Hi all,
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to update this in while because the internet is really temperamental here in Sulawesi. It also makes updating through Facebook and Twitter quite difficult a lot of the time too.
I have been here in Tasikoki for 3 weeks already! It has gone really quickly. All the volunteers here are amazing and it is so much fun. Some have already left who arrived with me, and who were already here, but it is fun to meet them all and share stories. I am sure in my six months I will see many waves of volunteers. I already know of one group at the end of November, and about two waves of volunteers coming through in December. Even though you have to wake up at 5:30, it is still good, especially since that is pretty much sunrise! I have been really busy, working on all the routines which is good fun, and this week is the first week I am Team Leader for routines. As well as this, I am the enrichment coordinator (obviously), which is good. I have come up with a few ideas which have had varying amounts of success; I have also helped the other volunteers come up with some amazing enrichment ideas. On top of these two responsibilities, I have been the head of the new bear enclosure project for the past week, as the usual leader (Brooke) has been away volunteering at another Masarang project for a week. I am also the only person working on a training and enrichment project with the orang-utans (Is and Bento) here. Finally, on top of these roles, I am being trained to be the cover volunteer coordinator for the days he is off or sick. So I am going to be nice and busy for the next six months or so!
Other than work, spare-time has been fun too. In my first week, on Wednesday (our half day), we went to the Masarang sugar palm factory in the mountains which was interesting. After this we travelled around about, saw a geothermal lake, which you were technically allowed to swim in, but no one did… It didn’t look too inviting, might have been amazing though. We also went to visit some hot springs up in the mountains, since the whole of Indonesia is volcanic, they are quite common. It was quite amazing… There were Pine Trees in the middle of the rainforest around these springs! I am not sure if they are there naturally, I think they are.
I have been down to the beach at Tasikoki a couple of times, it is really nice, volcanic black sand, really warm water, and really strong currents along the beach and in the lagoon when the tide is coming in and going out. I have bought a snorkel locally as there are several good places to snorkel along their beach; a pier, a small coral reef and bit of mangroves.
Seen quite a lot of large spiders around the place in the past few weeks, mostly wolf spiders (I found one in my shorts) and a couple tarantulas. Seen a few snakes (none venomous yet) just a couple green racers and a brown-tailed rat snake. Loads of geckos, small lizards and a couple Water Monitor Lizards, I really wanted to catch the largest one I saw (maybe 2 foot long) to have a closer look.
I have been to the local supermarket (like 30 minutes away) a couple times with a group of volunteers that is quite an adventure in itself. I wasn’t built for Asia, I am too tall, especially the taxis, luckily some of these taxis have a place for you to sit in a doorway, effectively hanging part-way out of the car, so I sit there, and it is so much fun. I am also beginning to love the Gangnam Style “song” as that seems to be the theme tune of our supermarket trips, so loud you can hear it for hundreds of metres around the taxi. The supermarket itself is really westernised as a lot Sulawesi (and probably the rest of Indonesia) is. But going to the supermarket or any town or city is fun. You feel like you’re famous, everyone is staring at you, it feels so weird but it is fun at the same time. You here people shouting Bule, which is Indonesian for foreigner, or people saying “Hello Mister, how are you?” even Mister to girls which is quite funny. You even occasionally get asked if they can take your picture, sometimes not even with them in, but to put on Facebook to show people they met a foreigner.
A couple days ago I went to a local market in a place called Tomohon with another volunteer (Edwin) and the volunteer coordinator (Graeme) because it was our day off. It was really quite interesting, all the locals staring again, but also really surreal. Again, we weren’t built for the market, lots of ducking but that is beside the point. Just walking through seeing all the local fruit for sale, some western clothes, some loose, dry rice and spices, amazing amounts of multi-coloured fish of all sizes!… and then you turn around and people are selling mobile phones and SIM cards, it was so weird, but good fun none the less.
A couple days ago I had an extremely unfortunate and severe group of problems and illnesses, I felt so bad, but I am mostly better now. Luckily, like one of the Danish girls said, I am smart enough to find out what was wrong with myself and fix it myself. First off I got really bad back pain because I had pulled a couple muscles in the base of my back, which I assume was caused by the fact I was working on different projects all week, all of which involved heavy lifting or digging. The next day, my back pain hadn’t lessened at all but I now had a massive headache/migraine that I couldn’t get rid of and started to get a little bit of a sore throat and blocked sinuses. That evening we had a party at the Eco-lodge to celebrate the female Javan Leopard going to Java after 2 years of trying to get her there. As I started to head to the eco-lodge I was beginning to feel even more unwell, and it was real struggle to eat as I was losing my appetite. I then began to get a fever, the giveaway being that it must have been about 30°C and I was feeling cold and shivering. So I eventually left the eco-lodge, got back to volunteer house, took a load of painkillers and went to sleep. I felt a bit better the next day, but kept taking painkillers. I let Angela and Simon (the people running the project) and they said for me to stop taking the painkillers to see if the symptoms were just being masked, so I did. That evening the headache, back pain and fever came back with a vengeance. The next morning my back pain had gone down and fever had gone, but I still had my headache, so I made sure to take a bottle of water with me for the shift before breakfast. After breakfast and lunch I had forgotten to take water with me, so I just drank during the breaks, and that’s when it began to get interesting. First of all I couldn’t physically make myself eat at all that day, except for the watery pineapple at breakfast. My headache was still bad. But now new, weird symptoms began to emerge. First of all it was getting hot, and the normal response is to sweat, except I got an odd sheen of watery sweat all over me, which dried off… and then I didn’t sweat for the rest of the day, which was odd I thought. A couple hours later I was starting to get back pain again, but this time I noticed it was actually kidney pain, which I have never had before. I then desperately needed to go to the loo (toilet) and it became weirder… as I peed blood! That’s when I thought I must have become very dehydrated! But on top the fever may have been caused by a kidney infection as there was no water to clean them, and I had caught a bit of a cold off another volunteer as there wasn’t even water in my blood to help with my immune system! So that evening I drank 2 litres of water, a cup of salt water, and two cups of really sweet sugar water. Within a few hours my kidney pain had gone down, there was no more blood. The next morning I drank a litre of Coca-Cola, to try and get some slats and sugars I needed back into my body, then two more litres of water. No more symptoms of dehydration and my appetite has come back slightly, presumably since water is needed for digestions and everything in your body. Still not full hydrated, but on my way there, still drinking tons of water and taking a larger bottle with me to work. It certainly pays to be smart! However my fever stayed with me for 5 days! So I went to a hospital in Manado to see what was wrong. It could have been a simple infection, or Malaria, Typhoid, or Dengue Fever. They all show similar symptoms but the latter are a lot more dangerous. Unfortunately they cannot identify most of these problems through blood tests until after 4 days. So I went to the hospital on the 5th day and had a bloody test. Luckily it came back saying I had a simple infection, so they gave me tons of antibiotics and I feel much better and am back to work.
The end of my fever and infection came at the perfect time too. The volunteer coordinator has now suddenly left Tasikoki so now another volunteer (Brooke) and I have been promoted to volunteer coordinator for the time being. Another challenge on top of many, but I sure we can handle it just fine!
But all is good, despite being dangerously dehydrated; I would not miss this for anything! Everyone who can do this sort of thing, even for a couple weeks, should do.
I’ll try to keep this regularly updated, internet depending.
Cheery-bye
Scott