I have been asked to post about our Christmas eve trip to my sponsored village with a bit of back ground to share with the people who kindly donated clothes so here goes.
I am a retired Englishman, living in Bali on my pension, I sold up in UK and bought house in Bali.
As for work, I don't. But being an old git, and having to do some thing to justify my existence, I allow myself to get roped in to helping people and charities, improve the quality of life for some of the kids, in the poorer regions of Bali.
I have 3 young sisters living in my house 2 are working for me the other does hair braiding; they come from Tianya Barat a village in the north of Bali.
These days some very nice Australians like Max Payne & Fiona of the BTF collect and bring good, preloved clothes with them to Bali, then allow me to distribute them to people that need them. So I go up to my girl's village, Tianya Barat, were their dad is the local Holy Man. He arranges for some of the poorest people to come down from the higher remote villages. We then distribute the clothes and some rice etc.
We had been preparing to do the village run for a couple of weeks, getting food bought, buying polythene bags to measure rice into, and different kind of plastic bags for noodles. Also tins of condensed milk for children that are not getting enough food to survive.
On Saturday 24 December Danny & Becky, from the BTF, a young couple on their honeymoon, and a friend of theirs, Alan came to my house at 9 am to join us in taking goods to Tianya Barat.
They had brought a lot of clothes with them from Australia. As they had hired their own transport to go to the village they were able to take a bit of it in their vehicle. They helped us load up clothes from Chris & Emily from Southern Cross Charity, as well as big bags of clothes and soft toys Teddy Bears etc from Max Payne & Fiona.
On our many trips up the mountain different things have come to our attention children, that have cleft palette, motorbike injuries that need fixing, and many more illnesses, that the villages have no money to fix, on my own I would soon be bankrupt if I tried to fix all the needs but a charity and different individuals offered me their help when they found out what I was doing. One very small charity asked me to open a bank account for them to pay for hospital bills and asked me to act as their unpaid rep to arrange hospital treatment etc. I collect and return kids from village to medical facilities, and some time's put them up in my house while they are getting treatment. I quickly agreed being as it was sort of what I was doing anyway the only difference is other people are helping me pay for it, this little charity Southern Cross Bali Assoc Inc. run raffles garage sales etc to get funds they are real nice genuine people.
When individuals give me money and ask me to arrange for an operation or procedure for a child, or an adult that they know, and because it is important, to me, to keep my reputation intact, I give them a numbered receipt pay it into the charity account. Then on receiving an invoice draw out the money to pay the doctor or hospital bill getting proper receipts that the charity put through their books.
So here we are on Saturday going up to the village 9 people including 2 drivers, clothes for the villages and food we are taking 2 people carriers we have a huge amount of stuff to take up, at the same time we are taking an 11 year old back to her village after she came to get treatment at the Universitas Rumah Sakit Giggi Dan Mullet (University Teaching Hospital dept of Dentistry and Mouth). She has to have treatment, once a month for about 6, months to repair damage from a Cleft Palette operation.
Her teeth have braces now and when her teeth are straitened she will have a clamp that fits all round the head to reshape the upper jaw.
After about 3 hours we stopped off at a Warung where we had ordered 50 Nasi-bunkas specials to take up with us, paid for by the lovely couple Danny & Becky. It took nearly an hour to get it all boxed up, we then continued on to the village.
We arrived at the village Holy mans residence. 3 separate little buildings there is a stone platform that the local men were using to play the Holy Man's musical instruments.
We were soon surrounded by many very dirty children and as we were setting out the clothes and food many more people turned up, we started by sharing out most of the Nasi-Bunkas. The children shared 3 to a portion the Adults 2 to a portion, some said they had already eaten but some of the villagers are so skinny they don't look like they have ever had a good meal, we all joined them in their meal.
Then the girls, with the help of their brothers, gave out some of the clothes. Danny also helped to keep order; this took some time and generated a lot of smiles and excitement.
In a village further up the mountain, lives a friend of ours that runs a shop in Kuta. She had been in hospital with scary illness and had gone back to her village to recuperate , her husband agreed to come and pick us up in his 4 wheel drive Kajang on what I consider a very scary road, in some places its just a dodgy gravel road. Other times it's a mud road in rainy season and dust road in dry season, all is very steep and on the edge of the mountain so you could say the view is great, but if you look down to where you would fall if the driver makes a mistake, its scary. My girls brothers ferried other people, like our two drivers and some other villagers to the higher village.
More village children with their parents came here so we dished out some of the Nasi-Bunkas also rice and noodles and clothes that were put aside for this village.
We had a girl come down from an even higher village that is only reachable by motor bike or walking, to receive money from the SCBA to pay hospital bill for her 3 year old that had dengue fever.
We sat and talked with the help of My Driver Agus and my Girl Madé to interpret for a while.
After this we returned to Tianya Barat and met with relatives of a girl with what appears to be day blindness that has been house bound for years they wanted us to try and help her, we had been asked on other occasions to see this girl but she was too embarrassed to let us see her, on this occasion she plucked up courage and let one of her relatives bring her down the 20 minute motorbike journey down a foot wide path on a very dangerous mountain side path.
We had bought sun glasses with us to try and see if this would help, as without glasses she could not see at all, but with sun glasses she could tell me how many fingers I was holding up. We felt that, this was a start, but still need to get her to a specialist to get her diagnosed properly. I now have to go and talk to many people to see if she can be helped.
When we first started taking clothes to the village there were many people with hardly any clothes to wear, and what clothes they had were full of holes, so they hid behind buildings with just their heads peering round corners, now when we look we can see clothes that we have taken up over the years, and they all come round with happy smiling faces pleased to see us, but there are still communities higher up the mountain that need to be clothed given time we will get there.
By the time we left the village it was 5:30 pm and we still had to get back our respective accommodation.
Hope this has given you an idea of what we are doing with the clothes etc.
I could not do any of this without a lot of help from a lot of really nice people. I am no saint, and I do what I do because I get enormous pleasure and great satisfaction from it.
We have, over time taken a lot of people from the forum that have donated food and clothing with us on the food and clothes runs. LynneD, EvaH, Jackie Stone Bali Jo, Linda, Roo_Ted and Jean, Reiki and Colin UK to mention a few and these all now help when the return to Bali and I feel really privileged to be given the opportunity to help in this way.
At the first opportunity I asked advice from my friends Ken and Chris from Southern Cross Bali Assoc about the Blind Girl and they offered to help as I thought they would, and have now been offered kind assistance from a Brit in high place politically.
So thank you for all the lovely clothes that you sent and we assure you they will be well used now, if you see these people years later they will still be using them.