Suka duka
is an Indonesian expression that figuratively means “ups and downs” but literally
translates to “likes and sorrows” or “loves and heartaches”. Over the past two
years, I've kept a digital journal in a Word doc where I jotted down my private observations that may or may not have been suitable to say as an associate of the federal government. My first
entry was in August 2014, two months after arriving at my permanent site in
West Java (after three months of training in Batu, Malang in East Java). In reading over it
recently, I saw that my entries illustrate the concept of suka duka very well.
I have now been a returned Peace Corps Volunteer for one month. Stateside, when
people ask for that five second sound bite describing the Peace Corps, I don’t usually
go into all of my highs and lows. Usually I just say something along the lines of: “I’m glad I did it. I learned a lot about a new culture and about myself.” But for you, dear readers, here’s a
more in-depth response to how my last two years living in Indonesia have been.
It's mostly random thoughts and, on the whole, should only be read as a very wide-angle view
of my crazy journey in that wild and beautiful country that still haunts my dreams in a bizarrely familiar way.
Umi is one of the most remarkable teachers I've ever met. That she calls me a teacher for what I'm doing these two years is both the grossest hyperbole (by comparison) and cause for reflection. Teaching is an admirable profession but one has to know in their heart of hearts where their motivation to teach is coming from. To impart knowledge is to add something that is ever-growing (even infinite) to the world. We can be devoted to our teachers of the past but we must respect our own opinions and experiences too. Shakespeare may be a beacon of humanity but you are the living breathing person occupying this present world today. We are all learners, none of us are teachers, so said a wise woman I met in an intentional community in New Zealand years ago. I still think about what she said and how she applied that value to her life-long pursuit of a communal lifestyle which actually practiced non-possession and shared responsibility.
Can't cross the street because of the rain.
So it’s not true, as we sometimes hear, that it’s the woman’s job to make sure men don’t look at her?
Not in Islam. In Islamic law men and women are both supposed to be modest. Muslim scholars wouldn’t say that the reason for a woman covering herself is to avert the male gaze. Because really, you can go to a Muslim country as a woman and be fully covered in black garb and men will still hit on you. And covered women get harassed in this country, too. If someone wants to sexualize you, they’re going to sexualize you. So the problem isn’t about women covering themselves, it’s about men who have been constructed to behave in a certain way, and that behavior being considered acceptable. http://slutever.com/religion-sex/
I agreed before I even came to live in a Muslim-majority population for two years and I agree now, that a women’s dress doesn’t deter a man from objectifying her. I know we live in a world where a woman’s sexuality comes under much more scrutiny than a man’s. I know this but I don’t accept it.
Here in Indonesia, where I have observed a hyper-sexualization of women (and, from my perspective as an American, fetishizing of foreign features), I have observed the opposite for men. Men have fewer areas of the body that are considered sexually evocative. They should still dress modestly but not for the sake of averting temptation for women. I won't forget a day in the teacher's room where I was asking which parts of a man and woman's body were considered sexually evocative and one of my close teacher friends laughed at the idea that a man's chest or stomach or legs could be considered sexy. Nor all of the lady boys who wander the town, dressed in miniskirts, wigs and gaudy make-up. I know that women are more sexualized the world over but on Java, where there is a complete absence of men's sexuality on screen, in advertisements and in everyday life, the imbalance feels more stark.
I know that the jilbab is not only about keeping men from looking at a woman lustfully. It is a culture, a tradition, an expression of faith, a way to be closer to God and, lest we forget, the appointed dress for many other religions besides Islam. The idea I take issue with at the moment is that women are vastly more sexualized than men. It is an imbalance that leads to a society that doesn’t expect its women to sit at the table when decisions that affect all of society are up for discussion.
August 12, 2014
Life is distilled when you have limited internet access (or excruciatingly
slow internet in my case). I can no longer justify wasting time like this
except for in the 'noble' sacrifice of looking up lesson plan ideas and checking
email.
October 3, 2014
Just read the following from Rainbow Troops:"Pak Harfan never tired of trying to convince those children that knowledge was about self-respect, and education was an act of devotion to the Creator, that school hadn’t always been tied to goals like getting a degree and becoming rich. School was dignified and prestigious, a celebration of humanity; it was the joy of studying and the light of civilization."
Why do I feel so possessive over knowledge, even on behalf of others? Why do I feel like school is this huge rat race to get to the top or simply a means to an end? Lesser institution heads who put testing scores over learning are probably the culprits. The lack of possession over knowledge is something which inspires me about many devout people I am around here in Indonesia. Every thought comes from some greater source, not belonging to any one individual. Something which academics seem to be obsessed over, publishing your name at the top of a piece of paper, might motivate but it doesn’t inspire.
Abi (my host father) is reading the Qur’an in the prayer room at the
moment. It is simple and beautiful and makes me feel at peace. The other day, Umi corrected me
when I called their reading singing. She informed me that you are actually
not allowed to sing or play music while praying. Ergo, Abi is reciting in a
musical tone, but not singing.
Umi is one of the most remarkable teachers I've ever met. That she calls me a teacher for what I'm doing these two years is both the grossest hyperbole (by comparison) and cause for reflection. Teaching is an admirable profession but one has to know in their heart of hearts where their motivation to teach is coming from. To impart knowledge is to add something that is ever-growing (even infinite) to the world. We can be devoted to our teachers of the past but we must respect our own opinions and experiences too. Shakespeare may be a beacon of humanity but you are the living breathing person occupying this present world today. We are all learners, none of us are teachers, so said a wise woman I met in an intentional community in New Zealand years ago. I still think about what she said and how she applied that value to her life-long pursuit of a communal lifestyle which actually practiced non-possession and shared responsibility.
~~~
This school environment I'm working in is one where students aren't afraid to tell their teachers about their emotional well-being; albeit, in a coded form, such as talking about ghosts or possessions. Even though I'm annoyed with Pak Yayat for deserting me during our classes more often than not, I like that he takes the students seriously and that they feel they can tell him about personal matters.
Pak Yayat (my male counterpart) told me today that some students saw a
ghost outside the window of our classroom earlier this week and that is why
they were scared to sit in that corner today. Student-teacher relationships are closer here, generally speaking. In fact, it
goes to the other extreme; the teachers at my school take even more of an interest in students’
lives outside of school than they do in their academic performance. At my
Islamic school in particular, teachers even grade students on their moral
development. A students’ character and, particularly, their diligence towards their
religious studies, takes precedence at grading time. When I was researching my
grandmother’s school days back in the 1920s, her report cards had similar spaces for grades on character development. It’s different from what I know, but in my
public school experience how many times have I valued a teacher because they
treated my classmates and I as individuals rather than as a unit?
October 8, 2014
Each movement is like peeling myself off of pavement. The silences are too loud. Clumsy and uncoordinated, reaching to tear the net of dreams away so that
I can get to the surface, I feel like I'm treading water. Sweat clings
to my hair and face and a semi-familiar piano melody plays on repeat in my head:
up-down, up-down. I don’t know if it’s something I’ve heard outside of a dream
or not. In the back of my mind I know that it isn’t possible, but I feel as though my arm has fallen off. When I lift my head I
feel like I’m hurdling headlong into a void where the only sound is my heartbeat
thudding against my chest. That part, the part which they feel; of knife
to neck, knife through neck, is the same as coming out of a mefloquine dream. I
passed the cow somewhere in my surfacing, as he was going under.*
Later musings:
*My first strong side-effects with mefloquine, the anti-malarial I'm taking, began around my first
Idul Adha in Indonesia, an Islamic holiday otherwise known as “feast of the
sacrifice”. To read my previous post about Idul Adha click here. Muslims
sacrifice large animals like cows or sheep to commemorate Ibrahim’s willingness
to sacrifice his only son Ishmael, per God’s command. They give most of the
meat away to the poor and it’s also a time to celebrate family and togetherness,
akin to our Thanksgiving in some ways. I watched a celebration behind my host family's house and then at my school.
**Mefloquine is an anti-malarial that is issued as one of four options
upon arrival in country. The other options are doxycycline, chloroquine and
malarone. If you look it up you will find that mefloquine received a black box
warning from the FDA in 2013, the year before I came to Indonesia, and has also
been strongly discouraged by the CDC. This was due to neurologic and psychiatric
side-effects they observed in a ten year study. Mefloquine was subsequently
banned from the U.S. Army. The Peace Corps, however, still issues it. The few
volunteers who experience headaches, dizziness, disorientation, constant
nightmares, ongoing and unrelenting stress, unexpected mood swings and other
side effects either switch to one of the others (which come with their own
side-effects, but not usually psychological) or secretly stop taking it unless
they are going to travel to an area where malaria is prevalent. “Princess malarone”,
the last and very expensive option, is not distributed as frequently because of
its price.
October 16, 2014
Watching the National Geographic “The Changing Face of America” power
point during our first In-Service Training conference in Bandung made me
suddenly, overwhelmingly happy. Or sad. I felt like laughing and crying at the
same time. It is a relief to acknowledge complexity and diversity within my own
language and culture again.
December 8, 2014
The stranger stood
suddenly and started ironing some of our family's pants. Her tears steamed under the hot metal,
smoothing the fabric into place. She never looked up. Her expression was in her
practiced hands, which quickly made the wrinkled fabric smooth. It made me
calm, like this was the best way to resolve the starched tension squeezing the
room’s atmosphere; in a private place out in the open. This is the way I've seen many deal with their emotions here.
December 10, 2014
Adventures in the Kitchen
I put off cooking for as long as possible
for the following reasons:
- I want to eat Indonesian food while I’m in Indonesia and I am not a very good cook, even with familiar ingredients.
- I live with 3 very curious younger siblings who will stop what they’re doing to watch me do something as mundane as blow my nose. Also ~15 neighborhood kids pile in between 6:30-9 for nightly prayer groups. They are even more curious about my habits, if possible.
The biggest reason I had for not
cooking myself was that I didn’t want to extricate myself from this
family affair. Even if we don’t always eat together, communal eating creates a kinship, especially in Indonesian culture. Some opportunities to connect
with my host family are outside my control. This one isn't.
But, inevitably, the food was too
unhealthy and it's presence in my host family's kitchen too unpredictable so, after 6 months, I finally bit the bullet. I
anticipated that reason no. 2 would be a formidable challenge but I resolved to
swallow my tendency as an only child towards privacy and just cook when I wanted to cook. They
can always try a little of whatever I’m cooking if they want (which they always
do) but I’m also not cooking a second dinner for them.
So far, here is how the situation
has played out:
Scene 1
(The
bule* enters from stage right and chats a minute with the prayer group who
haven’t started reading the Qur’an yet. She then crosses to the refrigerator
and takes her supplies out from the bottom drawer. These supplies include
veggies, tempe and sauce, all purchased at the local market for very cheap.
These are ingredients she comes across regularly in most households. She begins
chopping the vegetables and tempe. Immediately, 2 or 3 kids drift over to stand
2 inches away from her cutting board, watching her every move.)
Child 1: Miss, mau bekin apa? (Miss, what are you making?)
Friendly bule: Mau masak sayuran dan
tempe. (I want to cook vegetables and
tempe.)
(Child
1 continues to stare and leans in closer to observe the process, coughing a
little on the food as she does so.)
Child 2: Miss, suka sayuran? (Do you like vegetables?)
Bule: Yeah! Enak dan sehat. (Yep, they’re delicious and nutritious!)
(1st
and 2nd child are pushed out of the way by other kids behind them.)
Child 3: Miss, mau bekin apa?
Bemused bule: Sayuran sama tempe,
karena aku suka itu. (You know, same old
same old, because I like vegetables and tempe.)
Child 4: (ignoring Child 1 and Child 3’s previously-stated questions) Miss,
mau bekin apa?
Slightly frustrated and, at this
point, claustrophobic bule: Itu. (Points
to blackened vegetables smoking in the saucepan.)
Child 5: Apa itu?….etc.
End
scene.
*For those who have missed my previous 20,500 references to this term, or who are reading my blog for the first time, bule means foreigner. Sept 10, 2015
Catcalls,
men shouting bule (“foreigner”) and
“Mister”, whistling at you, swerving too close to you so that you have to jump
out of the way, slowing down on their motorbikes to grab your ass as you’re
walking home on the side of the road, brushing against you inappropriately when they
sit next to you on the angkot, the clapping, harsh laughter, whistles and the stares,
always the stares. Not even returning a cordial smile, just staring…
This isn’t
my Karawang.
It is the people outside my desa who are quite surprised to see a foreigner (or, to be less
specific, anyone different – trans, tall, anyone who is visibly differently-abled,
the “crazy” poor beggars who walk around in shreds of clothing and even Chinese
people, who make up a significant portion of the population and who are seen as
“other”, “clique-y”, “estranged”). But I have gained a necessary talent for
looking past the leering, the screaming at the top of their lungs as they pass
you at high speed on their motorcycles and even the comparatively subtle things
grown-ass people do, often without malice, but disruptive all the same. All of the sweet, friendly people who initiate a smile, who are
interested in having a conversation with me, who go out of their way to give me
directions or even a ride, or who just treat me normally, are the moments I
think about at the end of the day. Sure, I am capable of remembering both
Karawangs, but only one of them is personal and unique to me.
November 17, 2015
Insects
scurry on the marble patio and a kind of stink bug is doing Jackie Chan
back-flips in front of me every few seconds in an attempt to fly. This is what
the beginning of the rainy season in Karawang, a city that’s half drowned in rice fields,
looks like. There is a swarm of news and opinion posts coating social media right
now that seems to be addressed to bigots or give attention to the kind of people
who would shout “Muslims suck” during a moment of silence for the victims of
the Paris bombing/shootings at a Packers game. Why do we have to acknowledge
them at all? I am dismayed that this minority of opinion gets such a loud voice
in international media, which is where a lot of my Muslim students and friends
in Indonesia get their opinions of other countries and, particularly, my
country. Even when the article is about how other people stood up to the
blatant racism/xenophobia, the journalist still chooses to focus on the xenophobic individual and talk down to the reader by explaining something that we all get, we just don't all agree on.
I just
want to tell my students, those same students who tell me of their dreams to go to America but also their fears that they would be met with discrimination, that the
people with the microphone are in a minority of rash people who
speak from a place of fear. I do tell them this. They look at me a little distrustfully but
with their ever-earnest eyes as though wanting to believe me. The other people,
those who stay silent because of lack of facts or a desire to stay out of the
social media fray, are too often mistaken by the loud-mouths as impassive
people who don't care about their country, their freedom or their pride. What a way to frame it. In
this world of loud bangs and sensationalism I suppose sitting back and
observing the situation first is received with some guilt-induced resentment.
Well, now
I do have some experience living in a Muslim-majority country and I think we should all take our discussions off-line. Have
conversations. In person. With people of a different nationality and religion.
With Muslims, in particular.
It’s easy
to express our dissonant opinions into the void of social media, where we can't ever be sure whether or not we’re completely understood. This has
become a necessary sounding board, but should not be mistaken for action....
January 15, 2016
Bu Hj.
Eulis told me this morning during English club for teachers that the thing which
most outraged her about the Jakarta terrorist attacks on Wednesday was that
they were “unprovoked.” According to Bu Hj. Eulis and Bu Ema, my regulars at English
club for teachers, in al-Quran it says you are allowed to seek revenge on
someone who has wronged you first but, they said, shaking their heads in
disbelief, the terrorists were not retaliating. They were attacking innocent
people. The taking of innocent lives is one of the main reasons she condemns
these terrorists as non or fake Muslims. However, provoked or unprovoked, my
teachers are all deeply disturbed by violence. This is evidenced by their
reactions in the teacher’s room to the news. A while ago a former student,
presumed mentally unwell, stabbed his foster parent not too far from my part of
town. This threw everyone into a tailspin for weeks. They couldn’t wrap their
heads around it. The OSIS students, always at the head of the fountain of trickle-down
information, immediately started a money collection for the grieving family.
Today in
our IGLOW meeting with my principal, two other volunteers and my counterparts,
I was encouraged to see all of us working through the language barriers and cultural
differences with an empathic attitude. Indonesian bureaucracy is never an easy ocean
to navigate and I was so proud to be in the room with everyone today and see us
all compromising, explaining, and working to find a solution to some rather
complex issues facing our project (mainly transparency of purpose in our
proposal and the concern that we are trying to corrupt the kids with some devious workshops). The tone from my principal and teachers was not one of “well here’s
how we do things in Indonesia, get used to it” and the tone from my peer
volunteers was not “well here’s a better
way to do it: our way”. Instead, everyone compromised and tried to do best by
the project, not their egos. It was one of the high points of my time with my
school and fellow volunteers, and made me realize I was among family.
January 21, 2016
Earlier this week another volunteer and I were talking about what kind of internal storm the past
two years have brought on, namely a disenchantment
with ourselves and our world views.
When you go abroad, especially to a place that is very conflicted about your country's cultural influence, you are forced to take on the identity of American (or wherever you're from) whether you see that as a big part of your identity or not. When you are constantly being identified as "the American" even you begin defining your experience through a cultural lens. The culture clash we experience, that of "West" meets "East", or Southern meets Sundanese in my case, and all of the uncomfortable aspects of this "clash" which manifest in our undeserved celebrity status for being white, is brought under painful light when we ponder our unadvertised purpose in being here, which is not as mere educators and correspondents from another land, but as
people seeking to actively facilitate development in a "developing country." (I don’t know whether Peace
Corps talks much about the human development side of our work when they meet
with Indonesian government officials, but Peace Corps was officially invited to Indonesia for only the English teaching
program).
For anyone
considering joining Peace Corps, my unsolicited advice would be to first read
up on the history of development all over the world, then to read up on the history of Peace
Corps’ development programs and, once you know your country assignment, to read
up as much as you can on the history of that country’s development. I believe Peace Corps and some other international development agencies can accomplish much-needed work and create very important relationships, but it is vitally important for us cogs in the bureaucratic machine to be armed with as much knowledge and awareness as possible so that we don't dichotomize what should be seen as world problems. Every single country has it's issues. There is no utopia and the United States is certainly a far cry (as anyone who is keeping up with the news can plainly see).
In all the factual and fictional stories that
I have read, gaining experience is always valued as a worthwhile human
endeavor. Why can’t one go to a place about which they know little to nothing
beforehand – not even the language – and try to live and work? You gotta start somewhere after all and, resume-building mentality aside, why not gain experience in a place that will really challenge your world-view as well? If you appreciate
learning rather than proselytizing or just getting that perfect #selfie of your hardcore and noble experience, then
is it necessarily wrong to go work abroad as a fresh graduate? The issue I’m dealing with is that I witness a lot of the big problems Indonesia
faces, at every level of society, but I don’t feel that I have the training or
background to make a significant impact. While 27 months is a major time
commitment for anyone, I also hesitate to say that it is enough time to process
all the negatives and positives we see when naturally comparing the US to Indonesia, while maneuvering between cultural norms and
identity. You spend so much time adapting to the culture that you really
need to come in with background knowledge and a specific transferable skill set
that you are already good at transferring.
The original cold war era goals of Peace Corps of promoting world peace and friendship are, I think, a little outdated in today’s globalized world. Should we even be using the world "development" anymore? Isn't that assuming that all of our systems and ideas are better than theirs? I can tell you right now that that's not true. What I think our Peace Corps program emphasizes is strengthening relationships and sharing ideas. This is something that recent English and Anthropology majors can do.
The original cold war era goals of Peace Corps of promoting world peace and friendship are, I think, a little outdated in today’s globalized world. Should we even be using the world "development" anymore? Isn't that assuming that all of our systems and ideas are better than theirs? I can tell you right now that that's not true. What I think our Peace Corps program emphasizes is strengthening relationships and sharing ideas. This is something that recent English and Anthropology majors can do.
Our Peace
Corps program stresses the importance of cultural exchange and reins in our
insecurities by saying that the change we want to see probably won’t be
recognizable within a year or even two years of our time there. Keep in touch and see how things
are going in 5, 10 or even 20 years. Peace Corps selects globally-minded,
well-rounded, passionate and curious individuals to live and work abroad in a highly visible
role with a reputable organization. Those are the qualities that will get you into the Peace Corps (along with a clean health record) but I think anyone who wants to join should remove development from their vocabulary and mentality.
~~~~
Indonesians are always looking outward, always curious about other cultures and people, not in
the way we Americans or even westerners seem to be. Noise complaints about the
Mosques blaring with dangdut music at 6 am on holidays would not go over well here
because that’s just being inclusive, sharing a time and space as a community. I am guilty of reacting to this
characteristic in an exasperated way because it makes me feel vulnerable.
Feeling so different makes me feel more vulnerable than I would have ever imagined,
coming from a society where I was a majority who did not stand out amongst the
rest and I was taught that I had to claw my way to the top to be heard amidst the din of other voices. We also discussed the regrets we have from our time in Indo.
I regret that I didn’t work on my own view more in regards to this cultural
outward-ness. I feel that if I had tried to be more open-minded about it then I
would have connected it to the positives of Indonesian/Sundanese cultures
earlier on and that would have helped me to understand the cultural differences
more.
~~~~
My thoughts
on extending for a third year: I think that what a lot of us who are about to leave are
afraid of is that we’re willfully relinquishing a very unique situation without
having explored it as thoroughly as we would have liked. We’re living in Southeast
Asia in a 90% majority Muslim country! People eat bats, cats, rats and dogs in
some places (obviously not the Muslim parts). Female genital mutilation,
virginity tests, belief in spirit possessions (which some politians conveniently
use to excuse their corrupt habits), child marriages, (human) blood sacrifice
and dependence on monoculture (namely rice) are all present-day practices. How
the heck could anyone hope to even scrape the surface of these cultures in two years? How can I
keep the adventure going once I leave? You build Peace Corps up as this
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the “exotic” intimately. For me,
looking back, I was most drawn to the period of self-reflection it promised (and delivered).
January 22, 2016
A precious
thing is feeling the lingering pressure from the ever-enthusiastic neighborhood
kids who clamber to claim one of my hands as I walk past. In those few minutes
they sang to me and told me of their days, who fell and scraped their knee and
who has beef with who. Now, minutes later, when I’m on the last stretch of
driveway around the bend, I still feel that impression tingling on my hand.
 |
| 1/50th of my neighborhood homies |
February 13, 2016
Reading
articles/listening to podcasts about the psychology of fort-building, how to
have a feminist marriage and so forth here on the eve of St. Valentine's Day. I had a conversation with Umi yesterday evening about marriage. She
says I should get married no later than 30. I know she’s adjusting her
expectations for me and for Syifa, my 26-year old host sister, as well, who
seems to be coping with the pressure by fretting over several new men every week, never dwelling very long on a single
one. It’s very big of my host mother and I sense the genuine and well-meaning
concern behind her words. Umi got married at 22 (10 years later than another
lady in my neighborhood who I talk with on my way home). She sees
that neither of her “of age” daughters (adopted and biological) have marriage
on our brains. I’ve come to concede lately that that doesn’t mean I’m anti-family.
I imagine making a family would be a bit like fort-building. Security, creative
co-ownership, having a small amount of control in the unknown dark areas of
life.
Earlier
this week, when Umi told the head of the Ministry of Religion office in Karawang
that she hoped when she came to visit me in America that it would be to meet her
“American grandchild”, it made me feel more battered than when strangers
constantly pester me about baby-making. I want to tell my wonderful host mother
– a mother who loves all of her biological and adopted children fiercely and
unconditionally and with an inhuman amount of wisdom – that I would like her to
see me first as a woman, not as a potential mother. I always tell her, with a
shadow of exhaustion behind my smile, maybe
someday. This has been my diplomatic response since the beginning, which I've gradually
said without any feeling or expression behind it. Honestly, hers and everyone
else’s concern for my future family life is coming from the best of places (or so they think). I am lucky
to have so many good people in my life who are concerned for my long-term
well-being. But, being a critical-thinking feminist from a society where women
aren’t nearly as pressured to marry quite so early, I can’t help but see the sinister
undercurrents of their concern.
True, it
seems that many of the best values of Indonesian culture spring from centering
their society around family: communal thinking, their incredible inclination to
help anyone in need, and including everyone (under their religion) in how they
speak of family. But I speak now to anyone, anywhere,
who has ever assumed that one of a
woman’s roles in life has to be motherhood: that is a terrible assumption to
make and to pin specifically on women. Personally, I’m not anti-family nor
necessarily anti-children. It's something to look forward to when I'm good and ready (preferably by adopting). But
please, in the words of Pink Floyd, leave us kids alone. And,
particularly, leave us women alone. It’s truly none of your damn business.
February 17, 2016
Past the
metallic beating of water in the sink she heard the soft static of raindrops
and knew that most of her plans would fall through today. Some teachers would
stay in their homes to mitigate flooding, the halls would be muddy, three
stones placed in the courtyard as a bridge to the main hallway and the students
would be distracted all day by the thought of going home in this weather.
March 4, 2016
Rain times (just the ones I remembered to write down):
Friday: 11:30
am – 11:45 (big rain)
Tuesday: early
afternoon rain around 1:30 – 2:15ish and then 5:37 pm – all night?
Can't cross the street because of the rain.
March 11, 2016
The
distance of difference of time.
That’s the
thing about living so far away from one of your lives: even if I had to return
to my family post-haste for whatever reason, the absolute soonest I could be
there would be in two days. In our modern age we’ve managed to eliminate
distance but we haven’t entirely eliminated time. We can still grow impatient
over the relatively small delays in our modern life which our ancestors
naturally incorporated into their lives.
This
thought used to trouble me sometimes, and of course you never want to be in
that extremely stressful situation of being out of reach in an emergency, but
the other night I thought about all the distances I’ve had to incorporate into
my daily life here and it felt a bit freeing. We spend hours on bus rides in
traffic any time we want to go anywhere, or else we’re swept away to social
occasions where we are at the mercy of the driver and everyone else’s
unpredictable plans. I think I started being more present here the moment I
accepted that distance as being too far to worry about.
May 7, 2016
Indonesia,
You taught
me many things. For instance, how to kill twenty mosquitoes in one sitting, how
to haggle prices, how to tolerate chili peppers grudgingly, about Islam, how to be good to people, how to be a guest, a
sister, a teacher and what it’s like being a minority.
For the past
two years I was a minority in a place where I couldn’t easily retreat to a
comfort zone. For the first time in my life I learned what it feels like
to be categorized as a ‘race’. This is something us white people should all
experience at some point in our lives, I think. In being obviously different from everyone
around me I got my first taste of how it feels to not be anonymous, but
instead, always stared at and always compared to anyone else who looked like me
(people would often compare me with any other white person they met/saw on TV
or else assume that we all know each other. It was annoying the one time the US
ambassador came on TV and I had to admit - annoyed that they'd proven their point - I’d had Thanksgiving dinner
at his house).
I won’t
miss the three 6-10 year-olds screaming “BULE BULE BULE!!!!!!!!!” at me as they
pass by on their motorbike. I know they’re kids but the adults aren’t much
different, they just aren’t as hyper about it. I’ve learned to laugh at it now,
but still, I won’t miss it. I also won’t miss the people who grab my arm to
hold next to theirs, lamenting at how much darker their skin color is. And all
the assumptions about foreigners’ wealth, activities, destination, morals,
diet…etc. For example: the assumption that American women have “free sex” is
one I’ve heard a lot. (Another PCV told me their response to that
statement was, “well I don’t pay for sex, do you?”. Touché ibu :) Everyone I have met has been so so curious
about American culture. It’s just one more example of how outward-minded
everyone is. The following are all questions people have asked me, usually in
the form of declarative statements, about America:
-
Americans just eat bread. (When “asked” this by someone in my school/home..etc.
they usually tell me this “fact” and look at me pointedly, daring me to refute
it).
- In
America you don’t have ___________ (insert kind of food, i.e. rice, potatoes, coconuts,
fruit, vegetables. The assumption is that Americans only eat hamburgers, fries,
pizza and cheese. Of course).
- In
America you don’t have to shower or use AC (because it’s not too hot).
- In America
do you have rain?
- Is there
water in America?
- In
America the houses are all made from wood from Indonesia. (This is an interesting one to unpack: since concrete is a cheaper building material, wood houses are associated with rich people a.k.a. all Americans. And Americans, among other richer countries, exploit Indonesia's natural resources naturally).
- In America there are only white people.
- In America there are only white people.
- In
America there are no poor people.
- In
America you have many maids. ("Would you like another?" is usually the following request).
- In
America the women give free sex (said to me quite bluntly in a teacher’s car
coming from a wedding. Unknown if this teacher was specifically implicating me in this declaration).
- In
America people don’t wear anything (granted, my Indo friends’ standards
of “anything” matches my regular summer attire).
- In America
you don’t have to wash dishes (declared by one of Umi’s guests as I was helping
clear the plates, as a way of asking where I learned to help clean).
You have
to laugh sometimes. And if the person is really committed to convincing you
that their assumption is the absolute God-given truth, then you just have to try
to demonstrate the folly of believing in stereotypes by flipping the situation
on them (are you all rice farmers? Do you all live near a beach? Are all
Indonesians crazy drivers? Are all of the officials corrupt? Do you all love bakso/chili peppers?). I will miss this
country, this experience and, above all, the people. Indonesians are actually
the kindest, friendliest, most hospitable, fun-loving people I have met in the nine
countries I’ve had the privilege to live in or visit. Nothing against New
Zealanders, who come in second, but Indonesians are simply the best people I’ve
ever met in my existence on earth. You are more in danger of being flooded with
invitations to “main ke rumah aku” (come to my house) and be stuffed with delicious
home-cooked food and too many cakes than of theft, harassment or illness (with
the exception of diarrhea). You may be feeling frustrated by the heat, the
noise, the pollution, the trash, the jokes at your expense, the invasion of
privacy, the bureaucracy or all of the above but if you accept just one
invitation to someone’s house or sit down to talk with any given individual,
your mood will completely turn around. After spending time with anyone here, I
am seized by a strong desire to be a better person.
Were I to
find another role to function in, I could imagine extending my time in
Indonesia. I feel as though I’ve dedicated myself (digging a large canal between
my previous and present self) to wandering around wide-eyed and confused and
just when I began finding cracks in my perspective, I’m jumping ship. It’s
disconcerting.
May 9, 2016
I don’t
talk about spirituality much. I keep that part of me at a bemused distance most
of the time. Sometimes, at 4 am, when I’m in my bed listening to my host
family’s morning movements, I feel a quiet energy as they invoke their spirit.
Maybe it’s a respectful quiet. In reading the part in Motorcycle Diaries where
Che and Alberto are tourists going through a bunch of old churches, it reminded me of
a time wandering alone into some churches in Christchurch, New Zealand. There
and at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, the majestic Masjid Kubah Emas in West
Java, and in a quiet pine grove, again in New Zealand, I remember feeling that
there was something quieter than silence stirring in me. I wasn’t reliving
memories or living on the surface of my thoughts. In not thinking, I felt that
I had sunken deeper and I was walking around beneath a thin cover. I feel
called to a similar state of quiet when I hear the underwater-like echoes of
the Quran reading floating across the rice fields in the early morning when I stumble to
the bathroom.
The past two years have reinforced and deepened my view that faith is beautiful. That
people have been performing the same rituals, facing and kneeling in the same
direction, speaking the same words on their lips, coming into the world,
marrying, making a family, upholding the central pillars of their religion and carrying out each of these tasks with thanks to God is a thought that humbles me. Millions of people throughout thousands of
lifetimes spanning age, class, ethnicity, and time have centered their lives around gratitude and a higher (deeper?) learning. People who follow an old religion carry on this hidden thing that becomes
the nexus of their life and death. Islam has so much richness and beauty to it and
the beautiful people who I have met only enrich it further as they pass on this parcel,
weightless as an idea, heavier than history, to the generations that follow.
I know many Westerners today are frightened and appalled by countries like Saudi Arabia where people apply ancient rules to modern life. But there are many beautiful things about it.
May 16, 2016
Regarding my views on gender after two years of living in a country where women are expected to dress conservatively because of socially constructed ideas of gender.
As an
outsider to a religion and a culture, I’ve had a somewhat steep learning curve
when it comes to understanding gender roles in Indonesia. However, this
experience has had a profound influence on the way in which I view the
expectations placed on me by society because of my sex.
The first
thing I’m quick to mention when other outsiders ask me about what it’s like
being a woman here – not a Muslim woman obviously, just a woman who is expected
to follow most of the customs of other women - is that I have a narrow window
of experience with Indonesian Islamic customs and the majority of my experience
has been with one school and one community. Indonesia is full of its own
cultural particularities (and many of them across 17,000+ islands) that
influence the Muslim population’s interpretation of Islam. Good. Now it’s clear
that I’m only speaking from my narrow
window of experience as a non-Muslim woman.
Here’s one
recent example of my difficulty with the dress code:
The other
morning I felt frustrated with my host uncle. All of my T’s were in the wash
because I had just come back from a weekend away. My host family told me from
the get-go that they are most comfortable if I wear no less than T-shirts and
pants around the house. When I came to Indonesia I was expecting a much stricter dress code, so I readily agreed and it hasn’t ever been a
problem. It wasn’t even a sense of rebellion I was feeling the other morning
when I was hanging around the kitchen with my host sister in a camisole and my
usual baggy lounge-around-the-house pants; I just didn’t have any clean T-shirts. This is a rare
predicament, as my standards of appearance have dropped significantly from the
dismal state they were in before Indonesia. I usually have at least one smelly
shirt lying around while I wait for the others to go through the wash. However,
on this morning I truly was without even a smelly back-up and it was only my
host sister and I in the house anyway. Everyone else had already gone off to
work or school and we were just shooting the shit. That is, until my host uncle suddenly returned and said, as he
walked into the room, “Wow! Sexy.”
In a split
second I went from relaxed, drowsy, just waking up-mode to femi-nazi. I was frustrated
because I felt that this was a technique I had seen used many times during and
before Indonesia (usually by men, but sometimes by women too) of making women
feel ashamed of our bodies by saying that we aren’t covered enough. To take it
further, there is often a teasing or wary comment about temptation and/or
seduction – as if that is always our goal when wearing a tank top. I felt
like I was being bullied into seeing something wrong with my state of dress in
those circumstances. The petulant child in me immediately thought, “Seriously?
You guys are allowed to walk around the house shirtless and in shorts but I’m
not allowed to wear a tank top when it’s just family around and 90 degrees?” Of course, it’s my Indo family and not
my American family and I realize that in all likelihood he was taking a serious
situation in a light-hearted way (I know his statement to be light-hearted and
not creepy because I know my host uncle’s character after two years) to make me
feel more comfortable. But incidents
like this have brought me to the following line of thinking more than once: what happened to the onus being on men to
treat women like human beings rather than as objects of sexual desire?
As a
visitor to another culture, it is my explicit obligation to respect the culture’s
norms and customs. The best and most immediate way a foreign woman can do this
in Indonesia is by covering their body. I don’t intentionally try to cut
corners (either literally or figuratively) with my dress. I don’t wear any less
than what people have asked me to wear in the different spheres I live and work
in, and I often just go ahead and cover my arms, legs and collarbone all the
time. Even around the house I wear T-shirts and pants, except on that rare
occasion when all of my shirts were being washed. I have absolutely nothing
wrong with covering up and wearing terribly baggy clothes for cultural
integration but I do have a problem with inequality.
I have noticed
what I perceive as gender inequalities in many aspects of life: women being
expected to have a family-oriented mentality from the early age of right around
puberty and men being allowed to marry at 30 or later or maybe have more than
one family at a time or, you know, we’re more interested in their work, their
dreams and their needs more than we
are about burdening them with the responsibility of a family. Also, I see women
aspiring to work as secretaries, teachers, in the service industry or something
to do with families/children but nothing higher (again, this is my experience
outside of the big cities). And, of course, the clothing requirements have
caught my attention. Actually, men must be polite and respectful by covering
from their shoulders down to their knees. Really
polite or religiously-devout men will also wear a hat. However, if a man doesn’t follow his dress code then he is not
reprimanded as harshly because he has fewer parts of his body that are sexually
desirable, whereas if a women doesn’t follow hers then she is subjected to
shaming and cat calls from society and her immediate circle. Something I did
not look into as much as I wanted while I was here was how Christian, Catholic,
Buddhist..etc. women living in the smaller cities feel about covering up. Some
Muslim women who don’t cover up have written interesting articles about their
decision and some of the assumptions they have met because of it, but on the
whole, I have mostly interacted with Muslim Indonesian women. So it seems that
this is a wide-spread cultural practice that is due to religious influence.
In an
interview earlier this year on the Daily Show with Dalia Mogahed, a prominent
commentator on Muslim-American issues, Mogahed said about the hijab that it
“privatizes women’s sexuality.” The full comment from the part of the video I’m
referring to went like this:
“When we
talk about oppression I think the concept is really important and interesting
because oppression means the taking away of one’s power, right? And what hijab
does is it basically privatizes women’s sexuality…So what are we saying when we
say that by taking away - or privatizing
- a women’s sexuality we are oppressing her? What is that saying about the
source of a woman’s power?”
Trevor
Noah replied, pretending to be tentative, “We’re saying….that a woman is only
strong if she’s sexy in public?” (Bing bing. Right answer.)
Another
interesting thing I came across in regards to Muslim women’s dress code is this
excerpt from an interview on a prominent Islamic fashion blogger’s blog
“Brain, Beauty, Belief”. So it’s not true, as we sometimes hear, that it’s the woman’s job to make sure men don’t look at her?
Not in Islam. In Islamic law men and women are both supposed to be modest. Muslim scholars wouldn’t say that the reason for a woman covering herself is to avert the male gaze. Because really, you can go to a Muslim country as a woman and be fully covered in black garb and men will still hit on you. And covered women get harassed in this country, too. If someone wants to sexualize you, they’re going to sexualize you. So the problem isn’t about women covering themselves, it’s about men who have been constructed to behave in a certain way, and that behavior being considered acceptable. http://slutever.com/religion-sex/
I agreed before I even came to live in a Muslim-majority population for two years and I agree now, that a women’s dress doesn’t deter a man from objectifying her. I know we live in a world where a woman’s sexuality comes under much more scrutiny than a man’s. I know this but I don’t accept it.
Here in Indonesia, where I have observed a hyper-sexualization of women (and, from my perspective as an American, fetishizing of foreign features), I have observed the opposite for men. Men have fewer areas of the body that are considered sexually evocative. They should still dress modestly but not for the sake of averting temptation for women. I won't forget a day in the teacher's room where I was asking which parts of a man and woman's body were considered sexually evocative and one of my close teacher friends laughed at the idea that a man's chest or stomach or legs could be considered sexy. Nor all of the lady boys who wander the town, dressed in miniskirts, wigs and gaudy make-up. I know that women are more sexualized the world over but on Java, where there is a complete absence of men's sexuality on screen, in advertisements and in everyday life, the imbalance feels more stark.
I know that the jilbab is not only about keeping men from looking at a woman lustfully. It is a culture, a tradition, an expression of faith, a way to be closer to God and, lest we forget, the appointed dress for many other religions besides Islam. The idea I take issue with at the moment is that women are vastly more sexualized than men. It is an imbalance that leads to a society that doesn’t expect its women to sit at the table when decisions that affect all of society are up for discussion.
