2 JANUARY 2007

Well, we’ve done our first show, but boy, what a long and difficult day! Let me tell you all about it.....

Wide awake

We got to bed early last night, so I woke at 3.30 am and rang Jessica, our beautiful 18-year-old daughter, in England, to wish her Happy New Year. She was well and happy, which was a relief as I had been trying to ring her for a couple of days without success - absolutely no success emailing anyone from the island either - we think the Taiwan earthquake caused some quite major problems. As I was wide awake, I decided to stay up and try to complete the Fairbairn funding application for Children’s World’s new Lightbeam Tour (which I’ll tell you about some day when I have more time and am not so tired!)

Why does everything take so much longer than one expects? Suddenly, long before I had finished my tasks, it was 6.00 am & time to wake Haggis & pack up our stuff & head to the ferry to go back to Banda Aceh.

Mound of luggage

The small minibus taxi arrives and there are 6 of us to fit in apart from the driver and a mound of luggage - we all gaze at the available space and then at the pile of luggage - there is no roof rack! Oh well, let’s improvise one! Haggis and the driver do complicated things with rope, battening the suitcases and bags onto the flat roof of the van. This works well for the first half of the journey, but suddenly there is a slip and a crash and bits come tumbling down. Somehow we manage to fit all the luggage inside with us in the end, and drive on somewhat cramped. Despite the crampedness, this minibus is still far comfier than the one we took to Gapang the other day. The ferry ride to Banda is also far smoother than our journey out to the island 3 days ago when the sea was very rough - the sun is shining, the water calm and clear - oh that it had been like this yesterday and the day before when we were diving! But today is the day of our first show and workshop session and we are very excited to be starting our Tour at last.

Green Paradise

We take a taxi back to Green Paradise and drop me off to start the repacking, and Haggis takes the taxi on into town to try to buy extension cable, a ball for the parachute footgall games, gaffer tape (or the nearest possible thing to gaffer tape) and superglue. He also goes to the ATM to get us more cash - but neither of our credit cards are working - horror shock! We will have to get that sorted out soon somehow. We have enough money for the next couple of days and Hags has some Euros that we can probably change at a bank in Sigli, but we are relying on the credit cards to get us through this journey. He manages to get everything else we need, except for the superglue - they don’t seem to have such a thing. He gets some good white tape which will do the trick for mending his clubs, but I really need a drop or two of superglue to cement my collapsing tooth - hey ho! I hope I find some before it disintegrates completely.

Internet

Thanks to the Green Paradise “Hot Spot” I manage to get online and email Chris, my lovely assistant in England and ask her to find out what has gone wrong with the credit cards. I also send her all the first bits of the Fairbairn application that I have managed to finish, so that she can start making it look presentable for sending off soon. Hopefully I will be able to get internet access in Sigli - but who can tell! I also email her the diary up to and including 1st January in the hope that she can get through to our lovely webmaster, David, and ask him to make the diary live.

Don't come yet!

Muslim Aid were meant to collect us at 12.00 noon - but suddenly Farid rings me on my mobile at 11.00 and says he will be with us in 15 minutes - “No, no!” I screech - don’t come yet, I still have internet work to do and we haven’t finished repacking yet.” He seems worried about the length of time it will take us to Sigli, so I agree that we will try to be ready by 11.45, and thankfully we are just about ready when he arrives. We load everything in to the 4 x 4 - not just our own normal personal luggage, but 2 parachutes, a ball, a big bag with the badge machine and 1,000 badge components (including the 300 for which we have pinned the backs and cut and drawn the circles), 60 beanbags, 2 speakers and Haggis's props and costumes.

Green young rice

The drive to Sigli takes 2 hours through lovely countryside, hills and banana plantations then many miles of flat rice fields - most of the fields have not been planted yet, but the brilliant, clear green of young rice beams out in about every 20th field - there's no other colour quite like it - not that I see much of the landscape, as I am working on my laptop, trying to finish the vital Fairbairn funding application.

No sense of urgency

Once we arrive in Sigli, from having been apparently in great haste, there seems suddenly to be no sense of urgency at all, and we all have lunch - very Acehnese food - rice and chickeney stews and prawns - hottish but not unbearably so. We would really like to go to wherever we are staying at this stage and unpack and get ready for the show, but no one seems to know where we are staying, so this is not possible. Instead we head off on a 40-minute drive to drop Farid's father-in-law, who had driven from Sigli with us, to stay with some friends. We return to Sigli, and things still seem very unclear. It is now about 3.00 and Haggis and I are champing at the bit to go and set up the show which is meant to start at 4.15. But no one seems to know where the show is taking place! Farid is on his mobile phone all the time, obviously trying to find out.

Everyone stares at us

Haggis and I sit on a bench on the pavement, watching the world go by. Hundreds of motorbikes pass by, lorries loaded to the gills with workers and becaks filled to overflowing - we counted 8 family members in one becak, which must surely be a record. We appear to be the only Europeans in town - everyone stares at us - not unkindly, but not as welcomingly as the people in Banda or on the island. I am more than decently dressed - dark trousers and a long black shirt, almost to my knees, buttoned up almost to my neck. I roll down my sleeves to cover the few inches of forearm that were showing - there's not really much I can do to be soberly dressed - except cover my head. Linda assured me that non-Muslims are not expected to cover their heads - thank goodness - it is fearfully hot and muggy here, and we are sweating a lot, and if I cover my head and keep the heat in I would probably collapse.

Where are we staying?

The 4 x 4 disappears temporarily while we are on our bench - with all our belongings in it - I don't even have my bag with me - but the Indonesian sense of laid-back-ness is such that we don't really even care. Luckily the 4 x 4 returns fairly soon, with a young man who seems to know where we are meant to be staying - and it's near, so we are taken there, which is quite a good idea as Hags needs to empty his suitcase of his clothes so that he can fill it with props for the show.

It is a nice, simple house and there is a very welcoming lady there to greet us - she can't speak English and we can't speak Acehnese or Bahasa, so a lot of miming goes on, reasonably successfully. Our room is small but has a truly enormous bed, with a pretty good mattress. As on the island, we are in the land of squatting loos - my back, hips and knees struggle with these, and I understand why people get constipated at the Festival - it's all very clean, but oh for the comfort of a sit-down loo! Hags throws some water over himself and makes sure he has all his props. I take the ipod for the soundtracks for the show, and hey, at long last someone knows where we are meant to be going - thank goodness! It is now 4.00 pm and we are meant to be starting the show at 4.15 - hopefully the venue is nearby.

Desperado driver

Unfortunately it soon becomes apparent the venue is not near at all, and at last, for the first time since leaving Sigli, the people with us show some sense of urgency. The driver starts to drive really frighteningly fast, overtaking other vehicles with gay abandon - I resort to my laptop and the Fairbairn application rather than look at the road and worry about the endless possibilities for crashes. Then it starts to rain, but this doesn't slow our driver down at all, and he continues to overtake all-comers in a desperado-ish sort of way. Despite our driver's speed, the journey takes over an hour. No one seems to know how many children there will be, so Haggis and I try to make some plans. We decide if there are only 60 children or less I will start making badges with them first while Haggis sets up the show - but if there are more than 60 children, we will just go hell-for-leather setting up the show, which shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes.

ALL THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ENLARGE TO A DECENT SIZE IF YOU CLICK ON THEM.

SO HAVE A CLICK AND SEE THE CHILDREN'S FACES PROPERLY!

Eventually we round a corner and come upon a football field - there are masses of people there. Are they watching the football, or are they waiting for us? They are waiting for us, it seems, and have been waiting quite a while. Through no fault of our own we have been brought here 1 hour and 5 minutes after the show was meant to begin! We really hate being late, but there truly is nothing we could have done to speed things up - hey ho!

Everyone (about 300 children and adults) has rushed into the balai (balais are roofed, open-sided buildings on stilts where community events take place) and at least another 100 that can't fit in are standing on the ground, outside looking in over the side walls.

Phone call from England

At this moment my mobile phone rings - it's Chris, my lovely assistant, from our Glastonbury office. "Chris, I really can't talk now - we've just arrived at our first gig more than an hour late - there are throngs of people waiting - call me again in a couple of hours please!", I squawk.

We fight our way in to the smallish balai - it is chaos! We get all the props for the show from the 4 x 4 into the balai - badge-making or parachute games clearly aren't going to work here with so many people, so we leave them in the 4 x 4. Anyway the light will be failing soon, so we must hurry and get the show on.

No power, no music

I start to set up the sound system, and then it turns out there is no power in the balai. This is a real pain, as I had made sure everyone knew we needed power for the sound. Apparently there is power in the house next door, but our 10m cable won't reach it, and nobody else seems to have a longer cable - oh, crikey, Hags is going to have to do the show without sound. What a shame.

It's difficult preparing a show when the audience are already in the building. Various tables and chairs are put outside to create more space and we manage to move the audience back so that Haggis has room to perform, and off he goes into his hat routine, which should, by rights, be accompanied by the mellifluent strains of Frank Sinatra's "I get a kick out of you!"

Clowning

Hags does very well considering he has no music and can't talk to the audience - but the show is not nearly so bouncey without the music. Hags compensates for the lack of music by becoming wonderfully clownish and has the whole audience in fits of laughter with his foolish antics. They do love a bit of clowning, slapstick and tomfoolery in Indonesia (and indeed in Thailand and Sri Lanka where Children's World International has also done tours).

Juggling? Not impressed

They are not really all that impressed by juggling - I don't think they see that juggling 7 balls is far harder than juggling 3 balls. What they love, amazingly, is when Haggis drops a club, a hat or a ball - they roar with laughter and applaud. It's very strange - it's not unpleasant, and not as though they are laughing at him - they just find it very funny! Oh well, it will make his life easier, I suppose! But a juggler doesn't like to drop really. Half way through the show, the rain starts to really pelt down and even more people crush into the balai. There is a second annexe audience of about 50 in the shelter of the eves of a nearby house, so Haggis includes them in the fun. Hags has a boy out of the audience come up and have a giant inflatable ball spun on his finger - he's great, just the right sort of child, nice and outgoing - but he cringes in horror when Haggis tries to give him a balloon animal - he was only about 6 years old, but maybe he thought he was too old for a balloon. We give it instead to a sweet toddler with the most beautiful, smiley mother. (I took some photos of the show and the audience and will try to remember how to get these up onto the web page - hopefully you will be able to see them soon.)

Dramatic exit

As there is no music, the show is over in about 30 minutes. Haggis exits by dramatically leaping over the low wall of the building down onto the ground - thankfully there were no children and no glass below! He is so hot and sweaty form the show that he goes and stands in the heavy rain for about 5 minutes and uses it as a (clothes on) shower.

Thousands died here

We drive an hour back to Sigli in the 4 x 4. This area, though not as badly hit by the tsunami as Banda Aceh, was still very badly affected - thousands died and huge numbers of homes and businesses were destroyed. I would love to know more about the area and how it is recovering, but it seems hard to find out. In many ways it would have been easier to stay in Banda and do all our shows there, but I don't think the people out here get much in the way of entertainment, so we are glad that Muslim Aid have arranged for us to come here for 5 afternoons of shows - I only hope things are more organised in future and that we manage get to venues with power in plenty of time to set up on the next 4 days! Maybe we could go back to the venue we have just been to (we believe the balai acts as the school) one morning and give them a better show with music and do the parachute games and badge-making as well. That would be great!

Back of motor bikes

Back to our room for a quick shower and then Arwin (who is going to look after us for the next few days, and who seems very nice) and Ishmael take us to dinner on the back of their motor bikes. Neither Haggis nor I have been on a motor bike for years and it is quite a thrill - people do drive quite remarkably in this country! After dinner they take us to shops where we eventually manage to buy superglue and when we get home Haggis manages to fix my tooth (Arwin was horrified when I told him what the superglue was for, but it's worked and should hold the tooth till I can get it fixed properly in Australia.) An early night as we are very tired, and we sleep soundly in our enormous bed.