Field report

I'm in Manado, the provincial capital, for R and R. Which includes some time on a moderately fast internet connection.
So, I have been here 10 days already. I've spent most of that time in the village (Wioi), recording old people and generally asking a lot of questions and making a nuisance of myself.

Can you watch these silly movies on my computer and say what is happening?
Can you tell me what this word means?
Can you say this sentence a different way?
Can you tell me about birds?
Here's someone from another village, can you have a conversation with him in front of this camera?

Also a lot of time waiting for people to turn up, or waiting to see if the rain will stop so we can go out, or if the power will come back on so I can charge the camera and laptop.

Saturday was fairly typical. I'd arranged to go to the village of Tatengesan (30 mins away) and collect Om Willem from there so he could work with the other guys in Wioi - my plan was that I'd split the guys into two groups and try to do some lexical brainstorming and beef up the dictionary a bit. But Om Willem had bathed at the wrong time the previous day and given himself a headache (this is a legitimate way to acquire a headache or other malady in Indonesia, as is eating something at the wrong time. But probably he was just nervous about leaving the village). So he couldn't come. He said ask Om Wawo, he's from Wongkai and speaks really well. Om Wawo is sent for, but he can't get in a car or cross a bridge because his wife died recently. So I arranged to come back the next day and record them. (Which I did, they had a splendid time talking about the Permesta rebellion and other matters of local history for about 3 hours.)
I didn't have much success with the brainstorming in the end. Well, it went OK, but there weren't enough participants, and only Om Bert got the idea, so it was just like working with him on his own, which is what we usually do. I'd brought along a student to work with the putative second group, but I had to find other chores for him to do. No shortage of them.