Hello. World!

I've never been much of a diarist, and I've resisted starting a blog because it seemed to me that, with so many blogs, who could possibly want to read one more? But it struck me the other day that most of what we do is in Indonesian, and few people who don't speak the language would have any idea of what we in Spiritia are actually doing - and the adventures we have.

So in this blog, I'll try to report the interesting occurrences that I experience in my daily efforts to support the (mostly young people) with HIV in Indonesia. For the most of you who don't know who or what is Spiritia, you can browse to the English version of our web site, which includes a brief profile and some information about AIDS in Indonesia.

Basically, Spiritia is the Indonesian national peer support organization for people living with and affected by HIV or PLHIV. We support and work with more than 200 peer support groups for PLHIV around this huge and extensive country. Most people don't know much about Indonesia; it stretches from East to West over three time zones, a distance equivalent to New York to Los Angeles, or from Ankara to Belfast. With 17,000 islands, you'll understand that it offers many challenges in getting around. Although I live on the outskirts of Jakarta, I spend a good proportion of my time travelling, much of it on aeroplanes of the much-vilified (with some reason) Indonesian airlines, but also sometimes on the even more disorganised railways and sometimes on a variety of usually overloaded and terribly maintained boats. Sometimes it means staying in some less than salubrious hotels. It would be easy to let all this stress one out, so the solution we have developed is to view it all as an adventure, hence the blog title.

Not every day brings an adventure, so this blog won't just be a diary. When I'm short of material, I'll try to dredge up some interesting tale from the past - I've been supporting people with HIV in Indonesia since 1991, so there's no shortage, as long as my fallable memory holds out.