Tentena, Week 3.

I’m getting the sense that some of you don’t know why I’m here.

I’m surprised.  I can’t believe those pictures of me doing yoga with a kindergartner and staring at kittens didn’t sum things right up for you.

Here’s an attempt to try and explain better:

It’s not that important how I ended up here.  I wanted to go help out with research in Lebanon this summer and it didn’t work.  This did, so, great.  Prior to coming, I had next to no agenda.  If Merry Minkler’s Community Based Participatory Research Class last semester taught me anything, it’s that you do not go into communities unknown to you demanding to fulfill a predetermined agenda.  True change has to be community partnered.  Things have to come from within.  Lucky for all of us (but mainly just me), my community partner based within, Lian Gogali, is a real life Indonesian Energizer Bunny with high prospects for world peace and a laundry list of tasks to dole out. 

My messy outline/shinning example of my poor spatial-visual skills. 

Task #1 for me this summer is working on ways to increase education, awareness, and intervention for domestic violence (DV).  The Institue Mosinutuwu is expanding and Lian is hoping to establish a safe house for women and children.  She asked me to think about ways we can work to break multigenerational cycles of DV.  I asked her to start thinking about working with the men.  She asked me to create a perpetrator curriculum for the church-run men’s disucssion groups.  (That lady sure can counter.)  I thought, omgggg I’m officially never going to stop working with domestic- and gender-based violence kill me.

But then I said okay.

There is a real need here and I suppose, after all these years of DV counseling, rape crisis counseling, and sexual trauma researching I have, at least, some knowledge on the topic.  

Sondang & Ibu Lina

Included, find some images from our first meeting going over an initial curriculum outline created by yours truly.  Take note of the very official Institute Mosintuwu office space, which also doubles as Sophie’s playroom. 

As things are unfolding from here, I’m now trying to figure out a good way we can train male church leaders to be facilitators of perpetrator groups and good ways we can start assessing community attitudes towards DV.  Evaluation is ethical practice, people!  And propsects for a little data…maybe even a few publications…never hurt anyone. 

Jaime and Sophie's Disney Princess backpacks

Also, Jaime is working on a curriculum for training law enforcement on the fairly-comprehensive-but-rarely-upheld DV laws they have here.  Sondang is working on youth awareness and training because she’d rather work with them when they’re young.  Better to do it when you can actually change them, she says. Ibu (meaning Ms or Madam) Lina, who’s pictured here, works for and closely with Lian and is the official church liaison because she’s a prominent member in that community.  

Lian's mantra. 

***

I want to add that all of this is my on-paper answer to what I’m doing here.  My truth is different.  I took a T.O. from the States this summer to break away from the chaos of my routine and to live a little bit outside of what I know.  Lately it feels like the harder I try to be calm and present the less good at it I get.  My anxiety at home is often barely manageable and I’m not sure what it means when you no longer have time or energy to be available to the people you love.  So in response to this question I’ve been getting a lot, what are you doing?,  my actual answer is: Nothing.  I am working with Lian, but I’m mainly just trying to exist.  Away from constant social media and wifi and frivilous spending and alcohol.  Eve Ensler says that happiness exists in action, it exists in telling the truth and what your truth is, and it exists in giving the world what you want the most.  This summer, I’m just taking a couple of months to sit on my porch overlooking Lake Poso with hot drinks and good reading, trying to figure out what it is that I want the most. 

And also relishing in the Saluopa Waterfall located just outside of town.  (I got a little camera excited here.):