Will that be nasi or mie?

I cannot be described as adventurous when it comes to food, so I’ve been carefully sampling what’s on offer in Bali & quite happy to occasionally revert to fish & chips or a hamburger at the restaurants in Sanur, one of the beach areas outside Denpasar that caters to tourists. Most days, ‘though, we order food for lunch to eat at the VSO office, from the previously mentioned warung, Warung Qumpul. So the choices are nasi (rice), mie (noodles) or soup with chicken, seafood, tofu or vegetables or any combination of these. Eggs are popular, either fried or boiled in sauce that makes them greenish-brown in colour. Each meal comes with spicy sauce on the side, to add as much or as little as you like. Why do people in tropical countries gravitate toward spicy food? Do we all need to sweat more here? Anyways, carbs are in good supply, despite the general lack of bread in local restaurants. Fresh bread and pastries are available at bakeries, but caution is advised, since many of these are sweetened beyond typical North American taste. Rice crackers and roasted peanuts are great snacks, and of course there is fruit in abundance - mangos, papayas, pineapples, bananas, oranges, as well as snakeskin fruit, mangosteen, star fruit, etc, etc. Apples - not as tasty here - I think they’re imported from New Zealand, and maybe they don’t hold up as well in the climate.

One of my fellow volunteers, Leslie, is far more fearless and willing to try anything. I had to take a picture of his Sunday breakfast purchased at a stall by the beach. Ordering fish soup in bahasa Indonesia, I think he said, “Yes, please, extra teeth!” Reportedly very good, but I think I’ll pass.

Left: Leslie having breakfast

                                                                Right: Leslie's breakfast

                           

As coffee is grown here, you could expect it to be very good and it is, except - it generally comes not coarsely ground, but ground to a fine powder. So you can get coffee hot, fresh & strong, but it’s not advisable to drain your cup completely - it’s a bit sludgy at the bottom. Also, when ordering coffee or tea, iced or hot, you have to specify without sugar, or it’ll come very sweet.

A handy alternative to going out to eat - takeout from one of the travelling food carts (on street at left). The vendors advertise by the simple expedient of banging either a wooden or metal stick, indicating both their current location & their menu - tok, tok means nasi coming your way; clang, clang - step outside and buy mie. Or, you can pick up corn on the cob roasted over coals, watermelon slices or sate (spicy grilled meat on skewers) from sedentary chefs on many sidestreets and in the nearby park.

This week, we were asked to put together recipes from Canada, to be prepared and shared at the office lunch on Wednesday. Hmmm - Canadian food, eh? The first thought - grilled salmon - well, that was done by the last batch of Canuck volunteers (thanks, guys), so our choice is shepherd’s pie (thanks, Britain &/or France) and pancakes with - yeah, you guessed it - maple syrup brought from Canada by Cordelia, another new volunteer. I would have felt guilty inflicting poutine on the local staff and we don’t have the facilities to prepare a full turkey dinner.

Notes from the neighborhood

In-country training & orientation continues. Thursday I actually had a brief conversation in bahasa Indonesia. I discovered that Asih, the assistant programme manager, has a three-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son! So, although it’s daunting to realize that on November 2nd, I’ll need to use the language to work, I might be able to squeak by, particularly since my sponsor in Jeneponto does speak English.

Our accommodations in Bali are relatively modest (photo at left). We (the four new volunteers) each have our own room with a fridge, bed, TV & small washroom at a kost* just around the corner from the VSO office. Side note: CUSO International is closely affiliated with VSO (Volunteer Services Overseas) which was first formed in the U.K. Training and administration in Indonesia is handled by VSO because CUSO doesn’t maintain an office here, while admin for VSO volunteers in some South or Central American countries may be handled by the local CUSO offices there. VSO is established in, and recruits international volunteers from several countries: Kenya, Australia, India, the Netherlands, Indonesia, among others; while CUSO recruits some volunteers from the U.S. as well as Canada. Currently the VSO Indonesia office takes care of several volunteers from Kenya, one from the Netherlands, and about seven from Canada. VSO is also working to develop more extensive national volunteering programmes, drawing on expertise available in-country to develop capacity in poorer rural areas.

Around 5 o’clock weekdays, I’m woken by a choir of barking dogs, bird calls & motorcycles revving up. People start the day early & wind down gradually in the mid-day heat. This is the hottest time of year in Indonesia; apparently the rainy season is late this year, usually expected in early October, and lasting until February or March.

The neighborhood around our kost seems to be in the middle of a building boom - several large houses can be seen in various stages of construction. There are many stray dogs in the streets, but they are easily scared off. It seemed at first that the scrawny cats have all had half of their tails clipped, but apparently that’s just they way they are here; not quite Manx cats, not luxuriously tailed. Another example of small island diversity, I guess. 

The immediate neighborhood has a number of warung*, the closest is Warung Qumpul, where we can have dinner & go online using their free wifi. Another internet cafe, laundry & Circle K convenience store are all within short walking distance. I’ll enjoy the conveniences while in the city; my placement will be in a rural village with very limited shopping.

Houses in our neighborhood.

*kost = guesthouse

*warung = cafe, canteen

Week One

It’s been a busy week since arriving in Denpasar, Bali late Monday evening. After catching up on some sleep Tuesday, two volunteers who have been in country for a year took us, the four new vols, for a peek around Sanur - one of the touristy suburbs of Denpasar - including a walk along the beachfront and dinner. On Wednesday our orientation training began, Thursday we had our first language lesson, more orientation, and Friday was taken up almost entirely by bahasa* Indonesia. While feeling the continuous mild stress of a new environment, the VSO staff and Pam & Salim, the experienced volunteers, keep the tone relaxed and low-key, allowing us generous time to adapt at our own pace.

Traffic really does flow - unlike Canada there are limited stops and starts, rare sudden turns - even though the streets are packed with cars, buses, and trucks, while scooters and motorcycles outnumber these by ten to one. And believe me, I’ve been observing the traffic very carefully, since next week we get out there on our motorcycles for road training. The first thought is ‘No bloody way am I driving here’, but I’ve been told (and now agree) that it is quite possible, even easy. The only thing I have to do is NOT drive like we all do in Canada. Here’s the conclusion: It’s not a matter of you, in your own vehicle, driving to where you want to go. The trick seems to be to integrate yourself into the river of traffic, flow along with it until a branch heads off in a direction that you wish to follow, and allow it to carry you to your destination. Tidak apa apa*, right? Well, we’ll see - I’ve got the theory.

Same thing with language, apparently. Indonesia, as an archipelago of over 17,000 islands with hundreds, perhaps thousands of indigenous languages, adopted bahasa Indonesia as the lingua franca for their national language. One of the easier ones to pick up (fingers crossed), with no tenses, and incorporating words from Dutch, Arabic, and Hindi, among several others. Our teacher, explaining some of the basic grammar rules, tells us that it’s quite acceptable to switch phrases around in a sentence. Speaking bahasa Indonesia is another example of following the river - language should flow from your thoughts rather than restricting the expression of an idea. Instead of taking a few extra milliseconds to worry about exact phrase order, more than one sequence is perfectly OK. So, you could say “What is your name?” or “Your name what is it?” depending on how your brain feels at the moment. The construction of the sentence is not allowed to slow communication more than necessary. I quite like the idea of it, although I’m not too sure that I, personally, can do without the additional milliseconds of thinking about what I’m going to say.

*bahasa = language (therefore, bahasa Indonesia = Indonesian language)

*tidak apa apa = no problem (lit. no what what)