Happy Thanksgiving

Happpy Thanksgiving all! It's still hot here in Papua. In fact, its been hotter this past week than any other week we've been here! Very strange feelings. The months seem to pass much more quickly without the weather as an indicator.

Louise, the senior teacher, is leaving next week. She will fly to Bali, then back to Australia. After staying in Australia for a bit, she will return to Papua and start working as a director of studies for a school in Wamena run by Ducth missionaries. Exciting job! Hannah and I hope to visit her sometime in March or April.

There is no Thanksgiving here, and it makes me sad. We will try to have a Thanksgiving feast at the teacher's house this weekend. I'll update you on how it goes.

We have a new teacher coming in January to replace Louise. She is Swiss born, but has dual citizenship in Switzerland and Australia. She seems to be overqualified. We'll see how that goes too. It's goo to have new people coming, but sad to have old people leaving.

I've got a nice crop of corn growing in the garden plot now. Most of the stalks are about a foot tall. The pumking plants are also doing well. The leaves are broad, and they are growing straight up. It suppose that in a month or so they will bend and begin creeping along the ground. I look forward to a nice harvest in February!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for more updates as things unfold.

-Nick

Mystery Part 2

OK, are you ready for part two of the mystery robbery? Here we go!

So, we went with Wade to One of the owners, and asked him to go to the police. He agreed and reported this case to the police. Shortly after this the police came and started the process of interviewing everyone that worked at EF. They also took Hannah's wallet so they could fingerprint it. Now, while all of this was going on, the teachers kept discussing the matter in the teachers house at night after work, and in the morning before work. It came to our attention then that it is generally agreed upon that the owner has the chief of police in, shall we say, his front pocket? From this discussion on, the possibility of the owner's family buying off the poilce to protect Annie (if she indeed is the culprit) had become very real.

The police took about three weeks to fit in interviews for everyone (it's a third world country, they are very busy here). After this they reported some information to the one of the owners, and aparently some DIFFERENT information to Wade. Wade got more info than the owner. What the police officer told Wade was that they had two suspects: one was Roy the office boy, and the other was Annie. They also told Wade that from what little evidence they had, and from the interviews with these two people, they were 70% sure it was Annie. The police then in secret slipped a note to one of the secretaries downstairs which read something like (keep an eye on Annie, look for any odd behavior). Wade was informed of this "sting", but the owner was not.

Good news for us!! The police are actually doing their job! We thought it was too good to be true, and it was. At least one more week went buy, and I got impatient. "OK, where's the update, now that the police are so close, what's next, and when?" I wanted information, I felt like we were being left in the dark. Furthermore we were all highly suspicious of the owner and his family because now that the police were closly invenstigating Annie, they had reason to cover it up. A little note on Chinese culture: family sticks together, and shame is a very real thing. It is perfect reasonable for us to expect that they would protect their family's honor and avoid being shamed.

So, I went to the owner myself. I have learned since being here that his is quite a genuine asshole, so I put on my game face and marched right into his office without knocking, sat down and demanded an update on what the police were doing. He said it would take more time. I didn't belive him. I said "Why don't I trust you?" He said, "Nick, I can't believe you say that!" I told him that the police suspected Roy and Annie. He said "Really, I didn't know that. Who told you?" "Wade," I said. "Oh." He phoned Wade's office, and Wade came down for a mini conference. It ended with the owner agreeing to set up a meeting for Hannah and I with the poilce, and with me apologizing to the owner for being rude.

Two days later we had our meeting. It was quite a load of bullshit if you ask me. The police told us everything we already new, with the added information that they had had a private meeting the owner's family, and that now they were going to investigate Roy's house. ROY's HOUSE!!! Stuff went missing BEFORE he worked there, AND Annie had admitted to at least one crime. Mr. Police man, do you think that the family might have an interest in protecting Annie to avoid shame? "No, the family said that they had searched Annie's room, and questioned her, and we trust the family."

After the family meeting, the police came around full circle and poured its effort into investigating Roy. I know that if I were the police I would save the most likely suspect for last, and then not even bother to search her house because I trust the family... (in the words of Wayne: NOT!)

Annie has made so many strange comments lately that it can't possibly be anyone else, unless she's actually clinically crazy, which is also likely.

Anyway, the plan now is for Hannah and I to mail the friendly heads of EF Indonesia in Jakarta and tell them our troubles. Included in the list of troubles might be how the onwers broke the law by refusing to give the Indonesian teachers their holiday bonus, and maybe even how when all that stuff went missing they denied it was their responsibily and refused to hire security. Our hope is that in response to this email they will contact Wade, and we will pressure the owners from many angles. More as the story developes. Stay tuned for part 3.

Here is a picture of Base G, a nearby beach.

Disruption in the Situation

Friends and Family gather around. Are you ready for a robbery mystery? The let's begin!

It all started about one month ago when Hannah noticed that her ATM card had gone missing. She tried to go in and get the card deactivated, but the bank was closed because of Idul Fitri (end of Ramadhan). When the bank finally opened, Hannah and I went in and cancelled her card. Everything was back to normal... or so we though.

A few days later (maybe it was a week later, I can't remember), Hannah went to the bank to withdraw some money. This in itself was unsual because we usually withdraw money from my account, and hold our savings in Hannah's. When Hannah came home after going to withdraw money, she reported that it had all been stolen! The bank satment said that over a course of two weeks, someone had slowly withdrawn Rp10,000,000 from her account. That's the same as $1,000!

We were both shocked. Everyone in the teacher's house discussed the matter, and reasoned that the card must have been stolen during school hours, while we were all teaching. Someone must have gone into the teacher's room, rumaged through Hannah's things, taken her ATM card, and COPIED the PIN number from its hidden location. Clue number one: Hannah's card was the only thing that went missing, and her PIN was hidden in a very deep and practically inaccessable part of her wallet. The fact that the thief took only the card, found the PIN, copied it, and put it back in the exact same spot, highly suggests this: that this was an inside job, and it was pemeditated.

As it turns out, this is not the first time something has gone missing from teachers at EF. Wade reported that almost since the beginning things have gone missing. Wade had money stolen form his office. Someone lifted up his briefcase, looked under a stack of papers, and unwrapped a wad of paper used to disguise his wallet, then took not all, but only some of the money there (Rp300,000). Some also stole one of the Indonesian teacher's handphones, and others have had bits of money and things taken from inside the teacher's room. Contracts had also been stolen from teacher's desks, and not long ago someone deleted a rather significant number of files from Wade's computer.

Interestingly, one of the office girls whom we shall call "Annie", admitted to Wade later that she had deleted the files from Wade's computer. It was also generally accepted that Annie was the one who stole the contracts, though no one can say why. Annie is the younger sister of the two Women that own EF and the rest of the block that EF sits on.

Now, when Louise heard of the money that had been stolen from Hannah's account, she later was having a casual conversation about it with some of the people downstairs. She mentioned to Annie that money had been stolen, and said "Why would someone do that?" as we often ask rhetorically. "Yeah, I know" is a common response, or "Yeah, I can't believe that, who would do such a thing?" Typically the response you get is not "Maybe the person was trying to cause a disruption, like in the political situation," which is exactly how Annie responded. Two points toward Annie as the culprit.

This concludes part one of a two part series. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion next time on "Disruption in the Situation".

-Nick