Beach meetings

I had a wonderful time at the strategic planning meeting. We stayed at Tanjung Bunga, a resort beach just 5 miles or so from the GC office. The office rented two beach houses.


We were just 20 feet or so from the beach - beautiful sunsets with all of the little islands out in the Makassar Strait, and lots of ships too.


The beach wasn't the cleanest in the world but it was fine, the water was bathtub warm and very calm (the strait is a pretty protected waterway, nothing like for instance the beaches in south Bali, which face right out to the Indian Ocean).


Saturday night was particularly beautiful. We spent the day doing some really interesting planning for the future of the organization and also to pick a new director (Akbar is going to become more of a chair of the board of directors kind of thing, still coming to the office every day but freer to do more lobbying and training work). Here I am leading a session on HIV updates:


And here I am taking notes in a breakout group working on ideas to improve medical and social care for gay men and warias with AIDS:


Lots of productive discussions--it was a great opportunity to be involved, particularly since I'm one of 4 people currently on their advisory board!





All throughout the 3 days we've eaten wonderful food - lots of fresh fish - looked by a lesbian friend of GC who is an amazing cook.



After the evening session where we picked the new director for GC (Azis, who's been with the organization since 1993 and is an old friend), we went outside to find the quarter moon above the ocean and beautiful white reflections on the waves, with tall pale white thunderclouds too. Distant flashes of lightning every so often, and stars above - it's nice to see the Southern Cross again, and Orion right overhead and the Big Dipper upside down on the northern horizion. A nice cool breeze and the squid-hunting fishing boats out on the water with their strong lights they use to attract the squid looked like a little village out at sea. Saturday night so lots of kids from town on the beach hanging out, playing guitar or chatting. Several of us thought we'd sleep out on one of the bamboo huts, so we just lay there for a long time talking and watching the waves. By about 1am though the beautiful sea breeze was getting stronger and the lightning more frequent - rain was clearly on its way, so we went inside - a good decision because it started pouring rain about 30 minutes later, quite a din on the tin roof of the beach house as I fell asleep thinking of my loved ones eating a sunny breakfast on the other side of the world.