Memperbarui Desa Oesena - Update, Oesena Village

Where has April gone? For those of you who have suffered through the usual April snow, warm, rain and just plain up and down weather patterns of Canada's spring I can imagine you are now rewarded with the sprouts and signs of warming. As I've said, seasons here are dry and wet and really the only other difference is in the direction of the breeze. Hot is the only word!

Lounging on Lombok with friends

So, the update on our DVD debut in Oesena village. The DVD was well received and comments are mostly that people were inspired to try to make a difference in the lives of their fellow villagers who experience the external barriers that having any kind of difference brings, be it mental, physical, emotional or social. With patient prodding and long silences we gained 7 volunteers who were willing to be coached by us on how to interview people with disabilites in their village and collect the data required by the provincial and district governments to assess them for assistance.  Primarily, the ones who will probably receive the most assistance will be young adults who qualify to go for training in skills or in upgrading high school education interrupted by accident or disease. We are learning that although it is said there is a pension fund  for older people who are totally dependent, the fact of the matter is this seldom seems to come about. Right now we think we are hearning that this year's budget for them is fully ascribed, therefore the woman we submitted information for two months ago will probably not receive anything. This is so sad, as her daughter provides total care in very limited surroudings and cannot get away to earn the money they need to make things a little more comfortable. The other limitation is schoooling for children with significant limitations physically and mentally. The family needs to have enough money to support room and board at the school sponsored by government in Kupang and transportation to bring the children home on weekends for a day, if there are even rooms available for the kids to board.

PERSANI 3rd Birthday

But, back to our volunteers. We went back to Oesena the following week to do the training with our 7 volunteers- two for each sub village (neighbourhood), one of whom is a local health volunter who has been trained to facilitate the maternal child health programme of  clinics for weigh in and checkups and referral. This is great to get these volunteers as they know their community and are well respected. Next step this week was to accompany them on their first interviews and coach on site if needed. It is so cool to see these people interact with their community members, how they use humour to set the tone and how serious everyone is about "data gathering". We left Kupang at 8 am on motorbikes and arrived at 9:30 in the village where we sat around for half an hour waiting for the other volunteeer to arrive who had been at her distant "plot" harvesting the corn crop for a few days so had to get up at 5 am to make it back to the village - taking local trucks as transport, outfitted with boards in the back for seats and on then foot the last 2 km.

Gili Island snorkel day from Lombok

Every interview - 5 in all in the 3 subvillages - took all day, getting home at 5, just before dark. I was bagged! Mostly because conversation runs slowly and lots of visiting, food at every home of course - lots of rice! Two interviews stand out for me, but all were vary valuable.
One is a girl of 10 whose twin is healthy, but this girl has a knee joint which is backwards, (try to picture how she walks) a hand with stubby and missing fingers, limited eyesight and  reduced mental capacity. Her father saw the DVD on Elmi's experience and this inspired him to try to find schooling for his daughter. We will do our best to investigate the possibilites as they will not be able to pay large fees and they will need to room and board her.

PERSANI Birthday party

The other is a young man of 25 who had a stroke due to high blood pressure a year ago and has lost the use of his right arm and has distinct weakness in his right leg. He was part way into his biology degree in Kupang at the university but has not returned, working on his ability to write notes with his left hand and trying to build walking strength. This so dismays me, because if he were in Canada or another "western" country he would be back to school with all the electronic aids at h

Green cake is popular!

and and conciliations from the university to support his continued success. We are helping the volunters to explore some options for him to continue his learning path.

I am also helping the organization for disabled persons with website development but as that is not in my repertoire, have enlisted daughter Kelsey's expertise. she is fabulous and the 3rd birthday for PERSANI the organization was this week, with a very tearful Director thanking us for this work so freely given. the members are so very appreciative as they have very limited funding and didn't see themselves able to have a much needed website. a few photos here on the birthday party.

roommate Nelly's kitten and neighbours

So that's the update. Other than that, I'm including photos from my Easter holiday on Lombok with my friends and a photo of my bed etc on the balcony frying out the bedbugs. Success!

Pertama Hasil - First (tangible) Result

Happy April to all of you in the land of 4 seasons.  Most of you will be seeing spring bulbs coming up, some will even have had the blooms – west coasters for sure! Here, we are mostly out of the rainy season although the odd rain does surprise me but only lasts a short half hour at most. But the end of rain means it’s now hot and muggy and the breeze is now coming from the south which means my balcony does not catch the lovely breezes that have been so helpful to me in the last few months. It’s pretty hot out there once the sun comes around! But this is the last month in this house as our lease is up and the end of April and I will move in with my friends Angela and Morton until I am finished my time here. We make a good group and as I stayed with them a year ago for a month we’ve already done a trial of living together and we more than survived.

drying clothes-tin roof and 32C perfect dyer and no electiricity

 This morning greeted me with my neighbours who are within a few meters away, burning their garbage that they pile at the end of our balcony below us.  Also where they live.  The lovely smell of burning plastic wafted across as I stepped out with my coffee in hand, so quickly backed into the house to wait it out. Piling and burning garbage is a common practice, even in the large cement bins that are along roadsides for the purpose of dumping and they are supposed to have garbage truck pickup regularly but sometimes they are overflowing and people burn some of it after they have climbed into the bin and sorted through for any good “finds”. It sure gives me the worries to see people sorting through, even young children, bare foot clambering through a pile of garbage with who knows what in it.  We’ve started to separate ours into a bag of stuff people might want and the kitchen wet stuff they might not so that they don’t have to sort through all of it to get bottles and cans etc. It’s a real dilemma as to how we can help out the waste management here! That’s our little bit that we thought of so far.Also see the laundry below us on the rood of the housing. Great way to get the clothes dry quickly.

my speaking debut!

Well, I left my last Blog with a comment of “see what’s next” after experiencing my epiphany of the education I think is needed regarding people with disability. That being just illuminating the “abilities” rather than the “disability” of people with physical differences such as missing limbs, body size, vision and hearing loss. All the power points in the world explaining symptoms and encouraging inclusion is far too generic. So, in consultation with my colleague Berty and my man Don (by Skype) the idea of doing a film of Elmi and her independence could be the start of showing how someone from their own village is independent, more so than they ever imagined, and begin to plant the seeds of seeing “ability” rather than pity for “disability”. There are many clips of videos shown here of white foreigners who have very serious limb losses doing spectacular things like playing piano with their toes, getting around with paralysis of the lower body etc but people see these and just look at them as movies from far away and can’t relate this to people here. They believe that these “miracles of ability” happen because foreigners have lots of money. Now they will see that every day independence and the learning of a skill to make a living can happen right here if they know about the resources available to them, mostly from government and can get connected.

Berty introducing DVD of Elmi and independence

watching the DVD

So, Elmi thought this filming was a marvelous idea; Berty used my camera with my coaching on what we are looking for and the night before Elmi flew to Solo, Java for her 10 months of computer training, they filmed and re-filmed until 2am! But they got it. I located a studio to do the editing through my friend Chrystal, and Berty and I spent many hours with the editing, writing script for Berty to narrate the introduction and purpose of the film, choosing music, colour – very bright ones catch Indonesian’s interest who love lots of colour. And we figure at least 40 hours start to finish, we are having the debut of the DVD in Elmi’s village this week. We are starting with a workshop on disability in general, then letting them know I will be going home, so we need 3 people to volunteer for us to coach on how to keep up to date on government resources and how to help people get applications in for what they need. Then we will end with the DVD of their neighbour Elmi. I think they will be very surprised when they see how able she is, as some have not seen her since her accident a year ago as they fear seeing her with missing legs.

I will not post this until I have a few photos from our film debut in Oesena and the workshop. Take care all, and enjoy your spring. 4 seasons is a blessing I think!