenggara
In the fishing village of Lanleki on the island of Alor I met an old man who had seen a dragon. His name was Achmad; he wore a white Haji’s skullcap and he told his tale simply, sitting in the narrow front room of his little house. Outside the hot wind rustled in the palm trees and the children of Lanleki jostled in the doorway, more interested in the foreign visitor than in hearing Haji Achmad’s familiar story.He had seen the dragon forty years ago, he said, long before he made the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. He had been walking along the narrow path that leads to Lanleki when the dragon emerged from the sea and chased him through the trees. It had horns like a buffalo and seven flickering tongues…Alor is a place of pale beaches and dark, myth-filled hills. The most easterly landfall in the stuttering island chain of Nusa Tenggara, like many parts of Indonesia it has gone through incredible changes in the last century. In 1938 the American anthropologist Cora Du Bois visited and recorded an island where people knew little of money and spoke no Indonesian. Though there was a long-established halo of Islam around the coast, in the hills Protestant missionaries had met little success and most people worshiped only the spirits of the countryside. Dutch colonialists had supposedly pacified the island at the turn of the 20th Century, but clan warfare and even headhunting were still very much current concepts.
Seventy years later roads have snaked into the hills, whitewashed churches have sprouted in remote villages and most of the population has become nominally Christian. The island capital, Kalabahi, has filled with buzzing motorbikes; there are daily flights from Kupang and even a nascent tourist industry. But as I was to find out, Alor is still a place where old beliefs and customary adat traditions hold strong, and where there is no distinction between history and myth. This is an island that could still be marked on the map with the words “here be dragons”...I first heard about dragons in Probul, a village in the hills behind Lanleki. An old man there had told me that in the days before Christianity there had been many dragons – he called them naga. Mostly they were invisible, but they were dangerous if not appeased. Then there was Haji Achmad’s story, in which the dragon was unmistakably a real thing. If I wanted to learn more about dragons, Haji Achmad told me, I should go to the village of Alor Kecil, on the other side of Kalabahi Bay.
Alor is smaller than Bali, and with a population of just 168,000, but it is perhaps the most linguistically diverse place in Indonesia. As many as 17 separate, mutually incomprehensible languages are spoken here, and distinct dialects are numbered in the hundreds.There is a similar diversity of culture, with the creation myths of one village often meaning nothing to the people of the next. But there are certain threads that run throughout the island. The moko is a bronze, hourglass-shaped kettledrum, thought to have originated in the ancient Dongson civilization of northern Vietnam. Just how the moko reached Alor, where the “lost wax technique” used to decorate the drums was never known, is a mystery – locals claim that they sprung fully-formed from the ground – but they are a key motif of the island. When the Cora Du Bois visited they were the main form of currency and even today they are used to pay wedding dowries.Another common connection is the misbah, a round altar of rough stones at the heart of each village. This is still the focus of the lego-lego, the Alorese circle dance performed at weddings and other celebrations, and in the not-too-distant past it was the place where heads taken in warfare were placed. And now it seemed that I had stumbled on another connecting thread – the dragon.Alor Kecil lies at the western tip of the rugged peninsula that bulges to the north of Kalabahi Bay. Offshore rides the little islet of Pulau Kepa, location of Alor’s first dive resort; in mid-channel rises the volcanic cone of Pura Island, while beyond it is the dark coastline of Pantar.Like Lanleki, Alor Kecil was a Muslim village with modern concrete houses and tin-roofed mosques in the shade of huge banyan trees. But here too there was a misbah, with a few buffalo skulls resting on its weathered stones in lieu of human heads. There were rumah adat – the lineage houses of each of Alor Kecil’s five clans – and as I picked my way through the village I spotted dragons everywhere. There were dragons carved into doorframes; dragons woven into pieces of local ikat cloth, and statues of dragons outside the modern community hall.Sitting outside the lineage house of the Suku Bao Raja, Alor Kecil’s royal clan, I met a young man named Jason. I asked him about the dragons. The dragon, he said, was the protector of the village. It had come originally from the ground in the hills to the north, but today it lived in the sea. I repeated Haji Achmad’s story and Jason was unsurprised.“People do see the dragon, but not often. It’s usually outsiders who see it, not locals,” he said.The dragon was not the only mythical presence around Alor Kecil; there were also Sea People. In ancient times, the story goes, the Sea People were regular visitors to their brethren on the shore, and though these days they stay beneath the surface, one of Alor Kecil’s tribes, the Mang Lolong, still claim to maintain a connection with them. A popular rumor has it that a few years ago a foreign tourist, diving near Pulau Kepa spotted an underwater village full of mermen dancing the lego-lego in the blue depths beyond the edge of the reef.Jason said that all of the people of Alor Kecil and the surrounding settlements are descended from a man who rose from the earth in a place called Bampalola in the hills above the coast. Following his directions I traveled up a steep track that wound between the ridges.Bampalola itself was a modern village with a school and a mosque, but a kilometer downhill through the maize fields, on a high promontory at the end of a razor-sharp ridge, stood the old village, Lakatuli. Many villages in Alor shifted from defensive hilltops to more convenient locations once the age of clan warfare was over; no one lived in Lakatuil now, but the place was still used for adat ceremonies. Tall thatched roofs rose above bamboo-floored platforms. Elaborate carvings on beams and banisters were picked out in white and ochre, and there were dragons chiseled into the woodwork.Looking at them I was reminded of a grainy black-and-white photo in the anthropologist Cora Du Bois’ 1944 book, The People of Alor. It was a picture of an Ulenai, the carving used in that era to represent the village guardian spirit. Though the Ulenai lacked the stylistic touches clearly borrowed from Chinese art that I had seen on the carvings in Alor Kecil and Bampalola, it was very obviously a dragon.Du Bois had written of ancestor myths and guardian spirits that “this whole concept will undoubtedly become the center of revivalistic cults when Alorese culture crumbles as it inevitably will under the impact of foreign colonization”. But it seemed to me that nothing had crumbled, let alone been revived.
The idea of the dragon as a powerful protector, and a real entity, had probably never faded from the scene in the villages here.From Bampalola I returned to the coast and the hamlet of Alu Kai, just east of Alor Kecil. In the front room of a clan house with a carved dragon in the corner two of the village elders, Pak Amir, and Pak Mo, told me more about dragons and sea people – they called all this “history” rather than “legend” and made no distinction between the wilder tales and the stories of the arrival of Islam in Alor from Ambon and Makassar.The dragon first appeared from the earth in Bampalola many centuries ago, before the birth of mankind, they said. The first man rose in the same place later and his descendents traveled downhill to the shore where the founder of Alu Kai hamlet, Jai Manu, married a princess of the mysterious Sea People named Eko Sari. Pak Amir and Pak Mo themselves, it seemed, were half-merman!While they talked children gathered in the doorway, just as they had done in Lanleki. Pak Amir smiled.“It’s important for old men to talk; if the old men just keep silent then how will the children know their own history?” he said.There was one more place to visit in my pursuit of the dragon myths of Alor. At the tip of the stony headland beyond Alor Kecil, Pak Amir had said, was a shrine dedicated to the dragon. Chickens and goats were routinely tossed into the sea there as offerings, he said.Leaving the road and the houses behind I picked my way through stony fields and thorny scrub. It was late afternoon now and a dense, humid heat had risen. Insects buzzed in the undergrowth and I could hear the sea, hissing onto the rocks nearby. I lost my way in the web of pathways until I met a tall, barefoot man named Haider who led me to the shrine.It was a small structure, a low tin roof sheltering two shelves painted with long, black dragons, and on the top level a heavier, cruder dragon carving. The ground around the shrine was scattered with old coconut husks. A bunch of dried goats’ ears hung on a rusty nail. It felt like a place of dark magic.People often came here to make offerings to the dragon, Haider said, not only local villagers but also big men, police chiefs and politicians from Kalabahi looking for the protection of the mysterious beast.The spot where the dragon was fed lay beyond the shrine, a ledge of scaly, reptilian black rock over deep blue water. The dried carcass of a chicken hung from a branch. It was a strange, faintly unsettling place, and as the afternoon sun slanted away over the hills of Pantar I peered down into the water, half-expecting to see a horned, seven-tongued serpent rise from the depths. In the 21st Century the myths and legends of Alor are, it seems, still powerful enough to impress a skeptic…
Saturday, January 28, 2012
First real week of work
I think the amoeba meds are working, I don't have stomach pain anymore. But the meds really make me feel nauseous and not wanting to eat anything. But I am finished with them at lunch today! On a side note...I started to have really bad muscle cramping and pain in my right calf one morning and it hasn't stopped for 5 days. I was worried it was from these antibiotics so I called a doc in Jakarta from my health insurance and he was worried it was a bloodclot and wants me to get an ultrasound of my foot. But ya, I really don't think I have a blood clot. I may still go get that ultrasound of my leg on Tuesday here at the village hospital, but I think its slowly getting better day by day. I have been looking it up online and I think its just a muscle strain. I think I just pulled something when I slipped when it was raining or something. No worries though.
Been busy at work preparing reports at work. Getting my head around this next seeding operation at the end of February. Really thankful that Daniel is here to help with the language, as Tomek and I are in the same boat learning the language together. We work 7-4 every day and Friday 7-12, and off on Sundays. Evan and Daniel's wife are here visiting. Evan is here for a hatchery spawn and Lita will be here until end of Feb visiting Daniel. We have been having several staff meetings with different local staff and have changed work hours and addressing problems etc, so its been a lot on the local staff we think. We had a party with them last night to bring their spirits up. Fun time. Huge feast of bbq chicken and fish (small mackerels and a big jack), veggies, rice, and some super sweet fruit punch they made. And dancing afterwards. There was this really old guy, prob in late 80s and he was getting down to every song! We are talking like dance dance clubbing music! So funny. All the staff brought their little kids and the kids were trying to dance too. The expats got out there for a bit and danced with them too. Dancing in two lines across from each other, pretty funny. Tomek was loving it though! He towers over these people, he is about 7 feet tall, and they are all my size and smaller. lol! He was really dancing it up. We left and the locals kept the party going. We all watched a slow depressing movie, Margin Call, about the financial crisis that I just wasn't into that night.
Today I got to sleep in! Yes! So great! I read my book in bed to get me back to sleep. Daniel's wife does CSR (local community relations, environmental concerns, etc.) for the company, and she has been taking some great pics for me. She is from Java in Indonesia so she is more of a local and can take pics of the locals and things for me, with me snapping photos of them as a tourist. So its been great. This morning she had invited all the local village kids over and we played games with about 15 kids on our porch. They were loving it. She had little alphabet puzzles and picture puzzles, a few board games, and some little teddy bears. Tomek was saying we should ask our friends for used kid clothes for them when we go home each time. They are really just wearing dirty old scraps of clothes that are too big or too small for them. I tried to teach them red light green light, but they didn't really get it. Duck duck goose next time! It was fun to play with them though and take some great pics. Lita (Daniel's wife, 8 months preggo) is really good with kids. I am just relaxing for the rest of the day. Daniel went for a dive with the local divers today, but everyone else is just chilling out. So its been going well here! Pretty full on and intense during the week, but nice to have Sundays to relax!
Today I got to sleep in! Yes! So great! I read my book in bed to get me back to sleep. Daniel's wife does CSR (local community relations, environmental concerns, etc.) for the company, and she has been taking some great pics for me. She is from Java in Indonesia so she is more of a local and can take pics of the locals and things for me, with me snapping photos of them as a tourist. So its been great. This morning she had invited all the local village kids over and we played games with about 15 kids on our porch. They were loving it. She had little alphabet puzzles and picture puzzles, a few board games, and some little teddy bears. Tomek was saying we should ask our friends for used kid clothes for them when we go home each time. They are really just wearing dirty old scraps of clothes that are too big or too small for them. I tried to teach them red light green light, but they didn't really get it. Duck duck goose next time! It was fun to play with them though and take some great pics. Lita (Daniel's wife, 8 months preggo) is really good with kids. I am just relaxing for the rest of the day. Daniel went for a dive with the local divers today, but everyone else is just chilling out. So its been going well here! Pretty full on and intense during the week, but nice to have Sundays to relax!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Allure of Alor
Kitchen on site 
Boat heading out to where I will be working
The dock at the farm
The village of Calabahi across the bay in the background
The expat house (my house)
The mountains on the drive from N Bali
This week has definitely been interesting. In the beginning of the week I went up to the N Bali site again with Evan. A ship was being loaded to transport oysters to another Indo site so I got to see how it was loaded and how that process works. In the afternoon, I spent some time on a cleaning boat getting dirty and grungy pressuring washing and chiseling in fouling off of the oysters. It’s a monotonous and dirty job but the 5-6 people working on these boats for 12 hours a day, like the work and some of them have been doing it for 8+ years. I enjoyed my 3 ½ hours but that was enough for me! The following morning I again went out for another 3 hours on a different cleaning boat to work with a different crew. That group was less friendly to me, but still helped me along and I got to learn how to do everyone’s job. The following afternoon, Evan and I packed it up again and drove the 2 ½ hours back to Sanur. I have traveled a fair bit between N Bali and Sanur, and it’s not a fun drive at all. Pretty scenery but def not fun. Hairpin turns up and down a mountain with motorbikes (scooters, motorcycles) with the husband, wife, newborn baby, and week’s worth of groceries onboard, zooming past your large SUV around the blind corner ahead, just as a pickup truck carrying a load of his three prized cows comes flying by in the other lane. There is a lot of this action, motorbikes far too overloaded bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic, and a lot of horn usage to say the least(bright lights flashing on at night).
We did make it back to Sanur ok, Evan is a great aggressive Indonesian driver (you have to be!). I was back in my nice hotel in Sanur enjoying my steaming hot shower and good internet. That night I decided to go for it! I took a taxi to the touristy strip in town. I found a path that lead down to the boardwalk at the beach. Went for an app and a beer and watched a killer surf break as the sun set. Then I went to a nice touristy restaurant on the beach boardwalk and had a nice salad and finally a fresh squeezed pineapple and banana juice drink (with ice) that I have been wanting to try. Any idea what happened next….you will learn soon enough!! The following morning the office in Sanur held a managers meeting of all the expats from the different Indo sites. It was my first real board meeting with a job and it lasted all day. Got to meet 2 of the big wigs in the company too. I def learned a lot during the meeting and was glad I could make it. That night I went to a restaurant near my hotel and was up at midnight with horrible stomach cramps and having to get up and go to the bathroom. Then the same thing at 2, 4, 5, 6 and I was up for the day. I took a Pepto and a Cipro antibiotic, but I was still feeling like crap! I was stressing because I didn’t know how I would be able to sit all day through another day of managers meeting. Had breakfast in my room and made my way to the office. As much as I didn’t want to I stopped by my boss’s office and told him about my problem. Well it turns out someone else in the office was feeling the same way I was and they insisted I went to the clinic to make sure it wasn’t dengue fever. I stuck it out through the morning session of the meeting and I didn’t need to rush to the toilet every two minutes either.
I took a taxi to the SOS International Clinic in Bali (that we have insurance for), and I was really impressed with the facility. Clean, not long to wait, and a nice young doctor helped me out the whole time. Well it turns out I had amoebic dysentery and I’m so glad my boss talked me into going to the doctor. I got four different meds, including an anti amoeba and anti nausea med. I have to take them for 10 days and then check to see if there are still little amoebas in me. Lol! Kind of weird, I know! But the medication has definitely helped and I don’t have the cramping or need to go to the bathroom all the time anymore.
The next morning I caught my flight to Alor with a temporary manager that will be working out there with me, Daniel. I talked my way out of $50 of excess baggage fees in Bali by myself, pretty impressive! I just wasn’t going to pay the huge amount they wanted and I stood my ground. We had to change flights in Kupang on Timor, and it really helped having Daniel there for the language. He is from Belgium and his wife is Balinese so he has really had to learn Indonesian. We arrived in Alor to the super small airport around 4. There was a car there waiting for us with a girl that works on the farm. It takes a half hour to get to the farm from the airport. And a half hour from the farm to the main village of Kalabahi. The island has lots of small villages and clusters of houses made of tin, wood, brick, palm frond, whatever is available really. A lot of fires burning rubbish outside of the houses and kids playing in the streets. The island is very similar to Papua New Guinea and other islands I have been to in Indonesia. The farm is nice…quaint. Very small facility, clean, green grounds, and a nice managers house. The house is set up with 3 rooms. All the rooms aren’t connected like a normal house. I have a room and bathroom (with AC! Yes!) with only one entrance to the room from the outside. It opens up to a tiled open air porch, if that makes sense. One of the guys, his room is connected to a dining room area and living room with TV couch and TV table. There is satellite TV and internet so I am not totally unplugged from the world which is nice. The other manager, a hatchery manager, I am living with here is Tomek, from Poland. He has been here for a month without any company so he appreciates having us here. We have a cook and a maid here too. The food is not great but its edible. I wish there were more fresh fruits at least. Daniel is going to try to change the food situation for us. There are a few Indonesian staff that live here all the time but they are in a separate area from us. There is security on the site and out on barges watching the oysters 24/7 which is good. Mosquitoes can be bad at night and in the mornings, but as long as I spray myself with repellent and leave the AC on in my room, they don’t bother me.
The next day Daniel and I toured around the farm a bit with Tomek. Daniel has worked at a site that runs very well near Papua New Guinea, so he is here to setup our site and get it running to its best ability. In Alor we only acquired this site in 2010, so it hasn’t been running very long and there are still a lot of areas and things on the farm that need fixing. Where I work will be a 5 minute boat ride away. It’s a very nice facility, pretty big, and they are just finishing repairs on it now it will be in great condition when we start using it for operations in late February. So my first day went well, still wish my language was better, but that will come with time. That afternoon after the staff had left for the day, we discovered the small road that the farm is on, has been blocked from the village chief not getting along with someone’s son or something like that! Just closed the road because he is mad, like its his road or something! So we had to take a boat across the bay to Kalabahi instead of the car like we had planned. It poured down rain on the boat ride! We were all drenched. I even had my rain jacket on, but was still drenched. That’s why they call it monsoon rains I suppose! It is a dirty little town/village, but there are shops (each selling the same exact blue crap plastic bucket) and a few little markets. Most of the stores are run by Chinese as well, its amazing how the Chinese have spread to this little island to sell their wares. There were lots of people just standing around chewing bettle nut, taking in a busy Saturday night in the village. We ate restaurant down by the water at a shack and picked out our fish from a styrofoam cooler, to be grilled for dinner. Dinner was ok, I think MSG is loaded into everything we eat so it all tastes pretty decent even though MSG is horrible for you! I did have a big headache yesterday but I thought it was just from the meds. After our trip to town we watched the movie War Horse, Daniel had bought in Bali. I enjoyed it, pretty good movie.
This morning, Sunday, I got to sleep in, only until 8 but that’s sleeping in these days. We are up and working at 7:30 at the farm. One of these Sundays I would like to go to church with some of the local staff and just to make a good impression and respect the community. It has been raining today and we have been lounging about. In the afternoon the expat staff went on a muck dive at a site in the bay. Daniel is really big into diving and brought all his gear and fancy underwater camera. But he doesn’t even like to take pics of ordinary things or stuff I think is really cool! Only the best of the best, guess he has been in Raja Ampat and taken amazing pics already. Tomek and I just used the dive gear on the farm. This muck dive was on black sand, rubble, and a few coral heads. We were looking for all sorts of little critters like nudibranches, sea horses, frog fish, and more weird stuff. I saw a few nudis (oh so cute!), but it was just great to see all the cool species of fish and corals in the Pacific again. My boss and a few other staff are coming for a visit next week, and I met my Indo operations manager counterpart, Sugi, this afternoon. So that has been my life in Indo for the past week! Sorry this post so long, but a lot has happened!
Boat heading out to where I will be working
The dock at the farm
The village of Calabahi across the bay in the background
The expat house (my house)
The mountains on the drive from N Bali
This week has definitely been interesting. In the beginning of the week I went up to the N Bali site again with Evan. A ship was being loaded to transport oysters to another Indo site so I got to see how it was loaded and how that process works. In the afternoon, I spent some time on a cleaning boat getting dirty and grungy pressuring washing and chiseling in fouling off of the oysters. It’s a monotonous and dirty job but the 5-6 people working on these boats for 12 hours a day, like the work and some of them have been doing it for 8+ years. I enjoyed my 3 ½ hours but that was enough for me! The following morning I again went out for another 3 hours on a different cleaning boat to work with a different crew. That group was less friendly to me, but still helped me along and I got to learn how to do everyone’s job. The following afternoon, Evan and I packed it up again and drove the 2 ½ hours back to Sanur. I have traveled a fair bit between N Bali and Sanur, and it’s not a fun drive at all. Pretty scenery but def not fun. Hairpin turns up and down a mountain with motorbikes (scooters, motorcycles) with the husband, wife, newborn baby, and week’s worth of groceries onboard, zooming past your large SUV around the blind corner ahead, just as a pickup truck carrying a load of his three prized cows comes flying by in the other lane. There is a lot of this action, motorbikes far too overloaded bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic, and a lot of horn usage to say the least(bright lights flashing on at night).
We did make it back to Sanur ok, Evan is a great aggressive Indonesian driver (you have to be!). I was back in my nice hotel in Sanur enjoying my steaming hot shower and good internet. That night I decided to go for it! I took a taxi to the touristy strip in town. I found a path that lead down to the boardwalk at the beach. Went for an app and a beer and watched a killer surf break as the sun set. Then I went to a nice touristy restaurant on the beach boardwalk and had a nice salad and finally a fresh squeezed pineapple and banana juice drink (with ice) that I have been wanting to try. Any idea what happened next….you will learn soon enough!! The following morning the office in Sanur held a managers meeting of all the expats from the different Indo sites. It was my first real board meeting with a job and it lasted all day. Got to meet 2 of the big wigs in the company too. I def learned a lot during the meeting and was glad I could make it. That night I went to a restaurant near my hotel and was up at midnight with horrible stomach cramps and having to get up and go to the bathroom. Then the same thing at 2, 4, 5, 6 and I was up for the day. I took a Pepto and a Cipro antibiotic, but I was still feeling like crap! I was stressing because I didn’t know how I would be able to sit all day through another day of managers meeting. Had breakfast in my room and made my way to the office. As much as I didn’t want to I stopped by my boss’s office and told him about my problem. Well it turns out someone else in the office was feeling the same way I was and they insisted I went to the clinic to make sure it wasn’t dengue fever. I stuck it out through the morning session of the meeting and I didn’t need to rush to the toilet every two minutes either.
I took a taxi to the SOS International Clinic in Bali (that we have insurance for), and I was really impressed with the facility. Clean, not long to wait, and a nice young doctor helped me out the whole time. Well it turns out I had amoebic dysentery and I’m so glad my boss talked me into going to the doctor. I got four different meds, including an anti amoeba and anti nausea med. I have to take them for 10 days and then check to see if there are still little amoebas in me. Lol! Kind of weird, I know! But the medication has definitely helped and I don’t have the cramping or need to go to the bathroom all the time anymore.
The next morning I caught my flight to Alor with a temporary manager that will be working out there with me, Daniel. I talked my way out of $50 of excess baggage fees in Bali by myself, pretty impressive! I just wasn’t going to pay the huge amount they wanted and I stood my ground. We had to change flights in Kupang on Timor, and it really helped having Daniel there for the language. He is from Belgium and his wife is Balinese so he has really had to learn Indonesian. We arrived in Alor to the super small airport around 4. There was a car there waiting for us with a girl that works on the farm. It takes a half hour to get to the farm from the airport. And a half hour from the farm to the main village of Kalabahi. The island has lots of small villages and clusters of houses made of tin, wood, brick, palm frond, whatever is available really. A lot of fires burning rubbish outside of the houses and kids playing in the streets. The island is very similar to Papua New Guinea and other islands I have been to in Indonesia. The farm is nice…quaint. Very small facility, clean, green grounds, and a nice managers house. The house is set up with 3 rooms. All the rooms aren’t connected like a normal house. I have a room and bathroom (with AC! Yes!) with only one entrance to the room from the outside. It opens up to a tiled open air porch, if that makes sense. One of the guys, his room is connected to a dining room area and living room with TV couch and TV table. There is satellite TV and internet so I am not totally unplugged from the world which is nice. The other manager, a hatchery manager, I am living with here is Tomek, from Poland. He has been here for a month without any company so he appreciates having us here. We have a cook and a maid here too. The food is not great but its edible. I wish there were more fresh fruits at least. Daniel is going to try to change the food situation for us. There are a few Indonesian staff that live here all the time but they are in a separate area from us. There is security on the site and out on barges watching the oysters 24/7 which is good. Mosquitoes can be bad at night and in the mornings, but as long as I spray myself with repellent and leave the AC on in my room, they don’t bother me.
The next day Daniel and I toured around the farm a bit with Tomek. Daniel has worked at a site that runs very well near Papua New Guinea, so he is here to setup our site and get it running to its best ability. In Alor we only acquired this site in 2010, so it hasn’t been running very long and there are still a lot of areas and things on the farm that need fixing. Where I work will be a 5 minute boat ride away. It’s a very nice facility, pretty big, and they are just finishing repairs on it now it will be in great condition when we start using it for operations in late February. So my first day went well, still wish my language was better, but that will come with time. That afternoon after the staff had left for the day, we discovered the small road that the farm is on, has been blocked from the village chief not getting along with someone’s son or something like that! Just closed the road because he is mad, like its his road or something! So we had to take a boat across the bay to Kalabahi instead of the car like we had planned. It poured down rain on the boat ride! We were all drenched. I even had my rain jacket on, but was still drenched. That’s why they call it monsoon rains I suppose! It is a dirty little town/village, but there are shops (each selling the same exact blue crap plastic bucket) and a few little markets. Most of the stores are run by Chinese as well, its amazing how the Chinese have spread to this little island to sell their wares. There were lots of people just standing around chewing bettle nut, taking in a busy Saturday night in the village. We ate restaurant down by the water at a shack and picked out our fish from a styrofoam cooler, to be grilled for dinner. Dinner was ok, I think MSG is loaded into everything we eat so it all tastes pretty decent even though MSG is horrible for you! I did have a big headache yesterday but I thought it was just from the meds. After our trip to town we watched the movie War Horse, Daniel had bought in Bali. I enjoyed it, pretty good movie.
This morning, Sunday, I got to sleep in, only until 8 but that’s sleeping in these days. We are up and working at 7:30 at the farm. One of these Sundays I would like to go to church with some of the local staff and just to make a good impression and respect the community. It has been raining today and we have been lounging about. In the afternoon the expat staff went on a muck dive at a site in the bay. Daniel is really big into diving and brought all his gear and fancy underwater camera. But he doesn’t even like to take pics of ordinary things or stuff I think is really cool! Only the best of the best, guess he has been in Raja Ampat and taken amazing pics already. Tomek and I just used the dive gear on the farm. This muck dive was on black sand, rubble, and a few coral heads. We were looking for all sorts of little critters like nudibranches, sea horses, frog fish, and more weird stuff. I saw a few nudis (oh so cute!), but it was just great to see all the cool species of fish and corals in the Pacific again. My boss and a few other staff are coming for a visit next week, and I met my Indo operations manager counterpart, Sugi, this afternoon. So that has been my life in Indo for the past week! Sorry this post so long, but a lot has happened!
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Penybanyan site in North Bali
Hi! So yes I changed websites sorry for the confusion! Its been going well so far here in Bali. I got a bit overwhelmed in North Bali about what I will actually be doing as a manager for this company, but I am slowly understanding more and more and feeling less overwhelmed. Its not only learning to seed oysters and whats involved in the management of the seeding operation, but its learning another language at the same time too! A lot of the files are in Indonesian so I have to spend time translating what data I'm actually looking at. The local staff are all really nice and want to talk to me. All the seeding technicians are girls about my age, so they are all interested if I am married and how many kids I have. Putu, a girl who taught me the surgery procedure, speaks a few English words, but that's it, none of the other techs speak any English. There are four girls in the showroom who selling the jewelry to the tourists and they speak good English so we had a few sessions with them teaching me important words I should know. My bahasa Indonesia is coming along though. Pronouncation is a bit tricky sometimes, but I'm getting it.
I didn't realize how big this company was before I started working for them. They have about 8 sites doing hatchery, growout, and seeding (what I do!) all over Indonesia. Just in one site in Bali where the hatchery and seeding is taking place, there are over 200 people working there every day! And I had no idea how expensive these pearls are and why we take such great care growing them. There is a showroom to buy pearls and jewelry at the N Bali site, and one perfect pearl there is $3,000! Can you imagine a string of perfect pearls on a necklace? Crazy... Its a pretty lucrative business if its done well.
So at the N Bali site I learned how to seed the pearls with nuclei so the nacre grows over the nuclei and forms a pearl. Its a very skilled technique and takes years to be considered an expert technician. I was only doing it for 3 days and I can manage, but I'm not great yet. Imagine its kind of like an oyster surgery, that should be done in less than a minute! I can fill a net of 16 oysters in around 2 hours. Its a really nice facility there though. Interesting Indonesian food... I had a lunch one day and I didn't know what anything I ate was! Turned out it was young jackfruit (its a vegetable when its young?) and livers. Yum...? Another night it was chicken hearts and lungs. Looked like small ears! Gross. I did try a bite but I went for the boiled egg option that night. I went for a dive one of the days I was there to check the oysters out on one of the longlines. Weird to see these nets of oysters swaying to and fro in the current. Later in the week I was able to see a harvest. It was really great to see a small harvest and actually see the end result of production. Opening every oyster was like opening a Christmas present! All different shapes, colors, and sizes. Really fun to see a harvest. All the parts of the oyster are sold too. Shells are polished, the meat is shucked and peeled, even the gills are taken off and sold.
So I am back in Sanur for the weekend, I had to come back here on Friday to sort out my visa at immigration. I've had a fun weekend studying and meeting up with some friends that live here in Southern Bali. Headed back to N Bali on Monday for two more days of training. I think more time will be spent on the oyster cleaning boats to understand proper cleaning technique and what may not be happening correctly out in Alor. I will be back in Sanur on Wednesday and Thursday for a meeting and then finally out to Alor on Friday. I would love to just unpack and get settled already! I'm going here and there and trying to keep tidy and packed up every where I go. Oh and also just as a side note, I may only be updating this on the weekends when I have a chance to breathe! lol! Not really, but its been long hours and a lot to take in and I haven't been able to blog it up as much as I would like. Until next time!!
My blog!
Hi from Bali everyone! Sorry to mix it up on you but I like blogspot format better so I had to switch it. For those of you that don’t know…I have moved to Indonesia and I’m working for a pearling company culturing oysters for their pearls. I am in the seeding area of the company, where I will manage the staff actually surgerically starting off the pearl implantation.
I arrived two days ago now and I’m still culture shocking. I’ve even been to Bali before, but its just other worldly here. Hindu statues and offerings are everywhere and its just really a unique little spot in the world. I quite like Bali. I am staying at a hotel in Sanur and I met with the staff at my company yesterday and meeting everyone went well. It is quite a large pearling operation here in Indonesia. I will be in here in Sanur until Monday and then head up to a North Bali site in Penybangan to go through some training for a week. Then its off to the island of Alor (3 hr flight from Bali) where I will be based. Loading up on mosquito repellent and coils as it sounds like dengue fever is prevelant in these places. Other than dengue and a slight chance of malaria I’ve got all my shots so I’m good! It seems like the people of Alor are different than most Indonesians. I am under the impression that the people will be similar to those living in Papua New Guinea, but I will just have to see! For example Christianity is primarily practiced in Alor instead of Hindu in Bali and Muslim throughout the rest of Indonesia.
I’m excited to get up to N Bali and start training but in the meantime I’m trying to get over this jet lag from the 30 hours of flying it took to get here. I have a hard time staying up past 7 pm and I’m wide awake and ready to go at 4 am. Not ideal. My hotel has a great pool so I’m reading up about oysters and making this blog sitting outside by the pool in the sun with purple and peach bouganvilla and pink and yellow frangipani trees (my fav!) around the pool. Hindu fountains of elephants and koi are in the pool and a flying bird statue of Garuda greets you at the hotel’s entrance. Well enough about what I’m looking at just now! I’m off to stroll along the beach front cobblestone path on Sanur’s beach (bustling with locals and tourists) and find something for lunch. The food is great by the way. A bit spicy for my tastes, but I can deal. Last night I went around the corner to a local spot for dinner and had a spicy chicken and rice dish I ate with my fingers. Chicken complete with neck! Lots of condiments including some strange fish flakes? I tried a bit of everything though. Ok well I’m off!
I arrived two days ago now and I’m still culture shocking. I’ve even been to Bali before, but its just other worldly here. Hindu statues and offerings are everywhere and its just really a unique little spot in the world. I quite like Bali. I am staying at a hotel in Sanur and I met with the staff at my company yesterday and meeting everyone went well. It is quite a large pearling operation here in Indonesia. I will be in here in Sanur until Monday and then head up to a North Bali site in Penybangan to go through some training for a week. Then its off to the island of Alor (3 hr flight from Bali) where I will be based. Loading up on mosquito repellent and coils as it sounds like dengue fever is prevelant in these places. Other than dengue and a slight chance of malaria I’ve got all my shots so I’m good! It seems like the people of Alor are different than most Indonesians. I am under the impression that the people will be similar to those living in Papua New Guinea, but I will just have to see! For example Christianity is primarily practiced in Alor instead of Hindu in Bali and Muslim throughout the rest of Indonesia.
I’m excited to get up to N Bali and start training but in the meantime I’m trying to get over this jet lag from the 30 hours of flying it took to get here. I have a hard time staying up past 7 pm and I’m wide awake and ready to go at 4 am. Not ideal. My hotel has a great pool so I’m reading up about oysters and making this blog sitting outside by the pool in the sun with purple and peach bouganvilla and pink and yellow frangipani trees (my fav!) around the pool. Hindu fountains of elephants and koi are in the pool and a flying bird statue of Garuda greets you at the hotel’s entrance. Well enough about what I’m looking at just now! I’m off to stroll along the beach front cobblestone path on Sanur’s beach (bustling with locals and tourists) and find something for lunch. The food is great by the way. A bit spicy for my tastes, but I can deal. Last night I went around the corner to a local spot for dinner and had a spicy chicken and rice dish I ate with my fingers. Chicken complete with neck! Lots of condiments including some strange fish flakes? I tried a bit of everything though. Ok well I’m off!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)