Today I took a trip up to the Maros area, about 20 miles north from where I live - basically the county north of Makassar. There is a kelompok diskusi there, and the members really wanted to meet me. I was in for a nice surprise - they had decided to take me to Bantimurung, a well-known tourist destination in the area. I'd been there about 10 years ago but didn't remember it well and there have been a lot of improvements.
Most of the time, I'm doing my work here in the Makassar metro area, right by the sea. Occasionally you get a glimpse of the mountains in the distance (reminds me of Long Beach), but it's easy to forget that most of the island of Sulawesi is quite mountainous. This "leg" of the island is particularly interesting. No active volcanos, but a whole range of karst volcanos. Karst topography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) is really amazing - hills that just rise vertically right up hundreds of feet, then flat-topped, like giant teeth, or all kinds of crazy sculpted shapes. When my mom is here, we'll be going to the Toraja area, a real tour de force of karst topography, but if you just get outside Makassar a bit you can see some beautiful examples, like the karst hills at Battimurung.


There's a river running through the area with a pretty waterfall...


and lots of butterflies. It's a recreation area where lots of Makassar folks go on the weekend for the scenery and cool breezes.
So I got to go there with 3 GC staff and about 12 folks from the area. We had a great HIV/AIDS discussion in a pretty little hut right next to the river...

and after lunch walked around the area and had a grand time. An aide to the regional leader (like a mayor, but for a county) was there and asked some good questions too! This was because it turns out that in the last year, the current governor has deicded to really court the gay/waria vote, I kid you not. There is a "waria for so-and-so" political group that has its own table in the county party offices, and they do a lot of work getting out the vote. The head of the waria organization for the whole area came to the meeting and we had a great talk on the 1 1/2 drive back to the GC office - she and the other waria talking about how they're getting better treatment from society because they're taking a stand in the political area. Obviously, very interesting!
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