SATURDAY 13 JANUARY:

Who are you?

An Irish Red Cross jeep collects us at 7.45 am and takes us to the Junior High School in Tungkop – we get there about 8.30, and no one has ever heard of us!

I can’t get hold of Mr. Ady who is meant to be our contact – indeed everyone denies any knowledge of him. We find a man who says he IS Mr. Ady, but he has never heard of us either. At this stage, having been sent from office to office, I discover that I have lost my all-important Master Timetable that has all my notes on it (luckily it is discovered late in the Red Cross jeep!), so I start to feel a bit panickey!

I can’t reach Amy or Ellen from the Irish Red Cross on the phone, and the number I have for Mr. Ady still doesn’t answer. Shades of chaos and lack of information on previous CWI Tours

In the end Iring poor Linda North at Yayasan Lamjabat (who has an Acehnese husband and has lived here 12 years) and ask her to talk in Acehnese to the man who says he is Mr. Ady . She does, bless her, but it doesn’t seem to advance our situation.

Enter Mr. Ady

Just when I think we might as well cut our losses and leave, the real Mr. Ady arrives, and knows all about us, and what we are meant to be doing. He just has to go and get equipment moved out of the hall and get it cleaned, so I am left sitting in yet another office – which is quite calming and relaxing once I accept we are just going to run very late.

The idea that has been arranged between the Irish Red Cross and Mr. Ady is that we have 120 children for an hour – 60 will do badge-making and 60 will do parachute games for half an hour, and then they will swap over – and then we will have about 300 children for the show.

Pretty hellish

We are eventually ushered into the hall and there at least 300 children there already. The parachute games and badge-making are pretty hellish, as the schools’ staff don’t seem to have any control over their children – but the show goes great, probably to at least 400 children, and everyone seems happy. The wretched leaking pot of fire fuel gets knocked over, so I have to clear the stage of last badge-makers. Everything is slippery and oily and smelly! Hey ho!

HAGS HAVING A VERY JOLLY TIME IN FRONT OF A HUGE AUDIENCE AT TUNGKOP JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

On our way out to the car, feeling rather exhausted, a teacher from another school comes up and asks if we will visit his school next Saturday morning (one of our last free sessions). Part of me never wants to touch another school session, but he and Dini, another Irish Red Cross lady, seem to understand the problems we had today. We agree that if they can organise 120 children in a hall, we will start with an hour of badge-making and parachute games, but that if there are more children there, we will just do the show. I think they will make sure it works out more calmly than it did this morning. Now that Yulfrita has taken the morning of the 18th for her orphan school, we only have 2 spare mornings left in Banda – which we will probably need for admin, badge preparation and perhaps looking at more housing projects.

Idea of genius

Yesterday, having spent our lunch hour making badges, I had an idea of genius. As Muslim Aid send about 4 people to accompany us to each gig (to put up the banner and be generally useful, though actually one really good translator with a “fun” character would be of more use) I asked them to help me prepare badges and had them drawing circles in the middle of the paper badge centres and pinning pins into the plastic backs. And I asked the Red Cross helpers to do the same this morning, and at last we are building a real stash of badge bits and not having to desperately make them up before each session. If we can keep this up, or rather if Muslim Aid and the Red Cross can keep this up, our life will become a great deal easier – I wish I had thought of it before!

FORMAL PHOTO OUTSIDE THE UNICEF CENTRE

Buying supplies

We stop off and get more money out of the ATM to pay for the car down to Tuenom and back, and buy yet more paper and coloured pens for badge making. We don’t get back to our hotel till 1.30 and Muslim Aid are coming to collect us at 3.30, so we just have a quick lunch and a quick horizontal rest. Quite a long drive to this afternoon’s session which is at a charming UNICEF Children’s Centre. The staff are lovely and tremendously helpful and we have a great time with the 80 children – one of our nicest afternoons!

JOLLY SHOW INSIDE THE UNICEF CENTRE

Pizza and telly

Back to the Green Paradise about 7.00 pm, and eat take-away pizza and watch a bit of telly – then Hussan comes by with our driver for Monday and Wednesday who is called Mar. We pay half the 2.5 million rupiahs (actually only £150 even though it sounds so enormous) so that he can hire the car on Sunday. Mar seems very nice - he is going to come and pick us up at 5.00 am on Monday, and reckons it will take us 7 hours – though of course it may take much longer if there are problems with the road or bridges – fingers crossed! It should be a very exciting journey.

OK – to bed now, as we are knackered! An Australian Red Cross jeep is coming to collect us at 8.30 for the session at Cot Cut.........