Open Writing

So, in between house-hunting, a bit of work had to be done. Each morning the university bus, donated by IDP Australia, would come and collect Mike and myself, and we’d drive over to the old campus. This was a twenty-five year old building, and due to almost total neglect, was only fit for the bulldozer. The very large new campus was still under construction about 11 kms out of town, and we’d go out there often to check on progress and see if we could help with any problems.

The funding for this huge venture was coming from the Asia Development Bank, and a number of countries were involved. The Dutch were handling the architecture and supervision of construction, Australia had handled the teaching materials and recommended what each faculty should have, as well as supplying us to help with installation of equipment and training of staff, and Japan was landscaping.

Everything was going as well as could be expected, and our central workshop facility and training area was only just under way, and it was quite a few months before it was enclosed enough to start pushing for staff to train.

On April 25th, a large conference was called, and a number of Australian advisors had turned up, plus the hierarchy of the University and World Bank officials. It didn’t seem right to be working on Anzac Day, but we weren’t in Australia. Part-way through the meeting, I stuck my hand up, and reminded the hierarchy (as if they needed it) that we had been pushing for months to start training, and where were the technical staff?

A word of explanation. Most modern universities in Australia and overseas are stuffed full of complex electronic equipment, and complicated computers, machinery or equipment that needs to be used in the correct manner. To keep this rather large investment in good running order for research and teaching purposes, about one-third of university staff are ‘support staff’. That is, carpenters, electricians, air conditioning experts, technicians in all fields from Anatomy to Zoology, Glassblowers, Photographers, Laboratory Managers, all bringing years of experience and expertise.

This university had fifteen thousand students, soon to grow to twenty-three thousand, and three thousand staff. Fifteen hundred of these staff were professors, lecturers and the like, and the rest were administrative staff. Last but not least, there were two technical staff! Needless to say, there was a lot of previously valuable equipment in storage, awaiting service for such things as a new globe or an electrical plug to fit the local system.

So, there we were at a packed meeting, and one of the Australian education experts stood up and advised us that the Indonesian education system did not recognise support or technical service as part of their system, and were not normally employed. So, we’d been there for close on two months, and no-one at the university had wanted to tell us why they could not give us staff for training.

The workshop and training centre was obviously not going to be ready for a few months yet, so I busied myself by starting on a data-base for the $9 million worth of new equipment. There were a great many contracts, but no central register of supplier, parts, part numbers or suppliers.

It soon became obvious that what the Australian academics had recommended for certain subjects, and what was going to be delivered, were often completely different. One that sticks in my mind were cork dissecting mats. These are used to carve up a small rodent or frog, and pin out the skin so that the insides can be examined. A cork mat is as big as a dinner plate and about 6 or 8mm thick, and would cost maybe $2.00 each. Somewhere in the ordering process, the word ‘dissecting’ stood out, and as cork mats were not terribly expensive, someone had decided to buy stainless steel dissecting tables, at around $1500.00 each. So those studying zoology would not be getting a few hundred cork mats and pins, but two or three human sized tables.

The tenders had all been approved of by the government body that co-ordinates such things in Jakarta, and percentages added on as they went. Instead of the prices being extremely good, they were far more than I would have paid in Australia, but then our purchase orders did not go through a myriad of government officials.

Many of these government officials had no clues whatsoever on laboratory equipment, and so when they saw an item on tender, they just removed all the accessories. Months later we had large lathes arriving without chucks, Welding equipment without gauges or hoses, or hundreds of microscopes without power leads. Even the plugs on the ends of the leads had not been specified, and so they arrived with the country of origin’s plug fitted. “So what?” you might ask, but consider what 3000 UK type plugs would cost to buy, and who would fit them? When some did eventually arrive, staff had to be convinced that wiring in the earth wire was important; normally it is left off altogether.

We used to get quite a few Australian academic staff visiting under the aid program, and running training courses for university staff. On one occasion, a visiting professor tracked me down and asked if I could look into a problem. A piece of laboratory equipment had been donated and sent to his opposite number in the university, and he had written back to say that it ‘wouldn’t fit’. “Could I please help?”. So I grabbed a few tools and parts, and followed the professor over to his colleague’s laboratory, and was shown the equipment sitting on the bench, still in its original plastic covering.

I then told the professor that I could see the problem, and he was somewhat curious, as it hadn’t been unpacked, and was still in its plastic inner container. The gear was unwrapped, and as it sat on the bench, I asked the Prof if he could now see the problem. Still no, so I pointed to the power plug. It was our good old Aussie plug, 3 pins, unbreakable body. Of course it ‘wouldn’t fit’; Indonesian plugs only have two sockets. I soon cut off the plug, as I was collecting these for use on my own computing gear, and put on a new plug.

The reason why I was changing over, apart from having set up an earthed system for electrical gear around the house, was that the local plugs had an annoying habit of falling out of their wall sockets. If you were in the middle of typing up a report on the computer, this could be bothersome.

The new university was standardising on the British system, which uses a very solid plug with a built in fuse. The material used tended to be rather brittle, and dropping them on the tiles or concrete floors did nothing to extend their life.

While on the subject of plugs, we took with us a small electric travelling jug, to boil up a bit of water for tea or coffee, rather than having to buy it all the time. Of course, our Aussie plug had to be changed, so I headed off to one of the numerous little hardware and electrical shops that can be found in most streets. My Indonesian at that stage was not too good, and for some reason, the little man in the shop didn’t have much of a command of English. I asked for ‘plug’, but that meant nothing to him. I cast my eye around the glass-fronted counter, but to no avail. Then I asked him for a pencil, and I drew a plug - with 3 pins! No, he’d never seen such a thing. As a last resort, I thought I’d try my smattering of Dutch, learned from a year in Holland and a Dutch wife. “Stekker?” I asked with a big question. “Ah, stekker!”. Of course he had them, He proudly pulled open two large drawers. “What colour would you like - black or white?”

So, my first practical lesson, and I was soon to learn that all electrical, automotive and plumbing items had Dutch names, although somewhat changed in spelling and pronunciation.

Another visiting professor had a problem of a different sort. The first I saw of this person was following a rather heavy knocking on my house door, and a very red-faced, hot and angry senior academic was huffing away, wanting to know why he had not been collected at the airport? This was hardly my department, but he was invited in, and he explained that people had told him that there was an Australian living here, and he had tracked me down.

It seems that he’d been to visit this university on previous occasions, and had trodden on a few toes. What no one had bothered to point out to him was that the university closed each day at 1pm. Staff would head for home, and then go to their offices or shops in the city, where they could earn a slightly more decent salary at their second job. This professor was running courses in the afternoons, and staff could not get away.

So it seemed that on this visit, he was being avoided, starting with a lack of transport from the airport to his temporary accommodation. As expected, when he arrived at the University next day sharing our transport, he was greeted with the usual Indonesian charm and hospitality. He was told what detailed plans had been made for him to visit a well-known tourist area up in the mountains, which would take exactly the same time as his proposed course. As the professor started turning an interesting shade of pink, I begged out of things, and slunk away to the peace of my temporary office.

One of the biggest problems we had was a cultural one. In Indonesia it is not considered polite to point out to your boss that something is broken or not operating, as this could be construed as criticism of some sort. So if a pump stopped operating or a piece of equipment would not function correctly, it was shelved, and left for the boss to find it. Another slightly irritating problem was that everything was locked. No-one trusted anyone, and all doors, cupboards, machine rooms and the like were locked. If the holder of the key should be away or the key forgotten, then the problem was avoided until maybe the next day.

As large numbers of students were starting to transfer out to the new campus, it was soon obvious that large amounts of water would soon be needed for toilets and cleaning. Try as we might, we could not find anyone with the key to the pump house, and so each department would ship in jerry cans full of water for the toilets. Drinking water was always bottled and you brought your own.

It was only after the builders had departed, that we were told the water mains was connected, which ran from a large underground reservoir. From here it was to be pumped around the campus using a ring mains system. Mike and I conferred on what should be done to get the pumps operating, as no-one seemed to know where the key was. We then bought a pair of solid bolt-cutters, and cut the padlock off the door, much to the horror of the local staff.

Our troubles had just started. Mike gave the pump a nudge, and it started running, but not too fast. This was the result of a missing phase cable, but that was fixed much later. We had enough pump power to start water flowing, and it started coming up all around the campus like a series of water fountains. The mains had been broken in many places by heavy machinery, and we suspect the builders knew it. Once the section nearest to our workshops had been repaired, we tested for water inside the building. Reports soon came that it was coming up through the tiled floor.

By now we had some staff, and one of the lads lifted out the tiles and they dug down to a water pipe. This had been installed only days before, but what they brought up was an old, rusty length of pipe, with so many holes you could have played a tune on it. As there was a growing village on the other side of the university fence, we had a pretty clear idea of where the new pipe had gone during the night.

It’s easy to be critical of a developing country, and especially the eastern part of Indonesia which tended to be a bit of a back-water. The lack of English was bad enough, especially as most hand-books and manuals came in English, and no-one bothered to insist on a good translation before anything was purchased. The lack of technical expertise was really holding things back, and the Dutch were about to build a new hospital, but would not do so until it could be maintained properly. There was a lot of cooperation with our team, and we knew we’d be handing over to their technical staff at the end of our contracts.

We instigated a program of asking staff to advise us of repairs needed, and we could come and check it out and if necessary, take it back for a detailed check-out. There seemed to be considerable reluctance to do this, and it took us some time to find out that our Indonesian counterpart had told departments that repairs would be charged for, as would bench time if they came to the workshop. He had opened a bank account for these ‘extra’ funds, and also, the precision tools we’d purchased out of our petty cash allowance were often very dirty and damaged on Monday mornings. We then discovered that the head of our section had started a small sideline on the weekends, and was running a bit of a garage. A large padlock soon slowed this down.

(To be continued)