Compassion

Last Tuesday, we started shooting for Compassion, and we had a very busy week. We have been at two projects and also visited six different children in their homes. It has been an amazing experience, one that is very difficult to describe. To see how these children live is extremely hard. It's heart-breaking. Hopefully these photos do a little better at showing what we've seen...

The little boy in the middle sitting down is sponsored through Compassion and this is his family home.

Wherever we go, we have a crowd of curious onlookers, you don't see foreigners in Jakarta very often, especially in the slum areas. This is one such crowd.

The second project we visited is right next to a rubbish tip, where many of the children and their parents work, collecting anything that can be cleaned and sold for recycling. When we visited the tip, many of the children that were hanging around us came along, and they loved having their photo taken.

This is one of the Compassion mums who works at the rubbish tip.


Goat fight at the tip.

Another Compassion mum with her children. She is in the Child Survival Program with her baby girl, and another one of her sons is sponsored too.

Bandung

Monday the 17th was Independence Day in Indonesia, so everyone had a holiday! We went to Bandung, which is about 2 hours from Jakarta - we left at 6.30 in the morning to try and avoid the traffic. Bandung is known for shopping and eating, and we did alot of both! There are so many factory outlets there, we managed to get to about 4 of them, and that was about all we could cope with. We also watched some of the games traditionally played on Independence Day - they looked like lots of fun!

We had lunch at a restaurant in the hills, in the middle of rice fields. We had our own little hut, where we all sat on the floor on cushions and the waiters brought everything out to us from the kitchens - it was great.

Bandung is also known for its brownies, believe it or not, and they are really good! Yum :) We had a very full day and arrived home just before midnight, shopped out and stuffed silly, but very happy.

Bandar Djakarta

That night, after our fish market ordeal, we went to an amazing seafood restaurant. Sarah and I are not big seafood people, but this rates as one of my top 5 meals of all time.....it was up there!

The restaurant was right on the water, it is the most popular seafood restaurant in town, I think they said there are 200 tables - the place was packed.

When you are arrive you go and pick out your meal for the night. Your meal being the fish swimming around in the tanks, or the live crabs with their claws tied up. Then you sit down and you have your meal all prepared,cooked and served to you in 20mins - it was so fresh, and tasted so good! This was the first time we had ever had crab, we also had squid, prawns, fish, chicken...



After dinner we went out for a quick ride on a boat, then went for a walk along Jakarta's one and only beach!

Habitat for Humanity

Hi blog world, it's Ben here. We do promise to blog more as we have a bit more internet access now. This post is from Thursday last week - so we have a bit of catching up to do....
We spent the day doing photography for the church's Habitat for Humanity project. We are making up a brochure here for the church to help them raise more funds to buy more land, to build more houses. We got up at 6.30 and drove to the block of land they are planning to purchase and took photos of that. Then on the way home we stopped by the local fish market to take some photos of it, but unfortunately it was all over by the time we got there. All that was left was a few fish lying around on the ground....(kind of disconcerting considering that we were going out for dinner to a seafood restaurant that night).


Then we went back in the afternoon to take photos of the people and houses at the current Habitat for Humanity site. On the way we stopped by the Plastic Recycling Centre which is run by some of the people living at Habitat. It gives them 'better' work than they originally had. They collect plastic bags, wash them, dry them out, bundle them up, and sell them to the recyclers.


The rest of these photos are from the Habitat project. We spent some time taking a lot of photos there, the houses only cost about US$1300 to build. Sarah took this first image!

These are some twins from the project.

Inside one of the homes.

Jakarta News

We don't have access to the internet where we are staying, so updating our blog has proved to be harder than we anticipated! We can walk over to the mall and get free wifi in some of the cafes, but today is the first time we've done it. We'll try and give a snapshot of what wev'e been up to in the last little while...When we arrived in Pontianak after our overnight coach trip, we waited out the hours til our flight to Jakarta in this little house on the river. It is very different to where we are staying now!

This is the apartment where we are currently staying. It is owned by Pastor Joshua and his wife Sannita. She does interior design (among other things) and this is a 'show apartment'. It is close to the church, and so it is often used by visiting pastors, and members of the church also pop in and out frequently. The contrast between the extravagant malls and apartments and the slums right next door is incredible - it's like two different worlds living side by side.


On Monday, we visited Evelyn's parent's bag shop/warehouse. They import bags from China and sell them wholesale to alot of retail shops in the area. They had just received a shipment before we arrived, so there was stock everywhere! They work extrememly hard and it was fascinating to see behind the scenes a little. I even got a free handbag from Evelyn's mum - and they also got us lunch from the local Soto shop - they are so generous and hospitable.


Evelyn's family also took us to one of the malls in Kelapa Gading (actually, it's 5 malls joined together). It was gigantic! There are malls everywhere - it's where everyone goes to hang out in Jakarta (there's not really much else to do, especially as it's so hot). We had Mixed Ice - which is like nothing we've ever had (or want to have again). It's shaved ice, mixed with all sorts of jellies, kidney beans, green beans, seaweed, coconut milk, brown sugar and more.

Afterwards, we went out to a noodle house (can't remember what it's called exactly) - the food was fantastic, I really love the noodles here. We also tried fish cakes, which were great as well. There are so many more flavours here than in Australia, and so many different fruits as well - I've never heard of half of them! We've tried lots of different drinks - the oddest one being avocado...it's blended up with condensed milk and chocolate syrup and actually tastes great (believe it or not).

We've also been to the Canon Service Centre to drop in one of our cameras which decided to break in Borneo. You take a number, just like in a deli, and then wait your turn. While it's not going to be cheap to repair, it's a LOT better than what it would've cost to fix in Australia, so God's timing is good!

This is a massive Reformed Presbyterian Church we passed on the way to Canon - Ben took the photo for his dad - thought he might be impressed!

Today we visited Rianno's printing shop. He is an elder from the church and runs a very successful printing business. He even printed out one of our photos for us on his new HP Indigo 5500 printer! Ben was very impressed and we've now got some ideas for things we can print out for our business while we're here...

The streets outside the shop were filled with cages - rabbits, guinea pigs, hawks, eagles, monkeys, snakes, lizards, owls...you name it. It was very sad to see. This photo was taken from the car, so it doesn't show much, but you can get the idea.

Anyway, that's officially way too much information, but it should keep everyone happy for a while! We are off to a media meeting at the church tonight and afterwards we are going to stay in another place, Taman Palem, for a few days. Tomorrow we are going to photograph some Habitat for Humanity houses and also the land they are purchasing to build more houses, so we are really looking forward to that!

In Jakarta

We arrived safely in Jakarta on Saturday afternoon - after a very long journey! We have caught up on a little sleep, gone to church yesterday, ate at a Padang restaurant with Evelyn and her family, walked around the massive shopping centre here and even gone to the movies! It is a world far removed from where we have been in Borneo and while we've enjoyed these 2 days of rest and relaxation, we are keen to get back into it and experience some more of what Jakarta has to offer. Will post some photos asap. Love to everyone.

Farewell Borneo!

Well, the time has come to farewell Borneo. We have had the most amazing time, and are sad to leave all these wonderful people. Last night, Ben shared his testimony at the worship meeting and then everyone prayed for us - it was so beautiful to hear hundreds of children's voices praying for us. Today, we've said our goodbyes and taken some last minute photos with the kids.


We're off to Nanga Pinoh now, where we'll catch the overnight coach to Pontiankak and then fly to Jakarta...woohoo!

Nanga Pinoh

We went into Nanga Pinoh a couple of days ago - it's about 50 minutes away, and the closest town to where we are (Manggalla is a tiny little village down the road, but there is nothing there apart from a few houses, soccer field and a little church). We got to Nanga Pinoh on the back of a truck, with about 30 other people. It was a bumpy ride and we all held on tight and tried to keep our balance as best we could! This is how the school kids get to school too!


The trip was definitely worth it though...we had ice-cream for the first time in what seems like forever! And we were also able to buy a few supplies for our long coach trip back to Pontianak (we leave tomorrow night). This time we think we'll actually get to go on the air-conditioned coach, but we'll believe it when we're sitting on it, and no sooner.



During our walk around town, we saw a monkey, porcupines and a sloth! Sadly, they were caged up - so not exactly the wildlife we were hoping to see in the jungles when we were over here. They sell monkeys here for about $150 - and we did entertain the thought of a pet monkey for a few seconds - but knowing that they kill the mothers to get them puts it into perspective.

We also went down to the river - what a site to behold...and the stench was unbelievable.



Our time here is almost up, and we'll be sad to leave. But we're also excited to start the next leg of our trip in Jakarta and see what God has in store for us there!

Jungle Trekking

Sit back and relax, this is going to be a long one! It started with four-wheel driving through the hills, up and down, winding round and round - with 9 people in the car and luggage too. What was supposed to be a 3 hour drive stretched out into 6 hours - due to 3 police check points. There is a lot of logging in Borneo and they are very suspicious of anyone coming into these parts (Central Kalimantan), especially foreigners, but we made it eventually!

At the first village we had some lunch and then tried the local fruit which is very popular over here - it's called durian - and it stinks like rotten cheese. It's reputation is that it smells like hell but tastes like heaven - but we think it tastes as bad as it smells! Later that night we went to a special service at the church, held in honour of our visit. We also visited a man who was very sick with TB and our doctor was able to help him. Then we strung up our mosquito nets and hit the hard wood floor for our first sleepless night.

The next day we visited the local school before heading off down the river on canoes to another village - it was so much fun!!

At each village we visited, the first stop was the chief's house, where we had to sit on the floor, drink tea, explain what we were doing there and then record our names in a little exercise book. Everything seems to take 5 times as long here, and it feels like a lot of nothing is going on, but it's just the way it's done here - so it's a good lesson in patience (especially when you can't understand the language).

After lunch, we headed back down to the canoes and traveled to our third village. While Wilika (the doctor) ran a clinic, we mixed with the people and took photos - they love to see what they look like on the back of the camera, although it takes a bit to warm them up.

Then it was back to the first village, where we hald a christian meeting in one of the homes and another medical clinic - late into the night.



We bathed in the river each night, which is also where the toilet is (see the little hut thing on the river? Yes, it's the toilet - try going at night when it's dark and you're trying to hold a torch and not fall in!). It's also where they do their teeth, wash their clothes and their dishes as well. I did quite a bit of praying over our health!

This is the people from the second village farewelling us the next morning as we made our way back to the first village we visited (which is where we had left the car).

Back in the village, we discovered a flat tyre - maybe they didn't want us to leave?! After changing it, we packed the car and were ready to head off...only to discover they had decided to rebuild the only bridge leading out of the village. Needless to say, we weren't happy!

Three hours later, we finally headed home. And thank the Lord, it only took 2.5hours on the way back!!