Indonesia etc

How much can you pay?

Last night, at the London Film Festival, I watched Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography — the most thought-provoking film I’ve seen in a long while.

Many years ago, I wrote a blog post with a very click-baity headline so rude I’m not hyper-linking it, which drew attention to how poorly Indonesian 15 year-olds tend to perform on internationally standrdised PISA tests of logic, maths, science and langua…

Good Distribution Practice in rural Indonesia.

Credit: M Agung Rajasa, Antara For months, Indonesia’s “pray-for-prevention” Health Minister and “virus-free-vaccation” President pretended that the country was shielded by some miraculous force-field from the pandemic that was consuming much of the world.

More long silence from Elizabeth.

Photo: Elizabeth Pisani, 2016 With apologies for the long silence, I’d like to share the banner, pictured above, which I happened to photograph in the shiny marble lobby of the spanking new district parliament building in PPU a couple of years ago.

(JG Photo / Yudha Baskoro) Indonesia always does well in the Department of #YouCouldn’tMakeItUp.

2018 started badly for children in Indonesian Papua; though it’s a miraculously fertile province, at least 70 children in the Asmat district died of malnutrition in December and January, and measles and other vaccine-preventable infections are running hig…

Somewhere between Aswan and Luxor.