Hazards of Life in the Jungle

Hazards of Life in the Jungle

I’ve developed a fondness for saying that I live in the jungle even though that statement is only partially true. It probably is more accurate to say that I live in a small village that skirts the sea and is surrounded by forest or bush (depending on where in the world you hail from). Whatever term is used, life here in Sumbawa is somewhat different from life in Jakarta, Surabaya, or Bali. A few examples might illuminate the realities of everyday life. The examples today are drawn from what my homeroom students call my “near-death experiences.”

Example 1: When we first built our house here, the local power company (PLN) wanted 35 million rupiahs to hook our house up to the grid. We opted to buy a 10,000 watt generator. At the time, it seemed like a good move financially: 11 million for a generator versus the 35 million to get hooked up to a supply of electricity that was, at the best, sporadic in terms of delivery. The generator became a source of daily jokes at school as it broke down almost daily. One evening, just as the sun was setting over the ocean, we switched the generator on and a belt snapped on the flywheel. In order to get a new belt on, the wheel had to be taken off the generator which involved a long, tiring process which required the work of several men. Living in the jungle means that you can’t call a local electrician – we had one electrician in the village even though several other men like to claim electrical knowledge. We set out in the dark to find the electrician. After 30 minutes we found him at a friend’s house. From there we picked up three more men to assist him in changing the belts. By 10 p.m we had the belts off and replaced, and had changed the batteries on the two flashlights twice. I was covered in mosquito bites hoping that they were malarial mosquitoes. We gathered around the generator while the electrician cranked it up. A loud pop and something whizzed past my eyes. The electrician shut off the generator, and we focused our flashlight on a piece of the flywheel embedded in the concrete wall. A few more inches and it would have been embedded in my forehead.

Example 2: With the generator on the blink, our electrician ran a line from the hotel next door into our son’s bedroom. That connection somehow gave us enough electricity to power a few lights and a fan so that we had some semblance of power during the warm nights. One evening all the power in the neighborhood shut down. I went to disconnect our hotel hookup so that we wouldn’t get a spike when the power went on. Just as I grabbed the cable, the power went back on. The surge shot me backwards across the room with the cartoon-like frizzing of hair. It would have been a good experience if I had been in cardiac arrest.

Example 3: The generator (once again). I went out one night to check the generator and noticed that water was leaking from the exit pipe. I climbed up on the platform where we had our water cooling system, and despite my wife’s urgings, I tried to tighten the pipe while the generator was running. End result – the pipe broke loose and I was showered with boiling water. The force of it knocked me off the platform and on to the ground. The boiling water burned all of the skin on the right side of my face and my right arm, missing my right eye by 2 millimeters. The doctor later said that I would have been blinded if I hadn’t fallen backwards on impact. My children called my the monster for the next week as the skin on my face and arm blackened and then fell off.

Example 4: Driving to work down a gravel road a few days ago, a dog sitting in the middle of the road suddenly ran in front of my motorbike. I hit the brakes in an attempt to avoid hitting him, lost control of the bike and bounced off the dog. As I lay on the road bleeding, a car which was driving too fast behind me just missed running over my head. The driver was nice enough to stop, ask if I was ok, and then get in his car and drive off to work leaving me bleeding on the road.

I’m leaving out encounters with mad monkeys the size of dogs, cobras and vipers, scorpions (I’ve only been stung once, but it was an experience I’ll remember forever), and a month long water outage. But, hey, it’s paradise the rest of the time.