WEDNESDAY 3 JANUARY 2007:

Wake earlyish and discover that my laptop hasn't charged at all overnight! The power here (which has to be routed through plug gangs and wobbly plugs) just doesn't seem to be right. I am now down to 19 minutes of power, so am going to transfer everything to my "memory stick" and soon we will head down to the Internet Office which Arwin pointed out to us last night on our motor bike ride - it is only 10 minutes walk away. I am so relieved there is internet - let's hope the connection is good. The sun is shining and Hags is juggling in the garden/yard and people are stopping to watch him as they walk down the road. He is just showing off his 7-balls and he and the mini-audience are loving it. We meet Arwin at 3.15 this afternoon and do a show and hopefully badge making and parachute session at 4.15 somewhere nearby. I will write more later.

WEDNESDAY 3 JANUARY 2007:

(By the way, the venue for the show yesterday was Cot Lureng in Trieng Gadeng – I forgot to say.)

We woke up a little depressed in our dark little room and discovered the world’s largest cockroach in our squat-loo/throw-water-over-yourself bathroom – at least the cockroach was dead, which gives one confidence that the insect sprays work!

Yesterdays’s show was not ideal – Arriving late (not our fault, honest guvnor – we were entirely in the hands of others!), not getting any set-up time and having no power source for the sound track makes for a far poorer show, and doesn’t allow the possibility of workshops. Goodness, I wish we spoke the language – it would make things a lot easier – if we are going to keep coming back to Aceh (which I hope we will be able to, as they really could still do with a lot more fun while they are waiting to be rehoused) we really must learn a bit at least.

We must try to ensure that today’s show goes better somehow. Arwin of Muslim Aid is coming to meet us at 3.15 and we have a 4.15 show somewhere very close apparently. Looking forward to it! Hags practises outside in the yard and has many passing admirers and I keep working on the Fairbairn funding application that needs to go off to England soon. I also pre-prepare a long email for my assistant in England, so that when I manage to get onto the internet, I can just cut and paste it and the Fairbairn application pages into hotmails (always safer than attaching files, I feel) and send them off.

About 11 am we set off to the Internet Office, but when we get there every cubicle is full, and there is a long queue of people waiting. We had been told that it might be possible to use the internet at the United National Development Programme office, so we head there. We are pointed upstairs and enter a large air con office where about 6 Acehnese men are doing very little. We seem to provide a pleasant distraction for them, and they leap up and offer me a computer. I try and try, but simply cannot get on to the internet. A very kind man in an elegant army uniform spends half an hour trying to get the machine to work for me, but eventually announces that the lines are down further along and there is nothing he can do. Maybe tomorrow, he says. Maybe tomorrow, we agree. They really couldn’t have been kinder, but I am no nearer to getting these vital hotmails sent off.

When we pass the other Intenet Office, on our way back to the house we are staying in, we see that the queue is still huge, so we go off to have a late lunch of noodle soup just over the road from our house.

Arwin is coming to collect us for the show at 3.15, so we take everything we need out to the benches in front of the house and sit and wait. There is always someone interesting walking down the road to watch. A lot of two-way people-watching goes on here by everyone. We find that the locals are far friendlier than we thought, and that if we say a loud “Selamat Pagee” and give a huge smile, they tend to do it back. The family who live in the house we are staying in are charming, but speak no English – but we do a lot of miming and the atmosphere is fine. Some of the family’s children and their friends turn up to practise their school English on us, and Haggis starts showing them how to juggle.

It is now 3.30 and Arwin hasn’t appeared, and we begin to worry – we really don’t want to arrive late for another show. We can’t get through to him on the phone so we ring Farid in Banda and check the number – Arwin had transposed two numbers by mistake when he gave it to me. I try again and can’t get through, and again and again and again. Maybe the phones aren’t working. We eventually realise we must have exhausted the credit on our phone card, and with the help of one of the children put the credit from the next card on to the phone. We get through to Arwin at last – “Where are you?” we ask. He sounds very stressed and says a friend of his had an accident on a motor bike, but that he is on his way soon. Eventually, about 4.15 he turns up (one hour late!), with a girl and with Isclan, another Muslim Aid worker, who was with us and Farid at the first show. They arrive with 2 becaks in tow and we pile all the props and equipment into one becak (pronounced bechak) and ourselves into the other, and off we set following Arwin and Isclan’s motor bikes.

STILL UP IN SIGLI DOING GIGS FOR MUSLIM AID EACH AFTERNOON. 3RD JAN WAS AT TANJUNG HARAPAN. LATE AGAIN (AGAIN NOT OUR FAULT!) BUT MANAGED TO DO BADGES AND PARACHUTES BEFORE THE SHOW.

HAGS TOOK THIS PICTURE IN THE BECAK WE DROVE TO THE GIG IN - THE PLASTIC BOTTLE YOU CAN SEE IS THE PETROL TANK! AND THE DRIVER DIDN'T EVEN WARN US NOT TO SMOKE!

Unfortunately our becak driver has a mind of his own and refuses to turn left to follow the bikes and the first becak at a certain point, and instead takes us a different way, and we land up we know not where - without our props and without our guides! Thank goodness for mobile phones? “Arwin, where are you?” “I’m here, where are you?”, he quite sensibly replies. We get the becak driver and Arwin to talk to each other on the phone and soon we manage to all meet up again. We pass several small barracks, and eventually roll up, not to a barracks as we had expected, but to a building site in Tanjung Harapan where the most enormous house is being built – very grand and "over the top", with hugely tall Corinthian columns and steps at the entrance – apparently it is for just one family – strange to see something so vast and grandiose being built when there are still so many with homeless. Cement, concrete and scaffolding everywhere. Can this be right? Arwin assures us that it is, so we unload the equipment and take it into the central hall of this enormous edifice. It is still a worksite and not the perfect spot Health and Safety-wise, but hey it will do, and, joy of joy, there is enough electricity for a light to somewhat brighten the dark interior and provide power for the sound track for the show.

The banner

Haggis takes about 30 children outside to play parachute games on the only bit of available grass, and I can hear them having a great time as I set up the badge equipment. Farid and Isclan unfurl the big Muslim Aid/Children’s World International banner that Muslim Aid arranged (which I now see even has the names of the areas we are visiting and the dates of our CWI Tour – very together!) and hang it so that serves as a backdrop for where Haggis will perform. More children start to trickle in and wonder what I am doing with this strange machine. I’ve made a few “example badges” and demonstrate how we make the badges, and they eagerly grab the paper centres and get to work. Lots of teenagers and adults turn up as well, and I let them make badges as well and everyone is very happy.

Then the 30 children who were playing parachute games with Haggis pour in from outside and I am somewhat besieged, but Isclan sees what needs to be done and collects the paper centres once the children have designed and drawn them, and passes them to me for making up, and then hands out the completed badges to the children, which makes things much, much easier. Goodness what a difference a bit of practical help like this makes when badge-making! There were times in April in the camps and barracks, when I was having to do all of it on my own, the handing out, the getting back, the making up and the handing out again – completely surrounded by beseeching little faces, with grasping little hands clawing at me – really nightmarish at times and very claustrophobic – I would feel hot, smothered, angry and miserable, and I would only continue because I knew how much pleasure the completed badges give the children. I’m really pleased and grateful that Isclan has picked up how to make my job easier – definite brownie points there!

Hags comes in and does a bit of impromptu dancing with the children, who copy his movements and really have fun. This could be a very good way of filling gaps. Then Hags goes off to another room to change into his costume and get his props sorted. “Dressing Room” and “privacy” would not be the right words, as half the children and most of the teenagers follow him and stare at him as he changes, but as there are no doors on this building site, there’s not a lot he can do about it!

What a difference music makes

I finish off the last badges, check the sound is working, put on “Sweet Georgia Brown”, and Hags enters in costume with his case full of props. The show is a humdinging success from the very start – goodness what a difference the music makes, both for Hags and for the audience! There are only about 40 children and about 40 adults/teenagers, but they are a wonderful audience. They really appreciate his juggling skills, laugh at his fooling and clap enthusiastically throughout. The running gag where one third of the audience have to go “Ooooh”, another third go “Aaaah” and the last third go “bwwwww” while vibrating their lips with their fingers, goes down a treat.

THE SHOW AND THE BADGE-MAKING TOOK PLACE IN THIS STRANGE DARK BUILDING SITE INTERIOR - IT REALLY WAS THIS DARK!

Why is today’s show so very much better than yesterday’s? I don’t think it is just the music, though that does make a huge difference – I think the fact that the children have played games with us and that they and their elder siblings and parents have made badges with us first and like us, makes the show, when it happens, work far, far better somehow. Whenever possible (though here it must be said, we are reliant on our guides!) we will arrive really early at venues and be very well set-up before children arrive, so that it will be possible to do at least some badge-making and games before the show. Apparently there will be a far bigger audience tomorrow (Thursday). We try to make plans so that it will be possible to do more than just the show. Linda and her team at Yayasan Lamjabat have translated all my badge and other instructions for me and I will use these notes (luckily Bahasa is very easy to pronounce) and hopefully Arwin or Isclan will be able to explain at a certain stage that they should leave their completed paper designs with me and just sit down and watch the show. I will make up any remaining badges during the show (as I only have to click the i-pod about 8 times during the show to work the sound track) and they can collect their badges afterwards. It will make it pretty chaotic afterwards, but hopefully it will work. We will see!

A really good session

We are very happy to have had a really good session and show and we becak it back to the house in high spirits. I ask Arwin to motorbike me to the Internet Office again in the hope that there might be less of a queue this time. Joy of joys, I get a cubicle straight away! No chairs – the computer is on a low table and one sits on the floor – great at first, but my knees and hips are giving me a lot of gip by the time I get up 2 hours later. It takes me at least 20 minutes to get into hotmail, but once I am in, it seems steady as a rock (unlike on the island when I would get in and then be disconnected continuously). I open all my most important hotmails, leaving all the less-important looking ones for when we return to Banda on Saturday night and I will have WiFi in my bedroom, and communications will be far easier. (Though cost is not an issue here – 2 hours of internet time costs me only 9,000 rupiahs, about 60p!) My main problem this evening is transferring the files I have put onto my memory stick onto the emails. I try putting my memory stick into their computer and attaching my memory stick files to the hotmail – my secretary rings from England and says the files wouldn’t open – her machine in Glastonbury said they were all corrupted. So I try and do a “cut and paste” job – but the memory stick files when opened on this computer come out as gobbledegook unfortunately. I’ll have to have a think, -maybe I can bring my laptop in later and do it more directly without having to use the memory stick. I walk back to the hotel. Hags has been downloading the photos from the shows, and fiddling with the laptop and has discovered that we can after all create Word documents on it, so we transform all the files into word. Maybe with World files, we will be able to open them on the Internet Office cmputer?

We walk into town and have a nice nasi goreng (fried rice) and ayam goreng (fried chicken – the stall calls itself Kentucky, and indeed I wonder if they have stolen the Kentucky Fried chicken batter recipe, as they really do taste very like the real thing) dinner washed down with iced milo (turning into our favourite drink out here – pretty fattening, but really delicious!) We go back to the house and collect the laptop and the memory stick and walk down to the Internet Office (which operates 24 hours a day, fantastically!). We have to wait about 20 minutes for a cubicle, during which the kind boy who helped me get onto hotmail this morning, asks for help for a Charity he is involved with, which is trying to make a funding application to a large American charity. We go through it – they are having problems understanding the difference between reports on past spending, yearly budgets and specific project budget proposals - I say I will take all his stuff away and see if I can help. Hags does the emailing while I help the guy and we are done. As we walk back to the house, I discover that Haggis has attached the vital files to the hotmails rather than copy and paste them into the body of the hotmails, so I am not convinced they will get there. (I know they should, but I find in Glastonbury that our machine is only able to open about 70% of attached files for some reason.) It is 11.30 pm our time and therefore 4.30 pm in England, so we ring the office to see if the files were open-able, but no one is there, so we will have to wait till tomorrow and copy and paste then to be on the safe side.

The time difference makes life difficult admin work-wise. 9.00 am in England is 4.00 pm in Aceh, which is when we are always starting our afternoon shows and sessions. We’re usually free by 7.00 pm, but it is then 12 noon in England and we have lost a vital 3 hours. Never mind – I’m sure we will get it all done – it’s just a bit of a worry until we get this vital Fairbairn Foundation funding application off.

Eventually get to bed just after midnight (very late for me – I normally an asleep by 10pm and up by 4 or 5 am – this wouldn’t suit most people, I know, but it works well for me, and makes it possible to get lots of admin work out of the way in the early mornings.)