Jakarta

I'm still feeling a few of the effects of jet lag on the trip over to Jakata. Indonesia is pretty much exaclty around the world from the US, so there is just no easy way to deal with the time change and the travel.

Yesterday we had a pretty slow day. I got to meet up with Erick Peterson, a roommate from college. We visited and went shopping for Bahtik's, the traditional Indonesian formal dress shirt. You have love a culuture where one shirt can replace a suit and tie.

Today we had meetings at a Women's organiztion, the US embassy, the Ministry of Defense, and with the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia. They were all quite informative. Some of the highlights:

One of Barak Obama's classmates at school in Indonesia now runs the National Airline of Jakarta, Guarada.

Barak used to spend quite a bit of time in the library at the embassy, while his mom was taking classes next door. It was a way for him to keep in touch with American culutre while living her. He would read the magazines and newspapers from America to keep in touch with what was going on there.

The slogan of Indondeisa is Unity and Diversity. Not so different from out slogan of From Many One.

On a different note, the weather was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It wouldn't be my favorite weather of all time, but better than I expected.

There are a lot of cars in Jakarta and ever more motobikes and mopeds. A lot. More than you would think is possible.

Indonesia

As some of you may be aware, about a month ago, I was contacted by the American Council of Young Political Leader’s (ACYPL) (http://www.acypl.org/) about taking on the role of escort for their delegation headed to Indonesia in August. I checked my schedule and checked in with the boss and when everything turned out to fall in my favor, I accepted to take over for another escort that had to drop out. Last summer I was lucky enough to get to travel to South Africa with an ACYPL delegation and so I was very excited to get another chance to work with that organization. As it happens, my brother had just come back from a great trip to Indonesia, so my curiosity about country and the serendipity getting a call to go to Indonesia was too much to resist.

Instead of starting a whole new blog, I decided I would just add on to my South Africa blog and not create a new web address.

I took off from Billings yesterday and had a very close connection in Denver, as we were late flying out of Billings. Everything made it OK, but I did end up reading most of the book I brought along for the trip. I started Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West (http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Your-Ponies-Stanley-West/dp/0965624781) and have most of the book read at this point. It is a page turner, but I may have all the pages turned before I get on my long flight to Indonesia. I brought along a couple other books, but may look for some additional reading material at the airport.

Today was an orientation for our trip to Indonesia. We spent most of the day in briefings trying to get us orientated to get the most out of our trip to Indonesia. The first meeting of the day was at the ACYPL office. They are sponsoring the trip and that meeting consisted mostly of what to expect on the trip and what was expected of us. The second meeting was at the US Dept of State to discuss the exchange program and to get an overview of Indonesia.

We moved onto the US-Indonesia Society (http://www.usindo.org/index.php) where he had lunch and a good discussion about many topics in Indonesia. US relations with that country have been good, but low profile, with not many Americans much aware of Indonesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html). As you can read in that information, Indonesia had a strong dictator for many years, but has recently become a very open democracy. It is the third largest democracy in the world, after India and the United States. It has almost as many people as the US and the geography is bigger if you include the entire ocean between the islands of Indonesia.

Every one we talked to today was very upbeat about where US-Indonesia relations are going, especially because President Obama used to live in Indonesia. There are plenty of opportunities to grow that relationship, which has stayed relatively dormant considering the size of the two countries. Part of that is due to the US’s reluctance to meddle in Southeast Asia after our withdrawal from Vietnam. Throughout the day we were able to ask questions about the security in the country (pretty good), the politics of the place (fairly complex, but what politics aren’t), the diversity of the islands, the sensitive subjects, how the history has shaped the place, the natural resources, the environment, the education system, and how long it takes to get to Indonesia.

The final meeting of the day was at the Indonesian Embassy. We met with the ambassador and got a tour of their very cool embassy. They bought the place in 1951 from the people that owned the Hope Diamond. They paid around $370,000 and spent $30,000 on renovations. I’m sure that the return on that investment would be well into the millions at this point.

The final part of our day is a dinner at the Old Ebbit Grille in DC. Should be a good chance to get to know everyone better. Our group has a state legislator from Wyoming and Minnesota, a city council member from New York, an aide to the minority leader in Puerto Rico, and a lobbyist from Tennessee.

Tomorrow we leave from Reagan airport and fly to Minneapolis (2 hours). Minneapolis to Tokyo (14 hours), Tokyo to Bangkok (6 hours), spend a few short hours in Bangkok and arrive in Jakarta on Sunday. Not really looking forward to the flight, but I can’t wait to get to Jakarta.

Pictures

Here is the link to some photos from my trip. Due to limits, I can only upload these photos at this point.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoots1/

Home

I did make it home yesterday. The day before was quite a long trip as I was in transit for about 32 hours from the time I got to the airport in Cape Town until I got to the hotel in Washington, DC. I spent the night there and visited a friend before getting on the plane to Billings yesterday.

My niece is visiting, so I spent most of yesterday over at my folks' house.

I will get pictures up once I get organized and unpacked.

Last Day

Tomorrow is our last day in South Africa. After a couple of meetings with the Provincial parliament in the morning, we are headed to the airport in the afternoon.

Today's meetings were at the National Parliament and were fairly interesting. We met with several different party leaders and had lunch with the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town. They were having a speaker on the American Presidential election. He didn't add anything new to what we already knew about the election, however I would have liked to be able to stay for questions. Unfortunately, we had to leave to get back to an appointment.

I'm sure tomorrow will be a very similar day. And then the long flights home. I'm hoping to sleep quite a while on the plane from Johannesburg to Amsterdam. We'll see how that goes.

I'm guessing I won't have time to post again before I get home. Most of the rest of my week will be running somewhere or another.

Cape Town

We made the successfully journey from Durban to Cape Town. We are having a very nice weekend in Cape Town. The city is absolutely gorgeous and we’ve had a pretty relaxed schedule thus far. There is a great waterfront area not too far from the hotel and we’ve spent a lot of time there. We were not able to go to Robben Island because the weather was too bad and we were not able to take the cable trolley up Table Mountain because it is under maintenance. However, we have found other activities to fill in the time.

Yesterday we went to Long Street and shopped at a flea market. In the evening we took a drive up the coast and ate at Hout Bay. Today we drove up the coast again, over the mountain and visited a winery. We start back again with meetings at Parliament on Monday.

You can definitely see the end of the trip coming. We were talking about the long day ahead on Tuesday/Wednesday. That is the day we are traveling back to the States. I’m wishing we had a couple more days in South Africa. I would have really liked one more day in Durban and probably one more in Cape Town. But I can’t complain, it has been a great trip so far.

I do have to say that getting Internet access is harder in South Africa than I thought and it is much more expensive than most places. This is due to the isolation of South Africa, ie it is not on the way to anywhere as far as the Internet is concerned. However, I have heard that they are in the process of laying some new fiber optic cable to South Africa and they will be much more connected in the future. That doesn't help me much.

Durban

Well it doesn’t seem like I have been in Durban very long and we are already headed to Cape Town tomorrow. I am very impressed with Durban. It is a beautiful city right on the ocean with a great sky line in the background. It’s a bit humid for my taste, but since it is winter here, I’m still pretty happy with the weather. They city has 3.5 million residents and is the third largest city in South Africa. It has the largest sea port in Africa.

When we arrived we had a presentation to attend. It was not the best and we skipped out a little early to get settled into the hotel. We are staying at a hotel and casino, so it is pretty nice. The beach is right next door, but unfortunately, we don’t have any time built into our schedule to spend time on the beach. Instead, we have the weekend in Cape Town to do fun stuff.

Today was another really good day on the trip. We traveled to Pietermatrinsburg, the capital of the Province of KwaZulu Natal. We met with the speaker of the Parliament. We had a pretty frank discussion with him about the problems in his province and the politics of his province. It was nice to have that honesty, as politicians are usually fairly hesitant to say too much in meetings with us. I can’t blame them, I would be the same way, especially when the media is there.

From the Parliament building, we traveled to a medical clinic at Soihizo. The take care of AIDS orphans and try to do outreach to the community. We got to mingle and play with the kinds and they danced for us. It was wonderful to see the kids/teenagers perform traditional Zulu dances for us.

After about an hour, we walked through part of the village near the medical station. I don’t have words for what we say. Or if I did, I would take me a long time to think about what we saw and how to describe it. Although it was not all that remote from traveling to an Indian reservation, but with an African twist. The poverty level was quite high and most of the people living around there are subsistence farmers. The houses are very small and several people live in them. There are not roads, running water, and there is an outhouse at each house.

Beyond that, I just don’t have the worlds to describe the experience at this point. It was definitely a highlight of the trip and something I would never have gotten to do elsewhere. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The landscape was very beautiful and the walk was interesting.

One the way home and throughout the evening, we all commented on the impact that the trip through the village had on all of us. There wasn’t anyone that wasn’t moved by what we saw and the poverty they live in.

It will be a long time before I can forget that afternoon.

Tomorrow we visit an AIDS clinic, meet with the City Council, and travel to Cape Town. I may not have access to the Internet tomorrow also.