SEACON

SEACON, the Southeast Council for Food Security and Fair Trade, was our next volunteer destination. While still tired from the travelling in Indonesia, we headed out on Wednesday to learn the ropes at our new NGO. After a long commute to a suburb-turned-city on the outskirts of KL, we met Annie at the above-ground train station who took us to the office. While much smaller than we expected (SEACON's website is quite impressive), we learned that they influence the agendas of a number (around 30) smaller non-governmental and civil society organizations in the countries they represent. They oversee food security and free trade issues on behalf of small-scale farmers in seven SE Asia countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), and set regional initiatives to improve the market power of their constituents, who desperately need advocates in this increasingly globalized world. Many of these farmers continue to farm using the same methods they've used for decades, but in the last five years the industry has shifted substantially toward favoring big-industry farmes. The smaller farmers thus experience the weight of the international trade regime pressing down on them, but lack the skills and the understanding to organize against it or adapt. Organizations like SEACON see it as their mission to educate, mobilize and advocate on behalf of these farmers in the face of such large forces.

Annie, our boss and confidant at SEACON, has a special place in her heart for this population, as her extended family are small-scale farmers in East Malaysia who she visited on weekends and holidays when she was young. We enjoyed hearing her stories about how the village used to share a generator that would operate for four hours a day (the villge only received real electricity 3-4 years ago), and about some of the special traditions the villagers shared at weddings, funerals, and summer-festivals where they host surrounding villages and friends. If you ever visit her village during a particular day in June, the whole village (around 300 families) will take turns feeding you, entertaining you, and serving you home-made alcoholic beverages.

Annie herself is quite unique. She is a bubbly and lively Malay woman and proud alumni of the University of Wisconsin. She is married to Helmut, an Austrian computer-engineer who works on electronic financial debit-card systems. (Helmut took care of all the highway tolls with a special electronic device developed by his company...it automatically deducts tolls from a pre-paid card that also works on the train system, the monorail, etc.)

Upon arrival, Annie handed us a stack of papers relating to the right to food, and asked us to go to work. Our mission is to help her develop a Regional Briefing Paper on the Right to Food that will go out to all of SEACON's partners. A daunting task, but fortunately I am well-prepared...

...unfortunately my stomach wasn't, as I went home sick the first day at SEACON, and stayed in bed the next. It was a slight obstacle in our plan to bring the realization of the right to food to SE Asia in a matter of a week, but only a setback. To incrase our odds of meeting the high goals we had set for ourself, we rearranged our agenda to stay an extra two days.

Something Totally Awesome!

I know what you must be thinking: "Sure this blog is pretty neat and all, but gosh if there aren't enough pictures of monkeys for my taste."

Well dear reader, your day has come.

MONKEYS!

JJ thinks this monkey was traumatized by the flash. More like the knowing look of mutual awesomeness, I think.

Check out the baby monkey feeding mid-stride.

Struttin' time = Feedin' time.

They know they have the run of the place. We just appreciated all the awesomeness and tried to stay out of their way.

Wise Monkey contemplates the futility of all this. Decides on a life course of stealing peanuts, existentially.

The hills are alive with the sound of monkeys.

This is where we were - the Batu Caves north of Kuala Lumpur. A massive Hindu festival takes place here annually.

There are 272 steps to get to the top. A sign there reads "No exercising." I don't think we had a choice.

The cave - imagine about 100,000 devout Hindus in here.

A temple in the interior space of the cave.

Monkey-faced Hulk here is tearing open his chest to reveal two women in his heart. Makes my problems seem kinda small, huh?

Here we are with our friend Julian, from Germany. Good man, Julian.

So. Much. Visual. Information.

Welcome to Malaysia!!!

Friends and Family,

Greatest apologies that our updates are a week behind our travels in Malaysia. We will do our best to promptly catch you up.

The first few days in Malaysia were the best and worst of times, especially for yours truly. The award-winning Malaysian airport was a beautiful sight to me with its cleanliness, efficiency and "welcome Westerners!" feel. The sun was shining, mothers were playing with their toddlers, and the tourist agency was very clear about what the country had to offer. (They are celebrating 50 years of Independence this week, though the average Malaysian couldn't care less). While I appreciated Malaysia for the changes it brought in comparison with Indonesia, Victor received it a bit more skeptically, deeming "Florida" of SE Asia. (Victor intends to publish a post defending his derogatory assertions...more on that to come)

While Malaysia does lack some of the Indonesia's excitement (we ceased to experience the liklihood of sudden death on a daily basis in transportation....and we didn't didn't have to worry about being tracked by the government for working at a human rights organization) many more of the creature comforts we missed in Indonesia were now there. We could walk down the street without suddenly loosing our appetite to the city smells, and Kuala Lampur struck us as a friendly place with very diverse cultures, religions, and cuisine mixing amicably in public places.

Unfortunately, all this cleanliness and tidiness did not translate into better health for me. I was sick on the second day of arrival. But I'll get back to that. The first day was pretty good.

We arrived early in the morning (just in time to wish my dad a very late-in-the-day happy birthday)and celebrated our arrival with some McD's fish sandwiches (on the breakfast menu!). We boarded a highly decorated coach bus (complete with hanging Indian fabric and tassels)that was playing the "Gwen Stafani" Station 24/7, which we found notable. The drive to KL took us past palm forests under blue sky, which left the impression that Malaysia is a naturally beautiful place...we later found out that the government cedes 3/4 of all agriculture-friendly land in Malaysia to a giant corporation (Deetech?)that plants palm forests for palm oil extraction. Our hosts at SEACON, the Southeast Asia Council on Food and Fair Trade, later complained that most of the oil is used on fuel and manufactured goods rather than applied to food products that benefit those on the lower end of the economic scale. Food security in SE Asia is generally unstable, and focusing so much of the country's resources on products for exportation threatens the ability of the least well off to secure adequate nutrition for themselves and their families, and the ability of small-scale farmers to compete with the international pressures towards big-industry and monoculture.

This information was timed very interestingly with the Malaysian evening news, which today announced that Malaysia will not meet its expected output of palm oil this year (approx. 17 million tons). The government will seek to compensate by doubling export tariffs.

The second tallest buildings in the world...

...photographed from the fourth tallest radio tower in the world.

Welcome to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Winding down in Indonesia

On our last day in Jakarta, we were both able to buckle down and get some work done. JJ drafted a sample letter to support the urgent appeal to end the prosecution of human rights attorneys in Aceh and Victor took a stab at editing the English language pages of the website (the changes aren't up yet in case you were doubting his mastery of grammar).

After lunch with Yasmin we met with Patra, YLBHI's leader, for a long talk that meandered from economic, social and cultural rights and the IMF loan regime to Faith No More and AC/DC as Patra's laptop cranked out the tunes.

Witty, easygoing and dedicated, Patra's comment on being a human rights lawyer in Indonesia was "high profile, low profit." He referred to the 2004 murder of Munir, a prominent human rights activist from a neighboring NGO as a tragedy, but said that such things could never deter him from speaking out against injustice. He said that driving in Jakarta or flying in an airplane were still more dangerous than being a human rights defender in Indonesia, and that working against injustice was for him a moral imperative. Great stuff.

We left that evening feeling proud of our work at YLBHI, and with a deeper understanding of the things that drive this world and the importance of vigilance and principled resistance to the barriers to the protection of human rights.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Look where I called you from (the first time) on your birthday! It was in the Jakarta airport.

Bandung and an Apogee

On Yasmin's suggestion, we left Jakarta on Saturday and headed up into the mountains to Bandung, a relatively tiny village of 2.7 million. The train ride was beautiful as the engine climbed through countryside and towns and the sun dipped to the magic hour.

The countryside in Java, Indonesia.

Rice paddies, tiered for maximum yield.

A video of the view from the train.

At the train station we met Cha-Cha, a guide and hotel booker guy. He set us up with a room for the night near the station (@$5.50/night) gave us a great dinner suggestion and sold us on his tour the next day. Cha-Cha = Bandung for us.

Bandung's beautiful central mosque.

Sunday morning we got up early and did the following things:

1. Ram Fighting - we had to keep stopping to ask locals where the ram fight was going down, as police raids make the venue fluid until the event gets underway.

A ram, not fighting.

Two rams, fighting.


"Ohhh, so that's why they're called rams ... because of the ramming!"

2. Visited the rice fields - Cha-Cha showed us some great local flora and explained the harvest cycle and working life of a rice farmer.

3. Had a great Sundanese (the region of Java we were visiting) lunch in a beautiful bungalow. That's Cha-Cha next to Victor and Monica and Hans from Germany.


4. Hiked around on an active volcano.

Craters and sulfuric gas everywhere - like another planet. The volcano is called Papandayan.

Ummm...

Stinky.

Creepy yet fascinating.

At this place, a sulfuric lake created by a 2002 eruption, we reached an apogee of this trip. I think Indonesia is geographically the farthest away from home of the countries we'll be visiting, and I think from a philosophical perpsective Indonesia was out there more than the other places. Here at this place, a train ride from Jakarta, 2 hours drive from Bandung and a 2 kilometer hike up a smoking volcano, we were I think farthest from home. I wanted to commemorate that point, as the turn from this lake was the first step toward home, though four weeks still remain.

Elbehahhay

Strange title, no? That is the phonetic pronunciation of YLBHI, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation where JJ and I have been working since Tuesday.

As alluded to earlier, the experience has been fantastic, but here's our no doubt inadequate attempt to explain why.

TUESDAY

We arrived after noon, having Internetted the morning away. Our cab driver was not familiar with the neighborhood, and drove in circles for an hour before we got here. He pulled over and asked directions no fewer than four times. What appeared to be navigational incompetence was explained by the fact that the office was temporarily relocated while a new building (at the old address) was being constructed. The cab driver understandably did not think that we wanted to get dropped off inside the superstructure of a new building, hence the one hour diversion.

We met Yasmin Purba, our soon-to-be guide, confidant and boss, as well as many of the other wonderful people at YLBHI. Yasmin received an LLM from Notre Dame Law School on a Fulbright scholarship, and she knew Sean O'Brian, JJ's old boss! Small world, and it made us close quickly.

JJ and Yasmin in the Cafe Batavia, a relic from the Dutch colonial era.


The building is in a neighborhood of like-minded NGOs and there is constant traffic between the organizations, so we met people from human rights, anti-corruption and women's rights groups in that first whirlwind day.

We learned so much about the judicial system and the challenges facing Indonesian human rights attorneys. One common theme was the inability to rely heavily on law to win the day, as corruption and bad judges mean that a court case is often only the first step in pursuing justice. Naming and shaming, legislative appeals and public demonstrations are central to the work done here, and provide other channels to funnel all this energy.


JJ and our friend Adeh behind the office.

WEDNESDAY

We met with Taufik, the Director of Advocacy at YLBHI, and then Yasmin took us to see a demonstration in the city center by an environmental watchdog NGO. They were protesting the overforesting of Indonesia's natural resouces, using photographs, banners and notably, performance art, with green-painted activists covered in leaves and lying motionless on the street, a la the die-ins of the 1960s.

After working a litle that afternoon, Patra, YLBHI's director, called JJ in to explain a couple things about the US Supreme Court appointment system. Turns out there were two journalists in his office, and for the next 20 minutes both of us held forth on the structure, strengths, weaknesses and substantive jurisprudence of the US judicial system for Indonesian newspapers. We're still working on getting access to the stories, but a hyperlink is to come.

That evening Yasmin took us to an amazing sate restaurant in a bustling neighborhood. The lamb skewers were served in a sauce called Indonesian ketchup, but I have to say it put Heinz to shame. It wasn't tomato based, but it was richly spiced, sweet and flavorful.

THURSDAY

We visited on of the slum areas near the river in Jakarta. Densely populated and shoddily constructed, this area was striking for the communal feel inside. Despite difficult living conditions and no privacy whatsoever, commerce and friendly conversation were the main activities. Most houses had televisions and sheet metal roofs. The nearby river was full of garbage.


The slums occupy the area next to the river, as semiannual floods render the land unwanted by others.


A shopkeeper and his sons in the slum.


The rags indicate the flood height.

We had an amazing lunch (complete with Durian-fruit popsicles!) and returned to the office to get some work done. We've been helping Yasmin craft an urgent appeal regarding the prosecution of human rights attorneys in Indonesia. It will be sent to other NGOs around the world in the hopes of pressuring the government to cease such prosecutions.

Traffic in Jakarta

Jakarta is amazing. Three days in, and we're still getting eyeball exhaustion from trying to take in even a portion of what is happening in this quaint little burg of 20 million.

We will post a proper entry on the experience of working at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, but for now I will just say that it has been warm, fascinating, educational, sobering productive and fun. Check tomorrow's Indonesian newspapers for our names! (more to come on that)

The only thing I want to broach is the experience of riding around in Jakarta. It's kind of like a two dimensional Star Wars space battle scene. There are dozens of varieties of modes of transport here, from buses through taxis through bajajs (think motorized covered wheelbarrow) through motorbikes through rickshaws. And they all move in accordance less with traffic laws and lane markings but more with the unspoken law of swarm theory - like in Planet Earth where a dense ball of fish all dart in and out but still move in the same direction together. Distances between vehicles and pedestrians that would make a midwestern driver blow a gasket are the norm, and once I found myself staring out the window of a taxi at a man's hand on the handle of a motorbike, so close that I could see the individual hairs on his knuckles.

So quickly I've gone from clenching every muscle and preparing for impact to enjoying the physical ballet that is Jakarta traffic. This should be in the guidebooks as the number one attraction in town.

As for pictures, I will provide them at a later date, and apologize for the lack of visual proof of all that we write so far. The connection speed here is difficult.

Lantau Island in the Fog

Hi friends and family! Victor and I first want to say thank you for your comments and feedback so far. We hope to write at least a few times a week, and we really enjoy hearing from all of you who have responded...

This past Friday the weather finally let us venture out of the city. Our first choice to make the best of our remaining days in HK was to head to Lantau Island, where they the largest sitting Buddha in the world sits atop a peak among other green peaks on this preserved island. The 45-minute bus ride, which took us up and down these mountains past waterfalls, reservoirs, and small beach towns, had Victor and I singing the Jurassic Park theme song. All we needed was for somebody to cue the Velociraptors. No kidding. This mountaintop is usually accessible to tourists by a beautiful five-mile cable car ride, but I enjoyed the sense of adventure the mountain bus provided...

The bus dropped us near the top of one of the peaks amidst dense fog. The first thing that stood out against this backdrop was a circular platform with levels of brightly colored prayer flags surrounding it. It was situated opposite the large stone staircase also disappearing into fog that led up to the base of the Buddha. This platform, upon which a monk waited to give daily devotions to the Buddha, combined with an imposing and elaborate gate in the background to let us know this was a special place.





We followed the monk down a path behind the platform, and eventually came to Po Lin Monastery. It is a beautiful working monastery that allows tourist visitation. Before the front temple gates stand large incense pots in which visitors offer lit incense sticks in thanks and prayer for loved ones. If I ever go back I hope to light some in honor of all of you. Its smell also enhanced the spiritual experience, as it wafted throughout the temple and very effectively put you in the right frame of mind to enter a reflective place.




I will leave the pictures to provide the remaining descriptions of this amazing place. It was beautiful, peaceful, contemplative, unique. Victor and I both came away with a strong appreciation for the path these monks had chosen as well as how quickly our surroundings were able to instill in us a similar feeling of peace.





We were unable to see the full Buddha in the fog, but his outline was ascertainable and still neat to see. The stairs up to him pass vegetation and growth with health and vibrancy of color I've never seen. When we came back down the path in the rain, we stopped by a nearby village called Ngong Ping, a recently completed tourist attraction created for visitors to the peak. It normally has a large variety of attractions, but these were limited, again, on account of the rain and the broken cable car. The upside was that Victor and I had the whole village practically to ourselves, and the places that were open treated us as honored guests.



Our activities included a four-dollar presentation called "Walk with Buddha" that describes the story of Siddhartha's life and path to enlightenment through a Disney-quality walk-through adventure put on just for us. We were then (once again, all by ourselves!) treated by a charming young Chinese girl to a tea ceremony at the village's tea house. She had spent three years in training as a tea specialist, and gave us the benefit of her education by demonstrating the correct pouring of tea, how to gently coax a pressed white flower out of its preserved, hard form into a beautiful floating blossom that looked, smelled, and tasted spectacular. (We brought the second flower home in the hopes of replicating this experience one day ourselves.) She then sat and made very nice conversation with us while continually refilling our small cups as we enjoyed the tea with a plate of honey-covered walnuts.

We left feeling serenely peaceful and taken care of, with a calm that remained with us through the harrowing ride back down the mountain through denser fog and rain to the subway station. We went back to our hostel on Hong Kong's most bustling commercial roads, and both fell into a deep, deep sleep.

Hong Kong

Rain.

The dominant force in our lives since touching down two days ago. Sprinkling rain, pouring rain, drizzling rain, slanty spiky rain, and then, top it off, a class 8 typhoon. But more on that later.

Our flight was surprisingly easy (emergency exit row, thanks to Victor's last-minute manipulations) nonstop from Newark to Hong Kong. Our plane took the shortest distance between two points-- flying almost straight North over Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Circle and Siberia. Due to the time of the year, we followed the bright sun the whole way there, getting a great view at the top. We arrived after dusk in the bright-light, foggy city of Hong Kong.

We got into our modern if slightly out of the way hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island on Wednesday night. We later learned the building of our stay was the former Chinese Embassy before Hong Kong's transition to Chinese rule in '97. After a tip from the concierge, we grabbed a quick bite in Times Square in what JJ considered the HK version of Denny's - comfort food with a Chinese twist.

They have capitalism in Hong Kong. Victor is less than thrilled.

Our 25th floor hotel room has a great view of the southern hills and a Muslim cemetary carved into the hillside, as the southern 2/3 of Hong Kong Island is mountain hills with only minor development.

Our excurions today (before we learned of the typhoon) involved a ride up the 15+ story outside escalator that takes you to some of the nicest parts of the city (SOHO, where many ex-pats appear to reside). Antique shops, restaurants and hip bars abound. It also gives you a feel for how Hong Kong sticks its 7 million residents directly on top of one another...hence the skyscrapers of people living vertically in a 2 x 6 mile space.

Another way to get a feel for the number of people in this city is to join a few thousand of them jammed like sardines in their fine subway system beneath the city. Why would you do that, you ask? To avoid the oncoming class 8 typhoon about to strike, of course. On our way back down the mountain (they make you walk your way back down after the free ride up), an American woman pulled us aside to tell us about the oncoming typhoon, a class "8" (the highest level, we quickly learned, is "10"). Fortunate timing, as we could not have understood the weather reports on our own. A businessman with good english language skills (as opposed to the merely passable English of most HKers) also kindly adopted us on the way to the subway to explain these conditions. Everyone was let off work to go home to take cover which meant that sidewalks were wall to wall people, bus lines were enormous, and we had to push ourselves into stampede-like conditions on the subway. Fortunately many of our fellow captives were Buddhists. This is a very polite, very hygenic city. Victor's lack of enthusiasm for such sterilized city living quickly morphed into sincere appreciation under subterranean evacuation conditions.

The view from the Central MTR station - replicated on three sides of us.

The storm blew through without too much ado. We learned that the southern part of the island breaks the force of the storm, and generally typhoons don't gather speed and mass for days like US hurricanes. Anyway, we're glad to have gotten back to the hotel in time to try to decipher cryptic Cantonese newscasts and meterological analysis. Mostly we learned that the water was choppy and people look funny trying to hold umbrellas against typhoon winds.

That's the basic tale so far - we'll add some pics when we get to another computer.

Here's a vid of the skyline:

Counting Down...

So, family and friends, we are four days from departure! I get sworn into the DC Bar, and I'm off!!!