We have water! Yes you read right, water… we’d almost forgotten what it was like to turn on the tap and have water flow out… On Thursday the head MAF guy from the Jakarta office came by and he and Pak Nadi decided that instead of waiting for the landlord to give his ok, (his sister is mysteriously ill right now and she holds the purse strings), they went and bought a new pump and installed it. Now we have water and a pump that works! I kept pinching myself to make sure this is real…. Then I enjoyed a fabulous hot shower for the first time in about a month. Wow, what deprivation does to make you appreciate things! We’re still being careful with water, that’s a hard one to break.
So much of life here revolves around the buying and selling of food. On Friday I spent an hour visiting with our neighbours beside the road just up from our house. They have a little cart up there where they sell gado-gado. Gado-gado is a dish made with tofu, potatoes, peanut sauce and some other stuff. So I hung out with them for a while and watched the people. The couple that I posted a picture of last month – Bobon, Marni, and Sri – have their little warung (tiny shop) around the corner from our neighbour’s cart. They spend their entire days at this shop. They have a mat on the floor for their little girl to take naps on with mom and a tv that’s about 5 inches across. This is normal life for the average poor family here. Kids here learn real fast to watch out for motorbikes and cars. They also learn to eat deep fried foods really early too. So they hang around all day and sell the odd cigarette or deep fried item. This is their life, they struggle from day to day to make enough money to live. But they always have time for a chat and a smile. I love having little visits with this young couple. Although it is sometimes difficult to talk with Bobon as he mixes Indonesian with Sundanese. They keep asking me if I want to learn Sundanese, but I tell them that I’m already forgetting my dutch as it is. Another language would be a bit much right now. As I sat there talking with them all on Friday a truck drove up full of plastic items for sale. There was a guy in the cab talking over a loud speaker. The speaker was so bad that it was like fuzz to me. Then another guy walked by selling inflatable children’s toys. Every now and then some motorbikes would go by. This is life here. A lot of hanging around, chatting and selling.