I know it has been months but in my defence I've actually tried to transfer blogs from my mac to the company IBM to post but have not yet quite figured out how to make that transfer stick. So my flashdisk has several entries that I can't decode to post! all would be fine if I could find a landline in Banda Aceh that works, as the airport seems to be on th eblink so I can't seem to access all those super-fast wireless networks floating around out there... anyway that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Quite a few changes since June.
1. I've got a house out near the guv's office complete with Twin Towers, matching above-ground two-meter-high cement reservoirs I've had installed to handle 4,000 liters of water. Bitched for weeks before the contractor got the job done properly, and cursed the owner for leaving me with a useless well. Subsequently humbled by the fact that so many in the adjacent middle-class neighborhood are having to drive down twice daily to load up their buckets and 20 L water bottles at outdoor taps.
Place has its own musholla in the front room - owner is the ex-regent of North aceh and presumably in need of Divine Intercession to prevent his corrupt soul from being relegated to a place of flame and suffering. Niggling now over the $45 DVD machines, both of which have crapped out within a month of purchase. My fault for going with knockoffs instead of Sony etc.
Pemantu refuses to clean the bathrooms so tiles on the bottom of the mandi are as slick as a carp's back now. Tomorrow is showdown time "my way or the highway" and I'm hoping it'll be the former because she's very nice.
2. Survived the six-month rush - did something like 120 interviews - but despite best efforts to avoid all the minefields the org's work seems to be getting bogged down in contractor wrangling, disfunctional relationships and bureaucratic blundering so there's no way we're going to meet our year-end targets. That mean's there will be a lot of questions come mid-December and no way of framing the whole thing that's going to make sense. We're far more advanced than most so there will be plenty of pain to spred around.
3. Went home for a couple of weeks with The Han for bro's wedding and weeks of fattening-up time eating cheese and steaks every night. Beautiful Montreal weather, Jazz Fest, days lazing in Montebello etc. Came back fat and sleek and committed to taking at least a day off each week. Actually managed to stick to it for about a month. Stopped smoking, left the office before 7 in the evening, played Rugby in the empty stadium every Sunday afternoon etc.
But that has all stopped now and there's no reason to believe it's going to happen again: here I am on a Sunday back in my cave!
4. We've had an amazing 10 days coordinating behind the scenes, the release and return of more than 1,400 political prisoners from jails around the country. All were released as part of the peace agreement between Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement. Can't write much about it now because of sensitivities but can say that the days at Jantho prison outside banda aceh were informative and I really took heart from the the apparent commitment on the part of the government to go this right.
Considering all the things that could have gone wrong it was a huge success, a real feather in the cap of all here and a shot in the arm for the process.
5. The upshot is that my desk is creaking beneath the volumes of work ahead. I'm now pointman for the socialization of this deal, working with local government and GAM to come up with a public information campaign that will engage the entire province, explain the naunces of the Memorandum of Understanding to all, and trying to overcome three decades of fear and suspicion.
I feel like I have a lot invested here after so many years. I wake in the morning full of optimism and hope for the future but by the time I get home, it's been bled away, whittled down by the realities on the ground. It's an emotional roller-coaster ride and I'm strapping in the the long run.