Miruru 28th March - 6th May

A Day in the Life

5.50am: Wake up to the noise of cockerels, cows, and the general sound of the village starting to move at first light. Stretch an arm out from my hammock bed (on a bamboo frame), under my mosquito to grab water bottle and check the time. I can see it's starting to get light. Crawl out of hammock and into Yo's flip flops (Yo was my PM buddy for phases 2 & 3 and had better flip flops than me - thanks Yo), put on last night's shirt over my pyjamas and open up community hall door to go down the three steps to the grass outside. Strategically avoiding any fresh cow pats (and at the end of phase avoiding losing my foot in the qugmire that had developed due to so much rain) I make it to the long drop; 2mx2m hole, wooden boards on top. That's basically it. Wildlife spotted in the long drop include maggots, flys, ants, a snake, a frog and then more maggots.

Wish good morning to Laus a 50 yr old Indonesian guy who lived in the house behind and head back to the hall where I'd either curl back into my hammock or decide to get dressed.

6.30: After getting dressed, perhaps doing some yoga it would be porridge for breakfast. Whoever was day leader would be getting the group up with the aim of us setting off for work soon after 7am. Although there was usually plenty of faffing whilst the locals who were helping for the day gathered outside ready to go off to work.

For the last week or so though this was a chilled time of day as the group were mostly asleep (due to us finishing the work) and so it gave me a chance to sit on the steps and watch the world go by. S potting the new baby piglets, the kids in uniform going off the school, wave to the KK (head of village) driving his mini-van to Ranau and watching the evil white cockerel chase everything in sight. From the steps I could see the mountains around - usually with a skirt of cloud each morning and generally survey the other stilted houses watching other people watch the world go by - ladies with their gerry cans to fill, men going off rubber tapping and the village waking up.

7.30am: Off on our way to work. The daily commute was walking left from the community hall up a stone road, past the church and then about 15minutes to the river. This is of course where the bridge of doom is - ably fixed by the villagers with some chicken wire..... Despite walking the 150m length most days for six weeks the whole Indiana Jones vision of the bridge snapping and having to run its length to escape came to mid on every crossing (particularly with a rucksack full of cement on my back).

The rest of the walk was uphill, through a large field and section of jungle used for rubber tapping before reaching another small river that we crossed by way of a large fallen tree and then on up to source for the gravity water feed system. It was about an hour's walk although not all the work was at the top and there was plenty to do along the whole route.

8.30 - 12noon: Work
The project was liking jumping from nursery school to university and made what we had to do in Sosondoton seem positively simple - 4 km of ups and downs, trails to clear, a river rather than a stream to dam, a distinct lack of suitable downhill routes from the source (generally helpful in a gravity based system..) the 150m suspension bridge that wouldn't be safe with the additional weight of the water filled pipe and only me who had even the start of an idea of what to do. The pressure was on... (get it - pressure...water..... hahahaha. See what the jungle has done to me?)

12: Lunch was crackers, sardines, jam and plastic cheese on good days. Enough said. Fortunately made up for by the fact we could sit in a beautiful river setting to 'enjoy'.

We'd do a bit more work although by this time the heat would be over-bearing. I would be drenched just doing the walk every morning and it is amazing how drained we'd feel from working.

3pm Get home and collapse.

a) Find empty space on hall floor or pondok.
(NB Pondok = wooden shelter on legs with corrugated iron roof rather like a bus shelter (except that there is no bus service) but very useful for tea drinking, card playing, being starred at by the children, gossiping, ipod disco, moon gazing etc)
b) Collapse flat on back
c) Lie and breathe
d) Feel like you're being baked alive, try to drink whilst flat on back without choking
e) Get Yo to fan you with some handy cardboard
f) One recovered roll over and admire that seat pattern left on the wooden floorboards underneath you.

For the afternoon there was general apathy - too hot to move or want to move. The most entertainment being the local children who've finished school for the day and come to stare at the local novelty that we were for them. The village had a primary school but no secondary and due to the cost of sending older children to

school there was a good number of young teenagers who did nothing. They helped at home but basically didn't do anything. The village earn most of their income from rubber tapping which is a tedious process and only brings in a small income. A few work within the local oil palm plantations and there were the few that obviously had a bit more money but it wasn't clear where it came from and is something we never got to the bottom of. We sometimes also stretched to donut buying from the

village shop (15p for 5), reading on the pondok, takro - local sport like volleyball but with rules of football - girls not allowed which was probably a good thing. If there was any water I could take a shower - bucket of water and plastic scoop in out tarpaulin shelter - which I really enjoyed with the sun shining down or as in the last week with a tropical storm hammering down around me. Sometimes a chicken would duck under through the drainage channel and join me :-)

6pm: Fondly known as 'longs time' in the world of Raleigh (it does mess with your head) - this is the the time we put on long trousers and shirts in the 30 degree plus heat and spray ourselves in skin removing deet to avoid the mosquitos. Apparently it's a bad area for Malaria so this was kind of important. The team then sat down for whatever culinary delight we'd managed to make from our rations. Miruru is incredibly poor so we didn't get the regular delivery of dinner like in Sosondoton but the village were still very hospitable with invites to meals at the church on occasions, leaving meals for the group at the end of each phase and also home stay meals where the group went to stay in a local home for the evening.

The homes are built from wood and corrugated iron on the whole, up on stilts generally. There were a few that were two storey or built from brick but these were then rarity. The houses are pretty spacious though and quite a few had generators that they used to power some lighting and TVs in the evening. Saying that there is no proper drainage or sanitation in the village - on a home stay one participant asked to be shown the toilet and was lead to the balcony. We made do with candles and head torches in the evening and, at least for Yo and I, going to bed quite early.

Sometimes we would go to a villager's home and watch television with about 12 kids around, adults and teenagers - not all from the same family but just there to socialise. We'd be given the traditional sweetened coffee and bread with condensed milk. I don't know if it's just because we are there but the children have no obvious bedtime and no restrictions as to what's on the tv.

Other evening entertainment (when we didn't just get to bed) included poker leagues, disco nights (the particpants at a villagers house with the stereo on blasting out Crazy Frog), chasing the mangy dog out of the hall, read, write diary, sit around the fire (which the village children were 100x better at making than any of us), a bug eating bet, chilli eating dare and on the last evening of each phase we had food and music in the community hall.

We also had an opening ceremony for the project here - it really was amazing when we successfully got the water all the way to the village. I accidently put a chicken head on my plate at the celebration lunch and quickly had to get it back into the serving bowl. One of the participants gave it a go though. My taste buds haven't changed quite that much yet.

There is so much more I could write but I'd be here forever and you've been patient getting this far. Living with such happy, relaxed and friendly people has been truly special. We were there to 'help' them but all they need is the means to improve their lives. They have the skills and the motivation but their time and effort is put into the basic job of just living every day. Having done just one small thing for them has been an honour - I value what being there has given to me as much as they value having the new water source in the village.

Did I mention there is a trait in the village for six toes? There is photographic evidence of the additional evolution that has taken place in the village and just need to get the photo from the team - check back here soon!