Sun rises over nearby hills in Trenggalek
Meet the gang,there are 15 of us. Fresh grads of Airlangga med school, adventurous, smart, cool, energic, loveable and low-paid (not jokingly said cuz we think it’s something to be proud of T_T). And this is Dian Prakoso, MD writing ;P
Since February 5, the East Javanese small town of Trenggalek has officially been a place I call home for a year ahead. Trenggalek is 186 km away from the provincial capital of Surabaya that equals some 4-hours trip by car. People might not have any ideas how much I really wanted it to be. I had waited for long to live separately from my mom and dad, and at last that day arrived this February. I couldn’t be happier. Trenggalek is at the very opposite pole of Surabaya. Both are simply incomparable in terms of the pace of development. Completely like heaven and earth. Trenggalek is very much a sleeping laid-back hamlet. The town centre is not supposed to exceed 2x2 km in dimension. Fringed by endless rice fields, nearly surrounded by hills and mountain, the town occupies an area of fertile valley making it naturally susceptible to annual floods. The worst of it took place back in 2007. To make the thing sound worse, people really need to have a proper insight that touring the town center after 7 pm is like attending a funeral ceremony. It’s nearly no signs of life you can observe at every corners during these hours, not even the townsquare that’s just filled with dozens of street vendors selling tasteless food. Mama mia. The rumours have it that the town is moderately haunted, but luckily we’ve not yet seen any ghost sightings here, not once. T_T
For housing, we decided to rent a quiet fashionable house not far from the town market. Only 6 out of 15 who’ll live in the house, the others go with their own preference for housing. Our new house was formerly resided by a local tycoon owning more than a dozen of jewellery shops scattering across East Java. For the rent we have to pay 9 millions IDR a year. We thought it was a good bargain since we knew our colleagues who got stationed in neighboring town of Pacitan had to pay some 34 millions IDR for a house shared by 12. By the time we set foot in the house, it was a complete mess. The floors and the walls are all awfully dusty. The ceilings are covered by spider webs, not to forget the missing lamp bulbs there and here and the dysfunctional water pump machine. It was like a wreckage that it needed tons of clean ups. But fortunately all of us were willing to give a hand and we started to work on them. All set by the end of the day, except for the water pump since we had to call the mechanic from the nearby town of Tulungagung. We got it fixed by the next day.
For transportation we brought here 3 motorcycles and a car all the way from Surabaya. Transportation is rather difficult here. The only way you can get out of town is by taking a bus.
Two days after we met some lead figures of the medical service in this town, but most importantly we got introduced to our dearest supervising doctors i.e. dr. Fonyta Sugianto and dr. Lilik Rahaju. They’re among the senior general practitioners at the hospital in which we’re going to work. They, just like everyone we’ve met here, are extremely nice, supporting, and helpful. They are the ones responsible for making this internship stay on the right track. We promise to carry on this program as well as possible in a hope not to let them down. We do love them both just like we love our own parents.
We’re split into three smaller groups of 5 to do the working rotations as follows: community health centre, out-patient unit, ER for 4 months respectively. We’ll start working by February 21, so for the time being we’re on our 2-week orientation period.
A road scene in Trenggalek, Jalan Soekarno-Hatta
Doing the errands in the traditional markets of Trenggalek (up) and another road scene, Jalan Kartini (below)
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