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.

Newsletter PBI NL

http://www.peacebrigades.nl/fileadmin/user_files/groups/netherlands/files/Nieuwsbrief_voorjaar_2008.pdf

With this link you can download the newsletter of PBI NL. In this newsletter there is also an article about us.

2th July 2008.Visitors from the Netherlands

This week Ankie and Raoel visited us. They came to Yogya especially for us and it felt really good to speak “brabants” again. Even more since Ankie is really talkative! They promised to visit us once we are in Papua. For now we are looking forward to new visitors, Harold's family is coming at the end of July and are planning to have a great time together.

28th June 2008.Birthday at 2965 meters

This birthday was really special. On the evening of 27th of June we started our trip to clime the Merapi vulcano. We were with 7 participants and 4 guides and the clime was rough enough for Harold and me. We walked up the mountain for 5 and a half hours (1400 meters) and reached the top at around 5AM in the morning. In a strange way Harold and I ended up to be the latest reached the top???The walk was hard for us and we felt the weak couple in the team ;)
But once on the top it was wonderful. A beautiful sunrise, beautiful views and the guides made some delicious nasi goreng for us.
But as it goes with climbing mountains we also had to go down. Harold was nock out and really could not walk anymore....But we reached the “finish” safely. Although it was the longest trip downwards we ever experienced.

26th June pre-deploymenttraining

For three days we had our training to prepare us for our work in Papua.

21th June 2008.Cycling to Kaliurang

Because we study very hard during the weekdays we really need some relaxing in the weekends. On Saturday morning at 5am we started to cycle up the hills of Kaliurang. As people from the Netherlands, no mountains!, it was quit a hard trip. But our new bikes were great and after 3 hours we arrived in Kaliurang (mountainvillage) were we could enjoy a great view of the Mount Merapi.

We also visited the famous Budha tempel Borobudur and watched sunset and sunrise overthere.

14th June 2008.Teaching in Yogya

For the first time of my life I (Meriam)teached English to children!It was a real nice experience but is also took a lot of preparation since I am not a native speaker. At this picture there was a end of the schoolyear ceremony with all the teachers and me.

Back in Yogya 18 juni 2008

Papua indah sekali

Hello Fish

Seahorse


BIG Turtle


We are having a wonderfull time at gangga island. Besides all the wonderfull things here like sun, beach, palms, the diving is wonderfull too. We have already seen lots of nudibranch, fish in all sizes and colours, a big turtle of 2 meters, shark, coralgardens, too much to mention! Tonight there was a special event at dinner, we were surprised by a singing staff with a honeymoon cake. We felt a bit in the picture but it was very nice!

Honeymoon/Bulan Madu

Since the 17th of April we are back in Indonesia again. This time we will stay for more dan one and a half year! After having a hard time in saying goodbye's again we now are on Honeymoon!
Yesterday we arrived on a very beautiful island in the north of Sulawesi, called Gangga island. It is almost too beautiful here, nice white sandy beaches, waving palms, cristal blue water, hearing and seeing the sea all day and night, what else do you need to have a wonderfull honeymoon?
Tomorrow we go out to have our first dive and we are looking forward to see all the coral and all the fish!

Yes, husband and wife! Thnx

Aren't we beautiful? ;))
We feel so happy together! In the middle of 2007 our whole wedding started out as a practical matter. Would'nt it be more easy to be married in Indonesia while working for BPI....?How romantic can it get! Well, after a relationship of already 20 years we did'nt really feel the need of being married in the first place, what difference would it make? We decided to have a party then since we would leave our family and friends for a long time and then there where wedding clothes for Harold and one day before the wedding there was a wedding dress for Meriam. Mmme the longer it take the more a real wedding was coming up.
At the end the 4th of april was coming up and there we met on the first floor of our house, mmme we really looked like we were going to get married and we looked really beautiful!
The whole day we felt like being very in love and very happy and very special, on top of that our family and friends made our day even more special, with beautiful romantic surprises and wonderful happy smiles.....
They always say something about the most beautiful day of your life stuff, now we know what they mean!

We want to thank all our family and friends for being with us and for making this day so wonderful and unforgetable for us. XXX

Almost back to the Netherlands

Our house/verandah in Yogya.




Away for the weekend in bandungan (central Jawa).


Tomorrow night we fly back to the Netherlands, We are very excited for the wedding and to see everybody again. We finally managed how to put some pictures on our log so here they are!

cumi cumi

Yes,
Finally a new message on our log.
We now found a more fast internetlocation!

We arrived in Jakarta on the 19th of February, the journey begins!
Jakarta is dirty, busy, chaotic, stinky, hot, humid etc.
But we got a nice welcome from our friends in the PBI Jakarta team were we staid for three days. On friday the 22th of February we went to Yogja by train. And now we are almost two weeks in Yogja. It's great! The language is difficult and the level that we should reach is kind of high. Especially translating everything from Dutch, to English, to Bahasa Indonesia makes things more complicated. But de school is great and we are in an intens programm. De teachers are also very nice and Harold and I are learning together in one class at the moment. But in a week we will have our own private lessons.

Since a week we stay at a very, very lovely family in Yogja near the school. It is a very warm and friendly family and we can practise our newly learned bahasa skills whole day.

The food is great here. You can eat whole day nice Indonesian stuff and enjoy calemares, as the call it here so funny, cumi cumi!

In other words we are doing great and we are having a great time studying the language.

We are getting married on the 4th of April 2008!

February 18th we go off to Jakarta!

Finally, after more then a year of preparing, we go to Indonesia. On Monday 18th of February we fly from Amsterdam to Jakarta to start our big PBI adventure. We are very excited and we (especially Harold) feel some tension. It feels strange and sad to leave all our family, friends and our rabbit behind...
At this moment we are finishing things up here, arrange the visa and soon we will be packing, hihi. Besides that we are planning a (our) wedding, eeks! On the 25th of February we start in languageschool in Yogjakarta. We already had a languagecourse in the Netherlands in the last few months with guru Pak Herman. Thanks to him we are already a bit familiar with Bahasa Indonesia. But there is still a lot to learn! We are looking forward to our languageschool in Yogjakarta and meeting all the other PBI guys.

On April the first we fly back home for two weeks for our wedding and goodbye party on the 4th of April and after that we will be off untill February 2010.