Where Are Ron and Ellen?
Indonesia: 30 November 2010 - 15 March 2011
Ron on the road to Geumpang, Indonesia, December 2010
Gold Mines of Geumpang
18 December 2010
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
Cold continues here, and we had several inches of snow on Thursday, enough to close schools and businesses and make roads treacherous. Although my driveway is still "exciting," (put the car in low gear and gun the engine to get up the long slope!), paved roads were clear enough yesterday for the two performances of North Branch School's 27th annual production of St. George and the Dragon. Based on traditional mummers' plays and similar to The Christmas Revels performed each year in Washington DC, the show is a patchwork of songs, stories, skits, and dances from many traditions, all designed to keep people hopeful and cheerful on the shortest day of the year, and to drive the cold darkness away. Each year, all except the very youngest students take part, with the younger students singing and dancing in the show’s opening scenes, the oldest students performing the main "St. George" part of the play, and all music provided by students on recorder, guitar, cello, harp, and drum.
Simon, my 3rd grade grandson, wearing silky red pants and long glittery red stocking cap, danced and sang with his age group, and had special lines to say. Leo, my 5th grade grandson, was a dancer in the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance and in the sword dance, and was a spectacular Dragon of Air in flowing and sparkling silver robes.
Leo is the silvery Dragon of Air, Simon (in red hat) helps to "turn the spit" No matter how many times I see it performed, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance never fails to awe me. It is an ancient ritual, danced in the hope of good hunting, and watching it you feel in your bones a connection to those long-ago people. Antlers used for the dance in the English village of Abbots Bromley have been carbon-dated as at least a thousand years old.
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance (Leo in rose-colored robe) Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ron has been having his usual unique adventures. Many of you have asked me questions that are variants of why he wants to travel so much, why is he willing (or courageous or foolish?) to have the adventures he does. I don't know the answer. Some of you have said you love to travel, but (like me) want a bit more comfort and security than Ron seems to need. That said, you (and I) can thoroughly enjoy reading about Ron's adventures, while being very happy that we are reading about them at home. Much as I hate cold and snow, I prefer to deal with them (and to enjoy "St. George and the Dragon") than to slog up and down a muddy mountain in borrowed and ill-fitting rubber boots. But, read on....
Love to all,
Ellen
To see photos of the road to the gold mine and of the gold mine site, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Gold Mines of Geumpang
To see photos of the gold mining process, click on the thumbnail at the left.
17 December 2010
On the way via bus to Medan, IndonesiaHello, my dear,
Friday afternoon, December 17, drained, bruised feet, upset stomach, sore muscles, sitting in the front left seat, which is not behind the bus driver [because they drive on the left so the driver sits on the right], with my Toshiba netbook, named Marco, on my lap and at my feet my backpack containing sample ore given to me by a couple of the gold miners of Geumpang with instructions for getting the gold out, listening to a collection of French music from Bob and Thierry, while I try to type this report, which I think Doug will be most interested in, and wondering where I will spend Christmas.
Arriving via ferry in Medan around 9 pm Sunday it was a mob scene and I am thankful to have a guide, my new friend, Nasrullah, who was my cabinmate, (2nd class cabin of 8 bunks with only three) on the overnight cruise from Karimun to Medan. We took a small van to where we caught another small van to the city center (couple of hours) where his brother was picking us up in his car. This morning I asked Nasrullah who was his mentor who taught and influenced him to become a businessman, and he answered everything he learned came was from Robert Kiyojaki's book: Rich Dad and Poor Dad. Over the last few days from hours of conversation I have created an image of him as very wealthy, unpretentious, ambitious 37 year old businessman and politician (leader of his party) from Batam on a trip to implement a well thought out business plan in his home of Geumpang in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra. He now has four businesses: a Metal Fabrication Plant and a road building company in Batam, a 25 hector chocolate tree plantation near Geumpang where his mother and father are living and watching, and now a gold processing company in Geumpang.
Nasrullah's brother Fadhillah met us near the bus station and took us to his home west of the city, in Binjai, in an interesting gated community which I look forward to exploring more in the next few days as well as getting to know his wife Emi and his children Nisa and El.
We slept on a couple of mattresses in his daughter's room, vacated for us. The next morning I had a shower in a bathroom with an Asian squat toilet, a large reservoir of water with a plastic pot with a handle to pour into the toilet to flush. There was a handheld shower to bathe. The floor was tiled, with no part dry. While there was no mirror, there was a small rack to hold my toilet kit along with a lot of other stuff which was already there. The bath was off of the kitchen /dining room which had a sink and mirror.
The day was full of errands which both brothers had to complete. In the process we visited a large chicken farm (300,000 chickens) since Fadhillah is a veterinarian specializing in chickens, working for a large company (his boss is coming from Jakarta) supervising 8 other veterinarians working under him. Nasrullah was also visiting a large metal-working plant where his new first set of 8 vats for taking gold from other miners' rubble was being fabricated. Fadhillah said it would be like a large mixer used for making chicken feed. We also went shopping at a couple of the large malls to buy my charger for my telephone and camera (both of which I left at home when I was adding the last charge). The neatest purchase was a usb G3 modem and phone card for unlimited Internet access anywhere I can pick up the telephone signal in Indonesia, which is almost everywhere. This means I won't have to go searching for "hot spots" to access the Internet and my email. This was the last purchase of the day and we were running out of time, so I have to go back and get everything registered so it will work. Fadhillah, his wife, son and daughter were taking us to the bus station to what I finally figured out was Aceh Province, the northern tip of Sumatra. We took a large overnight bus with a large window that ran the length of the bus.
I slept most of the night and have no idea where we got off of the bus the next morning. We transferred to a small van for a couple more hours before we got to another town where we were picked up by a police car, driven by two police inspectors from neighboring towns, to Nasrullah's home town of Geumpang. Perhaps Google Maps will show the location of Geumpang. I have no clue. To get the bus back we went NW for a couple of hours from Geumpang and the bus started out going East.
Nasrullah's mother's brother, his uncle, is the chief of police in Geumpang which explains the police transport. We stayed in his uncle's home in a complex of police, army and government buildings next to the mosque (which woke me up this morning at 5:15), and I remembered the time I slept in the police station in Costa Rica after my pack was stolen on the train while going through a dark tunnel, and another time in Peru with Brenda when we slept in empty police jail cells.
We ate and had tea at a couple of different restaurants and I met other government officials and friends of the chief and Nasrullah, and everyone was polite and interested in me and what I was doing. Nasrullah is telling people that we met in Singapore and I am his American consultant. It is impossible for me to pay for anything and finally he told me it was embarrassing when I paid for him, so now everything is provided by Nasrullah and I can spend nothing.
To keep track of the day of the week, I have to remember where I slept. Saturday on was the boat, Sunday was in Medan at Fadhillah's home, Monday was on the bus to Aceh, Tuesday was in Geumpang in the chief's home, Wednesday was at the gold mines, Thursday was back in Geumpang, and for tonight (Friday) and Saturday (two nights in a row!) I will be back in Medan at Fadhillah's home. Because of his boss's visit Nasrullah will not be able to take me to Lake Toba as planned. I long for a bed and time to get myself organized, clothes washed, notes written and rest. But I digress.
Wednesday morning we took off on a motor scooter to visit again the land outside of town where Nasrullah is setting up a number of large vats to process the rubble from other miner's gold mines. We have spend hours discussing his business plan and it sounds solid to me. He took classes from an expert in Singapore to learn how to use chemicals to treat the rubble to get out the gold that the miners did not get in their process, and in the process he will also clean the rubble and recover the chemicals. I won't give away his secrets but I am sure Doug will be most interested. And I will bring back a sample of the gold ore they gave me today.
The land he is developing is a hectare and he plans on buying a couple of more hectares. The site is a beautiful spot, on top of a plateau and will be built down the side so the vats can be filled from the upper level. In Medan I saw the equipment being built. A cone shaped bottom, and three rings of steel high, with each ring being about four feet high and I think 90 inches diameter. I saw the number on a tape measure but not sure what unit of measure they were using. [probably centimeters? in which case it would be about 36 inches in diameter]
After checking on the site work, we took a motor scooter down to the river below and began our long walk to the gold mines. The road was terrible and not easy for motor scooters. I saw a couple of Jeeps with chains. I think we walked up the mountain 7K where we were to be picked up by his cousin on a motor scooter, but he wasn't there and we must have walked one or two more before meeting him, to be shuttled one at a time to an intersection where we had tea and water. Then we had to walk on an even worse road for another 3 or 4 K before arriving at the gold mines. This road had a lot of areas where wooden slats made a path for the motor scooters. Still very rough. And in between, large mud puddles, some like bogs. I had to be careful where I stepped so my boots did not get stuck and pulled off. I was wearing a pair of rubber boots a little too large for me, with two pairs of socks and my gortex socks also to make a better fit. Walking in mud or water up to my calf. The trip was over 6 hours with most of the time walking, uphill and very difficult walking. There was a lot of humor about it being only 10 more minutes.
As an aside, I am back at his uncle's home and Nasrullah's father (my age: 70) has walked in to my room with his wife (younger, 58 I think) and has started giving me a traditional foot massage, including cracking all my toes. There is a lot of humor as I pull back and yell as each toe is cracked. On the way back today, downhill, my feet kept sliding forward in my boots putting pressure on my toes. I may never walk again! Coming back we had a motor scooter, but I think it was harder for Nasrullah handling the motor scooter than it was for me walking. I would ride some and then get off to cross rickety bridges, mud bogs, deep ruts, bad rocks, etc., then ride some more. The last part I walked because he was losing air in the front tire and the terrain was really bad. A couple of times I had to push or pull or lift the motor scooter to get up some mud banks. From the walk up to the gold mining camp and back my clothes are a sight from the mud, and smell worse than they look. I like his mother and father. They were both teachers and I think did a good job of teaching their children.
I tried to envision California in the gold rush days. Here I was told there were over 3,000 miners working more than 300 holes and some getting a kilogram of gold a day. (Doug, what is that worth?) I saw some of the silver colored balls of gold that the chemical had made and some samples of gold after the chemical was burned away. They bring the gold ore rocks from the holes back to camp where they crush them with metal hammers and put the crushed stones in metal containers with steel bars, water, chalk and chemicals which are turned by pulleys run by generators. They have two shifts and work 24/7. When the containers are emptied the water and sludge runs down a trough into large pots, with the water and sludge overflowing and mostly being contained in settlement ponds. This is the rubble. The gold embedded in the chemical balls goes to the bottom of the pots. By burning the chemicals away, they end up with gold.
Nasrullah will buy the rubble from the people who have the mines producing the most gold and I watched him testing a sample to decide if he wanted to buy that mine's rubble. There are two others also setting up the same process (they were also trained in Singapore) but he is local and went to school with many of the guys and has a great way with people as well as the local connections to out-compete them. His business plans have evolved over the couple of days we have been here. The morning at the mine he met with the miners committee and received permission to put up one of his vats at the miners' camp, which will solve the transportation costs. He still has to provide information to them to show that his chemicals are safe to have in the camp. The supplies such as rice and gasoline have to be transported over the so-called roads we had hiked in on and the guys on motorbikes can only carry so much and charge a good fee for doing so. Transporting the rubble from the camp to his land outside of town would be a major expense. He also has some new ideas which I will not provide here about an alternative to the vats, has talked to his contacts in Singapore, and will be going there in the next couple of weeks to work out the plans.
There is an American gold mining company in the area which explored the area from the air with lasers and determined where the most gold was located. The site I am visiting, I understand, was found by the Americans but they started their work in a more distant and harder to reach area with indications of more gold. The locals found out about the site and started mining on their own and now the Army and the miners protect the place from outsiders, including the American company. There was a painting of an AK47 on one of the miner's house. I watched the helicopter go back and forth to the American mine and joked about how Nasrullah would have to buy a helicopter.
One of Nasrullah's friends from Batam, an English teacher who taught him English, has come here to work for him and has spent a lot of time in my presence tonight. He tells me he has four wives, and his first wife doesn't know about the others and he is not able to tell her because he loves her the most. Eight children, four from his first wife. We talked about economics and how it is impossible to save any money in Indonesia and when I asked him how much his cigarettes were, he said about $1 a pack, and he smokes three packs a day. I pointed out that he could save almost a hundred dollars a month but he said it is too hard to quit. (And now as I sit in the bus at one of the rest stops, my seat mate is smoking a cigarette and I now realize the smell is cloves.) He told me that on the west coast near Pandang where one of his wives is from things are very different. Usually when a couple get married the woman moves into the man's family home, but in this area it is different and the man moves into the woman's family home. When they tire of the man, they just ask him to leave. Here the women are in charge, very different from the Aceh area where there is no alcohol, no affairs with women without marriage, and all the women have covered heads and the men are in charge.
Tonight we walked up the street in Geumpang and watched the Indonesia soccer team beat the Philippines one to zero while we drank tea. We were going to take the van bus to the town where I can catch the large bus back to Medan tomorrow. I was looking forward to a hotel room to wash my clothes and sleep in a bed. But this evening the rain came, very heavy and very long and all the buses were canceled because they could not make it through the lower places that would be flooded. So now we are planning on taking a van bus tomorrow at 6 am to meet the larger bus and I will be able to see the terrain between here and Medan. Who knows when I will get to send this message, but this has been one hard and wonderful adventure into the gold mining area or Aceh where they have their own language, all the women's heads are covered, there are no premarital relationships, no beer or alcohol, it is controlled by the religious order and would be rather repressive to me, but the people are wonderful, friendly, open and interested in me. I have perceived no negative feelings about me being here with one exception. Walking around the gold mining camp taking pictures, one guy got sort of up-tight; I could tell by the way he was talking to Nasrullah and motioning towards me. Nasrullah told me later than when the guy realized who he was, he then realized they were family and there was no problem at all.
Nasrullah would like to come to Virginia for a month to study English so he can speak correctly, but doesn't know where or how to get a visa. This will be something I will work on when I get home.
As I look up and watch the road in front of me as the bus driver hurls this large bus down a road covered with motor scooters, cars and an occasional bicycle in the towns, sounding his air horn constantly, I am amazed to see no accidents and just pray I make it to Medan safely. If you get this you will know I arrived safely.
Love and miss you, I am sure you would have loved the hike into the gold miner's camp. [Ellen's comment: HAH!]
Love and miss you,
Ron
18 December 2010
To see photos of Medan and friends there, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Medan, Sumatra, IndonesiaHello, my dear -
Today I spent the whole day with Boy, the name his father gave him when he was a young boy, and his family - first at the mall getting my g3 modem and card to work - and it does as I have now downloaded your email and am sending this from his home without a local network, hotspot or Internet cafe. So I can more easily stay in touch and find out info off of the Internet like Google Maps, and click on links in my email wherever I am. Makes our service at home seem rather archaic. But the download is slow.
First thing this morning we started the washing. But when we came home we found that it had not finished because the water got turned off to this section of town. So I still have clothes that are dirty and stinky - but now also wet with soapy water.
We also went to a travel agent and booked a flight to Jakarta for Dec 27. So I will spend Christmas in Lake Toba or Brastagi, probably the latter. Tomorrow we are making a trip to Brastagi, and if we find transportation is available between Brastagi and Lake Toba, I will stay. If not I will return to Medan, and the next day take a bus to Lake Toba, returning after a few days to go again to Brastagi for Christmas. It is a Christian town with a high elevation, so it will be cool, and, I have read, is interesting, with pleasant walks outside of town, and good accommodations.
We spent a lot of the afternoon at a used clothing market, and while Emi was shopping for clothes, we drank tea, walked around, and talked. While having tea the young waitress came over to me with her camera and asked to have a picture taken of her and me. I agreed. She explained to me and Boy that she was a student - 19, studying tourism - and when I asked she told me she wanted to work in food and beverage in a hotel. Later she came an asked me to come with her to show me the shopping area. She made an interesting tour out of a rather dull market, showing me all the interesting little back alleyways, where all the bales of clothing are received from Singapore, and where they are sorted and distributed around the city of Medan - and perhaps further. Sort of like a big Goodwill operation. Later she came up and asked if I have a Facebook page, so now I will start to have friends from Sumatra.
Communications are really faster here. Everyone has cell phones, texting, calling, and using email and Facebook, I think from their phones. I am still trying to figure out how to use my phone and now I am getting text messages from my gold miner businessman friend.
I keep trying to turn down all food today, still have a bad case of tourista, and the second thing we had to do in the mall after getting my modem fixed, was to buy toilet paper, a most difficult item to communicate. I was out and had no sample. The two words in the dictionary didn't work. Finally, after a long struggle to communicate, the word tissue was used - that was the magic word.
Now back home I am recharging my netbook, my Walkman, my phone, my camera battery.... and having fun using the Internet to write you. But in the background I can hear food being cooked .... Thank goodness for the little white pills and toilet paper.
Love and miss you. I worry about you staying warm (which is one of my main tasks in life and I have let you down). Would love to be home and rest for a few days. Of course to return after.
Ron
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Last updated: 7 January 2011
