Wednesday 12th April

Fed up though we are by the Save the Children gigs for today being cancelled, in many ways it is a relief as we have so much to do today before we leave for the ferry at 2.30 - so it is true that every cloud has a silver lining!

THIS PICTURE ACTUALLY SHOWS PARACHUTE GAMES FROM YAYASAN LAMBAJAT YESTERDAY!

We need to reorganise all our luggage, taking only what we need to the Island of Pulua Weh for the next eight days of shows and workshops, and leaving the remainder here at our Banda Aceh hotel till our return on the 20th. We do a huge badge count - we have the capability of making a further 565 badges - which means we have already made 1,435 of the 2,000 badge bits we brought with us. We pack up 300 of these (fronts, pinnned backs, laminates and paper centres) to take with us to the Island, and leave 265 here for our final Banda Aceh shows when we return. We take the paper cutter with us and will try to make up all the paper centres needed for the entire trip while we are away - then we will just have to sort out the pins for the remaining 365 badge backs once we return to Banda.

BELOW IS A PICTURE OF THE "ELECTRICITY SHIP" THAT WAS WASHED IN BY THE TSUNAMI, TRAVELLED AROUND FOR SEVERAL MILES IN THE WASHING-MACHINE CURRENTS, AND FINALLY LANDED HERE. IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER MOVE IT AS IT IS ENORMOUS, BUT IT IS NOW AGAIN BEING USED TO PROVIDE ELECTRICITY. IT IS AN EXTRAORDINARY SIGHT TO VIEW THIS HUGE SHIP AT THE END OF A STREET!

I ring Douggie of Amurt to see if he can fix up the visit to the Elementary School for the morning of Friday the 21st (to which we might try to invite press and other NGO's, to show them our work), and I speak to Paul at Children on the Edge (an apparently excellent Children's Centre set up by Anita Roddick's Body Shop Foundation) to see if we can do a show for them on the afternoon of 20th April when we return from Pulau Weh - Paul is leaving his post soon, and this will be hand-over week for him and his successor, so it may not be possible - but he hopes it will be, and will get back to me. Then I ring the Mike Poole of the World Food Programme at the UN Office to see if we can get seats on the helicopter down to the Aceh Raya area on Saturday 22nd to go and see the IDES housing that is so cheap and which Michael might give his £100,000 to. (The seats are $100 per single, but Michael wants us to go and inspect the housing and will pay for these flights - we will hopefully be able to do some shows and workshops down in the villages and camps there in Aceh Raya at the same time.) It looks like we can get seats, so I email him our passport details. I ask him whether it might be possible for us to fly from the South West direct to Medan, rather than having to come back via Banda Aceh - he says that their helicopter doesn't fly that way, but he very kindly says he will try to find out for me. Quick email to Ronald Ritchie of IDES to tell him it looks as though we will be able to come down to inspect the houses for Michael, and then Dedy arrives and we have to rush to the port to buy our tickets for the ferry.

I use the ferry time to catch up with yesterday's diary. When we arrive at the port on Pulua Weh, Siryhal and Mr. Fir are there to meet us, and we have a quick meeting about the timetable that Muslim Aid have set up for us on the Island. There have obviously been some confusions and misunderstandings - gigs have been set up for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which is excellent, but over the weekend, there is only one gig arranged for Sunday afternoon at Sabang Fair - we had been hoping to get at least 4 camps in over Saturday and Sunday. We ask Siryhal to set up two extra gigs on Saturday, an extra gig on Sunday. These with the Iboih gig and the one we want to do for the children Flo knows, will fill our time excellently here.

We try to work out which days we need Mr. Fir and which days we can manage without him (we really need to reduce our transport costs, as they are far higher than we were expecting) and formulate some sort of plan. Then we leap into Mr. Fir's uncomfortable taxi and head to our first show at Cot Abeu.

We arrive at Cot Abeu at about 6.00. Apparently people had expected us earlier and had gone away, but Haggis took it really slowly and built a big crowd up again, and the show went really well. A nice start to our return visit to Pulua Weh. Mr. Fir drives us to Gapang and we collapse into bed.