Arriving at Medan airport after over 24 hours travelling was a relief to say the least. The first thing that hit me was the heat. Then the panic about how I was ever going to carry my luggage in the heat. Luckily I commandeered a trolley and made it past the sniffer dogs, out of arrivals to where my driver was meeting me.
The noise, the colour, the fluorescent lights and the total lack of rules on the road was both wonderful overwhelming. Everyone on the main road seemed to own some kind of shop, or restaurant, or animal.
As we drove on, with Jack Johnson blaring, we began to hit the floods. At one point between flood and roadworks and traffic jam, we pulled over in the middle of the flooded road and I had my first real taste of Indonesia at a roadside restaurant.
We drove on and on, reaching increasingly bad roads, before we began to hit the palm oil plantations. And they too went on and on. And on. At 1am we made it to the Trust and by 3 I had (very poorly) assembled my mosquito net and fallen asleep.
The next day I woke up late, unpacked and then we set off for breakfast. After my first tuk tuk ride and a terrifying clamber over a bridge that looks on its last legs, Bukit Lawang Indah served us some incredible food. We then walked right up to the edge of the jungle, the locals were keen to check where we were going, since they knew that “bulays” would never last if we got lost in the actual jungle. I saw my first wild monkey, quickly followed by many, many more. After a wander round the village and several selfies with demanding locals (or more likely tourists) we headed to the river. It’s a fun swim there, as the current is strong enough to swoop you down, but not dangerous to a confident swimmer.
After spending much of the day in the glorious tourist centre, I was shown a more realistic side to Bukit Lawang. Real poverty lurks so close to the facade that tourists see and its incredibly important to understand this, for us to try to help tackle it.
Monday – I have to admit I was very worried for my first proper day at school, especially as a combination of jet lag and heat meant I’d had very little sleep. But everyone was so so welcoming. After meeting our cleaner, I managed to pop out and grab an Indonesian sim, before heading back and meeting the kindergarten teachers. Later in the day we managed to top up my sim with a lot of help from keen locals and google translate! After the most unbelievable lunch made by our own wonderful cook, we started lesson planning for the week. I sat in on the afternoon lesson, before heading back to the office to do some serious planning, focusing especially on our days for girls project. That evening all of the staff team went out for a meal together, although much of the conversation was on bhasa, I really feel so so welcome here.
Tuesday- go go go again! This morning we had a volunteer in who kindly offered to paint the spare volunteer rooms for us. This was a massive help as meant we could get on with paperwork. I finished my teacher training pack and updated some adverts on our website. Then we headed out to try and arrange a deal for a local carpenter to build us some bunk beds. This involved a lot of driving around and no real conclusion yet, but it was amazing to see his work, he is a real artist with his carvings! After afternoon classes today we planned the pub quiz for the evening and had an interview with a potential volunteer. We then headed out to the pub, but we didn’t have enough tourists for the quiz! Instead we had a wonderful meal and hung out with the locals, we sang a lot and heard some Bahasa songs that were definitely mocking the bulah toursits! Then back over the terrifying bridge and off on the moped to bed!! Every day here really is incredible.
Wednesday – this morning we ran our first aerobics class which was a massive hit! We had such a good turn out among the locals, with a lot of the mums of our kindergarten students attending. I then sadly spent most the day in the office, but I finally sorted the curriculum, the teacher training packs and some adverts for volunteers! Success! After work I had my first go at driving the moped and then we headed down to the river for a wash/ swim. We then went out exploring, just picking left or right at each turn. We ended up in a palm oil plantation surrounded by cows, in the dark with pot holes all around. Time to turn around for definite!
Thursday – I began the day completing our risk assessments and then we headed out on the bike to buy a new whiteboard for the school, which we will write our house rules on, carrying it home on the moped in the wind was a challenge! We then headed out again to investigate getting a new wooden wall on our roof. We went to the most amazing home stay to discuss this, surrounded by rice fields and with a beautiful hammock view of the mountains. Then we headed into town to hand out posters for our new exercise classes, en route home we picked up some buckets for washing clothes and paid the children’s transport driver. Then after another hour in the office, it was back to town to finish giving out our posters. It was great to get to know the locals, except perhaps the guy who told us that “excersize is just for women, the men here are too busy working”, as his wife cooked his meal! Most people however, seemed really enthusiastic and it was great to spend some time chatting to stall owners.
So it’s now a week since I left England! On Friday morning we went down to the market before school opened. It wasn’t yet in full swing but we bought a sweet tea and watched all the stalls unfold. So so much colour!! Then we headed back to school, did a few hours in the office before showing some kindergarten teachers from Germany around the centre. We then paid our staff for the month and headed out on the bike to bohorok to get out some more money for the week to come. Back at the school we had (another) delicious meal and then I headed into the afternoon English class. As education classes at the centre are completely free, every lesson we have a LOT of new students. So I ended up taking those students who hadn’t done any English before in a very basic and unplanned lesson, luckily one of their mums helped with some translation and they quite enjoyed acting out “jump, sit down, stand up” etc.
After completing the budget for the week we headed out on a run. I am nowhere near as fit as our marathon running head of conservation, so the hills and the heat were a struggle! Running through the village is highly entertaining however, as exercise doesn’t seem to be embraced here, so running seems novel to the many people who sit outside their homes watching us! A lot of people cheered us on as we went by. We headed to the edge of the jungle at dusk to see if we could find orangutangs, but it got dark faster than expected, leaving us alone in the jungle in the dark. Having made our way back out, with a lot of mosquito bites but no broken ankles, we bought some jus jeruk in a nearby tourist restaurant. As we were drinking the local snake man walked through and he told us about the scar on his arm from a king cobra. He’s an incredible man, who not only deals with snakes by moving them rather than killing them, but also apparently makes his own medicines which (according to him) work a lot better than doctors do (and are of course a lot cheaper). His account of a tourist offering to pay his medical fees and then abandoning him in hospital can serve as a reminder to all tourists or volunteers trying to help over here that we must not make promises we can’t keep, especially in such a trusting community. He actually has a documentary coming out soon, which I’ll add a link here too as soon as it’s released!
There are some things here which will take some getting used to- bucket showers, unashamed staring, Asian toilets and getting trapped in my mosquito net every morning to name a few! But the Trust is really more incredible than I could have ever dreamed. We employ many local people and provide free education to hundreds of students. Not only this, but we take them litter picking, give them free fruit and now provide fitness classes. We’re working on adding conservation programmes, business classes and a programme on female health to our curriculum, alongside renovating much of the building. It really is the best project I’ve ever been involved in and it’s such a privilege to be here.
The other European volunteers and I are not in any way the heroes of this story, nor even its authors. The people who live here and work for the Trust are the heroes, many of them have in fact turned down better paying jobs in order to continue providing free education here.
We run entirely on donations, including the wages which we pay our teaching staff, cleaner, drivers and cook with.
For anyone who’d like some more information on the Trust, or to donate to us, head to: http://www.bukitlawangtrust.org
Rosie Roams 