This guy has been stuck in bed for months since his motorbike accident. His accident happened as he was just months away from finishing his university degree. He was ready to start working to provide for his family who had all sacrificed for him to attend university.
If there wasn't someone around his house to help him get around, he couldn't stand up on his own. It's been really difficult for him at times. He's been working hard on his therapy, while also fighting to keep a positive outlook on life.
Our team delivered a walker to his home recently, and he instantly got up and started walking around his home. He was excited to show off his upper body strength. It is always exciting to see how a simple mobility aid can not only change a person's physical mobility but also their attitude.
Sometimes it's just heartbreaking. The struggles that people are facing all over this island can be so difficult, and it is difficult knowing that we cannot help everyone.
Our local partners that work at Access life Bali face these challenging situations everyday as they help people with disabilities. I was with Ani and Andre recently when they were following up with a family in the mountains. The grandpa has some disabilities, the grandma has some health issues, and the granddaughter has major disabilities that stem from a sickness she had as a small child. The dad and mom of the little girl are not in the home any longer.
Incredibly, this family continues to live with hope for the future. They are focused on all the good things in their life, and they are so thankful that our team continues to visit them regularly. It's great.
I had a summer job once where we worked closely with the Dept. of Transportation. The running joke was that for every person actually working, you would need a minimum of 3 guys "supervising", i.e. doing nothing.
I was recently up in the mountains to check on a water project, and everything was looking good: the water source still has a high flow rate, the pump is still running, and the pipes are intact. However, there were some loose ends that needed to be finished up. One thing was running a pipe underneath a road and then connecting the main pipe into a smaller, feeder pipe.
As you can see, here in Bali we also like to keep to the DOT ratio of one person working to three people "supervising". In this situation, lots of advice and constructive criticism were coming from the supervisors. It was fun...
At a recent ceremony to hand over seven new water tanks to a local village, I had the responsibility of taking some pictures for the Access Life Bali office.
The guy in this picture came and kind of hung around without saying much.
He didn't need to say much. His face shows that he's probably got a lot of experience and plenty of stories to tell. He lives up in the mountainous area where the Balinese fought off the Dutch and the Japanese during the Indonesian struggle for independence.
I wish that I would have had more time to hear some of his stories...
Pak Kadek and I drove out to west Bali in order to help one of our coworkers install a submersible pump. The install went well, and a community of about 75 people now has access to water. The most interesting part of the day was when Pak Kadek, who was telling a story about something, bolted mid-sentence up a hill. He grabbed a stick as he was running and pinned something to the ground. We all followed. Half confused, half curious.
He had seen a black scorpion cross a path and wanted to catch it. Usually scorpions in Bali tend to be small, but this one was relatively large (about 5 inches long). On our island, the bigger the scorpion, the less you have to worry. The word on the street is that the big ones don't really hurt if they sting you. It's the small ones that have a dangerous sting.
About 30 minutes later, I was telling a story about something, and I saw a brownish blur fly past me, from left to right. My eyes tried to follow it, but it was a small 'landing' sound that drew my attention to a nearby tree. It was a lizard! He scurried up the tree and out of sight. I had heard of flying lizards but had never seen one. I was a bit embarrassed to even suggest to my friends that I 'thought' I saw a lizard fly past me (Living in a different culture tends to bring on plenty of ridicule, so I try to avoid intentionally sounding like an idiot).
But I had to ask... turns out there are plenty of gliding lizards in that part of Bali. I got home later in the day, told Jaiden and Kenan about it, and then we looked up this video that tells a little more about the 'Draco' lizards.
I just finished a funny post about Tinga-Tinga for the Access Life Bali blog. If you want to know how ALB has helped to end female baldness in Tinga-Tinga, you can find out by clicking HERE.
I will be running a half marathon this coming Sunday in and around the lovely little town of Gianyar, Bali. I will be running to raise money for Access Life Bali's water projects and sustainable goat farming initiative.
The shack on the right is currently being inhabited by a family of five. Their previous home collapsed, and they used some of the salvageable materials to contstruct this little shack.
The Indonesian and expat workers at Access Life Bali got together recently and raised money to build a simple house for this lady and her family. Work on the new house started just a few days ago, and it should be completed soon.
It was great to see Pak Nyoman, Ibu Kadek, Made, and Arie from Access Life Bali going to this community to help build the new house.
We are still in the preliminary stages of checking to see what the flow rate on the springs in Tinga-Tinga will be, but it's looking good so far. I was there last week, and we should have water flowing into the village soon. The picture below is the house where we store all the materials. Those stacks of white things are 100 meter rolls of pipe.
Jaiden gets all kinds of breaks from school. Indonesia recognizes 6 religions, and the schools take off for most of the 6 religions' important days. On one of her recent days off, she and her friend Mikayla came along with me and Ash for a water survey.
Access Life is looking to start some new projects, so we have been surveying several potential sites over the past few weeks. Jaiden came and provided her valuable expertise... Mikayla and Jaiden waded around, looked for river crabs and tadpoles, threw sticks, and ate junk food.
I was out in west Bali the other week, and we needed to upgrade a pump that we had used in one of our previous water projects. So I was out there with some of the other ALB guys, and we had to unroll 1,000 meters of electrical cable so that we could put in an electrical pump.
You can see the whole kilometer (that's .62 miles) of cable sitting on the back of this pickup. It was really heavy (about 500 pounds), and it wasn't easy to unroll either.
About 20 guys from the local community came out to help unwind the cable. I joined in with the guys that were pulling the cable. As we got farther and farther away from the pickup, it became more and more exhausting. Then we turned a corner and couldn't see the pickup anymore. The cable became almost impossible to pull, so we gathered up all of our energy and yanked as hard as we could. We heard the guys from the pickup yelling something, and it got passed down the line. It sounded to us like they were encouraging us to pull harder. So we pulled even harder...
Turns out they were actually telling us to stop pulling because the cable had gotten stuck on a tree or something. Thankfully, we didn't break anything, because within a short time the pump was installed and running, and the people from Pendem village were enjoying access to water again.
I had the privilege of spending several hours with this lady and her family. Her name is Men Kamar, and remembering her smile and laugh still brings a smile to my face.
I wrote a quick blurb about her on the ALB blog (which also explains why she's covering her face)... you can read it by clicking here.
