Day One in Pulau Bacan
Hey folks, this is Edward, reporting from the islands of South
Halmahera. I just took a nice cold shower, and I think this is a good
time to write you guys.
Everything has been great, in fact, it has been more than what I
expected when I prepared myself for this journey.
I currently typing in the house of Ibu Poni, some sort of the Pengajar
Muda (Young Teachers, lets call them PM from now on) headquarters here
in Labuha, the biggest town around. The PMs gathered here once a week,
a lot of times longer than that to resupply, to get their teaching
materials printed, and to relax.
It’s been wonderful meeting them all. Currently I have met Ayu, Ais,
Jun, Adi, Ajib and Bayu. I felt that I have interrupted their schedule
since I came on the weekend of their preparation for exam season,
starting Monday. Everybody is making exam problems, printing them,
typing away on their laptops. They do this on one big living room,
matress everywhere with cables, books, CDs and laptops scattered on
them.
Funny thing happened. After only like an hour arriving on their home,
I realised that I have left my Blackberry in the room on the ship
going here. The port is like 16 kilometers away. So we headed back
right to the port, only to have a flat tire in the middle of nowhere.
This was only like two hours since I set foot in Bacan.
And I need to go to the toilet.
Badly.
But what do you know, there’s a little housing complex around 200
metres from where we were, and they had this spanking new toilet for
me to use.
From that moment, I know that The Good Lord is gonna be with me. Hey,
He took care of my toilet stuff, how could He not take care the
others?
Since that incident yesterday, everything is going well. Me and Francy
were like these two cooks sent from the heavens, we have made three
dishes on our two day stay: Corn soup, pepes ikan, and mie tektek. We
shopped to the market together, prepared the ingredients together, we
ate them clean together.
Tell you the truth, while I was with Francy last nite, trying to sleep
in our very warm room, the question passed my mind a couple of times,
“What the heck am I doing here?”
I keep reminding myself that this is not a visit, not an assignment.
This is a journey of experiences, little things on slow time.
Hmmm… experiences of little things on slow time.
I think in my other world, I have forgotten what is the meaning of
that string of words. It’s most likely not the way of living that I
choose, but this month, on this year, I will soak in everything in
front of me. The warm air, the blazing sun, the friendly people, the
mosquitos, the modest bed.
I am looking forward to the next experiences. In an hour I am leaving
to the poorest region of the islands, leaving with a boat that will
fit only one row of people’s butts. I’m staying there for three
nights, before coming back here, to the more civilized world.
So far, the pictures and videos that I have taken are amazing, but I
can only send you little if not none, since the internet is very slow.
Stay tuned.
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