Desa Oelomin - Oelomin Village

This week had me back in Oelomin for a day of visiting a couple of more people who have disability as indentified by the "Kapala Desa" or Village Head. He is the man with many responsibilities running and guiding the operations of a village of about 350 people. He provided a list of people with disabilitites to Berti when I was early on in my placement. On this day we saw him in his office to ask official permission to go ahead and start visiting people. When we sat down in the office Berti turned to me and told me to ask for the permission in Indonesian and caught me by surprise as so often happens here.

Mama trying on Berti's glasses for fun!

I stumbled my way through and we sent on our way with his thanks and blessing.

First we went to a family where the 4 year old girl was reported to have mobility problems but on arrival, saw her playing and walking with no problem. We politely visitied with her mother for a while, me trying to get the little girl to dance or play with me so that we could really look for  her mobility problem but her shyness kept her back although my dancing brought a smile to her face! We did decide the Kapala Desa did not quite have an up to date list! So from then on Berti asked other people who she has worked with in the village for updates to the list and we think we have much better detail now.

visiting in the family living room

We did visit a woman of 32 who has severe mobility challenges and following a fever and pain in 2004, was left in bed for quite a while and now has weakness in her legs and walks bent at the waist. We want to try to have her assessed as we aren't sure if this was polio or something else.
She cooks for the family, her mother and father, sister and her small child and her own daughter who is now 8 years old. she also works in the garden where they have produce for the family and for taking to market in Kupang, a 60 minute  ride away by the rickety crowded bemo bus. Her sister has that chore!

family home

The whole family lives in a one room bamboo hut and their living room is the front yeard where we visited. When they saw us coming someone ran into the house and brought out the usual plastic chairs and they served us sweet coffee. Her Elderly mother and father sat under the tree after bringing some produce we wanted to buy from their plots of veggies - fresh picked casava leaves and papaya flowers as well.

village traditional dance competition

Then as we walked back to Berti's motor bike we spotted some fruit for sale on the roadside and called to the house for someone to sell us some. Turned out to be guava and she sold it by a big bowl full. Quite small fruit but really high in vitamin C. Then we  squeezed it all into our day packs and hang the extra bag off the hook on the front of the bike and headed home!
The papaya flowers got soaked in salt to reduce theri bitter flavour and stir fried with the casava leaves, garlic, onion and of course hot chiles. Delicious! or Sedap! in Indonesian.

take care all - talk to you again soon.

elders enoying traditional dance competition