Waterfalls and butterflies

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!

A Fishing Village

Yesterday had an adventure out of town with two folks from YGC (including Andy, YGC's treasurer) and a guy who works for an NGO concerned with rural empowerment. We took about an hour motorcycle ride down south along the coast (which given how slow traffic moves on the narrow roads here, means about 20 miles). We met up with a group of about 6 other NGO activists and then went to this little village right on the beach. Quite beautiful, with a little island right off the coast and a big nonfunctional ship right up on the beach:



Some smaller fishing vessels too:



These folks are quite impoverished - electricity, but no running water and such. So the NGO activists are helping the villagers develop alternate sources of income by making ceramics, weaving, etc., since the money from fishing is limited and not that much. We went up into one of the little wood homes and had a lovely lunch of cucumbers, beans, cabbage, and fresh grilled fish. Then had a meeting with representatives from four villages touching base on the alternative income project. Andy had come as an accounting expert and met with the persons from each of the four villages in charge of accounting - it was very helpful because they were making all kinds of mistakes in their bookkeeping and were getting confused as to how to manage the money allocated for the project.


It was great to see how the GC staff are becoming trusted by other NGOs as a source of knowledge.