Doing some catching up with my blogging this morning and writing about Nusa Penida! I left for Nusa Penida from Sanur on Monday to volunteer at the Friends of the National Parks Foundation - I wasn’t really told what I was going to be doing during the volunteering but as I loved diving off Nusa Penida last time I thought it might be a cool opportunity to see how the local people go about their days.
When I arrived at the harbour in Penida, I realised that they had actually gotten my dates wrong and hadn’t sent anyone to pick me up so I had to wait half an hour for a ride. I ended up going up some really unsealed roads with my pack on the back of a bike and thought that I was going to fall off the back at some point.
FNPF is a non-profit that works to conserve the critically endangered Jalak Bali, also known as the Bali starling, which was nearly poached to extinction in mainland Bali to be traded as a songbird. Where there were only 10 left in the wild in 2006, but their numbers have risen to around 90 with their introduction to Nusa Penida (very political in the bird community apparently).
The centre also teaches local school children English, and tries to grow food such as the vanilla orchid, potatoes, eggplant, papaya and corn to sell. They also have chickens and cows on site which they eat and sacrifice, as well as sell.
As some of you might know, I actually shortened my stay here by three nights for a few reasons - the main ones were that my skin was reacting to the water quite badly and I couldn’t sleep in the open cabins (roosters, geckos, mosquitoes). Call me a spoilt city girl if you will.
The more complicated reason was that I didn’t feel like the centre was really using the volunteer resources as best they could, where the volunteer activities were inconsistent and poorly organised. After some pretty extensive conversations with the volunteer coordinators about the centre and some of their challenges, we realised what they deeply needed was actually knowledge rather than extra hands (or preferably, both). I had identified some good opportunities at the centre to improve their agricultural practises around fortifying the soil to make their food grow better, and to prevent their hillside on which the vanilla bean was growing from further eroding.
By the second day, we had agreed that I would write up a document with some agricultural techniques and approaches to improving how they grow food at the centre. This included teaching them how to mulch, compost, propagate, irrigate and build structures to stop erosion of steep slopes. I also translated this document into Indonesia with some help from the staff.
I spent two whole days writing the document, broken up by beach visits and smoothie bowls.
One of my beach trips was particularly entertaining. A lot of beaches on Nusa Penida aren’t particularly accessible, so I tried to find one that I could drive down to during my lunch break. I ended up riding down a very steep unsealed road (again) and to my delight, once I got down the the beach, my bike ran out of fuel. There was no way I could get the bike out without getting fuel as the roads were so steep, so I had to figure something out.
Once I had finished lying on the beach trying not to think about my bike situation, I walked up to the local warung on the hill where no one spoke English and tried to plead my case in Indonesia to get help. Thankfully they understood enough of my broken Indo for one of the lovely older men to come down and help me fill up my bike. I wanted to give him 100k for his help, but he insisted that I only pay 20k for the fuel. Such a kind person! I ended up getting back to my accomodation safe and sound.
After finishing my report on Thursday, I got the local boat out to Nusa Lembongan where I’d be spending three nights. The boat ride was quick (15 minutes) and I’ll be writing more about my stay here soon!
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