from the horizon

(Same same but different)

I arrived back in Banda Aceh on Friday on a Garuda flight from Jakarta. When people wishing you a safe trip, you take it a lot more seriously when the airline you’re flying with has had a plane crash two days prior.

It is good to be back in Banda Aceh, especially after Jakarta. The drive from the airport past rice paddy fields and luscious greenery is a stark and pleasant difference from the motorways, skyscrapers and traffic in Jakarta. Once again I was straight into work, and met with the Chief of Party to clarify and prioritize my work. It was a good meeting, and we managed to reduce to number of databases which they wanted from ten to seven. This is actually still a massive amount of work, but I’m doing my best to cherish the 30% reduction. I also think that I have found a staff member who will be able to work with me on the databases, which will make the work a lot more interesting. Although it will be useful to have another person working on the projects, it will force me to be more disciplined with the design and allocate the workload – both of which are probably good things. Also the staff member doesn’t speak that much English – so it will be another motivation to learn Indonesian.

I am staying in a house just down the road from where I stayed when I was first in Aceh, so I am familiar with the neighbourhood.

My House

My Room

You can also see my house from here (Google Maps). Later on I will to embedded these maps into the posts…

Unfortunately my house is right across the road from a Mosque, which means that I am woken by the Call to Prayer, blasted from it’s speakers, at some hour far earlier than I need to get up. I’m sure that I’ll adapt soon enough, and learn to sleep through it.

Taking a stroll do to the main street to buy udang mie goreng (prawn fried noodles) for dinner, dodging motorcycles and potholes on the way, doesn’t feel that different from walking up the road at home to get a meal from a cafe. It’s a little odd to be in such a foreign place, where everything is so different to New Zealand, yet to feel so comfortable here. It was amusing to be walking past a house, and hear someone call out “Pateng Goreng”. This was a phrase that developed out of conversations with the staff at the NGO I used to work for. It turned out that the house was now used by that NGO so I met up with some of my old colleagues!

I have also got back into my fitness regeim, and been for my first run. This was also an opportunity to play with my new GPS toy, which I hope to use to plot the roads I run on around Banda Aceh (if I get round to it I’ll try to put up a Google Map mash-up). It also shows me how far I’ve run – and after 15.2km, I decided that I’d run far enough, so I took a betcap (motorcycle sidecar taxi) home.

Last night I went to a party held by the Irish Red Cross, there a lot of new faces around, but it was good to see some of the people I knew when I was in Aceh before. It’s nice to know that I still have some friends around.

I feel like I have really settled in, and have even had a chance to sow my seeds – literally (nothing dodgy thank you). I managed to buy pots and soil to plant the seeds I had brought from New Zealand. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll be complimenting the local ingredient in my cooking with basil, coriander, mint, capsicum, mescaline and spinach – fresh from my own garden!