Blog 48. 15 August. Banu Banua and on.

Alcedo
David Batten
Fri 23 Aug 2019 03:37
Sorry this one has been sent out of order. Unfortunately it is not possible to recover 49 to correct it.

To continue our visit to Banu Banua, Tuesday morning included a visit to the junior high school in Ereke where we had been asked to talk to the students about the usefulness of being able to speak English and dangers of plastic pollution. All Alcedo’s crew were involved, with Skipper, Wife and Venetia taking a group of about 10 students each. We had done some preparation and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to exchange information as part of the learning English and explaining about the dangers and horrors of uncontrolled use and dumping of plastics.

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The Skipper’s wife’s class of 2019, all signed up to “Tidak Sampah”. They were all on board for the “no rubbish” message as was their English teacher, also in the photograph.
Note that they are all Muslims except the one on the right.

In the afternoon, we were taken to visit a traditional village which had just been connected to a water supply, we visited a fort and a beach and another lovely village where they practiced a more interesting form of courtship dancing. We also watched a few teams perform a very dull dance where the same dance was repeated by each team to the same dire music as part of a competition. We were a bit late for the independence parade of exotically dressed children being carried in sedan type chairs, followed by good dancing and very long, to us tedious, speeches in Indonesian from the Regent and various other important persons, plus some monotone prayers. Another feast was laid on, with the inevitable plastic bags that the local men and women filled to take home, while we filled some for the “have not” children.

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For the farmers reading this blog, subsistence farming, cassava growing between the partially cleared coral rocks, seen on the way to the beach.

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The feast at the Independence Day parade, with most of the food now in plastic bags ready to go back home.

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The exotically dressed children lined up for photographs. Definitely from the “have” families who hire the costumes at no small cost, while the children get paid Rp100,000 for participating. Could be seen as a form of wealth transference?

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After the children, the red shirts, namely all the Rally participants at the celebration and the guides. Yus is the young lady in the foreground and behind her, Pasha, with Rauf on his left and the skipper hidden behind a flower arrangement.

On our last day in Banu Banua, we met the Minister for the Enviroment and Health for the Regency, Mr Alifuddin Zuhri and his team, who wanted to tell us about the work he and his team were doing to try and preserve the reefs, mangroves and forests and the work they were doing on rubbish management. We discussed the difficulties the Regency was experiencing with lack of funding and government support and the importance of educating the children. We passed on information about Trash Heroes and any information we had on disposing of plastic rubbish, recycling, re-using and ideas for reducing the use of plastics such as water bottles. We also admitted to having a big problem with litter, pollution and destruction of natural habitats in England, so understand their problems.

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Mr Alifuddin Zuhri, centre and his team. We did mention all the single use, plastic drink containers in the room, which none of us touched and Stuart and Anne brought their water bottles as a good example.

We really feel the educated Indonesians are beginning to grasp the pollution problem. Small beginnings but it has been very encouraging and we have undertaken to help spread the “no plastic” mantra.

Now we are on our way to Wangi-Wangi in the Wakatobi region and some R and R as it is not a formal rally stop. The wind is almost on the nose, but we are on a making tack and are motor sailing to keep Alcedo’s nose up in a surprisingly rough sea.

Alcedo
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