I’ve gotten pretty lax in my blogging. Well, in reality I’ve gotten pretty lax about everything. I could blame myself for succumbing to the complacency of Hot Weather Culture (which is a damned real phenomenon, try living in a tropical place with little to no air conditioning for a sustained period of time while working only half-time)…or I could admit to being terrified of the impending change in my life and thus feeling unable to commit to anything beyond the everyday basics of living here—eating, working, sleeping, and my own basic need: reading. Yeah, take your pick; any of the above explanations for my reticence are more or less true.
I want to leave. I don’t want to leave.
I am looking ahead with nervous excitement to the “rest of my life”: L.A.I. (Life After Indonesia). No I’m not. There are no jobs in America. Hell, I don’t WANT a job. The only work interests I have are sort of out of the question (novel-writing? Freelance opinion journalism? Teaching English as a Second Language?) I want to stay here, doing exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 10 months, forever.
Wait; no.
The inefficacy of the public school system in this country has pushed me right through the roof. This week I’ve shown up for school and TWICE I’ve been told I have no teaching duties: the first time it was a national holiday (they failed to inform me, and naturally I don’t have a calendar, nor do I have the skills to read the big marker-board calendar in the Teacher’s Room written in abbreviated Indonesian). The second time, I was usurped by other teachers who had to “use” “my” periods in order to teach classes that would be observed by Sampoerna Foundation (our sugar-daddy cigarette company educational fund) to judge whether they all live up to Mighty Cigarette Daddy’s stringent teaching standards.
If I spent another year with regular unannounced school cancellations, consistently faulty technology (THEY HAVE 3 WIRELESS NETWORKS! THEY PAY FOR THEM! WHY DON’T THEY WORK?), and weeks of what I see as pointless “testing” periods in lieu of actual teaching, I would probably become massively disillusioned and just give up trying to make a difference, or I’d continue the fight and be testy and judgmental and try to uproot the system (which is a pretty huge no-no here; the teachers publicly kiss our principal’s hand; don’t think they fight her on any of her decrees).
So I need to go home. I need to reclaim my identity, find my niche, all that stuff. But when Lexie was here for two weeks, visiting, she clued me in on some crucial information: Americans are mean. They don’t kiss hands in America. They don’t inquire at every meal-time whether you’ve eaten, just as a means to check on your health and wellbeing. They don’t use the word “please” 30 times a day. And they sure as hell don’t make friends with you on random whims. Maybe in the South, Lexie says, but that’s a sort of fake civility.
I have been treated as almost super-human for so long now, and—like most of us Fulbrighters—have developed such a massive ego, that I fear going back to the US will scare the crap out of me. To the majority of people I encounter I won’t be a star or a beauty or a mythical creature or an embodiment of first-world health and wealth. I will be an insignificant brunette who is trying to do something ridiculous, like bargain over an item with a fixed price, or, I don’t know, drive a car on the left side of the road, or ask someone “apa?” and expect them to understand I’m asking “what?”
As my Indonesian teachers, friends, and cohorts would say before anything big happens to them, “Pray for me.”
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Things Indonesians Do to Eke Out a Living
• Selling raw tofu and tempeh by driving around neighborhoods on motor or bicycle, mostly in the morning, and yelling stuff
• Selling nasi goreng, chicken sate, and terang bulan from small stalls on wheels, at night
• Driving around a bicycle, squeaking a funny horn and selling balloons to parents to give to their small children
• Selling gasoline by the liter for people on motorbikes (including me)
• Selling market produce from a big basket that women skillfully carry on their head around neighborhoods in the early morning
• Becak drivers (pedi-cab men) delivering people, but very often industrial material like two-by-fours or scrap metal, from one site to another
• Selling various kinds of Indonesian “special” cold drinks; es doger (a weird combination of black sticky rice, bread, milk, sugar, and tapioca), es degan (young coconut and sugar), es buah (fruit cocktail), etc, from stalls (mobile or otherwise) on the street
• Selling newspapers, peanuts, and other things to people at traffic lights
• Copying keys for people, also from kiosks on the side of the road
• Selling rides on what I can only describe as a sort of carousel that doesn’t go “round and round,” only up and down. These men drive around neighborhoods playing ridiculous recorded music; parents pay probably a thousand or two to put their kid on the pony for a few minutes
• Selling computer generated city maps to people waiting at traffic lights
• Working at a night market (produce market open from 8 pm to 3 am or something)
• Selling fruit, of course
• Driving around a bicycle full of brooms and other household necessities
• Selling shoes
• Selling phone minutes (pulsa)
• Selling water, other bottled drinks, and processed snacks from a kiosk (this has to be the most over-staffed, unnecessary vocation in Indonesia)
• Acting as a “parking man.” Rachel and I describe this as Indonesia’s version of social welfare. Those without other employment will sit at particular parking lots and areas, their “turf.” When you, the driver, are ready to leave, you have to give the parking man 500 rupiah. You don’t ask why, you don’t bargain, and you NEVER leave without paying.
• Acting as unofficial garbage collector
• Acting as unofficial recycling man/woman: collecting bottles or paper from people’s homes. I don’t know what they do with it once they have it.
• Making power strips and other electrical devices for people, because you generally can’t trust the quality of those you buy in the store (true story)
• Sharpening knives for people at their homes
• Driving a becak (yes, I am fully aware I’m repeating here)
• Copying things for people. I swear there is a photocopy shop on every block in my neighborhood
• Doing people’s laundry
• Cleaning rich people’s homes
• Being a “driver” for rich people
• Operating “warkop”s, a version of a coffee shoppe that’s usually outdoors or underneath a rickety structure. The coffee is usually of the instant variety.
• Washing motorcycles
• Washing motorcycle helmets (in 20 minutes or less!)
• Working for rich people. Being the person who cleans all the glass in the house, or the person who revvs all the engines (motorcycle and car) daily (thanks to Caitlin for her extensive knowledge of the Things That Rich Indonesians Employ Other People to Do For Them).
People have frequently asked me what people do, career-wise, in Indonesia. Obviously the educated and the rich are an exception, but the list above pretty well illustrates the jobs available to Indonesian people. They do whatever they can figure out to do; I don’t think there’s a science to it. Personally, though, I think they are creative, industrious, and open-minded. They are survivors.
• Selling nasi goreng, chicken sate, and terang bulan from small stalls on wheels, at night
• Driving around a bicycle, squeaking a funny horn and selling balloons to parents to give to their small children
• Selling gasoline by the liter for people on motorbikes (including me)
• Selling market produce from a big basket that women skillfully carry on their head around neighborhoods in the early morning
• Becak drivers (pedi-cab men) delivering people, but very often industrial material like two-by-fours or scrap metal, from one site to another
• Selling various kinds of Indonesian “special” cold drinks; es doger (a weird combination of black sticky rice, bread, milk, sugar, and tapioca), es degan (young coconut and sugar), es buah (fruit cocktail), etc, from stalls (mobile or otherwise) on the street
• Selling newspapers, peanuts, and other things to people at traffic lights
• Copying keys for people, also from kiosks on the side of the road
• Selling rides on what I can only describe as a sort of carousel that doesn’t go “round and round,” only up and down. These men drive around neighborhoods playing ridiculous recorded music; parents pay probably a thousand or two to put their kid on the pony for a few minutes
• Selling computer generated city maps to people waiting at traffic lights
• Working at a night market (produce market open from 8 pm to 3 am or something)
• Selling fruit, of course
• Driving around a bicycle full of brooms and other household necessities
• Selling shoes
• Selling phone minutes (pulsa)
• Selling water, other bottled drinks, and processed snacks from a kiosk (this has to be the most over-staffed, unnecessary vocation in Indonesia)
• Acting as a “parking man.” Rachel and I describe this as Indonesia’s version of social welfare. Those without other employment will sit at particular parking lots and areas, their “turf.” When you, the driver, are ready to leave, you have to give the parking man 500 rupiah. You don’t ask why, you don’t bargain, and you NEVER leave without paying.
• Acting as unofficial garbage collector
• Acting as unofficial recycling man/woman: collecting bottles or paper from people’s homes. I don’t know what they do with it once they have it.
• Making power strips and other electrical devices for people, because you generally can’t trust the quality of those you buy in the store (true story)
• Sharpening knives for people at their homes
• Driving a becak (yes, I am fully aware I’m repeating here)
• Copying things for people. I swear there is a photocopy shop on every block in my neighborhood
• Doing people’s laundry
• Cleaning rich people’s homes
• Being a “driver” for rich people
• Operating “warkop”s, a version of a coffee shoppe that’s usually outdoors or underneath a rickety structure. The coffee is usually of the instant variety.
• Washing motorcycles
• Washing motorcycle helmets (in 20 minutes or less!)
• Working for rich people. Being the person who cleans all the glass in the house, or the person who revvs all the engines (motorcycle and car) daily (thanks to Caitlin for her extensive knowledge of the Things That Rich Indonesians Employ Other People to Do For Them).
People have frequently asked me what people do, career-wise, in Indonesia. Obviously the educated and the rich are an exception, but the list above pretty well illustrates the jobs available to Indonesian people. They do whatever they can figure out to do; I don’t think there’s a science to it. Personally, though, I think they are creative, industrious, and open-minded. They are survivors.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Today...
I listened to the lyrics of a White Lion song and furiously typed them out for one of the teachers at my school, a male biology (physics?) teacher who "really likes the song." Now he's playing it for the fourth time and studying the lyrics.
Freak bule travels solo in Indonesia
Over the past weekend I took a trip by myself to Gili Trawangan, a tiny island off of Lombok: one of the main (albeit a tiny one) islands in Indonesia. I’d already been there once before (during Idul Fitri) with a large group of friends, and I was dying to go somewhere where Islamic culture wasn’t the focus of the entire population, and where I could get some sun, some reading done, and some perspective on my recent malaise. I couldn’t have chosen a better place.
Being on Gili Trawangan brought me back to all I love about Indonesia, as well as all that makes me anxious and uneasy. On the plus side of my Gili balance sheet, the people on the island have very little fear of social interaction (yelling things at random to me whenever I walk by) are extremely hospitable (the managers of the ‘motel’ I stayed at gave me free stuff on a daily basis, from wine to bananas), and just generally enjoy laughing, hanging out, befriending strangers, and cuddling babies.
They were also hysterically funny. When I sat down to lunch at the café of a dive center, a pretty boisterous group of Indonesians on holiday were ordering at a table nearby. I heard a number of them inquire about the ingredients about particular dishes on the menu, the same way a bule might ask about the composition of “special sauce” or “whole chicken” (here, it includes the head!). But what the family was politely inquiring about was the limited menu of Indonesian food; asking about the komposisi of the most basic Indonesian grub around: fried rice (nasi goreng), fried chicken (ayam goreng), mixed rice (nasi campur), and fried fish (ikan goreng). And of course, these were precisely the dishes they ordered. Just imagine a family in America walking into a nice restaurant and asking “could you please explain what the ‘chicken pot pie’ consists of?” or “what exactly is the ‘burger and fries’?” I don’t know if they were joking or serious, but I will remember that conversation for years to come (okay, maybe not). Epic.
But there was one element of Indonesian cultural consciousness that I found to be exaggerated here, and one that made me extremely uncomfortable. You know the phenomenon in which the post-colonial still idealizes its colonizer? It was definitely at work on Gili T. No matter whom I befriended, I always felt, suspected, that there was more at work than a simple meeting of the minds or something equally idealistic. I’ll try to illustrate: whenever I sat down at a café, bar, restaurant, or even at my own hotel, I struck up a conversation with an Indonesian person that always inevitably led to (1): them telling me how fluent I was in Indonesian (not true!), (2): them making some remark about what a good character I have, what a good person I am, and (3): how much I can teach them about “American” or “speaking English.” At one bar, I ended up talking to a 33 year-old mother of two and her 16 year old sister-in-law (ie: she was already married!), for an hour or so. While we sat together we talked about a number of things (in Bahasa Indonesia), some of them really personal and intimate, and yet the entire time the older woman addressed me as “Anda” (it’s the very formal version of the “you” pronoun, usually reserved for people older than you or your boss). Not only is this woman significantly older than me, but there was no external power relationship between us (she wasn’t my waiter, for instance); still she insisted on taking the subservient position. Finally I told her she had to start calling me “Kamu,” and she acted like I was granting her a great privilege. I didn’t like it. Not only does it make me question the validity of any casual friendship I strike up with other Indonesians, but it makes me wonder if I’m having delusions of grandeur or something (look at me, I only hang out with locals, I am so kind and friendly, etc). When I told an American friend about my feelings, he even wondered if I am so friendly and open to Indonesians precisely because I have tacitly acknowledged my inherently more powerful position in any relationship I establish here. It’s a scary thought. It makes my skin crawl.
So how do I deal with loving this island country and the people in it if I have to constantly challenge (inwardly, at least) my motivations for feeling thus? Sometimes I wonder if being here in any capacity is a kind of act of colonialism, an exercise of power: exploiting a people and an economy for personal gain, however idealistically we envision it.
Being on Gili Trawangan brought me back to all I love about Indonesia, as well as all that makes me anxious and uneasy. On the plus side of my Gili balance sheet, the people on the island have very little fear of social interaction (yelling things at random to me whenever I walk by) are extremely hospitable (the managers of the ‘motel’ I stayed at gave me free stuff on a daily basis, from wine to bananas), and just generally enjoy laughing, hanging out, befriending strangers, and cuddling babies.
They were also hysterically funny. When I sat down to lunch at the café of a dive center, a pretty boisterous group of Indonesians on holiday were ordering at a table nearby. I heard a number of them inquire about the ingredients about particular dishes on the menu, the same way a bule might ask about the composition of “special sauce” or “whole chicken” (here, it includes the head!). But what the family was politely inquiring about was the limited menu of Indonesian food; asking about the komposisi of the most basic Indonesian grub around: fried rice (nasi goreng), fried chicken (ayam goreng), mixed rice (nasi campur), and fried fish (ikan goreng). And of course, these were precisely the dishes they ordered. Just imagine a family in America walking into a nice restaurant and asking “could you please explain what the ‘chicken pot pie’ consists of?” or “what exactly is the ‘burger and fries’?” I don’t know if they were joking or serious, but I will remember that conversation for years to come (okay, maybe not). Epic.
But there was one element of Indonesian cultural consciousness that I found to be exaggerated here, and one that made me extremely uncomfortable. You know the phenomenon in which the post-colonial still idealizes its colonizer? It was definitely at work on Gili T. No matter whom I befriended, I always felt, suspected, that there was more at work than a simple meeting of the minds or something equally idealistic. I’ll try to illustrate: whenever I sat down at a café, bar, restaurant, or even at my own hotel, I struck up a conversation with an Indonesian person that always inevitably led to (1): them telling me how fluent I was in Indonesian (not true!), (2): them making some remark about what a good character I have, what a good person I am, and (3): how much I can teach them about “American” or “speaking English.” At one bar, I ended up talking to a 33 year-old mother of two and her 16 year old sister-in-law (ie: she was already married!), for an hour or so. While we sat together we talked about a number of things (in Bahasa Indonesia), some of them really personal and intimate, and yet the entire time the older woman addressed me as “Anda” (it’s the very formal version of the “you” pronoun, usually reserved for people older than you or your boss). Not only is this woman significantly older than me, but there was no external power relationship between us (she wasn’t my waiter, for instance); still she insisted on taking the subservient position. Finally I told her she had to start calling me “Kamu,” and she acted like I was granting her a great privilege. I didn’t like it. Not only does it make me question the validity of any casual friendship I strike up with other Indonesians, but it makes me wonder if I’m having delusions of grandeur or something (look at me, I only hang out with locals, I am so kind and friendly, etc). When I told an American friend about my feelings, he even wondered if I am so friendly and open to Indonesians precisely because I have tacitly acknowledged my inherently more powerful position in any relationship I establish here. It’s a scary thought. It makes my skin crawl.
So how do I deal with loving this island country and the people in it if I have to constantly challenge (inwardly, at least) my motivations for feeling thus? Sometimes I wonder if being here in any capacity is a kind of act of colonialism, an exercise of power: exploiting a people and an economy for personal gain, however idealistically we envision it.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Timeshares on Bali, Or: Pregnant Street Dogs Bark in the Night
This is no country for new souls,
A woman a fraction of my size cautions me,
Wordlessly.
She points me toward the “blissful view”
We’ve read about
On the undersides of the coffee tables.
We’re told that stabilizing forces
Are extraneous here.
Relax and enjoy the show.
***
The dead fish, animal waste, and plastic grocery bags
Spatter the beachfront
In an unpretentiously
Erotic display,
As unconvinced of their intimacy
As the pile of rocks those men just hauled
To its soon-to-be embodiment as
Bali’s Newest Tourist Resort.
***
A scrawny she-dog gives birth
In the dank safety of the night market
A woman a fraction of my size cautions me,
Wordlessly.
She points me toward the “blissful view”
We’ve read about
On the undersides of the coffee tables.
We’re told that stabilizing forces
Are extraneous here.
Relax and enjoy the show.
***
The dead fish, animal waste, and plastic grocery bags
Spatter the beachfront
In an unpretentiously
Erotic display,
As unconvinced of their intimacy
As the pile of rocks those men just hauled
To its soon-to-be embodiment as
Bali’s Newest Tourist Resort.
***
A scrawny she-dog gives birth
In the dank safety of the night market
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sudah makan?
I am so tired of being asked if I've already eaten. In any given lunch period (between 11 and 12), I run into maybe 25 teachers, of whom at least 15 or 20 ask me "Sudah makan?" "Silakan!" "Eaten?" "Please eat," or "I am eating."
I guess what bothers me is that it's none of their business whether I've had my meal yet or not. I am well-fed, everyone knows how big a deal I make of every meal we share, and furthermore we all know I have a pretty high salary and can thus afford to never be hungry.
Although all but the poorest individuals have a solid 3 meals a day, I think this place is so used to lack and need and want that if there is plenty, they want to make sure no one's been left out.
That, or I'm just ornery.
I guess what bothers me is that it's none of their business whether I've had my meal yet or not. I am well-fed, everyone knows how big a deal I make of every meal we share, and furthermore we all know I have a pretty high salary and can thus afford to never be hungry.
Although all but the poorest individuals have a solid 3 meals a day, I think this place is so used to lack and need and want that if there is plenty, they want to make sure no one's been left out.
That, or I'm just ornery.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
On Malas
About 50 meters from my house is a structure of sorts, that sells stuff. Apparently they don’t have water or fruit (I’ve checked), but they seem to sell processed snacks (and the Indonesian equivalent, krupuk) and maybe, I don’t know, some newspapers, and definitely gasoline for motorcycles. There’s a shelter attached that has a low-lying table and some mats, and by about noon every day, some middle aged Muslim dudes congregate, sometimes with their families, to nonkrong (Indonesian word for hanging out, doing nothing, wasting time). But what I discovered by popping my head in, a little rudely, maybe, is that they spend that nonkrong time playing chess. Not some crappy chessboard they bought used for 5 bucks, but a handcrafted, heavy-weight chessboard with carved wooden pawns. These guys, mind you, are pretty poor. They hang out in the equivalent of a shack every day in perhaps a futile attempt to sell crap, and meanwhile they’re spending hours upon hours in focused games of chess. I wish nonkrong took hold in America. Can you imagine?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Rainy Season brings out the worst in me
Sometimes I can’t tell if I love Indonesia so much that it hurts, or if actually, deep down the place depresses my spirits so much that it goes full-circle and starts to resemble love.
I can’t explain it.
It’s rainy season now. What I thought was rainy season, back in October, November, and December, was just a teaser. Sort of like an appetizer that disappoints, only to be overshadowed by a far more thoroughly disappointing main course. You know what I mean. This is rain that begins at 11 a.m. and doesn’t stop until 9 or 10 p.m. And while sometimes the rain might be moderate-to-moderately heavy, more often than not it’s an all-out downpour that floods the streets, causes people to be impaled by 2x4s that have blown off construction sites, drowns kittens, crashes cars, ruins lives.
Well, when my anger and seasonal affective disorder (doesn’t every American have it?) get the best of me, it certainly seems this way. But what I can say for certain—puce-colored glasses aside—is that rainy season makes the lives of the worst-off in Indonesia, well, worse. I would say that at least 60% of the jobs worked by the poor Indonesians (here I’ll define poor as living on less than a dollar a day and not owning a motorbike), and when the rain strikes (and boy, does it strike at any moment, usually without much notice), guess who has to bear the brunt of it? Those who make their living selling balloons from a bicycle, those who push around nasi goreng carts or bakso carts or es (various iced drinks; difficult to explain) carts, those who stand around with baskets of fruit or tempeh or veggies, those who peddle around becaks (human-powered pedi-cabs), those who stand on the corner and sell liters of gasoline. You get the picture. The entire underbelly of the Indonesian economy, and even the culture, I think, is composed of poor people who work outside, who, if they decide to escape the rain (which often lasts all day) actually won’t be able to have dinner or pay the rent or get to the other side of town by public transportation. I have become so depressed by this weather; so frequently confined to my house because I am unwilling to ride my motorbike through flooded streets, and I am near the top, the absolute best-off, in this society. What right do I have to complain that my 6 dollar rain jacket and pants aren’t completely water-proof, when I make FIVE TIMES AS MUCH money as the BEST PAID teacher in my school?
And what in hell am I doing in this country if I’m not doing something to help the lowest echelon rise to something approaching bearable (and I do not think working bare-foot on a construction site for 50 cents a day is bearable)? I just don’t know how I can justify my being here when I am living like royalty, disappointed that I lost $280 during my traveling because I missed a flight (that lost money is what many people in Indonesia earn in a YEAR!). What am I supposed to do? And I complain that the wireless internet connection I’ve been stealing inside my house is now password protected and I have to wait until I’m in my beautiful 10-year old school building which has its own wireless network to check email that, if I wanted, I could read in three different languages?
I just can’t figure out where my perspective is supposed to be right now.
Especially because, despite the hardships that being poor in Indonesia throws at people, they don’t seem too upset by it. I’d guess that part of this is just not knowing a different life, part is being member of a society that has always had and assumes it always will have a poor, traditional, laboring underclass, and part of it is probably religion. Do your work and be honest, get married, have some kids, and your life will be okay. It’s not so much complacency as it seems to me a sunny optimism. Hey, life isn’t so bad. So in that case, who am I to think that Indonesia needs me and people like me to step in and make things right? What if this is the way things are supposed to be?
I can’t explain it.
It’s rainy season now. What I thought was rainy season, back in October, November, and December, was just a teaser. Sort of like an appetizer that disappoints, only to be overshadowed by a far more thoroughly disappointing main course. You know what I mean. This is rain that begins at 11 a.m. and doesn’t stop until 9 or 10 p.m. And while sometimes the rain might be moderate-to-moderately heavy, more often than not it’s an all-out downpour that floods the streets, causes people to be impaled by 2x4s that have blown off construction sites, drowns kittens, crashes cars, ruins lives.
Well, when my anger and seasonal affective disorder (doesn’t every American have it?) get the best of me, it certainly seems this way. But what I can say for certain—puce-colored glasses aside—is that rainy season makes the lives of the worst-off in Indonesia, well, worse. I would say that at least 60% of the jobs worked by the poor Indonesians (here I’ll define poor as living on less than a dollar a day and not owning a motorbike), and when the rain strikes (and boy, does it strike at any moment, usually without much notice), guess who has to bear the brunt of it? Those who make their living selling balloons from a bicycle, those who push around nasi goreng carts or bakso carts or es (various iced drinks; difficult to explain) carts, those who stand around with baskets of fruit or tempeh or veggies, those who peddle around becaks (human-powered pedi-cabs), those who stand on the corner and sell liters of gasoline. You get the picture. The entire underbelly of the Indonesian economy, and even the culture, I think, is composed of poor people who work outside, who, if they decide to escape the rain (which often lasts all day) actually won’t be able to have dinner or pay the rent or get to the other side of town by public transportation. I have become so depressed by this weather; so frequently confined to my house because I am unwilling to ride my motorbike through flooded streets, and I am near the top, the absolute best-off, in this society. What right do I have to complain that my 6 dollar rain jacket and pants aren’t completely water-proof, when I make FIVE TIMES AS MUCH money as the BEST PAID teacher in my school?
And what in hell am I doing in this country if I’m not doing something to help the lowest echelon rise to something approaching bearable (and I do not think working bare-foot on a construction site for 50 cents a day is bearable)? I just don’t know how I can justify my being here when I am living like royalty, disappointed that I lost $280 during my traveling because I missed a flight (that lost money is what many people in Indonesia earn in a YEAR!). What am I supposed to do? And I complain that the wireless internet connection I’ve been stealing inside my house is now password protected and I have to wait until I’m in my beautiful 10-year old school building which has its own wireless network to check email that, if I wanted, I could read in three different languages?
I just can’t figure out where my perspective is supposed to be right now.
Especially because, despite the hardships that being poor in Indonesia throws at people, they don’t seem too upset by it. I’d guess that part of this is just not knowing a different life, part is being member of a society that has always had and assumes it always will have a poor, traditional, laboring underclass, and part of it is probably religion. Do your work and be honest, get married, have some kids, and your life will be okay. It’s not so much complacency as it seems to me a sunny optimism. Hey, life isn’t so bad. So in that case, who am I to think that Indonesia needs me and people like me to step in and make things right? What if this is the way things are supposed to be?
Monday, January 19, 2009
From late December...I didn't have internet for awhile
This is unrelated to the rest of my post, but I have recently discovered how sexy I find men who wear sarongs. In Indonesia and especially in Java and in madrassah (small religious villages), men basically wear skirts. They tie a decently large garment (often batik print) around their waist and wear this rather than pants. On Fridays, which are the special Muslim prayer day (shollah jum'at, I think), most men around Malang are in sarung. And you'd really have to be here to understand what is so sexy about this look. I'd date a man in a skirt any day.
So I've only recently come home from the Christmas trip to the island of Sumatra. I spent 8 nights in Sumatera Utara (the north) with three other Fulbrighter girls. We hung out in the capital city, spent two days trekking and rafting through a jungle filled with monkeys and even a few orangutans, another day climbing an inactive volcano, and a few days chilling out at the largest volcanic lake in the world. Suffice to say it was probably the best of my trips thus far. This might be in part due to the fact that I was courted by a Batak guy. Batak is the tribal group of North Sumatra (the same way Javanese is the tribal affiliation of most who live in East and Central Java). Basically, Bataks are known for their square, "nostrilly" noses, brutal honesty (as opposed to the Javanese excessive politeness/indirectness), and the men are known for being somewhat lascivious. Rather than shout "hey mister!" to me from afar, they walk right up to me and say "you're beautiful, want to come home with me?" Verrrry different cultures. I should also mention that most Bataks are Christian. Thus traveling there for Christmas.
So, what began as a lesbian vacation turned quickly into a party of two.
(I guess I should explain. Rachel, Caitlin, Claire and I coined the term after taking a serious of vacations that were always female-only affairs, usually involved several candle-light dinners, and lots of sharing beds [ie saving money on hotel rooms]. Hence, lesbian vacations were born. And I imagine there will be more before the year is finished.)
We had heard that Batak men on the island of Samosir (the island in the center of the lake) tend to lust intensely after bule women who come there for vacation. If they happen to hit it off with a particular lady, they fall pretty madly in love, keep a photo of their beloved with them always, and are under the impression that they are in a serious, committed relationship even if they never see their girlfriend again. My relationship (I use the word somewhat facetiously) with Nicolas followed this pattern. It started as middle-school style flirting: for some reason, we began a serious of play-boxing matches, (ie: let's hit each other playfully). Within a matter of hours we were holding hands, and less than 24 hours later, people on the island were referring to us as girlfriend and boyfriend. Will I see him again? It's hard to say, but I now have a bracelet with his name on it strapped to my wrist, and frankly i don't know how to remove it without cutting it off. That's saying something.
And then there was Mister Roy. Roy is an ageless (somewhere between 29 and 42 I think) single guy with long (below his shoulders) almost kinky-curly hair, half of which seems to have been dyed blonde, and an array of euro-trash/metro-sexual/muscle-man ensembles. Roy first comes across as a Rastafarian; he offers to hook you up with marijuana or magic mushrooms (illegality aside), he brings out some great food and wine (he runs a restaurant on the island), offers to take you on a motorbike tour of the island the following day. But things change quickly enough. You soon discover that Roy wants women. Whether he wants an actual sexual encounter or just to creepily touch your feet is unclear, but it's obvious enough that Roy eats, sleeps, walks, and dreams only in pursuit of women. He calls you "darling," he puts his hands in inappropriate places (ie your shoulders, your feet, your head); he stares at you from beneath his fake Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. As you walk out of the lake in your bathing suit, he nonchalantly mentions how sexy you are. When you're in the process of deciding who will ride with whom on the motorbikes, he immediately points to you and says "I want that one" as if he is choosing from so many cuts of meat. Yes, Roy is an unforgettable man. When you meet up with him the next morning, he quite graphically informs you that he had no woman to take home last night, and thus there was "only wanking" (his words, not mine).
Sadly, I was rarely, if ever, the object of Roy's desire, but I couldn't be happier that I got to witness the scenes above. As for my friends, well, I 'm not sure they feel the same way. Roy was pretty sure he'd end up with one of them, and by the end, the most action he got was a few slaps on the wrist from the girls when they found his inappropriateness to be downright annoying. When I asked Nicolas if Roy would ever get married, he sighed and said wistfully, "Ugh, well, I don’t know." That sounded more like "no" to me.
So I've only recently come home from the Christmas trip to the island of Sumatra. I spent 8 nights in Sumatera Utara (the north) with three other Fulbrighter girls. We hung out in the capital city, spent two days trekking and rafting through a jungle filled with monkeys and even a few orangutans, another day climbing an inactive volcano, and a few days chilling out at the largest volcanic lake in the world. Suffice to say it was probably the best of my trips thus far. This might be in part due to the fact that I was courted by a Batak guy. Batak is the tribal group of North Sumatra (the same way Javanese is the tribal affiliation of most who live in East and Central Java). Basically, Bataks are known for their square, "nostrilly" noses, brutal honesty (as opposed to the Javanese excessive politeness/indirectness), and the men are known for being somewhat lascivious. Rather than shout "hey mister!" to me from afar, they walk right up to me and say "you're beautiful, want to come home with me?" Verrrry different cultures. I should also mention that most Bataks are Christian. Thus traveling there for Christmas.
So, what began as a lesbian vacation turned quickly into a party of two.
(I guess I should explain. Rachel, Caitlin, Claire and I coined the term after taking a serious of vacations that were always female-only affairs, usually involved several candle-light dinners, and lots of sharing beds [ie saving money on hotel rooms]. Hence, lesbian vacations were born. And I imagine there will be more before the year is finished.)
We had heard that Batak men on the island of Samosir (the island in the center of the lake) tend to lust intensely after bule women who come there for vacation. If they happen to hit it off with a particular lady, they fall pretty madly in love, keep a photo of their beloved with them always, and are under the impression that they are in a serious, committed relationship even if they never see their girlfriend again. My relationship (I use the word somewhat facetiously) with Nicolas followed this pattern. It started as middle-school style flirting: for some reason, we began a serious of play-boxing matches, (ie: let's hit each other playfully). Within a matter of hours we were holding hands, and less than 24 hours later, people on the island were referring to us as girlfriend and boyfriend. Will I see him again? It's hard to say, but I now have a bracelet with his name on it strapped to my wrist, and frankly i don't know how to remove it without cutting it off. That's saying something.
And then there was Mister Roy. Roy is an ageless (somewhere between 29 and 42 I think) single guy with long (below his shoulders) almost kinky-curly hair, half of which seems to have been dyed blonde, and an array of euro-trash/metro-sexual/muscle-man ensembles. Roy first comes across as a Rastafarian; he offers to hook you up with marijuana or magic mushrooms (illegality aside), he brings out some great food and wine (he runs a restaurant on the island), offers to take you on a motorbike tour of the island the following day. But things change quickly enough. You soon discover that Roy wants women. Whether he wants an actual sexual encounter or just to creepily touch your feet is unclear, but it's obvious enough that Roy eats, sleeps, walks, and dreams only in pursuit of women. He calls you "darling," he puts his hands in inappropriate places (ie your shoulders, your feet, your head); he stares at you from beneath his fake Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. As you walk out of the lake in your bathing suit, he nonchalantly mentions how sexy you are. When you're in the process of deciding who will ride with whom on the motorbikes, he immediately points to you and says "I want that one" as if he is choosing from so many cuts of meat. Yes, Roy is an unforgettable man. When you meet up with him the next morning, he quite graphically informs you that he had no woman to take home last night, and thus there was "only wanking" (his words, not mine).
Sadly, I was rarely, if ever, the object of Roy's desire, but I couldn't be happier that I got to witness the scenes above. As for my friends, well, I 'm not sure they feel the same way. Roy was pretty sure he'd end up with one of them, and by the end, the most action he got was a few slaps on the wrist from the girls when they found his inappropriateness to be downright annoying. When I asked Nicolas if Roy would ever get married, he sighed and said wistfully, "Ugh, well, I don’t know." That sounded more like "no" to me.
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