The real game changer has arrived! Thanks to my solar genius friend; Nick Overton from Wicked Diving - I officially have a full battery hooked up to a solar panel at Turtle Camp and can now charge all my devices in the place where I spend 90% of my time. This means more blog posts, more pictures, and more listening to music. Hooray!
That being said – blog posts have been hard since the only time I’m in Labuan Bajo (my satellite home) I am running around like a crazy person running errands or guiding kayak trips and don’t have the mental bandwidth to sit down and type cognitive words for you to read. Not that my words from Turtle Camp will meld well either – but at least I now have the resources to type them out anyway.
The past 10 months have flown by. That’s right – I’ve been in Indoenesia for 10 months now. The other day I took a minute to sit down and reflect on my time here. It has certainly been anything but boring. I have experienced so many things, gone on so many adventures, learned 2 new languages, and accomplished things I never even considered. For example, helping over 1,000 baby sea turtles hatch and return to the sea, helping women with little opportunity sell their textiles, teaching hoards of children how to say ‘what’s up dawg’ in English, going diving for the first time in Komodo National Park, kayaking my way around Komodo National Park, collecting and losing chickens, collecting kittens, becoming a scorpion slayer, and clocking over 40 hours of traditional Manggarai funeral ceremonies(this is a huge accomplishment, one that I do not expect you to understand).
The pictures at the top of the blog will have to tell most of my stories for me otherwise this one would never end. So I will just have to offer a recap of my past 2 months so as not to bore you.
For a month I had an onslaught of kayak trips. 3 day trips, a 5 day trip, and a scattering of 1 day trips. All of these were amazing and afforded me time to get to know Komodo dragons intimately, learn the fierce and kind currents of the Park, watch beautiful sunrises and sunsets, drink cold beer under thousands of fruit bats leaving their mangroves to feast upon the fruits of Flores, and get to know some really great people that are nature nerds as well. Kayaking is one of my favorite things and there hasn’t been something as lovely as spending multiple nights on the water with a crew of Indonesians to pass your time talking about corruption with.
Between my kayak trips and my ceremony filled days in the village I got to escape for a little while and travel around Ruteng. One of Flores’ bigger cities that is a glorious chaotic mess. I’m sure there are worse, but this is one of my favorites. The underground market, the convent hotel, and the beautiful panoramic views make going back a treat every time.
Just below Ruteng, I got to explore the West side of the island’s geo thermal power plant and it’s source. Hidden in the lush, green, rice paddies of the mountains lays a desolate canyon of sulfer, clay, and bubbly steaming vents pushing boiling hot water out of the earth from the bottom of volcanic mountains. It does not get much more glorious or dangerous. “Follow me,” the local villager says “the last guests who didn’t listen died.” Whether or not he was joking, he wasn’t smiling. But with an entourage of teenage boys, buddy pal Paul, and our volunteer guide; we trekked up the narrow pathways to get a panoramic view of this amazing canyon. From above we could see houses along the edges with their gardens hanging over the tops of the cliffs. What a surreal thing to be in the middle of.
After we had our fill of the natural sauna, we more or less talked our way into the power plant itself. Here we met a man from Nevada who had helped build the plant a year previous – considering how far in the middle of nowhere we were, this brought us a good laugh. He showed us how the plant worked, explained the magic of geothermal power, and we parted ways.
Shortly after, we stopped at a small kiosk for coffee. There were small children playing and one small kitten. I set the kitten down, it ran towards a toddler, upon seeing it, she screamed, starting crying, and jumped into her brothers arms. Oh-my the emotions a kitten can evoke. Thus ending a magical day in the armpit of a volcano.
Safely back at home on the cliff once again, I have spent an incredible amount of time sitting in rooms full of people smoking, drinking coffee, doing 7 am shots of moonshine, not sleeping for 3 days, playing cards, gossiping, and sacrificing numerous animals. Needless to say, grief is handled very differently within the Manggarai culture than Western culture. This all happened at the funerals I attended, where it was a mix of a proper catholic funereal and their traditional ‘adat’ or ‘culture’ ceremony. Each funeral lasts 3 days and again, 1 year later, they will have another 3 day ceremony.
After much cultural participation with the village – they have been taking the opportunities to participate in my culture too. You can read about this from a couple of others’ points of views here and here.
Through English lessons, to beach cleans, to conservation education, I have spent the past couple of months with guests and villagers at Turtle Camp wanting to learn about the sea and how to speak my crappy, slang-filled English. They have not been disappointed. Daily kids from the village are going to the beach to clean up rubbish that has floated in from passing boats. This morning as I did the beach walk and clean with some ladies and I overheard their discussion that went like this:
“Cigarettes are garbage too!”
“They are?”
“Yes, if turtles eat them, they won’t be hungry anymore and they’ll DIE.”
“Then why does everybody litter them?”
“They just haven’t learned yet.”
“Well, just wait, we’ll talk to them and tell them to stop it or we’ll cut off their heads.”
Now, I’m not sure that was the message I was teaching them. I feel like they picked it up on their own. I don’t recall be-heading being a part of conservation efforts – but if it’s on their own initiative and it means a clean Indonesia….I guess I’ll take what I can get.
The other thing I’ve been really excited about is helping the women sell their textiles. Traditionally their textiles are sarongs that they wear for cultural ceremonies and simpler ones used for every day work sarongs. They are all beautiful regardless and I wish I could keep them all. They take between 2 – 9 weeks to make and have stories behind the designs. They use a back strap loom and sit in the garden during the dry season weaving beautiful masterpieces.
Generally they try to sell them at the market, which is 1 ½ hours away. But the market is flooded with them and they don’t often make the big sell which could more or less be their monthly income. So I have toyed around with a couple of ideas on how to get their textiles unto the world and have spoken with a couple of different organizations across Indonesia. I have a long-term plan that involves field trips, continuing education, and marketing for the ladies. But until that can come to fruition I have opened an ETSY shop that not only sells the sarongs but also benefits them further but putting the profit back into their very own turtle conservation efforts. Thus funding further education, field trips, and job training. So if you’re looking for a fantastic gift for your grandma or just want a new blanket that was handmade by some badass Indonesian women – you should look at my ETSY store here.
I wish I could tell you all about all the ridiculous shit I see everyday but this post would never end. I guess you’ll just have to come visit me and join in on it all. Or if it’s too far for a visit, I suggest becoming my pen pal. I am really enjoying the pen pals I have currently and would love to take on more. Interested? Send me some mail at the following address and you will get something grand in return:
Amber Clifton
C/O Wicked Diving
JL Hatta Soekarno
Labuan Bajo, NTT
85667
Indonesia
That’s all for now - I’m headed to Sri Lanka to see a man about some vanilla and some other people about some turtles and then to Malaysia to see an entire neighborhood filled with reportedly delicious food. I plan on returning mildly bloated and full of fun stories. Until next time….
That being said – blog posts have been hard since the only time I’m in Labuan Bajo (my satellite home) I am running around like a crazy person running errands or guiding kayak trips and don’t have the mental bandwidth to sit down and type cognitive words for you to read. Not that my words from Turtle Camp will meld well either – but at least I now have the resources to type them out anyway.
The past 10 months have flown by. That’s right – I’ve been in Indoenesia for 10 months now. The other day I took a minute to sit down and reflect on my time here. It has certainly been anything but boring. I have experienced so many things, gone on so many adventures, learned 2 new languages, and accomplished things I never even considered. For example, helping over 1,000 baby sea turtles hatch and return to the sea, helping women with little opportunity sell their textiles, teaching hoards of children how to say ‘what’s up dawg’ in English, going diving for the first time in Komodo National Park, kayaking my way around Komodo National Park, collecting and losing chickens, collecting kittens, becoming a scorpion slayer, and clocking over 40 hours of traditional Manggarai funeral ceremonies(this is a huge accomplishment, one that I do not expect you to understand).
The pictures at the top of the blog will have to tell most of my stories for me otherwise this one would never end. So I will just have to offer a recap of my past 2 months so as not to bore you.
For a month I had an onslaught of kayak trips. 3 day trips, a 5 day trip, and a scattering of 1 day trips. All of these were amazing and afforded me time to get to know Komodo dragons intimately, learn the fierce and kind currents of the Park, watch beautiful sunrises and sunsets, drink cold beer under thousands of fruit bats leaving their mangroves to feast upon the fruits of Flores, and get to know some really great people that are nature nerds as well. Kayaking is one of my favorite things and there hasn’t been something as lovely as spending multiple nights on the water with a crew of Indonesians to pass your time talking about corruption with.
Between my kayak trips and my ceremony filled days in the village I got to escape for a little while and travel around Ruteng. One of Flores’ bigger cities that is a glorious chaotic mess. I’m sure there are worse, but this is one of my favorites. The underground market, the convent hotel, and the beautiful panoramic views make going back a treat every time.
Just below Ruteng, I got to explore the West side of the island’s geo thermal power plant and it’s source. Hidden in the lush, green, rice paddies of the mountains lays a desolate canyon of sulfer, clay, and bubbly steaming vents pushing boiling hot water out of the earth from the bottom of volcanic mountains. It does not get much more glorious or dangerous. “Follow me,” the local villager says “the last guests who didn’t listen died.” Whether or not he was joking, he wasn’t smiling. But with an entourage of teenage boys, buddy pal Paul, and our volunteer guide; we trekked up the narrow pathways to get a panoramic view of this amazing canyon. From above we could see houses along the edges with their gardens hanging over the tops of the cliffs. What a surreal thing to be in the middle of.
After we had our fill of the natural sauna, we more or less talked our way into the power plant itself. Here we met a man from Nevada who had helped build the plant a year previous – considering how far in the middle of nowhere we were, this brought us a good laugh. He showed us how the plant worked, explained the magic of geothermal power, and we parted ways.
Shortly after, we stopped at a small kiosk for coffee. There were small children playing and one small kitten. I set the kitten down, it ran towards a toddler, upon seeing it, she screamed, starting crying, and jumped into her brothers arms. Oh-my the emotions a kitten can evoke. Thus ending a magical day in the armpit of a volcano.
Safely back at home on the cliff once again, I have spent an incredible amount of time sitting in rooms full of people smoking, drinking coffee, doing 7 am shots of moonshine, not sleeping for 3 days, playing cards, gossiping, and sacrificing numerous animals. Needless to say, grief is handled very differently within the Manggarai culture than Western culture. This all happened at the funerals I attended, where it was a mix of a proper catholic funereal and their traditional ‘adat’ or ‘culture’ ceremony. Each funeral lasts 3 days and again, 1 year later, they will have another 3 day ceremony.
After much cultural participation with the village – they have been taking the opportunities to participate in my culture too. You can read about this from a couple of others’ points of views here and here.
Through English lessons, to beach cleans, to conservation education, I have spent the past couple of months with guests and villagers at Turtle Camp wanting to learn about the sea and how to speak my crappy, slang-filled English. They have not been disappointed. Daily kids from the village are going to the beach to clean up rubbish that has floated in from passing boats. This morning as I did the beach walk and clean with some ladies and I overheard their discussion that went like this:
“Cigarettes are garbage too!”
“They are?”
“Yes, if turtles eat them, they won’t be hungry anymore and they’ll DIE.”
“Then why does everybody litter them?”
“They just haven’t learned yet.”
“Well, just wait, we’ll talk to them and tell them to stop it or we’ll cut off their heads.”
Now, I’m not sure that was the message I was teaching them. I feel like they picked it up on their own. I don’t recall be-heading being a part of conservation efforts – but if it’s on their own initiative and it means a clean Indonesia….I guess I’ll take what I can get.
The other thing I’ve been really excited about is helping the women sell their textiles. Traditionally their textiles are sarongs that they wear for cultural ceremonies and simpler ones used for every day work sarongs. They are all beautiful regardless and I wish I could keep them all. They take between 2 – 9 weeks to make and have stories behind the designs. They use a back strap loom and sit in the garden during the dry season weaving beautiful masterpieces.
Generally they try to sell them at the market, which is 1 ½ hours away. But the market is flooded with them and they don’t often make the big sell which could more or less be their monthly income. So I have toyed around with a couple of ideas on how to get their textiles unto the world and have spoken with a couple of different organizations across Indonesia. I have a long-term plan that involves field trips, continuing education, and marketing for the ladies. But until that can come to fruition I have opened an ETSY shop that not only sells the sarongs but also benefits them further but putting the profit back into their very own turtle conservation efforts. Thus funding further education, field trips, and job training. So if you’re looking for a fantastic gift for your grandma or just want a new blanket that was handmade by some badass Indonesian women – you should look at my ETSY store here.
I wish I could tell you all about all the ridiculous shit I see everyday but this post would never end. I guess you’ll just have to come visit me and join in on it all. Or if it’s too far for a visit, I suggest becoming my pen pal. I am really enjoying the pen pals I have currently and would love to take on more. Interested? Send me some mail at the following address and you will get something grand in return:
Amber Clifton
C/O Wicked Diving
JL Hatta Soekarno
Labuan Bajo, NTT
85667
Indonesia
That’s all for now - I’m headed to Sri Lanka to see a man about some vanilla and some other people about some turtles and then to Malaysia to see an entire neighborhood filled with reportedly delicious food. I plan on returning mildly bloated and full of fun stories. Until next time….