Future sailors

It is rare these days to meet a person who lives outside of time. Ma Ai, a woman who lives next door and does the housework for my host family in the place of my busy host mom, is one of those rare people. She has the warmest, prettiest smile and, apart from when she's scolding my naughty host brother, she is calm and even-paced in all she does. She irons, cooks and washes clothes without rushing, day in, day out.

Ma Ai and my younger sister, always the hamster.

At any given time, I have four pieces of electronics in my backpack - a cheap disposable Indonesian phone, a smart phone, a laptop and an ipod. Ma Ai has one piece of technology: the exact same cheap Nokia cell phone I have. She uses it for one purpose: to recieve calls. One time my host mother Umi left her blackberry at home after leaving for work and then called it to check on its whereabouts with Ma Ai. I was still at home that morning so Ma Ai called me over and handed it to me, asking "how do I answer it?" By then Umi's cell had stopped ringing and so Ma Ai went to get her phone to call her back. She didn't know how to search the contacts or do anything but press the green telephone icon when the phone was ringing, so it was up to Generation Y to navigate the waters of communicating in our modern age.

These interactions between Ma Ai and me happen frequently when it's only us in the house together - and not just with technology. The other day she asked me when my dad was coming to visit. In July, I said. This didn't register for her so she asked if July was before or after the Haaj season. I knew from experience last year that a popular time for making the Haaj, according to the Islamic calendar, is September until October so I said it was before or, more specifically, one month from now. 

Ma Ai didn't go school, she will sometimes ask me to read her the time from the clock in the kitchen as the numbers carry no meaning for her, she doesn't know her age or birthday (we agreed early forties) and she asks me sometimes to read the grocery list Umi writes out for her or a name in her phone contacts. Her measurement of time is completely centered on relgious happenings, like the daily prayer or when someone will go on Haaj, or else just morning, afternoon or night. 

For instance, if I ask when Umi will be home she will say, after Duhur prayer. This is a habit of most people here though, so I am no more in the dark as to when events will take place with Ma Ai than I am with the general person I talk to.

She moved with her husband to live near and work for Umi "many years ago". She has three children, already grown and with families of their own. She lives with one of them and his wife and new-born child. The others live nearby, in this neighborhood. She adores t-shirts from neighboring cities like Bandung. This is to say that the only times she leaves the house are at the end of Ramadan, when it is customary to return to your family's hometown, see the family still living there and visit the burial grounds of deceased family members, and to accompany her extended family on a trip (my host family is included in her extended family). 

It isn't phenomenal to meet an adult in my neighborhood whose general literacy is surpassed by their children - I know a few others. What is novel for me to think about is the completely different sphere of time Ma Ai moves in. I suppose she isn't outside of time, as I originally said, but has a different way of measuring it, a mixture of internal and by the schedule of her religion. 

When I moved to this side of the world a little over a year ago I began to equate physical travel with time travel. As we cross time zones we aren't just going backward or forward a couple of hours, sometimes we're leaping through time by the decade. As we were discussing Karawang the other day, a man said to me that he thought Indonesia was approximately 60 years "behind" the United States in terms of progress. He gestured to the pot-holed main road for emphasis. Also, just five years ago - in some places even less - all of this was rice field, he added, referring to the bustling intersection along an irrigation chanel. I have heard this before about Karawang's history of development. 

Politically and economically, Indonesia is setting an example for its neighboring Asian countries. Socially-speaking, I have often heard the comparison made between Indonesia today and the United States pre-sexual revolution, pre-Clean Air Act, pre-Civil Rights Act...etc. I see the community of friendly, waving neighbors who stop to chat while carrying their babies in batik slings and all pray to the same god, where sons and husbands sit down expectantly waiting for a woman to bring them their plates (and aren't jumped by a brigade of feminists when they say that if you're a women you must also wash the dishes), where consuming alcohol is illegal and being gay is equated with being mentally handicapped and therefore you have no protection under the law and I feel as if I've stepped into the movie Pleasantville. If Pleasantville were an Islamic community filled with youngsters constantly checking social media on their blackberries. 

Having lived in Indonesia for a while, I've stopped keeping track of how many hours I spend in transit when taking the angkot home at night or how long I hang out with someone on my way out of my neighborhood. My measurements are sunlight, my stomach rumbling and my need for a bath. It feels like a lost Utopia.

As my loved ones, exes and former bosses can attest to, I don't keep the strickest watch on time. Maybe my interest in time as a general, abstract notion can account for some percentage of this natural affinity for jam keret or, rubber time as it is here called (and my tendency to procrastinate the other, larger percentage). I don't know if my town or the country as a whole can be compared to the United States 60-odd years ago but it's really beautiful to meet someone who doesn't live under the rule of this monarch Time who controls the lives of so many of us.