Home

We arrived home last night. It was great to see Dave and Wylie at the gate.

I have put some photos up 0n the previous posts.
Here are some more photos.......

The blog will go on hiatus for awhile until the next mission begins.

Dawna.

The flight home continues

We are in Hong Kong now, the final 15 hour flight looms in front of us. We flew from Banda Aceh to Medan last night, and then on to Singapore. We met up with Katherine's friend Steve in Singapore. He took us to a local outdoor market where we had a great late night chatting, enjoying dim sum and beer. It meant that we only got an hour sleep before heading out this morning, but it was worth it.

We have been strolling around the Hong Kong airport, buying gifts and things that caught our fancy. I bought myself a travel purse that will serve me well on future trips. Soon we will check in for the flight...sleep and watch some movies and get home.

We are both looking forward to coming home.

Dawna.

Day at the Beach

Today we start the flight home but we started off with a morning of sightseeing. We met up with our friend Mary Ann's cousin Cordero (Cord) and he took us out for a great morning of sightseeing. We went to a fishing village and also had a good walk on the beach. Cord works for the Asian Development Bank and has been living in Banda Aceh for the past 8 months or so. He had some great stories to tell us and showed us some places that we wouldn't have known about.

It was a fun way to spend our last day here. He even took us to a surfer pizza place that was just perfect.

We are now waiting in the lobby of the hotel. A big Indonesia rock band has just checked in so there is a lot of excitement happening. It is sponsored by a local cigarette company so the air is thick with smoke.

Our ride comes in 90 minutes and then the L-O-N-G ride home will begin.

All for now,
Dawna.

Last day in Sigli

Today was our last day with the Sigli staff. It really was hard to say goodbye.

We had a hands on morning. Katherine reviewed our work plan with key staff. While she was doing that Rob gave the collection a thorough review and I worked with a group of staff at the computers.

My task was to support them in setting up some basic templates in Excel, to help with some performance measures. The thinking is to have a baseline to measure now so we can track the changes that will occur once some of the changes that we are planning to achieve happen. Each time that we work one-on-one with the staff we find more strengths. I worked with Yurni for about an hour and we had a good time together at the computer. We don't have a language in common but were able to understand each other for the most part. We were both showing each other tips in Excel. I give the staff credit for working in Excel (and Word) because they work with the English version and they have to learn all of the English commands. Just think of having to work in Excel and all of your commands were in Bahasa Indonesian. It actually helped me with my language learning this morning. I am getting most of the library terms down...not that it will help me in the market when I am trying to buy food!

Later in the afternoon we met with the Bapeda (the lead politician for the area) to thank him for letting us work with the staff and to show our appreciation for the opportunity we have been given in Sigli. He was equally gracious and permitted us to have a photograph. The other team was with us for this meeting. They had a good morning with their team too, so we were all on a bit of a high.

The afternoon was spent working on the various reports that are due and wrapping up details. For dinner, we went out to our favourite outdoors restaurant. Manon had a hamburger (which was really more like a roast beef sandwich)...this was the first time we had ventured past the regular satay and noodles. We had so much fun with her ordering the hamburger that we documented it with copious photographs...I even took a video! (I think this shows you how little it takes to amuse us these days!)

We head back to Banda tomorrow and slowly begin the journey home.

Dawna.

Eensy Weensy Spider

We began the morning with a review of the equipment list. This list itemizes all of the items, services and equipment that will be necessary for the project. Yesterday we had asked the Sigli staff to start thinking about this list. We were very impressed when they presented us with a full list today. Their list was fairly complete and a lot of thought had been put into it. It really felt like we were working together.

Later in the morning we focused on 'Children's Services in the Public Library'. Katherine and I had prepared some presentations before we left and this was one of them. It was fun to talk about ways to interact with children...this was all new to them but I could tell they liked what we had to share with them. At one point we spontaneously started showing them 'Eensy Weensy Spider' and it made everyone laugh. It will be interesting to see the programs that they develop based on local customs and traditions.

On the home front we have been exploring more food preparations. Manon (on another FCM project and staying in the house) and I had gone into the market yesterday afternoon and purchased a lot of different vegetables. I was a bit too squeamish to go into the fish market (you had to go in barefoot with rolled up trousers) but Manon braved it and got some super-sized prawns for our supper. We also bought some beans and noodles that were wrapped in banana leaves. It was take-out Sigli style.

The food has been interesting here. Some days we go to local restaurants and eat whatever is being served. I had a crab dinner that was one of the best meals I have had all year. Today at lunch we went to the local beach and had noodles and chicken. We tried a local drink of chocolate and avocado. It was a different combo and the texture and colour was unlike any beverage we have at home. (For anyone wondering about my stomach....I have been quite fine in that department.)

Tomorrow is our last day with the Sigli team. We are having a photo taken outside the library to place on the cover of our project plan. We have made some connections with the staff. They have tasks to do while we are back home and we have things to move forward too. We are anticipating our next mission will be at the end of the summer and before Ramadan.

I will get to the next level of blogging and add some pics when I get home. Web 2.0 here I come.

Home soon,
Dawna.

Sigli

The journey back to Sigli was good. I think we are getting more accustomed to the curves, cows and chaos of the trip. There is a wonderful chip stand that we stop at that has eggplant chips and potato chips. There is also an amazing local chip that is made...they are so delicious I will bring some home. We stopped to see some elephants. I was this close to getting on one but realized it would have slowed the convoy down. Drats. Maybe next time. We were travelling up with another van of FCM volunteers. That group is working on supporting the municipal government here. We share the house with them too.

The library staff were all set for us yesterday morning. We went through some basics of strategic planning and visioning with them. We had found out over the weekend that two of the staff had gone through this process with another FCM workshop so they were well primed for our discussions. (Sorry Ruth - this may be another five minutes you don't get back!).

Yesterday afternoon we talked with the staff some more. We were amazed to find out that they had wifi in the library. It is one of those situations where unless you ask the right questions you don't know what you will find out. They had mentioned that they get visitors to the library and when we asked what the visitors do...we were told about the wifi. We checked the connection out today but it was pretty slow and we were unable to show the TPL website as we had hoped.

It is such a different work flow here, The staff typically work just a few hours a day, from 9-11:30...even though the posted library hours are from 9-2:00. When we asked about that we didn't really get an answer. Prayers are at set time throughout the day and most activities stop for prayers. We also awake to prayers every morning at 5:30 a.m. It makes me think a lot about Khartoum and the time I spent there.

We took it as a very positive step when the staff agreed to meet with us in the afternoons, after prayer.

Today we gave a presentation on Canadian libraries. We were a little bit nervous about how it might go, knowing that libraries at home have quite a different look and feel from the Sigli library. We had a powerpoint presentation and set it all up in one of the offices. It went really well. The staff focused on all of the positive differences....lots of light, welcoming surroundings and the set spaces for children, youth and adults.

They had some questions about how things are set up in Toronto and were pleased and surprised to hear that TPL had a woman at the head of it.

This afternoon we return and will talk about getting some benchmarks in place and deciding on what tasks need to get accomplished between this trip and the next one. We only have a few more meetings with them and then we learn how it works to be moving the objectives forward from afar.

I cooked lunch for us today....made from a hodge podge of ingredients that were around the house. This afternoon (after our work session) I am going to the market to get food for our dinner. We have a cook who looks after us very well. She keeps our rooms spotless and also does our laundry. I will miss it all when I get back home.

I am trying to learn a little Bahasa Indonesia (the local language) each day. I am finding that the people we meet speak a little English and when I try to speak their language I get more English from them. There is also a little bit of Arabic that sneaks through so that is good too.

All for now,
Dawna.

Heading Back to Pidie

We have been in Banda Aceh for the weekend. I'll re-cap the first few working days in Pidie.

When we got to the public library in Sigli we met with the staff and the head of the District. Louise (FCM leader) reviewed the reasons we were there and began a discussion with the staff about their library service, what they were happy with and what they felt needed attention.

All throughout this discussion there were motorcycles racing around the library and I could hear Celine Dion music in the background. It was somewhat surreal.

There is a staff of 23 at the library and generally about 75% report for work each day. The staff get paid whether they attend work or not. They want to have an automated library system yet only about 4 of the staff are comfortable with computers. They have a bookmobile that serves 30 districts over a 120 km territory. They are proud of their service to the public but acknowledge that their collections are not strong.

We met with the head of the library and the head of the district on Thursday night. We talked through the objectives that we felt had been identified during our conversations with them and the staff. The key part was that the head of the library (Gusmeli) had not been able to be present for the discussions that we had been having and we wanted to make sure that the ideas made sense to her.

The evening meeting could have been a commercial for Deep Woods 'off' bug spray. The mosquitos were everywhere and we were trying to be discreet with our slapping and arm waving to get rid of the pesky bugs. We agreed to return in the morning to review it all again with them and the staff. Friday was a civic holiday so we were not sure how many staff would choose to come to this meeting.

On Friday, we were very pleased to see six staff, including the director and the head of the library was in attendance. I was pleased to see that they were not in their library (almost military style) uniforms....they had come in on their day off and were dressed in their regular clothes.

Once again we went through a process of reviewing and confirming the main goal of the project which is to improve the library service that is available for the people of Pidie. They were very responsive and made some good suggestions as to how they wanted to see this happen. It was an altogether different feel than the evening before when there was little comment given about the project.

They agreed to meet with us all the next week.

We headed back to Banda Aceh for the weekend. We had our work cut out for us. We still have to finalize the project plan, with the objectives and a plan lined out for future missions. Over the weekend in Banda we visited with our local resource partner, Sanusi, the head of the university library. He showed us around his facility. We now have an idea of how his operation works and if there is potential for staff training or job shadowing at the university library.

We went to a local book store to see what sort of materials are available. We also discovered a public library in Banda. Finding out more about the book industry in Indonesia and investigating the public library in Banda are some future steps for us.

Today we head back to Pidie to begin the next stage of our work.

We are having a lot of fun and enjoying the people we meet. I am trying to learn a bit of the Indonesian language each day. Katherine thinks this post is rather dry, but I wanted to make sure that I covered all of the details.

D.