In the morning, I was awoken very, very early (5am) by the sound of wailing. It sounded like the zombies from a horror movie, moaning almost in unison. It took a few seconds for me to focus (5am, remember?), then I could clearly hear one voice clearly amplified over the others. Ah, prayer. I forgot I was in a Muslim city. In Medan, I have heard the calls to prayer many times over the loudspeakers, but never individuals responding. In BA, everyone is a Muslim, so everyone is praying. The sound came from everywhere. It was incredibly eerie. One voice over the loudspeaker sounds melodious, tens of thousands murmuring in unison is creepy. And heartbreaking. The Darkness is so thick here.
A couple hours later we left town on the three hour drive to the project site in Sigli. The countryside is very different from Nias or Medan. It feels more African to me. More plains and less dense vegetation than Nias, more mountains than Medan. At one point we even passed a small grove of pine trees that reminded me of home. Cows wander the streets (Corvallis?) and later on we saw some monkeys and even a small elephant that was being used to haul something. But I was quickly told that’s not a normal sight. I want to ride the elephant!
Sigli seems like a pretty nice place that would have been even nicer before the tsunami. The climate here is much more mild (we’re about as far north as you can get) which I’m enjoying. It rained a lot today, in a very Oregon sort of way. Cold, grey and heavy. I don’t know why that’s so refreshing. And, of course, “cold” is a very relative term. It’s still a Muslim community; at prayer times, as soon as you drive out of range of one mosque’s speakers, you pick up another. But it seems less so than BA. The influences are everywhere, though. In the architecture of the buildings (big domes on top) down to your behavior (shoes OFF!). We might as well be in the middle east with more palm trees.
The office is nice. It’s by far the cleanest building I’ve seen in Indonesia. Everyone takes their shoes off when entering, which helps a lot. Seriously, this place is spotless. Whoever they have cleaning it is doing an outstanding job. The staff are friendly and much closer to my age than any of my stops thus far. It’s been easier to joke around with this crew, and, if you know me, that’s important. Their computers have also been meticulously maintained, even though the staff know very little about them. “Don’t install software.” So they don’t. It’s nice to have users who listen.
Their Internet is coming off a wireless setup. The antenna looks very familiar. I’m wondering if it was setup as part of the tsunami relief effort. Remember when I did the emergency communications work after Katrina? There was a crew that did the same thing in Indonesia after the tsunami, and this equipment looks like what we were using. I haven’t been able to get an answer as to where it came from, but that’s my guess. Kind of brings things full-circle for me.
Both project managers I’ve worked with (first Esther and now Jenny) have liked to feed me. I thought I would lose some weight on this trip, but they’re always bringing me something new to try. At least with Jenny it’s delicious fruit drinks. Seriously, they taste like biting into the fruit. For dinner we had some fried noodles – I think that marks my first Indonesian meal (any meal) that didn’t contain rice. They were spicy and delicious and reminded me of noodles my cousin Leo used to make when we were kids. Noodles were one of the few things we could make unsupervised, and he had a special blend of peppers to keep it interesting. Burned your mouth but you couldn’t stop eating them! If I have any tolerance for spicy food, it’s due to him.
The hotel I’m staying in (they have a hotel here!) has the look of a place that before the tsunami was nice. The walls are brightly painted instead of white and stained. There’s intricate molding around the doors and ceiling. There’s even some cool multi-colored lights. But, like most things, it suffered a blow from the tsunami. It’s still nice, but has a certain…worn…feeling to it. Like it was abused. And it suffers from the overall infrastructure problems (power, water, etc.). It comes with a prayer rug and a sign that points to Mecca.
Speaking of the tsunami, I should probably comment on that. Sigli is one of the “ground zeros” for the wave. Not only was there an earthquake here (see the map in yesterday’s post), but this is one of the places there was a wave. They say it got to be around 12 meters high. They took me to the beach this afternoon. It was deserted. No one goes there anymore. The good news about this particular spot is that there were no houses close to the water, just salt flats and shrimp, uh, growing (?) areas. But you can still see the devastation. I’m mad at myself for leaving my camera charger in Medan, because as we were there, my battery light started blinking. I’m saving the rest of my shots for tomorrow when we’re back in BA and visit the main landing spot for the wave. I’ll write more about the tsunami then.
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