Galen & Rebecca Kennel’s Weblog

As we eat our last breakfast at the Sibayak Hotel, we watch the “busy man” haul cement across the wooden bridge. This is the same young man who was carrying bags of sand across the river on Saturday. Today he is using a wheelbarrow to bring bags of cement across the footbridge to use in the construction of the new restaurant here at the hotel.

A crew of men has come up from Medan to build the restaurant. They will stay in some of the rooms here and Atik will cook for them. It would have been interesting to see the process, but we are leaving today.

Sri comes by before we leave. Papa caught the 6:00 bus to go to another town to buy parts for his project. 2 ½ hours by bus to buy a few screws.

We say our goodbyes to Sri, Amci, and Atik. We have grown attached to these people and this place. It is sad to leave this sad/happy place. I wonder how long it takes to heal from a traumatic disaster – perhaps it will take a whole generation.

The “busy man” takes us on his motorcycle sidecar to the bus station 2 km away and helps to load our bags onto the waiting bus. The buses are supposed to be “frequent” – like every half hour. We order a cup of coffee and sit to wait for the bus to leave.

People in traditional dress are arriving and walking down to the end of the market area. Curiosity finally gets the best of Galen and he walks down to see what is happening. It isn’t long before he is back and says I have to go down to see the headdresses of what he assumes is a wedding party.

I would have liked to have taken photos of the receiving line – men and women dressed in traditional wrap-around skirts, beautiful tops, and weird, triangular head pieces. Several hundred people are seated on the floor under one of the market sheds and a man is speaking into a microphone. Perhaps this is the continuation of the wedding that we were planning to go to on Saturday night before it started raining.

Back at the bus depot, a mini-bus is leaving for Medan. No thank you, we’ll wait for the big bus to go. Later another mini-bus goes and again we refuse. Surely the big bus will leave soon – we have waited 1 ½ hours.

At 10:45 a man climbs into the bus and starts the engine and announces that he is ready to go. He pulls out of the station with only two other people on the bus. As he drives slowly through town, people appear out of nowhere and climb on.

Half an hour down the road, we stop for another 15 minutes. He wants to get as many customers as possible.

The road is bad until about half way. And it seems like houses line the road the whole way, with a few breaks for the larger oil palm plantations. Then we are getting closer to Medan and the traffic gets heavy. The whole trip takes 5 hours.

In Medan, we catch the #64 mini-van to the Yuki Plaza, where we will get a room in the newer part of the Wisma Yuli with air conditioning.

Photos from our trip to Medan from Bukit Lawang.