*Yesterday morning Ice came to me and said that maybe she couldn’t work that day. The night before, two women, who live in a house in the same row as her house, had a big fight. One of the women happens to be the mother of our guard, Pak Nios. Ice thought they were done with the whole business when they went to bed, but the next morning after waking up, they carried on where they had left off the night before. (I didn’t get a chance to ask her today what the fight was actually about…) So I guess in situations like this, the neighbours get together to try and help the women solve their problem. Can you imagine using that as a reason not to go to work in Canada?
*On Monday Pak Nios said to me,”Oh, you’re back already. I wanted to order a watch from Singapore.” I was left a little dumbfounded and couldn’t help thinking to myself,” You live in a two room hovel with your wife and five kids including a 2 month old and you want a watch?????” I didn’t say this of course; I just told him that watches were much cheaper here than in Singapore. He then went on to say that from 8:00-10:00 he likes to sweep the perimeter (a little translation liberty there with my choice of words…) and by 11:00pm he likes to be inside our yard for the night. Because before then the young people like to go up the mountain to bathe and they sometimes are a bit rowdy. As he is saying all this to me he looks at his bare wrist to emphasize that he doesn’t have a watch. I just stared at the cell phone (which has a camera on it which my 2 year old phone doesn’t…) hanging around his neck and wondered why he didn’t just use the clock on his phone… But of course I didn’t say this. When white men go into a village here, the people want two things. They want clothes and they want watches. Which is really hilarious because Papuans are known for never being on time, watch or no watch… We go on jam (time) karet (rubber) over here. It is however, like the cell phone, a status symbol.
*It looks like Hugo is going to go to Aceh after all. Next month they want him to do an avionics upgrade on an airplane from MAF Australia.