Boys in Indonesia and the World Cup!

The preparations for World cup finals are nothing to turn your nose at. The suspense has been gaining momentum for the past week with everyone talking about who they want to come out on top. The result of your answer can bring jeers or cheers depending on which side you find yourself, but everyone is friendly in the end. Tonight, the majority of people will cheer for Spain. This makes sense, as the Dutch have left a bad taste in the mouth of many Indonesians, as colonialism can do. Another major decision for the hockey-loving Canadian who could care less which team actually wins, is where to watch the game. I have been invited to watch it by half a dozen people, from the local grocery store owner to the trainer at the gym… everyone wants to have the token foreigner over to watch the game. Luckily, I have a good answer when I turn down their offers, as the staff of Mercy Corps will gather at our home to enjoy a potluck style dinner and a projector that has been requisitioned for the purpose. As the game begins at 1:30 in the morning, the convenience of having the game at our place is well worth the effort we’ve put into making food and arranging the living area.
In the last posting, I spoke about some of the challenges faced by woman in West Sumatra. This week however, I thought I would relate the trials of the opposite sex. While hiking in the hills behind Padang, we came across a young boy, maybe 4 or 5 years old, in a sarong held out like a tent in from of him. Curious about his behaviour I asked our local friend, guide, interpreter about it. Very thoroughly, he explained that this boy was at the age where Muslim boys get circumcised. Apparently, people are quite open about the whole ordeal and don’t mind sharing the entire procedure and recovery details. So life, for males is not all fun and games, just ask the boy with the tented sarong!
As for project progress, we have begun to identify potential indicators to quantify for our CBA. For example, the first aid training we will try to measure any change in the number of visits to the doctor, for the evacuation routes we will measure the value of the land that was given up to construct them. These ‘proxies’ will, hopefully, give us some sort of idea as to what the benefits in dollars are for the P3DM program. However, using these proxies means that we will need to make some major assumptions while analyzing the data and unfortunately, the greater the assumptions, the less valid are our results. But, we must work with what we have available to us! There are sure to be many challenges as we progress further.