FRIDAY 19 JANUARY:

Free theoretically

Farid of Muslim Aid rang us a couple of days ago to say that the TK Aisyah Kindergarten in Ulee Kareng gig would not be able to happen this morning, as schools are on holiday this week, so that has been shifted to the morning of Saturday 27 January, which leaves us this morning free theoretically. But we liked Yulfrita’s little 40-boy Orphanage so much yesterday, that we decide to go back and do another sessions with them. Taking the hotel’s trolley we amble through the green gate at 9.00 am – so easy and nice!

We take the badge-making again as they really loved that yesterday, and we also took the bank bags, rice and balloons so that the boys were all able to make “beanbags” - and then Hags did a juggling workshop with them. They had a great time and so did we. It’s lovely working with large numbers, but having smaller numbers of children at intimate venues is lovely too, as you can spend more individual time with them, which they really appreciate.

Fond goodbyes

My stomach explodes again, but no matter – my bedroom and bathroom are only 100 yards away , and by walking in a rather tight little way I get there in time, and can return nice and quickly. Lots of lovely sweet tea and fond goodbyes – we will certainly visit these boys again when we come to Aceh next.

Baby story

Yulfrita sends two huge plates of noodles to our room and also a massage lady – what a lovely, unexpected treat. The massage lady is lovely and very chatty – of, I wish I could speak the language! A lot of miming goes on, and I fear she is telling me that she lost her baby in the tsunami. After the massage we go and visit Yulfrita, so that I can find out what the massage lady had been telling me – she had been telling me about the tsunami and a baby, but it was more positive than I had feared. As far as I can gather the tsunami came and everyone who was left alive ran away, and this lady then had her baby – it must have been very difficult having the baby all alone, but she and the baby survived. He is now 25 months old and she is very proud of him!

Unsafe, rowdy, cheating - who cares?

At 3.30 pm Farid and Shufic (the very nice Malaysian Muslim Aid volunteer, who is studying to be a doctor in Aukland) arrive to pick us up and take us to Asrama Raider Barracks. We visited this Barracks back in April and it was pretty run down then – now it is even more so. The floor in the balai looks completely unsafe, so we work outside. The badges go very well, though it is a bit hectic and pushy – but the lovely Muslim Aid driver now knows how it should work and is extremely helpful in protecting me and doesn’t let it get too out of control. Hags runs some very good parachute games – the parachute football gets particularly noisy and rowdy, with quite a lot of cheating going on, but the children and teenagers are having a lovely time, so who cares! The show also goes down really well for an audience of about 280. (When we were here in April we had actually been working on a school day with a smallish kindergarten group for Amort, I think, but lots of the children here must have been skipping school because they clearly remember us, which is nice.)

NO PIX TODAY FOR SOME REASON - WILL TRY TO FIND THEM AND GET THEM UP!

Appalling

It really is appalling that so many people are still having to live in these awful conditions more than 2 years after the tsunami. We hope that when we return next these barracks will have been destroyed and the families permanently re-housed!

We go out to dinner at the Buffalo Grill, but it is very mosquito-ey - and I don’t have the Autan with us. Hey ho! We love the Green Paradise Hotel so much – it is very reasonably priced at £12 a night for a double room, and we love the fact it has a communal room and pool and WiFi, but it is a real problem it being so far from the middle of town. We are most fortunate in that all the venue organisers have been wonderful about picking us up, taking us to the session venues, and returning us to Green Paradise, but once we have been deposited back in the evening with all our stuff (sometimes as late as 7 or 8 pm), it is very difficult to muster the energy to go out and eat, as we are generally exhausted. There is a little kitchen one can use here, but again we have not had the energy to go food shopping and then cook in the evenings, so it’s been a lot of pizzas alternated with bread, peanut butter, jam and banana sandwiches from the breakfast stash. Maybe we should buy some vitamin pills! We need to think how to manage things better food-wise for the next tour somehow.

Spend a couple of hours catching up with the hotmails and the diary while Hags watches some football on the Sky television, and then it’s time to hit the sack.