I got invited to attend the closing event for the Ikatan Perempuan Positif Indonesia (Indonesian Association of Positive Women), which was just created. Held in a hotel just a couple blocks from this one, there were about 50 women participating, the culmination of a couple years' planning. It was really touching to see this new organization created and run by women with or affected by HIV. It will do so much I think. I met some old friends there, including Pinky (who has been involved with women's issues for many years in Surabaya as a scholar and activist) and Jane Wilson (now with UNAIDS). When I walked in they basically stopped the proceedings and asked me and a couple other arrivals to introduce themselves, then practically gave me a standing ovation when I said what I was doing and how happy I was that the group existed - some of the women I know from earlier work but many were new faces to me. I offered to help with letters of recommendation and such and they were very interested in that - that's one of the ways I can be of help to these kinds of groups, particularly for funders who want everything in English.
Tomorrow the national HIV/AIDS conference begins - it's going to be a big day and a fun day!
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Lunch with Dede
Just had a nice lunch with Dede Oetomo, the most famous gay man in Indonesia and a friend since 1992 (both of my books about Indonesia are dedicated to him along with Bill). He's doing well and it was good to catch up and start making plans. We'll be having dinner tonight to continue the discussion!
Surabaya photos
Here are three photos from Surabaya - Chris in the hotel room where I spent the night last night, a view from the window with some old Dutch buildings (if you see the two tall buildings in the background, I lived right near the one on the right for a couple months in 1997), and a view from my new hotel room!
Flood photos
Here are some photos of the flooding in Jakarta. Two are from Chris Green's house; the rest are from the drive to the airport. I included a couple pictures of some of the mega housing complexes under construction or finished in Jakarta - it's full of them.
Surabaya!
Right before coming to Indonesia, I learned that the first national HIV/AIDS conference in seven years was going to be held in Surabaya from Feb 4-8. Many of my Indonesian colleagues said I really should go there en route to Makassar, so I've done it! Later I'll post some more pictures of the flooding in Jakarta, but the quick update is that last night I arrived here in Surabaya and this morning moved into the Shangri-La hotel, where the conference will be taking place. I'll say more about Surabaya later, but this is one of the main cities where I've lived over the years, the 2nd-largest city in Indonesia, on the other side of Java from Jakarta (see the map above). A wonderful town with many friends. The Shangri-La is a 5-star hotel - and only $97 a night! VERY worth it, to pamper myself and be right at the conference. Akbar, the head of Yayasan Gaya Celebes in Makassar, is flying down and will stay here with me - it will be great to catch up.
Floods
Written midday, Feb 2
Woke up this morning (Feb 2) after my first night of sleep in Indonesia (got almost 6 hours of sleep which is good for the first night. Walked out of the room and the street outside was under water! The house across the street had been flooded too, but Chris's house was fine - it's up on a rise a bit. It was only about 3 inches of water, but that's a real pain if it's in your house. Turns out the neighbors had moved themselves, their motorcycles, even a refrigerator into the bottom floor over the night and I hadn't heard a thing. Going to bed I'd heard all the rain but was so exhausted I just fell asleep. The rain has been constant and sometimes heavy, but often light - the issue is that the water is coming down from the mountains about 30 miles away, swelling the rivers that run through town.
We were hoping the waters were going down, but they were not. I spent almost 5 hours on the road today with Zaenal, Chris's driver and friend - he is a wonderful person I've known from previous trips. We got to the Dept of Police and got my form no problem, but then spent almost an hour getting about 5 miles to the LIPI office - total traffic jams as many of the main roads were partially or totally shut down, making the legendarily horrible Jakarta traffic even worse. Supposedly a couple places had 3-4 feet of standing water, but in most places I saw it was more like 3-6 inches at most, but it's amazing how disruptive even that much water can be.
So we got to the LIPI office to find it totally surrounded by water. I thought there might be a way around the back so walked into one big 10-story building that is next door to the building I needed to go to. It was totally without electricity - just a bunch of office workers and other folks milling about. Got to the back and the pathway was there in front of me, under 2 inches of water. So I rolled up my pants, took off my shoes and socks, holding them in one hand and my precious documents in the other, and waded across to the building with a couple other folks. Inside it was dark - no electricity, no elevators, nothing. I asked for Ruben, the staff person who'd been helping me, and it turned out he was right there beside me - I didn't recognize him in the dark. The floor was try but the water was rising and spilling into the lobby, just an inch but once again no fun, so we walked up some stairs to the second floor. Using my cellphone as a flashlight, I showed him the documents, including the precious one from the Dept of Police ("you need to have that photocopied," he said - I reminded him that the photocopy machine in the building was, like everything, nonfunctional so he said he'd do it himself later). He said that because there was no power, he wouldn't be able to process the paperwork today. My heart sank and I said I was supposed to get on a plane to Surabaya in a few hours (more on that in an upcoming post). Thankfully he said a friend could come on Monday and get the document and mail it to me in Makassar. Whew.
Then it was another drive across the rain back to the Yayasan Spiritia office. Zaenal, I owe you big time - thanks so much for all the help! Yayasan Spiritia (Spiritia Foundation) is where Chris and Zaenal work - it's got about 10 regular staff. It's one of the top organizations in Indonesia for support and treatment for people with AIDS. Suzanna Murni, one of the first Indonesians to admit publicly to having AIDS, was a founder and a dear person to me. I last met her in Melbourne in 2001 with Bill; not long after that she passed away. But the organization continues to grow and they do amazing work. Their website is probably the best anywhere for information about care and treatment for people with AIDS - it's a staggering work of data gathering, translation, and summarizing, and they keep adding to it.
Woke up this morning (Feb 2) after my first night of sleep in Indonesia (got almost 6 hours of sleep which is good for the first night. Walked out of the room and the street outside was under water! The house across the street had been flooded too, but Chris's house was fine - it's up on a rise a bit. It was only about 3 inches of water, but that's a real pain if it's in your house. Turns out the neighbors had moved themselves, their motorcycles, even a refrigerator into the bottom floor over the night and I hadn't heard a thing. Going to bed I'd heard all the rain but was so exhausted I just fell asleep. The rain has been constant and sometimes heavy, but often light - the issue is that the water is coming down from the mountains about 30 miles away, swelling the rivers that run through town.
We were hoping the waters were going down, but they were not. I spent almost 5 hours on the road today with Zaenal, Chris's driver and friend - he is a wonderful person I've known from previous trips. We got to the Dept of Police and got my form no problem, but then spent almost an hour getting about 5 miles to the LIPI office - total traffic jams as many of the main roads were partially or totally shut down, making the legendarily horrible Jakarta traffic even worse. Supposedly a couple places had 3-4 feet of standing water, but in most places I saw it was more like 3-6 inches at most, but it's amazing how disruptive even that much water can be.
So we got to the LIPI office to find it totally surrounded by water. I thought there might be a way around the back so walked into one big 10-story building that is next door to the building I needed to go to. It was totally without electricity - just a bunch of office workers and other folks milling about. Got to the back and the pathway was there in front of me, under 2 inches of water. So I rolled up my pants, took off my shoes and socks, holding them in one hand and my precious documents in the other, and waded across to the building with a couple other folks. Inside it was dark - no electricity, no elevators, nothing. I asked for Ruben, the staff person who'd been helping me, and it turned out he was right there beside me - I didn't recognize him in the dark. The floor was try but the water was rising and spilling into the lobby, just an inch but once again no fun, so we walked up some stairs to the second floor. Using my cellphone as a flashlight, I showed him the documents, including the precious one from the Dept of Police ("you need to have that photocopied," he said - I reminded him that the photocopy machine in the building was, like everything, nonfunctional so he said he'd do it himself later). He said that because there was no power, he wouldn't be able to process the paperwork today. My heart sank and I said I was supposed to get on a plane to Surabaya in a few hours (more on that in an upcoming post). Thankfully he said a friend could come on Monday and get the document and mail it to me in Makassar. Whew.
Then it was another drive across the rain back to the Yayasan Spiritia office. Zaenal, I owe you big time - thanks so much for all the help! Yayasan Spiritia (Spiritia Foundation) is where Chris and Zaenal work - it's got about 10 regular staff. It's one of the top organizations in Indonesia for support and treatment for people with AIDS. Suzanna Murni, one of the first Indonesians to admit publicly to having AIDS, was a founder and a dear person to me. I last met her in Melbourne in 2001 with Bill; not long after that she passed away. But the organization continues to grow and they do amazing work. Their website is probably the best anywhere for information about care and treatment for people with AIDS - it's a staggering work of data gathering, translation, and summarizing, and they keep adding to it.
Rain and taxis
From Feb 1
Well I left LIPI to go to the Department of Police folks to get my "travelling papers." It took 30 mins by taxi and then I had to wander around the gigantic building for 15 minutes to find the place, but they processed the papers, EXCEPT that I didn't have head shots of myself on a red background. So later today or tomorrow morning I'll get those made, return to the Dept of Police to get my travelling papers, then back to LIPI for the final letter thing. Research visas take a lot of running around, though compared to what the US government makes visitors go through, it's not a big deal. The fact that it was drizzling rain all day didn't help, and the little store on the bottom floor of the LIPI building was "out of umbrellas."
So I left the Dept of Police for the long (one hour plus) taxi ride in heavy traffic to the house of my dear friend Chris Green, where I'm staying tonight, and where Bill has stayed with me on more than one occasion I think. I was exhausted after more than a day of travel and all the paperwork, but feel into chatting with the taxi driver, who turned out was from the south coast of Java and a member of the Sundanese ethnic group. We fell into a great conversation where I told him that I'd heard about the myths of the "Queen of the Southern Ocean" (Ratu Kidul) in that area, and he told me contempory stories about how she is real. He told a great story about a kyai (Muslim cleric) from the nearby city of Bandung who married a woman in the taxi driver's village, just 20 miles from the ocean. He went around telling people that believing in the Queen was against Islam. Then one day his only son was out in the forest with some friends, and he went into the river and disappeared - no body, no clothes, nothing. Then the Queen of the Southern Ocean appeared to the kyai and said that as a punishment for not believing in her, she had "borrowed" the kyai's son and he was living with her (for hundreds of years there have been stories about the Queen luring men into the ocean to be her consort). Once a year, the son returns to the kyai and the kyai's wife, but as a kind of intangible ghost; he says that he's happy where he is, he likes it there, but that he will return to the normal world someday.
After that we started talking about language and he started teaching me some Sundanese - how to count to five, how to say "where are you going?", and so on. He enjoyed being the teacher. We talked about my life in America a bit, that I'm a teacher and such, but he was more interested in telling me about his life than in learning about America, and I'm happy to listen (it's sorta my job). I never fail to be impressed by the amazing people I meet in Indonesia driving taxis!
Now I've had a lovely shower and lunch courtesy of Chris's servants, and I'm relaxing and waiting for Chris to return from Spiritia, the NGO with which he works that is a leading force in Jakarta and all of Indonesia for the care and human rights of people with AIDS. An amazing group.
So the hardest part of the trip is over, and it wasn't that hard! It was both fun and a relief to switch from speaking English to speaking Indonesian so easily: I'm so glad to be at the stage where it's not tiring or overly difficult.
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