At the Tiga Wasa School, students traveled six miles to the next town for computer lessons.

Grand Circle Foundation provided computers, but only after we funded some basics needed at the school.

Formerly the school had no dining area, forcing the children to eat lunch standing up or sitting on the ground. With the Foundation’s support, a new cafeteria was built and the necessary furniture provided. There is now a clean, comfortable environment for the students to have meals.

The largest project funded to date was the completion of a water tower to provide clean water to the school and the village. The original project planned was to provide motorized pumps to  pipe water down from the mountains.

However, that project had to be changed due to religious beliefs  and superstitions of the villagers.

 

From our OAT project manager in Indonesia:

The villagers belief – received through spiritual signs – is that the holy spirits  dwelling near the sacred spring only approved the project to be as far as the completion of the water reservoir  and not to be continued with the installation of the pipelines and the pumps.

Because this reasoning was  based on ancient superstition upon which the whole village strongly believed, the chief of the village and the council of the elders decided to cancel the project.

A village elder suggested that the reason might have been because the holy spirits might want the local people to make some efforts to collect the water from the reservoir to appreciate how precious the water is. If the water were pumped through the pipelines, it would be too easy for the people to obtain them and there was a fear that the water might easily be wasted.

We have tried different ways to help such as suggesting to place the engine pumps away from the source – to avoid the noise that might upset the holy spirits—and to find a different source of water that we can pump. However, none of these efforts give positive result.

As it stands now,  the water reservoir that we have helped them built represents a big improvement from the past time  when they had to make a longer queue to collect the water from a single fountain channeled from the spring  versus taking them from several fountains of the reservoir. They accept that if such was the extent of the spirits generosity, then they are very happy with it.