26 August 2005

Work on the toilets got off to a very slow start during the first week. Part of the problem was that Pak Manto, the senior builder, was sick and his assistants didn't progress too quickly without him. It was really the end of the week before they got up to speed.

I mentioned in my last post that I've been in contact with Jack Large from KOTESOL in Korea. He's been providing support to English Language teachers in Aceh. He indicated that one of his contacts, Zulyadi Miska, was in need of some books so we brough some along for him. We didn't get a response from Zuldayi via email and therefore we did not manage to make contact or meet him while were in Meulaboh. We left the books with Dian as we figured that as email access is still extremely difficult in Meulaboh he may not have got the email and that he would probably get it given time. Once back in Jakarta we managed to get in contact with another of Jack's contacts, Sari, who is a lecturer at a university in Banda Aceh. Sari gave us Zulyadi's mobile number. We sent him an SMS, and of course when you send an SMS in Indonesia you get an instant response. The majority of Indonesians are hooked on SMS. Zulyadi picked up the books from Dian and he also helped her to take photos, using Pak Dadek's camera, and send them to me via email. This was excellent as Dian would not otherwise have had any access to email. Zulyadi told us that the only email access in Meulaboh is at the UN camp there where they've set up some VSAT satellite comms.

The first thing they worked on was the tower for the water tank. Here's a few photos:

It's basically a reinforced concrete frame.

The water will be pumped from the ground into the water tank. From there we rely on gravity once the taps in the toliets are turned on. The tower has to have a minimum height of three metres to ensure adequate pressure to supply the toilets. Purnomo, in the photo below, is fairly tall for an Indonesian. He's around 1.85 metres so it looks like the tower is just under four metres in height.

On top of the tower they're putting a wooden floor to hold the tank.

Meanwhile Pak Lilik's team started drilling for water. The started in the same position as our earlier failed attempt when we built the toilets.

After five days of drilling they had no success. They had already drilled down about 80 metres and they said said that they were not optimistic about finding water as the soil was very soft. They took a decision to stop and start again in a new position. This meant that five days effort had been wasted. We now were beginning to see why drilling for water was so expensive. It seems that Pak Lilik factored this into his pricing. We were glad we were using him rather than having sent someone from Jakarta. As I said before, you're guaranteed water almost anywhere in the Jakarta area if you go down about 30 metres. If people from Jakarta had drilled to 80 metres and not got water they would probably have given up and gone home by this stage.

They technique they use is to drill a wide hole to begin with. This goes down to about 18 metres. They then insert a steel pipe. The purpose of this steel pipe is to stop the soft soil at the top from caving in and filling up the hole.

They then drill with a rod inserted into the steel pipe. After a further five days drilling at the new spot they still hadn't hit water. They had already gone down more than 120 metres this time. This time they kept saying that they were optimistic about finding water as the soil was much harder and tougher to drill. By Tuesday I was getting worried and thinking that they were only saying that they were optimistic as they didn't want us to be disappointed with them. Then on Tuesday afternoon Purnomo called with the good news that they had struck water at 135 metres. They were also very happy that the water was of good quality. According to Pak Lilik it was clean enough to drink, after boiling for 20 minutes of course to kill any amoebae or anything else nasty!

 

As I said earlier, progress on the toilets got off to a slower start than what we would have preferred. This was mainly because Pak Manto was sick. We also encountered a few interesting cultural issues! The Acehnese enjoy their coffee. And we can't fault them for that: their coffee is very nice! Anyway they enjoy it to the point that sometimes they stop for a coffee on the way to work and don't end up leaving the coffee shop until evening ie not going to work at all. I suppose this is not so different from how some people in Ireland go to the pub at lunch time with the intention of having a single pint, and also end up there until closing time. Anyway it wasn't so bad that they didn't turn up, but getting them back from coffee and lunch breaks was a challenge, to put it mildly. It was Dian and Purnomo's job to coerce them back to work!

Here's a photo of the builders mixing cement:

 

I was a bit disappointed when I saw the next photo. It shows that they haven't extended the original toilets, as requested and as drawn for them, but instead they've started a new separate building for the additional two toilets. They said that this happened as Pak Manto was sick for the first few days and that his assistants started work not fully understanding instructions. However maybe there's a reason that they did not want to extend the original building and did not want to tell us why. Maybe it's because the land slopes away a bit and they did not want to build the foundations too high. Or maybe it was because the roof on the original building sticks out quite a bit. Who knows. Maybe we got lucky that the building was built pretty much to plan first time around.

The effect is that they are building one wall more that what we planned. This should not be too big a deal and we had bought some extra materials as contingency anyway.

 

A nice fresh cup of coffee sitting on top of the wall:

 

We now have this gap between the original toilets and the news ones. Maybe we can do something with this later, an open air shower for example. Or maybe a place to wash clothes.

There's another cup of coffee on the wall:

 

You can see well from these photos how buildings are constructed in Indonesia. Concrete reinforced with steel rods is poured to create pillars which sit on the foundation wall. The new toilets have four such pillars. The walls are then built using red bricks.

 

 

 

 

Good brickwork! Actually it looks worse than it really is as the planks are a bit warped.

 

That's about it in terms of progress for now. We hope to have everything finished by Saturday so I'll update again next week once everything is complete.

As for acquiring paintings, we've also made some progress in this area also. Dian managed to locate three of the artists who contributed to the art exhibition. They are Imran, Safna and Endi. We bought two samples already from Imran and Safna. Endi is asking for a lot more for his painting. It seems that he's already sold one or two to some foreign relief workers at high prices. We've still got Dian working on him trying to convince him that if he sells at the right price we can keep him busy for quite some time.

Here is Imran's sample:

Imran says that he witnessed a bridge being washed away while walking on the road between Meulaboh and Banda Aceh. This is a recollection of his experience.

Here is Safna's sample:

 

We've ordered ten pictures from Imran and five from Safna. Once they're finished we'll have a total of seventeen pictures for sale.

 

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