Our World (according to Yosip)

I love this picture.  This is where we live.

This is the world according to Yosip.  He's in 2nd grade at the school where I work.  He's from a village that's about a day's walk from here.
The little houses in the middle, that's his village, his home.  The bridge to the left goes over to his family's garden.  He labeled that big brown area "Landslide area".  You can see the various tunnels built by the mining company, a couple of the big rivers and the dock at the portsite.
And what's that in the top right corner?  It looks like a little city in the rain.  Yep.  It is.  That's where we live.  That's Tembagapura.  :-\  Right on the money, Yosip.  Well done.  It's perfect.  :-)   :-/

Tembagapura... (April 2013)

I like this video.  It's only a little over 3 minutes long (took me like 4 hours and 3 attempts to upload), but it pretty well captures a good flavor of how strange our lives are here:  traveling in and out on helicopters, incredible green rain/cloud forests,  spectacular mountains,  a constant stream of ridiculously large unidentifiable heavy industrial equipment,  groups of Papuans chatting exchanging secrets,  children wandering 'n playing around,  firefighters walking around like they're Rebel X-wing fighter pilots,  my new boss scratching his head...  it's all mixed up and chaotic,  everything is happening simultaneously, overlapping, interacting, disorganized, changing, often sparking conflict.

I wish I could write a poem as good as this video.

I welcome your comments.

Spinelli Times

 We live in the high jungle of Tembagapura - 7,000ft or 2,000meters - a cloud forest in a deep valley surrounded by mountains and rain, rain, rain. Tropical right? In December we started our vacation by going to the very hot and dry island of Sumba, located southeast of Bali. This is the island where D and I first met in 2001 and where we still have many friends from that time. Then we decide to spend Christmas and New Year in Hilo, Hawaii with the highest recorded rainfall in the 50 united states and very tropical! Finally, we ended our holiday with a taste of winter in South Korea.

Here are some highlights from our week in Sumba with friends:

East Sumba waiting for the rains to come...

Rambu Maru and her son Umbu Daiz. A fun evening of watching and playing badminton and pingpong!

D & Margareta at her husband's tomb in the traditional village of Prailiu, Waingapu.
This is the place and family that I had my homestay experience as a student in 2001.

The children of Puru Kambera village, the nearest village to where the student program was located in 2001.

Rambu Henjang and I wearing the traditional sorongs she made.

        Boiling water and roasting peanuts in Ata's kitchen. Their family home burned down a few                                               months earlier.

Breakfast our last morning with Henjang and Ata. May God's Kingdom come...

Snorkeling off the shore of Pantai Camara Pondok Wisata.

Highlights from Hawaii:

The Spinelli's in Hilo!

Octopus!

Mom and Dad Mitchell snorkeling in Hawaii!

Dave's Birthday Celebrations in Hilo!

Sparkles, YIPPPPEEE!

Thank you Mom & Dad Mitchell!

Climbing Mauna Loa New Year's Day

Brewing up something special for a very special guy!

South Korea:

Leslie: "Dave, what do you want to do for your 40th birthday?"
Dave: "I want to go to the DMZ between North and South Korea!"

                                       

                                                        Here we are at the line between North and South! Very tense indeed!                                                                                                  

Birthday celebrations are really exciting with the Lees in So Korea! 

Pekerjaan (Work)

It occurred to me that most of the stories we share are about what we do on our free-time, weekends or holidays. So I thought it would be nice to share a bit more about the work we do. Although technically Dave is the only one of the the two of us who holds a "work visa", I have found much of my time here consumed with various projects and volunteer opportunities.

As many of you know Dave was hired as a Technical Expert  at the Indonesian school in Tembagapura. Last year, he worked hard to develop teachers' English language skills and support them as they worked to integrate more English into their curriculum and lessons.

Here's Dave with one of his teachers. She is leading an assembly at the expat school on Indonesian Independence Day, 17 August 1945.

This year the school has hired more Technical Experts who are taking over some of Dave's classes and responsibilities to give him more time to devote to Quality Management and improving the school's compliance to ISO 9001.

Dave thinking about his new assignment. Hmmmmm....

Besides the basic house keeping duties which are not to be underestimated, I have taken on some new responsibilities in the community and schools this year. Last year I started a quarterly middle school after school program called Adventure Leadership - Adventure activities that build leadership through cross-cultural cooperation, communication, problem solving, challenge and service. This year I am once again leading AL with the occasional help of an Indonesian teacher with a background in Outward Bound-type activities. This term we have 8 students - 4 Indonesian, 2 Papuan, 1 Dutch and 1 American.

Adventure Leadership students problem-solving together.

Just this past week Dave and I made progress on a new initiative to start a "hiking club" with middle school students. Yesterday morning we led our first hike to the waterfall above town. We had 12 people join us!!! Many students here in town tend to spend so much time indoors due to the copious amounts of rain. Students also complain of being bored and not having enough to do, so we are trying to make more opportunities for healthy and active lifestyles - while pushing our personal agendas of breaking down racial barriers, building confidence and building respect for the natural environment. It was an absolutely beautiful day to start the hiking club!

Lastly, with a new school year, I have stepped into a new community volunteer role. Recently the torch of coordinator of Tomawin Dorm volunteers was passed down to me. The previous coordinator is moving on this week and has asked me to take over. Taking over essentially means coordinating a creative and generous collection of 6 women from the community who volunteer their time every Friday afternoon to play with, love on and teach English to the kids. However different our styles and approach may be, our intents come from the same heart - to serve the kids living at the dorm.  Asrama Tomawin is a dorm of 60+ Papuan students from grades 1-9. These kids have come to live at the dorm and study at D's school from surrounding villages, 1-3 days walking distance. Most of these kids come straight from remote villages when they are very young. When the kids come to live at the dorm they have little to no Indonesian language, they have never worn shoes, gone to school, slept in beds as we think of beds, washed regularly or traveled outside of their villages. Some kids have lived here for 9 years and others for only 1 week.

Needless to say, I have a very strong affection for these local kids and wish to see them succeed. With many odds against them, they struggle to learn two new languages - Indonesian & English, conform to an Indonesian academic style and live so far from their families.

This little cutie was competing in a PPE (personal protective equipment) relay race! 

So there's a snapshot of our work here in Tembagapura. Maybe this helps you to understand better what we do and why we have chosen to stay here for awhile. Thank you for all of your support and prayers.



  

Happy Easter!

This Palm Sunday we spent far away from the palms & ferns of Tembagapura's cloud forest! We drove over 2000+ meters up the HEAT road and hiked to where may as well have been the moon. With the appropriate balance of Geo-Techs, mining engineers, Gurus & a feminine touch - me - we set out on our moon expedition to the prominent features of Lost Lake & The Prow!

Lost Lake - you can see how lost is an accurate descriptor... the lake, however, is debatable! 

Our route! The benefit of hiking with hyper-techy geologists & engineers!

Over 10 hours later, door-door, we returned inspired & tired!  Before crashing in bed for the night we forgot our tiredness for a bit at The Lupa Lela while enjoying a delicious steak dinner!


Some of our  recent weekday adventures have included:
    Organizing team building activities at the local dorm, Asrama Tomawin...

      And leading ladies hikes to The Air Terjun (waterfall)...

2 latinos + 1 South African + 1 gringo/bule = muchas laughter!

This weekend we are off to The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, where we will learn about Gross National Happiness! More photos and stories to come...  

The Lows and Highs of Tembagapura

We've had our ups and downs over the past couple months.  Here's a recapitulation.

Low:
Our quiet little neighborhood got totally invaded.  :-(  Normally there are no cars on our street.  Yeah, well check out what happened in February.

How many cars can you count in our front yard?  :-(   It was like this every day in February.
 (Yeah, my wife was pissed.)

But things finally calmed down and things are almost back to normal.  :-)

High:
Enjoying our front porch.  My wife has a thing for porches, and sitting out on them.

Note the awesome crate being used as a footstool.  My wife loves rustic crates.

High:
We walked down to the village of Banti a couple weeks ago.

Communities of panners.

Local kids recognize Leslie from her volunteering at their health clinic.

The tailings river.

And we found some friends from the Baliem Valley!

High of Highs!:
We finally got to do some real, high, alpine hiking today!!!   Woohoo!   Check it out!  :-)

The Dog's Tooth in the background.  It looks like it's really close but that spire in the background 
("The Dog's Tooth") is really like about a half mile away.  It's really big.  Hard to tell in the photo though.

The Fairy Lakes in the background.  Incredible views.

There were some heated arguments about what our actual elevation was and whose GPS was better, but we all agreed that our highest point was over 15,000ft.  Woohoo!

Tembagapura Days

One common question I get living here is; "So what have you been doing to keep busy?" This isn't an unjustified question. We live in a small mining town with one main shop area which is an all inclusive grocery, department store, pharmacy, post office, salon and cafe. So, basically if you need to go to all of these places in one day (which I never do) you could accomplish your shopping needs and have a coffee in less than 2 hours. Which begs the question... what does one do with the remaining 14 hours of the day if, like me, you don't have a job or kids?

Well...

I've started a garden from seeds and cuttings from friends...

...making the most of our small back porch!

OH BOY!!! The culinary adventures have been delicious!

Every Thursday I lead an after school club called Adventure Leadership for Middle School students from both the expatriate and Indonesian schools.

Sometimes, when there are interesting events like the strike of 4,000 workers that started a couple of weeks ago, I get curious...

I put on my Personal Protective Equipment and head out with my camera...

...doing my best to document the goings on of this very dynamic place.

A red band around the head indicates the decision to strike for a better compensation package.

While at home, I'm kept company by some of the local boys who like to hang out in our backyard.

So, there's a better picture of what I do to keep busy while D's at work! Some things I also enjoy but don't have pictured are taking runs around town, walking with friends, studying Indonesian, volunteering at the local Indonesian school and playing with some of the kids and moms at the hospital in the local village Banti. My days are full and fulfilling. There never seems to be a dull moment here, I am learning continuously and I hope the same is true for you wherever this may find you!