22
November: The Restaurant's New Roof, Teaching Position Available
at MER |
by
Marit Miners
We are currently seeking an experienced English
teacher to train up our 30-odd staff. Duties will include conducting
lessons for about 2 hours each night after dinner. We will also
ask you to spend an afternoon or two each week in the local village
teaching school children. The minimum engagement is now until our
opening at the end of March. This is a paid position, and of course
includes heaps of mind-blowing diving. Please contact us for more details. |
As we get closer to our opening date,
things just seem to be moving faster and faster. From here on
out, we'll do our best to post updates here twice monthly. There's
just so much to tell.
Andrew and Cherry and Thorben were
joined on the island this week by J.M. Chazine, an archaeologist
and leading authority on rock paintings of Borneo and Australia.
Thanks to our friends at Precious
Planet, Chazine heard about the ancient petroglyphs we saw
near the resort last August. (You can read our posting about them here and see a photo album
of them here.)
He was very excited about the paintings,
and stated that there are some images that he has never before
seen in this tradition. He was very cautious about giving us an
estimate for how old they are, but he took a tiny sample of calcium
carbonate to send back for C-14 dating in France. I can't wait
to hear more about this when Andrew gets back to Sorong next week.
|
the
West walkway and restaurant |
Construction continues to move along
smoothly. After an agonizingly slow Ramadan, all the workers are
back in full force. Tadin, our star carpenter, has brought three
additional carpenters with him from Java. By all accounts, they
are very skilled and are leading construction groups on the guest
cottages. Work continues on the staff bungalows, and they should
be moving off the north beach in the coming weeks. It's getting
quite crowded there now that the construction of the restaurant
is under way.
Andrew has just sent along these photos of the restaurant's
new alang-alang mandala roof. It's a massive yet graceful structure,
and I'm looking forward to dining under it myself someday soon.
The view over the North Bay will be spectacular. |
restaurant
as seen from the cliff above |
The exposed alang-alang on the ceiling
of the restaurant lends a warm feel to an otherwise airy and open
structure. The supports were still in place in the photo to the
left, allowing the roofers to safely do their job. These will all
be removed once they're finished, and the roof will be supported
only by twelve natural timber posts along the circumference of the
roofline.
click on the drawing below to enlarge a detailed
image in a separate window.
drawing
of the restaurant. click to enlarge |
The last batch of soft furnishings
Andrew and I bought in Bali in October has finally arrived in a
cargo container. I was concerned that the pendant lamps we bought
for the restaurant would be too big for the space, but now that
the roof is on, I can see that they will be perfect. We are very
pleased with our table settings.
Just imagine a heaping bowl of homemade muesli with
toasted coconut, cashew nuts, and our own organic bananas and papaya.
Ooooh, and a steaming pot of Sulawesi coffee please. |
one
for breakfast |
| There has been an abundance
of rain in the past few weeks on Batbitim, and the path up over the
hill is edged with flowers. The pink ones below on the right are called
'Bunga Jam Sembilan,' or Nine O'Clock Flower. The bloom every morning,
and they are remarkably punctual. |
flower-lined
path to up the hill and over to the South Beach |
it
must be nine o'clock |
Sargassum
Frog Fish |
Several Sargassum Frog Fish (Histrio
histrio) have been lurking around the concrete posts of the
walkway. We are very flattered that they have graced us with their
presence.
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in America. Eat
some pumpkin pie for me... |
7
November: Our sustainability mission |
by
Marit + Andrew Miners |
| This month’s update
was meant to cover more developments on the island, picking up the
pace again after a frustratingly unproductive October, thanks to Ramadan
and our wedding. We thought we'd tell you a little bit about some
exciting marine life we have been seeing in the North Bay. That will
all have to wait till next time. The morning has been derailed by
a wave of great inspiration thanks to a recent posting from eco-blogger
and all-around do-gooder and smarty pants Colin Beavan, aka No Impact
Man. |
If you have yet to read his blog,
you're in for quite a treat. His posts are intelligent and inspiring,
as well as humble and sweet. In his own words, he's “a guilty
liberal (who) finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic,
becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop
and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging
lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the
planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby
daughter and Prada-wearing, Four Seasons-loving wife along for
the ride.”
|
| NIM and his family are nearing
the end of their one-year commitment to hew as close as possible to
environmental equilibrium, balancing the inevitable negative impacts
of urban life with intentional positive impact. The rules have been
constantly evolving over the past 11 months, but they'll soon be reintroducing
themselves to the 'normal' world with a singular perspective on their
consumption patterns. Perhaps the best part of tagging along on No
Impact Man's ride has been reading about what their 'deprivation'
has allowed - playing charades at night rather than watching tv, freeing
themselves of the frenetic loop of caffeine and refined sugar, and
simply wanting less. |
| He is just a regular guy
who doesn’t claim to know the answers to the universe. What
comes across so vividly from his blog is that not knowing all the
answers doesn’t stop him from trying to do what he feels is
the right thing. He's making it up as he goes along. We feel an affinity
with him, although what we are doing in Misool isn’t as full
on as what he and his family are doing (mate, we take our hats off
to you). We are constantly facing new challenges, and, well…
we’ve never done this before so it’s a steep learning
curve for us as well. We're faced with tough choices every single
day, which require us to make compromises along the way. For example,
do we: |
A: slog on with the local
carpenter whom we've engaged to make furniture to our specifications
using the salvaged and milled-to-order driftwood we provide. The
quality of the work is less than we'd hoped for, and it's taking
a lifetime to finish those doors...
-or-
B: buy the finished product in Java. The quality is good, and it's
cheap as chips. But this reversed dynamic points to its dubious
origins - it's likely the wood has been harvested through unsustainable
logging practices, and that the carpenters were underpaid and overworked.
And then of course we have to arrange to ship all the furniture
across thousands of miles of sea. Nevertheless, I'm sure we'd still
have it sooner than using our local guy...
|
What about our towels?
Do we buy cushy unbleached organic cotton towels, imported from
China? Or do we support our local economy and buy what's available
here, even if it's cheap chafing stuff printed with teddy bears
and disjointed Englishisms?
What about our food? How much imported stuff can
we expect our guests to live without? And should we worry about
introducing non-native crops for our organic kitchen garden?
What about our waste? What do we do with it? What
about our power, where does it come from? How much pollution are
we directly responsible for? And are carbon-neutral efforts just
plasters on our conscience? |
photo by eric battistoni |
| At the end of the day, each
decision we make helps to locate our balance point in the spectrum
which stretches between our most pure ethical principals and economic
success. We are looking for that point which proves that truly green
ventures can also be economically viable. We need to demonstrate this
to ourselves and our investors and supporters. But we also need to
demonstrate this principle in very real terms to our hosts in Raja
Ampat. Otherwise, how could we expect them to resist the temptations
of the logging and mining industries? |
Life was much simpler before we wondered where all
those plastic bottles end up. Living on a tiny island with limited
resources puts all these quandaries into stark relief. No one sweeps
the streets while we are all sleeping, and the rubbish doesn’t
conveniently disappear on a Thursday morning. When the composting
toilet is full, we empty it ourselves. The lights flicker and fail
when the generator runs out of fuel, and we're all very cranky when
the fruit bats wreak havoc on the bananas. |
No Impact Man writes that one of
the reasons he embarked on a low/no impact approach was that he
didn’t know who to believe when trying to consume responsibly.
He mentions chainsaws labeled"green" for their low fuel
usage, completely ignoring the decidedly non-green aspect of felling
trees...
It's certainly no secret that it's trendy to be
'green.' Corporations are shifting their identities towards green,
and every piece of packaging has a recycle logo on it (which means
'recycle this', not 'I’ve been recycled'), every resort is
an “eco” resort – including ours. There is so
much “spin” out there in the advertising world that
it’s tricky for people (including us) to discern whether the
product/services we are purchasing are genuinely “environmentally
friendly” or just jumping on the green bandwagon.
NIM brainstorms about who he'd like to buy from,
about the company he would like to have a long term relationship
with. He then describes a number of things that he would require
from this company, one of which is “transparency in its operations
and products." |
photo by tom scherer |
| We couldn't agree more.
We do consider ourselves a true 'eco' resort, but it's best to lay
out the facts as they are and let you judge for yourselves. To that
end, we've added a new page, our mission, to our website about precisely these challenges (sorry, English only
at the moment!). If you've been following our progress, you already
know that we've been milling all our lumber from fallen drift wood.
You know that we're using local labour, and you know we've created
a 200 sq km no-fishing zone. But we haven't discussed some of the
more contentious points, like how much C02 is created just by flying
from Europe to Misool Eco Resort. Or how we're solving our water usage
issues. Or how we're dealing with the educational and economic disparities
between us and our workers and hosts. |
| We simply don't have all
the answers yet, and we're bound to make mistakes. But together we
can come up with ways to fix our mistakes and use the wisdom gained
to make better informed decisions in the future. We believe we'll
all be buoyed by the positive news, reminded that regular people can
do good. |
| |
| By the way, we've posted
our rates! We'll be ready
to welcome our first guests on 30 March 2008, and we'll be accepting
bookings from the end of November. |
