Nurse·Community health·Research
Manado, Indonesia
The bigger the wave, the more spirited we become. Somahe Kaikehage.
Registered nurse. Master of Nursing in community, family and gerontological care — the three specialisms that all involve leaving the building and going to where people actually live.
They run across the top of his LinkedIn profile, separated by upright bars, with no explanation offered. Two of them are in Sangihe, the language of the island regency he comes from. Together they are about as complete a statement of a person as three lines can be.
“God alone is enough.”
Spanish · St. Teresa of Ávila, d. 1582
It is the closing line of a prayer found written inside her breviary after she died — Nada te turbe, let nothing disturb you. The verb matters: bastar is not quite “suffices” but something closer to “is already more than enough.” He keeps it in three places at once — the banner of his LinkedIn, the entirety of his Instagram bio, and the caption of the only photograph he has ever written anything underneath.
“Because we glide with the current, we grow fond of challenging the storm.”
Sangihe · Seafaring proverb
Somahe Kaikehage is the official motto of Kepulauan Sangihe, the island regency he is from — a place that is 93.38% ocean. On its own it is usually rendered as the bigger the wave, the more spirited we become. The full proverb is a sailor’s argument rather than a slogan: pay proper attention to the easy water, and you will have something to spend when the weather turns. Read it as a description of a career and it explains most of what follows.
“To declare it through prayer.”
Sangihe · From the Tulude rite
Tulude is the Sangihe new year — thanksgiving for the year that has closed, and petition for the one opening. Gahagho megegahagho is the part of it where the asking is said out loud. Put the three lines in order and they make one instruction: hold on to God, go out into the weather, and say so plainly.
Sangihe to Manado is a ferry. Manado to Bandung is most of a country. Every stop below is a real place he moved to, in the order he moved there.
Bearings true · distances not to scale
Catholic University of De La Salle Manado
The one-year professional programme that turns a nursing degree into a licence to practise: clinical rotations across every specialty, then the national competency examination. He came out of it with a perfect 4.00, on a scholarship from his own district government back in Sangihe.
Persatuan Perawat Nasional Indonesia (PPNI)
Registered with the national nursing association a month before he finished the programme, and registered ever since — five years and ten months without a break, through two cities and a master’s degree.
Universitas Padjadjaran
Community, family and gerontological nursing — health promotion, disease prevention, and the people who are hardest to reach because nobody comes looking for them. Funded end to end by LPDP, the Indonesian government’s education endowment, batch PK-209 “Asa Gaharu”. He graduated at 3.85 and took Best Oral and Poster Presentation in the master’s category at the Nursing Research Expo along the way.
Dinas Kesehatan Kabupaten Garut
Two months inside a district health office — the level at which community health stops being a seminar topic and becomes a caseload with names in it.
PR Konsorsium Komunitas Penabulu–STPI
Managing community-based interventions for tuberculosis patients across Cimahi City. Public-Private Mix is the part of Indonesia’s TB response aimed at the cases the public system never sees — people who were treated at a private clinic and then vanished from the record. Eight months of the unglamorous, decisive work of finding them.
DPK PPNI, Catholic University of De La Salle Manado
Home — back at the university that trained him, on the communications side of his professional association’s campus chapter. Two thousand kilometres out, two thousand back.
Drag it, or throw it
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing.
God never changes.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough. St. Teresa of Ávila · Nada te turbe
Nada te turbe, nada te espante, todo se pasa, Dios no se muda, la paciencia todo lo alcanza; quien a Dios tiene nada le falta: sólo Dios basta.
“Thank you God, thank you mother St. Mary. I entrust my 2025 into the hands of God.”
Candi Prambanan, Yogyakarta · posted 4 January 2025
Prambanan is a ninth-century Hindu temple complex, and he is a Catholic from Sangihe standing in the middle of it, thanking his own God for the year ahead. It is the only one of his three Instagram posts he wrote anything under.