The Soeharso – the Indonesian Hospital Ship

There was the reception on the Indonesian ship Soeharso that only 25 people from the Mercy were invited to. Each NGO and partner nation were to send one representative from their group and I was asked to go for LDSC. All the Navy personnel wore their “whites” and the NGO personnel were to wear their uniform – which consists of a blue collared LDSC shirt and khaki pants. To say the least I was very under dressed for this occasion. I may burn my shirt and pants when I get home.  It was fun to see all the different military uniforms from many different countries that attended this reception. We took the Band-aid boat to the pier and then we boarded cars to drive to the Soeharso that was docked at another pier. There were tons of policemen all around the ship for protection as the party was attended by a lot of big Indonesian officials. The Indonesian military wives were dressed in beautiful long Indonesian style dresses. My hiking boots just did not cut it. Ironically all 3 of the other representatives from the other NGO groups all worked in the OR so I knew them well and had someone to pal around with. We mingled with the Indonesian people. The Indonesians that we spoke with wanted to try their English out on us. It was fun to talk with them. The reception was held on the flight deck of Soeharso and at the back of the flight deck we saw a group of people congregated so we walked back to see what was going on. There was a table full of a fruit called, durian fruit. It is a fruit that smells really bad – hence they had it far away from the reception, but it is a favorite fruit of the Indonesian people. It is a huge fruit that is about 3 x as big as a grapefruit and with painful spikes on the outside. It is hard to pick up without getting hurt. Durian fruit grows on very tall trees and should never picked from a tree, but should be allowed to fall to the ground and then it would be ready to eat. The skin is tough and a knife is needed to make a cut in the spiny skin to get to the fruit inside. The inside is separated into sections that are full of these “fatty - sticky like” large seeds. The ministry of Health of Indonesia was out at the table with us and he was trying to show me how to eat it. The idea is to eat the meat around the seed and then spit out the large seed. The seed is about 1 ½ inch long by ¾ inch. Well it was all I could do to not spit out the fruit the minute it hit my mouth. The texture made me gag, but here I was standing next to their Ministry of Health and I wanted to be respectful and experience this new fruit so I had to eat all the fruit around my seed. I smiled a lot and tried not to gag too much and cleaned off as much of the fruit as I could before dutifully spiting out the seed. He encouraged me to get another bite – but there was no way I could stomach any more of that. They even had a wash station to wash your hands so your hands could not stink like durian fruit. That was probably the most memorable event of the whole evening. They say that the smell of Durian will stay on your hands for 3 days. I still can taste durian a day later on my tongue. I believe durian is an acquired taste and my palate just has not arrived yet.