Building a school, Indonesian Style

The new school building will officially open for business, Monday, July 21st. That is Orientation day when the parents come and check out the classroom, meet the teachers and buy the books and supplies. It was a long and confusing week to get to this point, but we are finally here.

Last Saturday, July 12th we moved everything from the old school building to the new one. Mind you, the new one was no where near done as we moved desks, tables, chairs, and supplies. We walked around workers drilling into metal, cementing ceramic tiles on the floor, and carrying wood beams up and down the stairs. We had to maneuver around bamboo ladders, and wooden horses that they stood on to drill and hammer. Not one worker had on a hard hat, and many of them were shoeless. Quite a few of them were doing their jobs with one hand, as they smoked a cigarette. Monday, and Tuesday of the following week, we were required to be at the building from 7:00 am until 3:00 pm. Yet we sat and waited as workers continued to hammer against the metal beams, cement stones to the façade of the school and running electrical wires. Monday morning, they had scrubbed and scraped my classroom’s ceramic tiles, I was sure Tuesday I would be able to set up my classroom. Instead, when I got to school, tiles were pulled up, and chipped away, because they hadn’t put enough cement underneath. Eventually all those tiles would have buckled if not secured properly. All that cleaning was for naught. We sit and wait

In the meantime, a water tank on the third floor (I am on the second) began to drip, causing a waterfall effect on my wall. Major gaps in the walls allowed for lots of air and sunlight to come in, which was fine for a while since we didn’t have any electricity. No running water either, so we had to tramp outside to the hose to get water to clean with, and then go across the dirt road to use a bathroom.

There are no inspections of the building, no codes to follow, and the man, who oversaw the construction, just appeared to walk around, look, nod his head and keep walking.

Finally, today, Sunday it’s beginning to look like a school. Teachers have been working, 8, 9, 10 hours to complete their classrooms, and we were required to work this past Saturday for at least 8 hours.

As is the custom here, today we had the blessing of the building. As my sister-in-law said, of course they had to have a blessing of the building – god knows without the codes and safety requirements. After the pastor prayed, and the group sang, four men went out of the classroom with oil and put it on various doors and windows. This is a symbol of God’s protection over the building.

Afterwards we had a massive boxed lunch with chicken, shrimp, beef, vegetables and lots of rice. Apparently, someone didn’t think that was enough so they brought in Kentucky Fried Chicken. However, no mashed potatoes – more rice!