CHAPTER 6 LERIES'S JOURNEY TO BANDUNG

Leries' trip to Bandung was no less exciting. After Leries decided to accept an offer to go to nursing school at Adventist Hospital at the encouragement of her father, she started selling books in Medan with her partner Dame Pohan. Her father now allows him to sell books so that Leries will go to Bandung. While they were in Medan, they looked for boat tickets to Jakarta, and finally Leries and her colleague got tickets and went on a ship to Jakarta.

Leries' trip to Bandung should have been smoother than Perry's, because her relative, namely her mother's brother, was a military man with a fairly good position who lived in Senen, Jakarta. Leries had contacted the relative beforehand, so their son picked them up at Tanjung Priok port, and they stayed for several days at the relative's house.

Leries' father said that perhaps the clothes in Bandung were different from those in the village, so instead of bringing clothes, it was better to just buy them in Bandung. So his father provided him with around Rp. 5,000. However, Leries was very surprised because after arriving in Jakarta in August 1959, there was an incident where large banknotes were cut (known as sanering) to only one tenth of their original value. Suddenly Leries no longer had enough money to buy clothes even though she didn't bring them from the village. Not only to buy clothes, she doesn't even have the money to go to Bandung, not to mention the IDR 1,000 she has to pay to the Bandung Adventist Hospital as a return fee if she doesn't pass the stipulated three-month trial period. Leries was very sad, because she had just arrived in Jakarta and didn't understand what and why there was sanering. Leries was confused about what to do.

Thankfully, her relative eventually was willing to lend her money for travel expenses from Jakarta to Bandung. Finally, Leries arrived in Bandung, and stayed with Kosti Sitorus for some time, who at that time had graduated from the nursing school at the Bandung Adventist Hospital. After that, Leries entered the boarding house, and managed to continue her education at the Bandung Adventist Hospital until she graduated as a nurse.