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May 21/05 Early Days in Lamsujen
Well, we finally have a foot on the ground. We've now rented the abandoned house at the edge of Lamsujen village within walking distance of the project site. This gives us a base. The house will be an excellent model for our home garden demonstration. At present we're cleaning up the house and adding a few rooms.
The village has 125 families, mostly uneducated farmers, with 150 kids in school. The farmers use many chemicals which are banned in Australia. The insecticides are applied with a back-pack spray unit with no protective safety gear at all. Many of the men have the shakes, even the younger ones. Their soils have collapsed and they have many problems with disease in the soils. The only seeds available are hybrid and they are not up to scratch. They are eager for training.
Two nights ago we all gathered in the village mosque for the big to meet the village. We have 7 staff now, all men. The women observed the meeting through wire grilled windows. The local language is spoken here as well as Indonesian, and translation was challenging because of local accents.
I told the crowd we would have women trainers and the women were very enthusiastic. There's an excitement building up. I may run a one-day workshop to explain sustainability and permaculture within the next week.
Soon a woman from Medan will join our team. Rosa works for Flora Fauna International (FFI) and speaks Acehnese, English and Indonesian. She's currently an admin officer but will train as a trainer.
The valley is beautiful, with rainforest on steep hills on each side. The villagers use the fast-flowing river that runs through the village centre to wash clothes and vehicles and to dump garbage. All the tsunami communities around Lhoong draw their water from this river but there is no attempt to keep it clean.
We are still having tremors and quakes. This morning was a ripper. It sounded like the roof was being jack-hammered. Pete, our IT man, snored right through it. That guy could sleep on fire! Well that's it for this week. Cheers, Steve.
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