The Posh Corps

As I mentioned before, Batu is a really nice town and does not match up with my image of how life in the Peace Corps should look. We're provided with jugs of approved water AND I take hot showers every morning AND there are hardly any insects.  Our water purification workshop last week is more in line with what I had in mind when I signed up for the Peace Corps:

We were told that if we're lucky we'll get water that looks like that in the bucket on the right.

Boil and filter or boil and soak with iodine or chlorine for 15 minutes.

Having had a week and a half of diarrhea right off the bat Im not to keen to test the waters, so to speak, with rice paddy run-off (top pic, left) or well water (top pic, middle). You can't really see it but the bucket on the right has dead bugs and other small particulates in it, so as not to be left out. 

We talked with some PCV's who are a year into service and they said Dr. Leonard scared them with this same workshop, but assured as that in their experience they didn't have water like that in any of the buckets. Some of them don't even have to use their filtration buckets because their tap water is potable. As I've seen here, the unofficial mantra of the PC, "it all depends", applies more oft than not. 

And then there's money. Dealing with money here is difficult for me because it doesn't do much good to compare Rupiah to US dollars for context. For example, I went to buy a pack of pens the other day and the cashier said it would cost 20,000 Rp (less than $2) for about 10 pens. I would pay that in the States without thinking and I actually did end up paying that amount without trying to haggle her down from the buleh price but when I told other people what I paid they said I had been seriously ripped off. So part of not acting like a buleh (sp?) is not comparing Indonesian and US prices of things. 

Saturday meant a half day of language class and a trip into Malang with some of the crew. We got lost for two hours trying to find a specific pizza shop that some people in my group wanted to go to to meet other volunteers, and got caught in a rain storm (2nd time with electronics and books in my backpack and no rain cover. I think this time I learned.) I enjoyed looking at the city. It's definitely different with more traffic noise from motor bikes than cars, huge palm trees and bamboo growing all over the dirty rivers with trash hanging from the trees from where the river rose last rainfall and, of course, the looks we get from everyone everywhere we go. Amazingly, even in the big city, Indonesian people are still so smiley and welcoming. 

Also, shouts out to Tamar for suggesting that I wear crocs here. They're perfect for everything and all the women here wear them.