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| Leslie with the local farmers in Bengo-Bengo |
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| Checking out composting |
One of the ways VSO encourages exchange of knowledge is to sponsor technical visits by volunteers to other placements to conduct workshops in their area of expertise. As a side benefit, we get to travel to other islands, do a little bit of sightseeing, & visit our colleagues. This month, Leslie, an agronomist from Toronto, came to South Sulawesi at my invitation. He’s been working in Ende, on the island of Flores, for Universitas Flores, arriving at the same time I did last year. So we invited him over to give a lecture to agriculture students at Universitas Hasanuddin on the theme of modern forestry. Although the timing was - hmmm- flexible - we finally rounded up about 50 students, a projector, several cameras, and Leslie at the podium, resulting in a captivating session. He was quite impressed with their questions and involvement in the subject; it was definitely a success.
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| Farmer in the forest |
The next day, Nasri & I took him up to Bengo-Bengo, where he conducted a workshop on organic composting for about 20 local farmers. Again, several questions, lots of interest, followed by a walk over to one gentleman’s house to see the efforts he has started with composting & fish pond culture. One more check mark for the good guys. Feels especially good for all of us to arrange something as a team & have it work. We also squeezed in a forest hike, and Amir made his specialty dinner, ikan bakar (grilled fish) for us and Rui, a Japanese graduate student who is doing her research here. Post-dinner conversation included a brief lesson on Japanese greetings, against a mellow background of Italian opera.
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| Nasri & Rui in the woods |
Feeling confident, we try for 3. On Thursday we made our way down to Maros to attend a workshop on waste management given by Margaret for the International Citizenship Volunteers (ICS), the group of 16 youth volunteers from England and Indonesia. Margaret, from Cape Breton, has been working in Puntundo, Takalar province (about an hour & a half from Makassar, on the south coast) for an environmental education centre since March of 2012. After Margaret’s activities, Leslie stepped up again, recapping the organic composting session for the youth volunteers who are working with local villages on several fronts; mangrove rehabilitation, composting, organic farming & environmental education (more about this in the next post).
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| Margaret rocking her facilitation |
So, after what I think we can honestly call a knowledge transfer hat trick, we quit while we were ahead & got ourselves back to Makassar. On Saturday, Margaret, Leslie & I met up with a couple of instructors from Humber College who are working with 7 universities in the city teaching entrepreneurship training. We took a choppy ride out to one of the small islands off the coast & lazed around on a beach for the afternoon. Back to the main island in time for a sunset beer at one of the local bars, where the large group of expats started to trickle in after their weekly hash run. Leslie was impressed; he’s one of only 2 expats in his city of Ende, and doesn’t have the opportunity to play with Aussies, English, Dutch, German, etc. etc. people as often as we do here.
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| ICS volunteers paying close attention to composting talk |
Sunday morning included a rushed, but necessary trip downtown so that Leslie could shop for oleh-oleh (little souvenirs from any trip away, expected by Indonesians as gifts when you get back), then a quick goodbye, & he headed off back to Flores. A busy trip, but it all went much better than expected. And, we all got to enjoy seeing Leslie's large selection of batik shirts.
