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Hello All!
There have been a change of plans- Heather will be returning to
Last Sunday was Indonesian Independence Day, so Heather made a red and white cake to celebrate. It tasted good, but was as flat as a pancake! She modified her tactics a bit and we managed to pull off a surprisingly decent, fluffy pineapple upside-down cake. The brown sugar here is pressed between two coconut half-shells so you have to grind it with a mortar and pestle, and it is very dark brown and very rich-tasting. It didn't look like your typical pineapple upside-down cake, but it worked! Then a few days later Heather taught the women to make pikelets (small pancakes for you Americans).
This photo was taken at a village we visited to get a deer
David and I attended a local church last Sunday; catching a ride with someone we know who goes there. This is the closest church to us. The church bells rang at half-hour intervals before the service started. We parked out the front as people were filing in through the 3 doors. There were around 100 or so there, sitting in straight-backed wooden chairs in a long room. There were three pulpits, a large one in the centre near the back, and two smaller ones on either side for those doing readings are announcements. All of the men wore nice shirts and trousers, and nice shoes (not the usual flip-flops). The women were quite dressed up, some even in sequins and lace and most in heels (Heather needs to buy a pair of heels, she brought the wrong shoes!) Most people either had Bibles with the hymnal included in the back or a Bible and a hymn book. At the start of the service a loud brass band (trumpets and trombones) started playing on the balcony above us. Then a man up the front read out announcements/finance figures at a quick speed for about 10 minutes. After this the band started playing again and a lady minister in the black robes went up the huge pulpit up front. There was a big mural of a white Jesus on the wall behind her- he wasn't even a tan white, but a pinkish never-seen-the-sun white. She led a couple of songs, familiar tunes, (with the brass drowning out peoples voices), gave an enthusiastic sermon and said a really long prayer, most of which we couldn't understand (as it was all in Indonesian). In the middle of it all a choir, consisting of women in all black and men in black shirts over white shirts, sang something to the tune of "Jesus Loves Me." There were offering boxes at the entrance we went in, and two lots of offering bags (black and purple) were passed around and at one point in the service most people went forward to put money in a box up front. These seemed to be for different church ministries, with the box up front for a youth conference for eastern Indonesian churches being held there soon. At the conclusion of the service people shook hands with those around them and then everyone left, most people walking.
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Also, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We seem to have hit a bit of turbulence with Immigration in Australia.
Brown sugar is pressed in two halves of a coconut then pressed together to make a ball, and then is wrapped in banana leaves. I chop off what I need then grind it with a mortar and pestle. There are a variety of cake baking products, in little plastic tubs with acronyms for what they stand for (in Indonesian). So I will be doing some experimentation!
Heather
We've had a few questions about the house, so here goes:
Back when the processing business was first starting, the business built a set of short-term accommodation villas and frequently people from the business came to stay. The business had full sets of diving equipment, a variety of fishing gear, everything. It seemed to be a very lively place- the kitchen has a huge number of nice serving dishes, bain maries, etc- it was definitely well set up.
Around the time of the civil unrest, the processing plant stopped operating and the villas were empty more often, there weren't any guards, and the place got trashed- most of the portable gear was stolen, mattresses disappeared, windows smashed, etc. All of the diving equipment and fishing equipment was stolen. It has been a while since all of the villas have been occupied.
A while back, before R. came to first see the place, people were hired to fix it all up, repaint, relace the toilets, etc. The main focus seemed to be the villa we're staying in, and the entertaining area. So it has been repainted recently, the curtains washed, etc. The other villas, not so much.
Much of the wiring and some of the pipes were stolen, so currently only half the villas have power. Those that have power are spliced together. When the army came, they spliced into our power, too (with permission), so the whole thing needs redoing.
We've made a point of repairing the leaks (when we find them), so the water situation is a bit more efficient. We collect rainwater in the only section of gutter there is, which goes into a cement tank in the ground. Then it is pumped into an overhead tank, which feeds our showers and taps and toilets. The water is usually turned off at night so we fill up a bucket for handwashing or whatever.
Our villa is not fully self-contained, there isn't a kitchen, so all the villas share the kitchen in the entertaining area. The villas are fairly public, being on the beach, so we often have people all around- in the gazebo, on our back porch, etc.
The villas aren't 'sealable' I guess you could say- geckos, mosquitoes, crabs can all get in under the centimetres-wide cracks under the doors. Dave's been repairing the 'ventilasi,' the square ventilation holes in the tops of the walls, which are covered with fly wire.
The floor is completely tiled with blue and white 'marbled' tiles, the walls are light blue and the curtains a darker blue. With the dark wood of the doors, windows, and furniture it is quite pretty. We are really grateful to live in such a nice place, next to the beach!
This fortnight's discoveries…
- if the weather is cool, an Indonesian may serve you a glass of hot water
- the words for dog, wind, and t-shirt are very much alike
- ½ tsp. salt and 8 tsp. sugar in 1 litre of water make an Oral Rehydration Solution
- Crabs can crawl up curtains and our drying laundry
- Dave got the word for head ("Kepala") and coconut ("Kelapa") mixed up only once…
- Laundry scrub brushes are a wonderful invention
- Heather's new hobby: Gecko Poking.
- Snorkelling + big waves + rocks = bloody scraped Heather and worried Indonesians
- If you sit still on the beach long enough, you'll notice hundreds of "pebbles" moving- tiny hermit crabs everywhere
- Indonesians (of limited English) will call both of us "Mister"
- Pisang Goreng (Fried Bananas)
- An oven, in this location, is a metal box that sits on your kerosene burner
- You can fell a tree with a machete and rope… then chop up the wood the next day with a chainsaw
This week the army came to camp on our basketball court during the change of troops. A huge landing ship came to drop them off, with little boats ferrying the men to the pier. We didn't see many of them during their stay, but they were quite polite and a few took photos with David.
There haven't been any major accomplishments this fortnight; we are still waiting on approvals and finances. We have completed many small tasks, such as getting power to some of the other chalets, establishing a rubbish handling system (burn, bury, or sell), fixing leaks and pumps, and hacking down trees and overgrown shrubs.
