Day eyes

We've spent today revisiting fishing communities on the eastern side of Simeulue Island, where due to the long period of review we've made of this project, we're now in a position to be offering more funding and redeploying our excellent staff Rakhmat and A'an. The communities were thrilled and it's nice to feel like this is the restart of a ramping up. In the picture we were at the beach and some of the fishermen were displaying what artisanal fishing methods they use to catch fish, sea cucumber, squid and lobster. They are hardly wealthy but the number of kilos they report landing each day (5-10kg is regular per fishing boat), replicated across the community and the innumerable villages on the island, reminds me of the bounty of the sea.

Indonesian is such a fun language. We've had a riot with it today, largely because I can't often extend to full sentences and have to resort to hollering out random assortments of words to make points and get the gist of what's being discussed. My imitations of the Khmer language also had the team in stitches.

P5L is short for panglima laot, an Acehnese term for the traditional head of a fishing community, responsible for dealing with conflicts over fishing methods. Lima means 5 in Indonesia so the term has been shortened as above.

The word for sun is matahari. Literally translated it means 'day eyes'. The famous spy Mata Hari must have acquired the stage name after she married a man who was living in Java, and moved to the Dutch East Indies.

Mata pencaharian means 'livelihoods' and I was told literally translated it means 'eye of the daily search'.

Telur mata sapi goreng is a way of saying 'fried egg' and it translates as fried 'cow's eye' egg. Some bright spark once thought a fried egg resembles a cow's eye. I don't see it.