Day Two: Field Visits, Avocado, and Dog Meat

Well I finally did it. I finally ate dog meat.

But before we go into that, let me give the scoop on today's events, because a lot of stuff went down that I don't want to forget.

Started off the day with a visit to YDD's "kebun" (garden), a seven hectare plot of land right by the sea. This is where they manufacture toilet prototypes and work on other STBM-related projects. It's also a famous site to visit Gua Maria, a worship site for Mother Mary. According to Bu Chris, many Catholic tourists come to make pilgrimage.

Bu Chris asked me to accompany Pak Yos, a staff member of YDD-Maumere, to visit a few desa (village) sites for monitoring and evaluation, something "more interesting" than witnessing all the tukang discuss plans for the upcoming workshop. Since I was under the impression that there weren't going to be a lot of field visits during this trip, I was pleasantly surprised and eager to go.

Pak Yos and I went first to desa Watumilok. Regarding sanitation, YDD does not currently have a partnership with Watumilok, but is interested in monitoring the use (or lack thereof) of a public bathroom that was erected by the Indonesian government back in 2011. Pak Yos first asked several villagers, ranging from young to old, and kept hearing inconsistent responses. We couldn't get a clear picture of whether or not the locals actually used the bathroom.

Finally, after speaking with a family who lives next to the public bathroom, Pak Yos confirmed that the bathroom is now obsolete and locked up. After its erection, something went wrong with the piping system, and since there was no monitoring system set up by the government, the bathroom no longer functions as originally intended. Locals initially tried to continue using it by bringing well water in buckets, but that eventually became tiresome, and there was always never enough water. Another issue was of cleanliness. Since there were no community funds to provide compensation for a cleaner, the bathroom got dirty very quickly. The man who kept the key to the stalls eventually became fed up with the state of the place and locked it up. When we visited today, all the bathroom stalls were still locked.  Without a functioning public bathroom, and with many homes without a WC, many villagers still go to the beach to relieve themselves.  According to Pak Yos, this was a classic example of a failed governmental project, embedded with corruption and poor planning.

After Watumilok, we went to a coastal village called Wae Pare, where house are built on stilts above the water. I asked Pak Yos if this kind of village is common in Flores, and he said, no, this was the only one of its kind, and the architecture was likely brought over from Sulawesi. I learned from Pak Yos that many of the people who live by the water are actually descendants of people who migrated from Sulawesi several generations ago.

YDD does not currently have a partnership with Wae Pare, but it sounds like it may be a possibility in the future. Apparently there are some WCs inland, but at night, when people don't want to venture out, people dump their waste in the water out of convenience. I asked Pak Yos if kids ever play or swim in the water, and he quickly pointed out a kid about 10-years-old who was wading waist high in the water below us.

The final sites we visited were Langir and Watu Liwung, two villages that YDD has a long-time partnership with. After working together with YDD for 4 years, Langir is about ready to declare STBM-status with the government. Receiving status means that the village meets a level of sanitation standard that is self-sustaining and maintained by the villagers. This means proper education, especially for children, concerning good sanitation habits, as well as access to bathrooms and clean water. As for Watu Liwung, YDD has been working with them since 2008, and although there have been delays, it sounds like they're almost ready, too.

After visiting all these places, Pak Yos and I stopped for lunch at a Javanese warung. According to Pak Yos, most of the restaurants/warung in Flores are actually owned by Javanese people. That explains why it was so hard to find "local food" when I was traveling in Flores last August.  I told Pak Yos about this, and he said, oh if you want local food, we have to wait for tonight's night market! That's where I ate dog for the first time, but wait…

First, the avocados. According to Bu Chris,  Flores has the tastiest avocados in Indonesia.  Pak Yos agreed and informed me that Flores avocados won some kind of national competition. Eager to try some, I purchased a few avocados from a local day market.  Upon returning home this evening, I asked the home stay cooks if they could blend me a juice using a few small green ones. Indeed, the avocados are enak sekali. I can't wait to try the big brown one! They said mine should be ready in a couple days.

After resting in the afternoon, Pak Yos took me to the local night market, where, at the very edge next to all the Javanese stalls, was a small warung for makanan khas Maumere. Options were red rice, ubi rebus (boiled cassava), stir fry papaya leaves, RW (dog meat), and darah babi (pork with pork blood, similar to the Filipino dinuguan). We decided to get everything except for the vegetables, because we weren't very hungry and I was more eager to try stuff I hadn't had before. The dog meat was surprisingly tender, contrary to reports I've heard about it being tough. I suspect the stew, prepared with a lot of local spices, simmered for a long time. Admittedly, I enjoyed eating it, though I might not be craving it any time soon.

Pak Yos is super nice. Apparently back in the day he went to seminary school to become a priest, and was very set on doing that up until he met his wife in Jakarta and decided to settle down with her in Timor. In Timor he worked as a teacher for seven years before getting his job at YDD in Flores, where he's been working for 17 years. His wife and a few of his younger kids are still in Timor, which is about a day's worth of travel, but he tries to visit them once every three months.

Tomorrow we set off for Flotim, or Flores Timor...