Monday, December 11, 2006

Comfort and Aid (Day 2)

An interesting night followed the first day. After getting back to the hotel we were staying at, I was twice pulled away from my room by a screaming Felicia, Miki and Jennifer. Both times involved very large cockroaches scaring the hell out of Miki as she about to take a shower... two times just seems like bad luck. I had to overcome my own dislike of cockroaches and kill them.

The next day, I woke up earlier than everyone else and went for a walk around the town. It's a bustling little place, but like most places in Indonesia it's filthy. I was nearly sideswiped twice by moto taxis just on my short walk (albeit due to my own carelessness).


However, the main point of the second day was to visit and take supplies to one of the local orphanages.


This orphanage has over fifty orphans in it. Again, we took them the basic supplies as well as clothes, toys, cakes and some candy.

We also put on a little party for these kids as well with food and some games. Later on in the day, they all sang a song for us before we left that apparently translates to "Pray for us"... that was a disturbing experience. Seeing fifty orphans singing out in anguish, many of them crying is NOT an experience that can be taken lightly.

However, as with before we had to leave and so we hopped back into an assortment of vans and sped back to the town.

With a bit of time before our ferry back to Singapore, I decided to go for another wander around the town. I started stumbling through a variety of different alleys and back streets, I was surprised by the level of variation between filth and cleanliness between some of the alleys.

We boarded the ferry at around five and most of us headed straight for the roof for the trip back.
This time it's Jennifer's turn to be making faces. Miki was a bit exhausted by it all. Not only did she have the good fortune of dealing with the two cockroaches from the night before, but she was also given an extra special surprise today. Though young, Miki is an excellent guitar player, and she brought one of her acoustic guitars along on the trip to play for the people we visited (the guitar is almost as big as she is). Before we headed off to the ferry terminal, she was sitting on a bench strumming her guitar when a large cockroach popped its head out of one of the holes in her guitar, looked at her, then scurried back into her guitar.... she screamed.... then ran crying to me.... thankfully we were able to get the damn thing out and kill it.
Can you see the small rain storm out in the distance?
All that travelling can be tiring.... More pictures of the rain storm as we got a little closer.And a picture as we approached the Singaporean skyline.
Jennifer, Miki and I making some bizarre faces with the Singaporean skyline in the background. The two of them were great on this trip, they worked hard and they mingled with those we were helping.

The sunset looks pretty amazing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That was a very meaningful thing to do :)