Far away from Christmas Trouble

It’s been almost two months since we, Maren and Philipp, arrived in Yogyakarta. Micha arrived 2 weeks ago, and the volunteer team is now complete. There is a lot to do in the BORDA office. Michi and Philipp directly started to join the big WSP Monitoring where during the last months nearly 200 plants all over Indonesia were checked. This included a lot of travelling in Yogyakarta and Central Java. This was not only a good introduction to see how the systems are working under real conditions, but it was also a great chance to learn more about life in local communities and the Indonesian culture.

     After this Michi will stay in the R&D team, where are a lot of interesting tasks to do. Philipp will work for AKSANSI, (Community Based Organization on Sanitation in Indonesia)to support provision of follow up Q&M services for CBOs. Maren is very busy on the topic of solid waste, especially with the registration for the emission trading system. Whereas Micha already left to Sumbawa for the supervision of Prefab plants which seems to be a big adventure. We are all excited what he will tell after his return in two weeks. 

     In private there is also a lot happening at the moment. Our Indonesian colleagues are very motivated to show us the city and we join them in hanging out with friends or doing sports. Everyone has found some sport and leisure activities in Yogya already.

     On weekends there are so many places to explore if it’s not raining. Well, it is raining really a lot of right now, but at least we have some time to learn some Indonesian, which is still a big challenge for us. Next to language struggles some of us are still challenged by driving motorbikes in the city traffic or wearing closed shoes at the office while having tropical degrees outside.

Luckily, there is no Christmas trouble at all in Indonesia. Yeah!