Hands On have been in Sumatra, Indonesia for a month and it seems like the presence of 40+ foreigners has finally gotten to this small community. I guess it’s difficult to lay low with so many people zipping around town on pickups full of tools and walking to and from town to get online and eat yummy things. We’ve been noticed in a big way and it’s not all a good thing, unfortunately.
We’ve had a few baffling semi-harassing encounters with the ‘Muslim Police’ who, we’re told, are completely separate from the regular police and are more like thugs than like law-enforcement. I don’t know the full story behind them but they’ve visited our house a few times with questions about how many Americans are in the place, accusations that we have been handing out Christian materials (ridiculous considering most people on the project are not religious at all), requests for money towards their vague aid projects and asking for the phone number of one volunteer saying that it is in ‘our culture’ to give out phone numbers willy nilly. They’re also paranoid that a bunch of donated goods we will be distributing contain covert Christian documents and short skirts. Actually, some of the clothes are unsuitable and have Jesus slogans but we’re ditching them before they hit the streets.
In short, these guys seem like a band of roving dickheads and the community seems to agree. The regular police assure us they have no problems with Hands On and seem to be distrustful of the ‘Muslim Police’. We’ve also been asked to not drink beer on town, even though it’s openly sold there. I think this has more to do with women drinking beer than the guys, but we’ve all been banned regardless. It’s not a huge deal and I understand that locals probably feel uneasy about us womenfolk setting a bad example, but it’s still annoying.
Now the latest in the recent wave of religion-related requests, the community has banded together after a month to ask that we not have men and women sleeping under the same roof. Given that we only have one house, this would have seemed to be a bit of a problem. The comprimise has been to chuck all the guys outside to sleep under a big army tent in bunkbeds. Not ideal (although it’s actually a pretty good deal for the girls!) but it’s just another thing that needs to be done to appease the local community.
All of this has been really interesting for me. I would have thought Bangladesh was a bit more religiously hard core but, as far as I know, there were no issues there like we’ve had here. One rural community thought were were there to give them injections to become Christians but, besides that, it seemed like the community was on board with what we were there to do and if there was any suspicion, I didn’t hear about it.
But it’s been an amazing experience thus far despite the hiccups and I’m always curious to see what the next day will hold. Internet has been set up thanks to the installation of our very own tower to pick up a signal. So I should be in touch a bit more and will attempt to do a little bit of work while I’m here.
If you want an idea of what we’ve been up to so far check out this Day in the Life of a Volunteer video. So far so good!
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