28 June 2009.Birthday....again

Birthdaybreakfast in Wamena, my teammates made it very special, flowers, chocolade cake, a giant self made bread, pancakes, candlelight, wah wah wah!

But I have to admit; I am also looking forward to a birthday party with my family and closest friends! Thanks for all the sms and emails and birthday cards! They arrived! Love from the surrounding mountains of Wamena, miss you all, muah, muah!

22th June Jalan Jalan in Kurima

Kurima is a small village close to Wamena, 1 hour cardrive, and it is seperated from Wamena through a big river. The last part you have to walk because the cars cannot cross the river because there is no brigde.

4th June Visiting Pass Valley

Pass valley is a village 2 hours drive from Wamena in a neighbour valley. We spent the weekend in a former missionary house with a nice fireplace. Pass Valley is really peaceful and beautiful with a lot of wild orchids and other type of colourful flowers. We did some hiking into local villages and the surrounding mountains.

May 30th Peace Dance 2 in Suroba

On the 30th of May the last in the series of PeaceDance was carried out by PBI together with lokal partner Sanggar Seni. As with the first Peacedance PBI tried to empower Sanggar Seni, a local umbrella organisation for traditional dance, music and handicrafts, to pay attention to local culture and cultural rights. We brought together 5 differents groups out of different areas in the Baliem Valley. The goals were again bringing together different tribes and pay attention to local culture as a part of human rights. After the formal program of performances and the bakar batu one of the groups started playing music and everybody started dancing spontaniously. It was a great event were people have been brought together in a broad sence.

May 24th 2009 Filmscreening with Gladi Rohani

The filmscreening was carried out by Gladi Rohani a local religious organisation that works with children in the age of 12-19 years. PBI worked together with Gladi Rohani to prepare and carry out the event. We watched the whalerider together were issues arise like culture and gender and afterwards we opened a dicussion and we did a role play about certain comparable issues in Papua and we played some games. It was a great event were everybody involved was really excited.

May 16th 2009 Opening Peace Resource Center

On the 16th of May 2009 PBI Wamena celebrated the re-opening of the Peace Resource Center in Wamena with a big bakar batu with more than 100 visitors.

PBI Wamena established a Peace Library in 2005. To make the library more mature and self-responsible PBI decided to hire local volunteers, extend the amount of books, change the design of the library and start organizing activities. This resulted in the Peace Resource Center which is fully funded by the Dutch Missionary organisation CMC. Because of their financial support to the Peace Resource Center for three years PBI was able to hire, train and empower two local volunteers and make the library ready for the time that PBI maybe is no longer needed in Wamena. The funding also resulted in more possibilities to invest in new books, new activities and soon there will be two laptops in the library so that the library volunteers and the visitors can learn and work in the Peace Resource Center.

The event was also attended by a journalist of the local newspaper Cendrawasih Pos and the on Monday after the event a very informative article about the Peace Resource Center of PBI was placed in the newspaper to make more people aware of the existence of our library.

26 March 2009 Holiday in the Maluku's

Beautiful diving in Ambon during our holiday in the Maluku's. 

21 March 2009 Peace Dance in Assologaima with PBI partner Sanggar Seni

On the 21th of March PBI carried out the first Peace Dance with local partner Sanggar Seni an umbrella organisation in the Baliem valley for traditional culture like music, dance and handicrafts. The objectives of the Peace Dance event are diverse. We want to bring together dance and musicgroups in the Baliemvalley that used the be in tribal war together. By dancing and making music together we want to pay attention to the local Papuan culture as a part of Human Rights. The event was attended by 4 groups from different places in the Palim and there were around 100 participants in total. After the performances PBI carried out a PBI socialisation in the kampung and opened peoples thoughts about their meaning of Peace and the children made beautiful drawings.

March 1th-10th F2F 2009 PBI meeting with partners and clients in Bali

This was a great meeting with PBI volunteers, staff, committee members, clients and partners from Papua and Jakarta. To bring clients and partners to this evaluation/strategy meeting was new this year and we learned a lot from them about what they need from PBI and were PBI can improve. After 2 meetingdays with clients and partners PBI went through a lot of proposals for improvements and the teams presented their work from the last year.

February 23th and 24th Finance workshop

On February 23th and 24th PBI organized a finance workshop to build capacity amongst PBI's local network of NGO's and activists. During the activities of the committee of Peace Day 2008 PBI discovered that there is a not enough capacity on financial management like, making and dealing with budgets, balances and proposals for funding. This workshop was facilitated by Heidi Scheunemann as a financial specialist with a lot of experience in working with Papuans in this field. The 2 day workshop was attended by 15 participants.

Rabbit couple in PBI house

Preparation of fieldtrips and Peace Education activities

One of PBI's very important principles is the principle of transparency. In PBI's daily work this  is shown by the fact that all the activities of PBI are well socialized with the local authorities like the head of locale government, police and military. Before PBI carries out a fieldtrip or a peace education activity PBI makes sure that the local authorities know who PBI is what PBI's principles are and what the activities are that will be carried out. In this picture you see the head of the police force in Wamena. 

February 14th 2009 Peace discussion with PBI partner YSBA

At the end of 2008 and the first two months of 2009 PBI worked together with Peace Education Partner YSBA (Yayasan Silimo Bina Adat) to prepare a series of Peacediscussions. On the 14 of February 2009 the last Peacediscussion was carried out and facilitated by PBI partner YSBA. Among the 13 participants where local social activists like local NGO's. The goal of the Peace Discussions was to open up a discussion and to form a working group to work on the issue problems with alcohol. 

February 12th 2009 Fieldtrip to PBI Wamena client in Napua

PBI provides regular fieldtrips to areas where PBI clients work and live.  Napua is a place very close to Wamena and you can reach it with a bicycle ride uphill in about an hour. Before you can enter the village you need to get permission to pass from the military post. 

Spring 2009 Beautiful markets in Wamena

Wamena has more than 5 markets and on each market you see beautiful traditional mama mama's selling their fresh fruits and vegetables.

Birthday in Wamena

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Happy and healthy New Year from Wamena

Keeping this blog up to date seems more difficult than expected. In October 2008, our last post on this blog, we just finished the first Peace building activity connected to International Peace Day. In the meanwhile two months past and 2009 started. In the months of November and December we had some great Peace building projects in Wamena. We did a film screening about Gandhi and the non-violent way to Peace in a small village.

Besides that we did field trips to surrounding kampungs to try to start up a new project, Peace Dance. We witnessed beautiful dance acts and in the meanwhile we are preparing a Peace Dance festival, very exciting!

Harold did a beautiful field trip to Dekai in the smallest plane ever and we experienced a unforgettable night in a Honai, where we fell asleep with singing men. A very special experience. Wamena is still great, beautiful mountains, beautiful people, special culture, we are enjoying!

Working for PBI is also unforgettable....difficult moments concerning working and living closely together, safety and security issues in work and private life when conflicts arise around you, it's good PBI is here.

Enjoy our pictures en we enjoy your emails.

Work as PBI-er

Elections in Wamena

Currently Wamena is full of election activities. No time and opportunity for jalan jalan. Election day was 8th of October, but not everybody was able to go and vote….The counting of the votes is already days in process and it is exciting in Wamena and the surrounding villages.

Small sweet baby Rabbits

Two weeks ago 4 little rabbits were born, very cute! Unfortunately these rabbits are born to be eaten. The rabbits are from our guard Otis and he told me I can become friends with mother rabbit, because she will not be eaten…!

Our own Honai in our garden.

Last week our own Honai was build in our garden. A honai is a traditional hut where the local traditions are held and where only men can sleep. The building proces was very special and unique. First all the materials were brought.

Floor

Wall

Roof.

The builders.

Jalan jalan in the small villages arround Wamena

After all the busy activities around International Peace Day we were able to enjoy some relaxed weekends. We went to Jiwika with the bus were people honor an old Mummy.

Last weekend we visited Hepoba where we were invited for a very nice Bakar Batu with Buah Merah. Very special to see how people live in the Kampung and very tasty to eat together in the Honai.

International Peace Day 2008 Wamena 21 September

The PBI team in Wamena was very busy with the preparation of the Peace Day 2008 activities in the past weeks. These activities took place form the 15th of September till 21st of September 2008. On the 21st of September International Peace Day is celebrated all over the world. The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations as an annual observance of global non-violence and ceasefire. Harold and I arrived in Wamena at the 11th of September and we were immediately drown into the Peace Day activities. Indirect this was a golden opportunity to meet and get to know all the PBI contacts in Wamena. The first one and a half week our house was full of visitors. Everybody walked in and out from early in the morning till late in the evening. It was great to meet everybody in this informal way and already be of help with questions.

The first activity of Peace Day 2008 was the Seminar about Peace in a broad way, which was visited by around 100 people. Day two followed with a children’s competition on the second day. For small children there was a colouring competition, for elder children there was a draft competition about Peace and for the youth there was a Pikon (local mouth harp)competition for the boys and a Noken competition for the girls. The third event was an interactif radio dialogue with the regent of the District Jayawijaya, the local head of the military and a representative of the police and two chairman of our Peace Day committee.

De last activity was the main activity, a great Parade consisting of 700 people through the streets of Wamena with at the end a big Bakar Batu. A Bakar Batu is a local traditional way of cooking and eating together and on this Peace day event we had our first Bakar Batu experience. There is a big fire where stones are heated. As soon as these stones are really hot they are thrown into a big hole in the ground together with vegetables and sweet potatoes (Ubi) and pig meat and/or chicken and then you have to wait a few hours until it is ready for eating.

House and office

Here some pics of our house and office in Wamena.

Selamat datang di Wamena

Wamena is a small town in the Baliem Valley in Papua.The town lays around 1600 meters above sealevel and is surrounded by mountains. The highest mountain is 4700 meters. Our arrival was lovely, finaly a village feeling again, no traffic lights, almost no traffic, sunny, beautiful surroundings. Every day one new experience after the other, rally becaks, buying very tastefull bananas on our door, shopping at the market, cold and rainy in the evening and night, a lot of work and a lot of things to learn, baby rabbits, mountainbiking, friendly people, our own Honai.

Papua, finaly but first a review of the last month in Yogya

This is a shame. Since July 7th this blog is not up-dated. We do put pictures on facebook though and we hope that makes up for it. We worked hard to finish our languageschool in August, but everything went well.

At the end of Harold's workshop.
Before ending our languageschool we had a good holiday in Java with the family of Harold. Together with Jolanda, Fons and father Passage we visited the Prambanan, Borobudur, the Bromo vulcano and plantations in East Java. We spent a very nice day on the beach en enjoyed being together.

Saying goodbye when leaving Yogya was hard, but it was also excited to move towards our goal in Indonesia and start our work for PBI in Papua.

Arya and sister Nuki from our second family in Yogya.