My experience with dating in Indonesia

Hi again! I know it’s been a while. I have wanted to write, but life has been getting in the way. In addition to starting my third semester teaching English here in Indonesia, I have also been working on some projects and activities outside of the classroom, such as setting up an English corner in my school’s library (we had to wait until after a government visit in August to move our donated books and teaching materials to our designated space in the library). I have also been researching a camp called IGLOW and IBRO (Indonesian Girls Leading Our World and Indonesian Boys Respecting Others), which myself and three neighboring volunteers will do next semester, meeting three times a week for both the students English Club and the teachers English Club and starting a monthly culture club at a local university, where my neighboring volunteers and I hope to recruit some students to be camp counselors at our camp. My friend Zoe, master strategist that she is, arranged for us to meet with the professors at this university. In addition to these activities, I have been pondering my next step after the Peace Corps and –oh yeah! I also picked up a boyfriend sometime in the last few months, which is a major time-suck. But I’ll get to that later.

In addition to the whirlwind that is completing projects begun in the last semester and ensuring that those projects last beyond your last semester working on them, the last eight-month stretch of Peace Corps is a time where I find myself thinking about what impact Peace Corps has made on me and my goals for the future. Where do I see myself going after this? Of course, throughout my year and a half here, I have frequently glimpsed brief pictures of what life as a teacher or living abroad would be like. Honestly, I’m not sure where I want to be next and what I want to be doing; however, in thinking about the end (of Peace Corps :), I’ve come full-circle back to some of my initial thoughts before joining.

What I wanted from the Peace Corps was to try a lot of new things in order to find out what I'm good at and enjoy doing. I’m 25 years old, have a bachelor’s degree in English, a love for living in/visiting new cultures and a big love for writing. At the outset, two years seemed like a good chunk of time for me to make some progress with finding my Great Purpose in Life, and the circumstances in particular of working with the Peace Corps appealed to me as being conducive to this philosophy of trying a lot of things all at once. Plus, we have a lot of autonomy with this job and I have always thought that I work best in situations where I am allowed to shape the task to suit my creative urges.

This job has demanded more from me in terms of flexibility, creativity and open-mindedness than any I’ve had before. I have serious respect for all of the teachers I interact with at my school and the other teaching assistants (aka my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers) who all seem like basic better people when I hear about what projects they're doing or cool methods they're using or thousands of selfie photo shoots they're smiling through. I know first-hand how much effort goes into “being on 24/7”,  which is what any high profile employee or really anybody living abroad should see as part of their job description. Our role as cultural ambassador follows us everywhere we go in and out of the country we're working in and will continue for the rest of our days.

This is not only a job that I'm using as a booster on my resume, however, but an experience. After 18 months of living in a tropical, Islamic-dominant/mostly-Sundanese culture in the rural outskirts of an industrial city in West Java, I finally feel like I’ve gotten my sea legs on the ever-moving grounds of cultural perception and am able to have a sense of control over some aspects of my experience here.

The problem when living here – as with any foreign place - is that just when you think you’ve understood something about Indonesian Islam, the Indonesian education system, how to sit, how to eat, how to greet people or what not to say – nope! You realize from one off-hand comment that you’re still the blundering fool in court.

In the beginning, I filled one role: the weird American. The longer I’ve been here, the more roles I’ve adopted. I am now also called a teacher (ibu guru), a citizen of Karawang, a person of Indonesia (which pretty much makes my whole week when people call me that, even if I know it’s just them being inclusive and nice), Umi’s (my host mother) daughter, Syifa’s (my host sister) sister, my counterpart's "boo" as she affectionately refers to me (a play on "ibu", which is often shortened to "bu") and even a world guest, as my host mom has called me before.

I think a high point in every volunteer’s service is the day when that pants-less three-year-old on the corner who always yells bule at you (meaning foreigner or, more specifically, white person) calls you “Miss” or even calls you by your own name. It magically washes away months of frustration in a single moment and your face breaks into the biggest smile. Acceptance – even through a small thing like a name – leads to confidence in one’s ability to adapt, to integrate, to communicate and, ultimately, to explore new facets of the culture.

One thing that really speeds up cultural integration is language ability. My sister (the one I'm related to by blood in America) once imparted the following words of wisdom to me: if you want to learn a new language date a native speaker of that language. Incidentally, I have received this same advice – unsolicited – since day one in Indonesia from my meddling neighbors and teachers. Not so much in the context of improving my language ability, but more so because every young unmarried person is subject to being asked, “Hey, where’s your boyfriend/girlfriend at?” See the Mad TV link for reference.

If you haven't already watched this skit from Mad TV, called "Can I Have Your Number", then you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTFZyl7hfBw.

No unmarried person, girl or boy, is exempt from this daily inquisition. What everyone failed to specify when they were encouraging me to find an Indonesian mate was that it shouldn’t be one of the good Muslim boys that they knew. To be clear, inter-religious relationships are OK with many people here. It’s not really fine from a legal standpoint if you’re going to marry according to Islamic law, but otherwise, many Indonesians are open-minded enough to say no problem if you’re just dating. Several non-Muslim volunteers have dated Muslims here and one I’ve heard of has even married an Indonesian Muslim woman (although I believe he had to convert or have it on paper somewhere that he had converted beforehand). This arrangement is just not fine with anyone in my immediate community.

Liking someone with whom you don’t share the same native language, culture, religion (or, in my case, a lack thereof), national history, holidays, food preferences or even height can be challenging enough even when you have the support of your friends and family. When you don’t have that, it becomes near impossible and, some might say, stupid.

The landscape of dating in Indonesia is fraught with landmines, even without a cross-cultural aspect thrown in. My own students get very giggly on the subject of dating and say, "No miss, we don't date while we're in high school." Generally, dating is not accepted at my school but if some high school romance does blossom, woe is the couple who must endure all the cuweeeeeeeeeee's that inevitably arise whenever they are in close proximity.

An encouraging picture in the Student Leadership Organization room (called OSIS here) at my school. To the left of the picture on top, the red sideways word reads "To be delayed." YAY! The caption in the above picture reads: "The ideal marriage age for women is above 20 years and for men above 25 years" but then they add "You choose your ideal age to marry" and below, it roughly translates to "delay early marriage, reach for your dreams first." The second picture on the bottom goes into more biological, psychological and social reasons why you shouldn't marry too young. This makes me happy to see because of the high rate of teen pregnancies, which often disproportionately affect the girls' futures and not their partners'.

And, of course, everyone I know here dates in a courtship-like fashion, with the end goal of marrying. A friend whose wedding I attended recently confided in me that she had *gasp* kissed her then boyfriend not once, not twice, but five times before their wedding, in secret when their parents weren’t around. She said if her parents found out they would kill her (not literally of course). Even for foreigners staying in the larger, more progressive cities, you will still come across many gender-segregated hostels where only married couples may share a room and you would be strongly advised against any sort of public display of affection above and beyond holding hands (in many areas, even that would be ill-advised).

Although legally, girls can marry as young as 16 and boys as young as 19, I have observed that the Muslim girls in my area are expected to marry no later than 25 - or usually right out of high school - and boys by 30, give or take a few years. If they pass either age limit, they are put under a lot of pressure to marry the first person their parents bring to them. My poor not yet-26 year old host sister has faced an extraordinary amount of pressure from her parents to marry before her birthday in October. It begins to sound like the plot of any Jane Austen novel when she tells me about the blind dates her parents arrange on her behalf to try and set her up with one of their well-mannered acquaintances' sons. In the past few months alone she has gone from the opinion that she won't marry until she’s well settled into the career of her dreams to talking incessantly about the *two* boys she likes. One is younger than her and the other is her age. The younger one is less responsible (a playboy, by the sounds of it. Yes, bad on me for playing into these games of stereotyping) and therefore she hasn’t ever introduced him to her parents. The one her age, a doctor who wants to marry closer to 30, has been invited to the house multiple times. An interesting twist in this tale is that the doctor seems to have changed his tune recently and she's reported him saying that he might move for a career advancement opportunity. This would be an interesting form of compromise for my sister if it came to pass that her parents allowed her to wait because the man she chose is not yet ready for marriage either. I admire her strength of will, now more than ever, for she is very adamant that she will, at least, chose who she will marry (and has probably gamed the system if she's picked a respectable guy who wants to wait).

This is what I have gathered from my religiously-conservative circle of family and friends. I teach at an Islamic high school run by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. My host dad works under this same department. My host mother works as a family/marriage counselor and frequently gives lectures on the Quran. She is highly respected in a surprisingly wide circle as an exemplary Muslim.

This is why the experience of having an Indonesian Muslim boyfriend in this strictly date-to-marry culture has been a very difficult and humbling one.

I had the summer, with many free hours, to fall into a blissfully ignorant happiness with a Bandung local (a city about 2 hours from mine). He lived with my host family from February until June in order to search for a job in Karawang and get practical experience through an internship in a mechanics shop. However, once mutual feelings developed in June, these plans had to be diverted as my host family knew of our feelings (pretty hard to hide anything from those in your own house) and didn’t think it appropriate for us to date.

I have admired my host mom, Umi, mostly from a distance during the entire time I've been living here. My host dad is around so little (he works in Bandung) that it has been difficult to develop a meaningful relationship with him. Umi too, is a very busy woman. I would see her come home, still full of energy after six hours at the office, eat a simple lunch of rice and seafood, and then go straight back out to run the next-door elementary school or back into town to lecture from the Quran. By 6 o'clock (I sometimes didn't see her eat dinner) a gaggle of around 15 neighborhood kids between the ages of 6-12 would come in for evening Quran studies. Umi presided over this study group until she basically dropped off to sleep right on the floor. The children would file out sometime between 8 and 9 and that is when our house winds down for the day.

Umi and Abi have really taken the Islamic tenant of charity into their hearts and it shows in every aspect of their lives. When I first arrived in their house, they had adopted four children in addition to their three biological children who were already older and living out of the house. They pay all the expenses for the adopted children because those families can’t afford to (one of the four adopted children has since moved back to her home town and now has a fiancé). They live simply but above the average in my neighborhood and donate their time and money to many causes whenever they can.

I sometimes forget to recognize the wonderful opportunity I have living with these truly good people. I do not say that they are truly good just because of their devoutness but because they exemplify all the best traits of human beings. For many months I mainly thought of how the evening Quran study group affected my schedule - listening to 20 kids shouting (kids will be kids) verses at the top of the lungs for three hours at the end of the day was not something I looked forward to and did my best to try to block out. But at this point I respect my host mom all the more for it.

I have had several host family experiences since I was 18, although none as long as my current one. While WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) isn’t exactly a host family situation because you’re trading your labor and/or skills for room and board, I’m counting my best WWOOF experiences in New Zealand as host families.

There is a difference between being a guest and living with a host family. As a guest you are usually only expected to honor your hosts and be somewhat sociable. But if you stay long enough to build a relationship with your hosts and enter their routine, then you are no longer a guest. You are family.

Guest culture is very important in Javanese culture. My counterpart and host sister have told me that it is also extremely important in Islamic culture. My counterpart told me of an expression used frequently here, “tamuku adalah raja”, which means “your guest is your king”. One time when my sister and I had walked about a mile from the bus stop to our house because it was dark and the public transportation was no longer running, she got very upset when no one answered the door for us, even though she heard Umi’s Quran study group laughing and playing inside. I told her I usually just go around to the unlocked door in the back but she insisted we should stay until someone opened the door. When one of the kids finally came to unlock the door she spent a full 20 minutes yelling them into stony silence about the importance of always opening up your home to guests. Even though it was technically her family's home, they were present in the house at the time when someone needed to come in.

I am no longer a guest, in the same way that I am no longer just the American living down the street. I greet guests when they come to the house – sometimes alone if my host family is out. But as proud as I am to call these particular people my Indonesian family, I still feel like it’s my right to set certain boundaries that a real daughter would not be able to.

Ever since I got into a relationship with a local that my host family knew, there has been a layer of tension in my relationship with them (I swear they have the most amazing sixth sense when it comes to guessing who I’ve been texting or hanging out with – either that, or I’m a lot more transparent than I thought). In the beginning, I wanted to be as honest with them as possible while still sparing them the details we both know they don’t want to hear. They would see pictures of me and him and ask, “did you see him while you were in Bandung last weekend?” and I would say yes, keeping it neutral. But ultimately, my relationship with my host parents grew tense and they became very anxious every time I went out of the city, even for Peace Corps appointments or events with other friends.

In the end, my host mother gave me a simple answer: you must respect other cultures. My teacher friends from school gave me a more detailed answer: in the matter of loving and making a future with someone from another religion (not that that’s where I’m heading with this, just in the big picture scheme of things), it is the afterlife they are concerned with. Bu Euis and Bu Dila, my main boos, told me that they must follow strict rules if they are to go to heaven and be joined by all their loved ones there. That is why neither of them want their children to date outside of their religion.

In the end, no matter how at home I feel here, I am still a guest in another culture. It feels wonderful to be so accepted by someone here. It feels good to have the openness with my Indonesian partner to describe to someone how incredible (and sometimes inexplicable) I find this place. While I am fortunate to have open communication with many people here – my host sister (the one who’s in danger of an arranged marriage), my counterpart, several other teachers at my school, some people from my host sister’s office, even an AFS student from Panama who recently arrived here – I feel a whole different level of freedom to discuss things with my partner. I’m very enamored. It's a new experience for me. But I am still at odds with my two identities as guest and family.

There are many screens between foreigners and locals. These screens are often misconceptions or prejudices based solely on that first three second impression you get of someone. Gender, race and social status all play their part, the same as they do anywhere. In the same way that I instinctively build up a stone wall between myself and most men I pass on the street whom I don't know (I tell myself these are learned behaviors and, after the umpteenth experience of physical and verbal harassment, they are that at the very least) some experiences with locals are dominated by assumptions of wealth and immorality.

These brief encounters are not usually the experiences I dwell on, but they are influenced by all the meaningful relationships I have in my life. The less you feel like a guest, the less you will act like one. The more you take responsibility for your experience, the more permanence you will feel in this new place and the more permanent the impact of this experience will be.

*Bu Dila, the biology teacher at my school who I am close with, is unconventional in her own way. She is the only divorced teacher at my school and has dated other men in the 10 years since her divorce (which is not legal in any way, they just live separately now). She made a deal with her daughter, who picked up a Christian boyfriend in her university in Jakarta, that she would break up with the man she was dating, whom the daughter did not approve of because he was already married, if her daughter would break up with the Christian boyfriend, who she definitely did not approve of. Last I heard, my teacher friend had rid herself of the married man she was seeing but the daughter was “still figuring out” how to break up with her boyfriend.

Part 2: Blue is the color of paradise

On Friday, while we were still blissed out in our humid and internet-less pocket of the jungle, Mount Raung erupted, making international news and stranding thousands of passengers who were traveling through Bali and Lombok. When we arrived in the Surabaya airport on Sunday morning, just two days after Mount Raung started spewing clouds of ash, it was a madhouse. I set dad up with coffee and a seat in the Starbucks lounge upstairs and proceeded to fight tooth and nail for a seat on the first plane to Labuan Bajo (which had to transit through Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali).

After some bilingual beleaguering, we were miraculously only 5 hours behind our original schedule in getting from Kalimantan to Flores, with one night spent in the Surabaya airport rather than a backpackers in Bali.



Many families spent the night sleeping on the floor in the airport. While we were eating dinner at an airport restaurant I saw kids pushing their dozing dads around in trolleys. One might have thought that the airport was the place to be after a hard day of work. Those of us lucky enough to get an early flight the next day were all told the same thing: get in line at 4 am to confirm your seat on the plane.



By the time we got to the Bali airport our spirits were restored by the open, clean atmosphere and the promise of momentum in our journey.

Labuan Bajo: Day 10-17

On Day 1 in Labuan Bajo dad's immune system said, "hey, wait up for me" so we rested for our first two afternoons in the insanely beautiful villa where he had arranged for us to stay. My time was spent in the laziest postures imaginable reading "Eat, Pray, Love" (because of our proximity to Bali) while listening to the wavering sounds of the call to prayer, coming up to our mountain-side homestay from what sounded like the bottom of a swimming pool.

Recitation of the Quran (Sorry about the construction noises in the foreground.)

My thoughts after my first encounter with hot water in....a while, as I stood on our deck looking out over the best view in town were:

This must be paradise. For one, there's the view: turquoise, wind-wrinkled water disturbed by small islands rising out of the sea like the spine of a great mythical beast. Everything is clean and spacious. Even the recitation of the Quran (pengajian Quran) earlier was a clear, pitch-perfect sound ringing across the bay. One dark cloud hangs over the water, casting half the harbor in shadow and the other half in solid white, like glass caught in a glare. Up in stage right, the islands farthest off are in a spotlight of late afternoon light, dirty gold-colored like our thatched roof. A disembodied voice from the mosque falls loudly, proudly on Catholic ears - like those of the family taking care of this house while our German host is abroad visiting family. The geckos (called tokays) call in response - in protest, admission or in competition, it's difficult to tell.



In hopes that he would feel up to seeing some dragons (komodo dragons that is) on the second day, my dad and I booked a one day tour to Rinca island. He still felt sick the morning of, however, so I went alone to join the group and left him well-supplied with tissue, water and beautiful views. He left me with a long list of safety tips to use in the face of anything that might bite, sting or....breath fire? After reminding my sniffly, well-meaning father that I do indeed have a sense of self-preservation, I was off!


Amid a crowd of small puttering tour boats with varicolored tarp roofs, ragged corners flapping in the breeze (some boats have to replace their tarps after every outing) I found our group of six. There was one woman from near Jakarta on vacation in Flores, a German couple spending three months traveling Indonesia, two English teachers from England who had spent the last ten years traveling and teaching in Asia, two Indo tour guides (students from a local high school), and our smiling, silent boat captain. I met a lot of young people on this trip who were spending anywhere between three months to three years traveling (and sometimes working) around Asia. This revived my sense of adventure.

During the two hour ride to Jurassic Park, or, as they call it here, Rinca Island, the woman from near Jakarta and I tried conversing in Indonesian over the sound of the raucous motor but eventually we resorted to typing our questions and comments on notes apps in our phones.

At one point I got tangled up in some unfamiliar vocabulary and so we began a game of charades. According to her gestures of something large and flying with sharp teeth I gathered she was trying to communicate that we were passing Kalong Island, home of the flying foxes, huge bats which can be seen coming out of their caves at dusk by the thousand.

Within five minutes of arriving on Rinca Island I could tell it was going to be one big tourist trap. There was a lot of bureaucracy for very little time with the dinosaur cousins. All park guests had to crowd into a small office to meet the director of the park (who referred to himself condescendingly as Uncle Louis) and undergo a small interview: what is your name, nationality, purpose of visit, date of departure...etc. I don't know why I am continually amazed by Indonesia's bureaucracy and inefficiency. I suppose I had higher standards for a world heritage site such as Komodo National park, but that turned out to be a mistake on my part.

We saw two dragons in the first ten minutes of our tour (in the shade near the office) and spent the next two hours trekking through a barren land where, if I were a komodo dragon, I probably wouldn't want to lounge around. But the entrance was pretty grand!



Finding Nemo

On the eve of Idul Fitri we booked a 2-day tour on a diving boat with a company called Wicked Diving. After dinner that night at a delicious Indonesian restaurant called Pesona Bali, we heard the sound of dozens of teens revving their motors as they passed in a deliberately ear-splitting motorcade. There was obviously some celebratory spirit in the air mixed with some protest perhaps of all the white foreign tourists literally cutting an expensive, posh path through their town. It was as if they were suddenly expressing their anger on an occasion that would draw the attention away from their true underlying feelings.

With high spirits we rose the next morning to see yet another world beneath the surface. One of the things we liked most about this company was that they packed as many dives/snorkel trips into a day as was humanly possible. This averaged about three for me and four for my very enthusiastic dad (having acclimated to the tropics, I now get cold even quicker than I did before.) Before even entering the water we saw schools of flying silver fish jumping in synchrony over the gentle waves.


I loved watching the dive instructors speak in their highly technical instructions with their own divers sign language before each dive. The general vibe of the group was almost feverishly excited. We sheepishly raised our hands when asked who the two snorkelers of the group were. Everyone around us was at least on their 10th or even past their 100th dive. Although we didn't have the proper camera to capture the marine marvels, the pictures below, taken by a diver in the group who graciously shared his pictures with everyone, capture most of what we saw higher up on the reef. What we saw was turtles, the corrugated lips of giant clams, universities of fish so colorful that my dad joked that perhaps the less colorful fish had an inferiority complex, cowry shells, an eel, many wavey, tentacle-y animals that shrank back into their rocks when our instructor dove down to point them out and lots and lots of beautiful coral. One of my favorite sights was watching the waves from below the surface moving like a clear cloth that two people were raising and lowering above my head.

The divers talked about the sensation of catching a drift of fast-moving water as flying underwater. We didn't catch any particularly strong currents from where we were but I loved the image they placed in my mind.


All photo and video creds to Florian Faucher, my new diving friend from France. Note to self: invest in a GoPro camera before embarking on another underwater venture.


The photographer himself, haloed by fish.


Dad was reading "The Sixth Extinction" on this trip and remarked that our snorkeling tour could be improved if they showed us more of the rapidly disappearing coral reefs. As it was, we were looking at some of the healthiest coral reefs in the whole world in Komodo National Park. Right up there with the location/inspiration for Finding Nemo, the Great Barrier Reef.



Another interesting observation from my biologist dad was that blue is one of the more rare colors to find on land. Maybe that's part of the appeal of hydrangeas for me. Maybe that's also what made the blue starfish and schools of fish we saw so striking.







A manta ray - truly a majestic sight. It had a wing span of maybe 6 feet and all the while it was passing below us (this probably wasn't the same one) I couldn't help but hear the Darth Vader theme song playing in my head.



Snorkeling brought out an awe and reverence in us both, I think. My dad and I have done some traveling together in the past but this was one of the most ecologically and culturally diverse places we have explored together. I'm happy that we still share a love of traveling and that we're able to continue our tradition. I was so grateful to be able to share my greatest adventure with him.

Part 1: Sh! We're hunting mushwooms

During this Ramadan (June 18th - July 16th) my dad came to visit me in Indonesia. My school had six weeks off between final tests and the start of the new semester so my dad came for an 18-day visit during which we travelled to the far (well, sort of) reaches of the archipelago. 

Visiting my Indonesian home, my family, my friends, "my" corner of Indonesia was, of course, a requirement for this trip. Although I spent my first three months of training in another village very different from this one, Karawang is really the base for all of my comparisons and my dad had to come here. Therefore, after meeting him at the airport my host uncle turned right back around and braved yet another three hours of gritty traffic (Jakarta seems to be in a state of constant rush hour at every time of year except holidays, like the one we would experience at the end of our trip, Idul Fitri, during which time it was an eerie ghost town). 

My dad's first three hours in Indonesia were spent in Jakarta traffic. Over the course of our trip my dad had many funny reactions to Indonesian culture and customs (Dad: Are there ANY traffic laws here?; How many times a day are we going to hear the mosque (the call to prayer)? Me: Five. Dad: Are you sure? I think it's been more than that already...) but my favorite of his reactions was caught on film while we were making our way from the airport the first afternoon:

I shall record what we did, saw and thought about during our travels to three out of 17,000 islands in Indonesia in two separate posts. My dad will also be sending me a guest entry to post, so I will leave most of the observations of my stomping grounds in West Java to him. 

My dad and some of my host siblings

In brief, it was surreal and exciting to introduce my dad to my host family and they seemed equally excited to meet him. My host dad, Abi, flexed his English skills and told my American dad all about the town, our neighborhood and the school he and my host mom run next door. In a culture that reveres parents so much, my dad was treated as an honored guest (if a very tall one. Many kids and adults alike were struck speechless by "how tall all Americans are." My dad confirmed their suspicions that this is an indisputable fact.)

In Indonesia there are two equally important cultural traditions I have seen that you should observe above all else: respect your elders and bring lots of gifts whenever you visit. In the weeks leading up to my dad's arrival, my family and friends were not passive when it came to reminding me to remind my dad to bring gifts, or, "oleh-oleh". Ergo, he came with one modest backpack of essentials for our two-week trip and one very large red suitcase packed to the gills with ONLY gifts. These were gifts not only for my family, but for neighbors, teachers and anyone else who I might have "forgotten". This red suitcase represented at least a month of my mom's time, energy and creativity, as she made (from scratch) shirts and purses for my host family. I think I've mentioned before that I live with a very large family here. (Refresher: my host parents have three biological children and, with me, five adopted kids. In our extended family there is also an uncle, housekeeper - who's really part of the family - and constant flow of family friends who stay here as well. On average there are twelve people staying in the house at any given time). It was wonderful to be able to say thank you in a small way from my American family to my Indonesian family who have made my experience here so unforgettable and most certainly wonderful that I have such creative, gung-ho parents who were able to help me articulate this sentiment with gifts and visits.

My dad's connecting flight from Japan was delayed so we only had one full day at my site. After that we spent three days touring Bogor, a near-by city famous for its botanical gardens. We went with my counterpart and another groovy teacher one the first afternoon then met up with my host sister and friend. 

Syifa, Alwin and dad.

Really cool tree in the Bogor Botanical Gardens.

 

One evening Syifa, Alwin and I left my dad at the homestay to rest after a long day of garden ambling and went out to see a boarding school put on a wayang performance. It was modernized or perhaps customized to this obviously musically-inclined group of middle school-aged children with the addition of an electric guitar and sound board.

Gamelan modern

And while we're on the topic of traditional music in Java, back in May at a martial arts festival in Karawang I heard another instrument native to Java called trumpet silat. 
Trumpet silat
 

Me and Syifa 

Kalimantan: Day 5 - 9

We flew from Jakarta to Pangkalan Bun (Pan-kalan-boon) on Tuesday, after four days spent between Karawang and Bogor. Syifa and Alwin, my Karawang compadres, saw us off to our Jakarta-bound shuttle. Later, I almost caught pneumonia from the air conditioning on the plane. Pangkalan Bun has only one military airport, so that is where we flew into. From there we paid a pre-set rate of 90.000 rupiah for a taxi to get to our eco-lodge called Yayorin. Small and spread-out are two words that come to mind to describe what we saw of Pangkalan Bun. We stayed in the secluded Yayorin eco-lodge, which could have doubled as a meditation retreat, at the book-ends of our trip to Tanjung Puting national park. Yayorin is a forest and orangutan conservation program which does educational outreach to the local population by traveling to schools and inviting groups to their lodge. Our means of travel through the park was a small puttering two-storied boat called a klotak. This is where we would spend the next three nights and four days - on board a boat going deeper and deeper into the jungle. 

When we emerged from the enchanted grove of Yayorin on Wednesday morning, my dad was already a little wobbly due to his first bout of illness (a mixture of the flu and an upset digestive system). Ali Mashouri, the director of our tour company (Dolphin Tours) and our tiny, sharp-as-a-nail guide Nina picked us up and drove us out of Pangkalan Bun. We went straight to our departure point in Kumai, a small river-side town (which means town by the river) just 30 minutes from Yayorin eco-lodge.

Several boats were huddled together in the dock, all with a bottom section for 4-5 local crew members and a top section for 1-4 bules (the average ratio we saw was 2 tourists: 5 crew members. It felt a little excessive.)

As we left Kumai we passed these buildings, which Nina told us were used to house sparrows. Are they really that bird-crazy in Kumai that they would spend millions of rupiah building concrete houses for sparrows? No. Actually, they are collecting the nests the sparrows make from their spit, which is then sold to other Asian countries like Japan in the form of soup. Sparrow-spit soup is believed to cure all ills and make you live hundreds of years, or something like that and there is a good market for it, so the buildings are quite a good investment in the end.

It's easy to become immune to the soul of summer when the eternal spell of heat and humidity never lifts. Going down a river, however, on a klotak with the sounds of the jungle surrounding you and a completely clear sky of stars every night, wiped clean of smog, light pollution and even the regular human sounds that keep you from losing yourself in the painting behind the glass, reminds you again what the child of summer looks and sounds like. 

By the second day of our river tour I was expertly pulling my pants off and on without getting them wet in the tiny wash closet where we took our cold bucket baths in the mornings. Somehow the lack of elbow space and simple focused mindset that this task required made me think that I could be happy waking up every morning to this routine. I could be very happy with a life of bucket baths and the sensation of a vehicle of transportation regularly rumbling beneath my feet, if I were to find such an opportunity after the Peace Corps... 

During our trek into the heart of the jungle we did see the usual suspects:

But the real stars of the show were the mushrooms! 

Everyone flocks to see the great beasts unique to this region: komodo dragons and orangutans, but we found that going off the beaten tourist track to look for species of a different size and splendor showed us a world very different from the one highlighted in guide books. In doing this we even had a semi-dramatic encounter with a young male orangutan who had purportedly lost in a fight with the lead male in his clan and was therefore aggressive because he had something to prove. (Fyi: orangutans are generally not aggressive because of their social structures but our guide knew that this specific one might be because of his situation and personality. If you're unsure, it's probably best to run in the other direction because adults weigh upwards of 300 pounds and that's quite an advantage). While dad was fumbling for his camera to get a video our guide Nina said very emphatically, "no, we need to RUN." 

Now who can say that they saw around 30 species of mushrooms, some foot-high worm-made mud houses, a white and black butterfly called Idea (pronounced ee-deh-ah) like rice paper floating in its own breeze, trails of army ants thick as a solid black line which you must jump over or else feel the fires of hell in your foot, wasp nests like upside-down terricota vases with an opening at the bottom shaped like a sunflower and were chased by an aggressive adolescent orangutan through the Borneo jungle on their vacation? Not too many people, I'd suppose.

One of my favorite splendors was watching fireflies decorate the canopy above the river where we spent our final night of the boat tour. The canopy was as black as the sky because there was no light pollution to distinguish them. The only light was the reflection of the upside down world in the murky pool of light spilling from our boat and the silent blinking lights in the trees. Which were fireflies and which were stars? It was difficult to tell.

Magical forest sounds 

(There are two videos in this post that may not play on a phone. You may only be able to access them on the web. There are also three links to audio files hosted on an external site. Don't miss them!)

Life and Death

The raw red orb bleeding light into the rice paddies at the ungodly hour of 5:30 AM was visually befitting of the occasion that brought us on the road at that hour. 

Mind you, 5:30 is practically afternoon here, as it is two and a half hours after everyone has woken up - everyone including me, because after subuh prayer my family watches very loud tv programs right outside my room that are quite difficult to sleep through.

So, as I was saying, at 5:30 we all cheerily embarked to perform a korban, or sacrificial slaughter, as part of an Islamic celebration known as Aqiqah. I had not heard of Aqiqah before today. It is a ceremony performed for a new-born by one of the child's guardians 7 (or 14 or 21) days after it is born. Aqiqah is both a tradition and an act of charity that, in so doing, will ensure the safety of the child. 

A few minutes into our drive we stopped. Yes, just like that, in the middle of the semi-busy road. My host father called home and asked for my host uncle. He forgot the knife. 

We waited. 

My host dad pulled over and went to use a restroom at a mosque we had stopped in front of. 

Uat, my uncle, appeared minutes later on his motorcycle. From the depths of his jacket he produced a sheathed knife and passed it to Umi through the window. 

All was well and we were off again, the sky now an unforgiving white. 

Once we arrived at my host sister's in-laws' house, we all crooned over Queenara, the newewst addition to the family. I wandered through the house and found a beautiful garden out back. A group of women sat on the tiled patio in a circle chopping and grinding up rich spices to prepare the goat with for buka puasa (break fasting). 

As it is Ramadhan now, the holiest month when Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn to dusk, roughly 15 hours here because they eat before the first prayer, the feast will not be enjoyed until after 

Maghrib prayer this evening at 6 o'clock. 

This is Queenara, the ignorant recipient of this bloody blessing. She was born last Friday, June 19th. An interesting fact about Aqiqah is that baby boys recieve two goat sacrifices, instead of one. Not that I'm advocating more slaughter to even out the gender disparity, I'm just taking note. More blood and more celebration in the name of baby boys.

The neck is cut over a hole in the ground to let the blood drain out. This is part of halal custom.

I picked the wrong time to read Lord of the Flies.

I don't know if this is the tradition, but the father, Deni, bought the goat. Cost was around 2 million rupiah, or 150 USD.  

Abi (my host father, pictured above making the sacrifice) enthusiastically encouraged me to take a photo with the recently slaughtered goat. If you're gonna watch, you might as well get up close and personal with the proceedings. 

My host family and I left after some more crooning and will return for the feast tonight. Although things slow down A LOT during Ramadhan (no school, people don't want to travel because they're fasting..etc) I am happy to be spending the first half of Ramadhan here in my community (before traveling around Indo with my dad!) because I actually feel relaxed at my site for once. Its amazing what less traffic and fewer people hanging around in the heat of the day can do for your aimless jaunts out of the house. I can go a whole day without people shouting "foreigner" at me in "my" own neighborhood! It feels like the best of lazy days in summers past when I could watch the unfrantic world around me with an inner smile. 

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.

Through the Looking-Glass

I just finished my second reading of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and the following quote resonated with me:

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under…the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public…the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…the third category need constantly to be before the eyes of the person they love…the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present.”

More and more it seems, social media is the eyes through which the semi-familiar public in the second category looks at us.

During my school's eight hour graduation yesterday I read an article about the impact of social media on the lives of young people in Saudi Arabia. The writer described it as nothing short of a social revolution where their lives behind their screens are freer and more robust than beyond the screen. After the usual proceedings of the students receiving their medals and saliming the line of teachers on stage, (me included! In the blue batik all teachers were gifted by the graduating class!) the rest of the day had the aura of a circus, with everything but the animals and peanuts. One interesting act was a Sundanese wedding ceremony, which I was told was symbolic in some way. In this symbolic graduation wedding two students were fabulously dressed up as bride and groom, others as dancers and two boys wore the costumes and make-up of an old man and women who performed a skit in the aisle before the play bride and play groom went up to our principal, vice principal and their wives. The pairs sat in a square facing each other and the “wedding” ceremony was complete when the bride and groom knelt at their feet and the narrator orated a speech. About one hour was devoted to the 12th graders graduating and the other seven were something akin to a talent show in which every extracurricular from the martial arts group to choir and scouts was represented.

Selfie sticks stuck up in the air like crooked cyborg arms throughout the ceremony. Even during the principal’s heart-felt speech at the beginning encouraging all of the students to continue their schooling before marrying, I was admitedly dismayed that the boys in their suits and the girls in the traditional kebaya gown and thick make-up were busy documenting more facial expressions than might be found in a super-model’s repertoire. The 10th and 11th graders, who sat behind the teachers, were decidedly more present at the ceremony.

What the kebaya looks like. It's very lovely.

Already in the spotlight, at least for the first hour, the graduating class appeared to quickly lose interest in the ceremony and became more interested in documenting their outfits and make-up for a wider audience than the one physically present (their entire social media family). One major difference between yesterday's graduation and my previous experience with graduations was that family members were not invited to participate – only the school family. I like to think that part of the selfie craze I saw served the purpose of preservingthis triumphant day for all those missing from the ceremony who mattered most to the students, like their immediate family. Judging from the amount of pictures posted to facebook the day after, however, their primary concern was that they appear before the public eye, the higher judgment of a facebook audience.

Although it has its merits, I believe much of what's posted on social media outlets like facebook is done so out of vanity. Undoubtedly there are many, many ways in which social media can enhance our lives. Twitter, Instagram, Etsy and Facebook are modern platforms for economics, politics and romance, as the article on Saudi youth argued. And the more conservative the society, the more enhancement offered. If eyes are the windows to the soul then our screens are our windows to the soul of a wonderland variety of information and possibilities. Our lives are larger and more important when laid out on our public timelines.

Truthfully, the examples of vanity here in Indonesia with the selfie fetish and obsession with lighter skin, hair and eyes are no more obscene than America’s vanity and feeling of self-importance. And even more truthfully, I look at the beauty ideal so scornfully because to me white skin is nothing special. It’s not the dominant feature in my image of beauty because I’m not being re-directed at every turn to conform to the dominant group’s ideal vision. I have options! I can take what the media pours into the visual stream or leave it. If I take it then no one blinks twice, if I leave it then I’m considered a modern, forward-thinking woman.

Unlike my students, I don’t have to talk about marrying by 25 (later for men. Just saying) or juggle fashion and piety. Even the occasional street harassment is nothing that would influence when and where I go out around town (at least nothing compared to what it is here, where waiting alone for a bus leads to men not-so-inconspicuously taking your picture and joking about how they’re going to use it as pornography).

Being a foreigner may sometimes add a special layer of fear and miscommunication to my interactions with strangers and in my interaction with this culture. When crossing cultures there's an abyss of faux-pauxs, frustrations and holes in the foreigner's understanding that can only be crossed once a modicum of common ground, or, in other words, trust, has been gained. And yet, there is a grace we give strangers in exchange for their honest judgement. Even strangers on the other side of the abyss. They cannot know us like someone who has followed our whole timeline but they see a snapshot of the person we are in that moment, from a distance, which is something we can never do ourselves. The longer I’ve been here the less I put myself in the first category of people who value the opinions of anonymous eyes. Living somewhere new means struggling toward the point when you can escape that first category and instead put your energy into your closer relationships.

When a student whom I don’t know well or stranger asks to take a photo with me, they couldn't care less about interacting with me. I am but a tool to get them more validation from their known public and the fact that I speak to them to offer congratulations or ask their name was glossed over entirely with the twelfth graders at our school's graduation. I do not belong to the group of people whose opinion they care about, which is understandable as I'm not a close relation and the abyss has not yet been crossed. 

What worries me is when our screens stand as an extra obstacle in crossing the abyss, when they are a screen we draw between us and any other persons who wearily watch us, wanting to pull back the screen but too afraid to do so without a modicum of humanity encouraging us to come forward. 

This wonderland through the screen is so appealing because nothing is what it is and everything is what it isn’t (my interpretation of this Carrollian quote in this context is that through the digital looking-glass people view us for what we are not – an unchanging picture out of context – and don’t view us for what we are – a unique experiment on the part of nature). But it's appealing because we feel in control of our image and we feel we can mold how the world views us with filtered snapshots of our lives. 

Obviously, these categories of self-importance are only in place to help the author, Kundera, clarify and simplify his argument. In real life they are fluid or perhaps non-existent. Obviously as well, I’m a white girl who can’t understand what it’s like being part of the colonized culture. I know what a monopoly on the beauty market looks like but not what complete, out-right rejection of my essential nature looks like.

Beauty is an ideal. It is a construct which gives us hope. And feeling watched isn’t entirely negative either. It gives us purpose because it means something apart from ourselves has taken notice and we are then forced to turn our focus outward and see what more can be expected of us. I just worry about how this fetishism with an ideal that doesn't reflect anything about who we are is detrimental to youth who are in the process of finding where they fit in the global picture. 

Oryza as Oracle or Revalations in the Rice Field

I can't describe the beauty of walking through the rice fields in my neighborhood at twilight. It is the dusty hour of ghosts, when ibus everywhere warn you to stay inside lest you get possessed. Day-dreaming and after dark: these are the times when you are most susceptible to possession apparently. Twilight is everything the easy sun-soaked hours of the early afternoon are not: fresh, mysterious and quiet (ok, besides the sound of the mosque, but that easily becomes background noise for me now). Beautiful places tend to add clarity to my perspective. They have the power to clear out all the cobwebs of my cluttered mind and leave only the here and now, stripped to its bare essence. 

 

Sometimes I am afraid of experiencing something truly sublime alone. Will I remember standing on the narrow dykes in between the mirror-like paddies, lighter than the sky, with mud weighing down my crocs? Will I remember how suddenly expansive it all felt, surrounded on all sides by watery fields and dark muddy paths leading away at not-so-perfect right angles? Will I remember the marbled clouds wobbling on the surface of the water which was streaked with eerie lights from the houses at the edge of the rice field? Or the lone tree that stood in the middle of it all, providing me with a point to reach? (I was as proud as if I'd landed on the moon.) And what of the call to prayer and the calls of frogs which filled the space of my mind so that I thought of nothing but what was in front of me? 

No, I may forget many details about Indonesia once I leave but I won't forget the feeling of particular moments such as these, wandering in nature among all the peaceful crepuscular-loving ghosts.

After my evening slog through the rice paddy I found myself asking, "what am I doing here?" As I was walking back in the dark, stumbling through the paths which were now less familiar (not because of the darkness but because I felt more alert to my surroundings), I wondered at how I came to have that frame of reference. How did I come to have an emotional attachment to this place so as to make it feel familiar, to make me feel a bit more connected to this strange place? I've often thought that you can only really know something once you're able to recognize the subtle changes it undergoes. 

Or, as Ursula Le Guin puts it: "Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger."

All of these people who go abroad with the expressed intention "to help" in another country - why do they stay? The decision to go is varied enough and perhaps mostly driven by personal desires in the beginning, when you can't really know what to expect and everything is just grand overtures and romantic ideals. Some might stay because the desire to fill out their resume is strong enough, but for most people I would not think that sufficient motivation to complete such an unpredictable, undefinable job as ours: volunteer english teachers. 

Our job description reads counterpart and cultural ambassador. It is as vague as it is impersonal; hardly a good argument to present yourself with on those days of doubt. A compelling reason to stay is feeling that you serve a purpose - first to your own life but also to the new community who adopts you. And you only know you serve a purpose for others once you have been invited to stay. Not simply for social currency (exhibit a. "hey look we have a foreigner!"; exhibit b. "hey look I'm helping out in a developing country. Aren't I noble?") but for your own unique offerings. And I think that really boils down to mindset. You can be extremely qualified to teach kids and share your knowledge about America but if you treat your differentness as a closed door whenever opportunity strikes, getting pissed off or easily overwhelmed by the attention and occasional harassment, then you'll want to leave and that will show. This invitation I speak of is usually not straight-forward or spoken aloud but a warmer current in the social atmosphere around you that develops over time. 

I think purpose is truly born within a moment that is especially impressive in some way. Beauty makes an impression. It makes me feel as though there is so much more of it to see. Indonesia might be in the international spotlight right now for its hard line on drugs (I wrote this a week ago as 8 of the 10 national and international drug smugglers were executed by firing squad) but in 10 years the impressions of my personal memories will be more tangible than the feature headlines of the Jakarta Post or international stories squished on page 3 of the Los Angeles Times*.

Despite my personal differences of opinion with some of the politics, policies and attitudes here, I hope I will always value observing the truths of others over amassing an audience for my own unevolved opinions. A thing that I think distinguishes the various bloggers and authors on all topics Indonesia is the capacity to admit that we are but foreigners looking in and don't have a place coming in to criticize another nation's system... As they say, my family may be messed up but I'm the only one who can say shit about them.

Beauty, although it may take a while to see, is equally accesible to everyone - travelers and residents alike. I try to imagine what the people who have lived around this their entire lives think of their natural beauty. I know they say Karawang is hot and has many rice fields and usually leave it at that but I wonder if for them they have internalized the beauty of the land they live, work and die on, all within few square miles' radius. There's transient beauty that you appreciate and a more spiritual beauty that you feel. Travelers and tourists may experience the first, people spending a short time somewhere might sense the second but only once you have a true emotional attachment to the land will you experience the third.

By traveling outside our comfort zone with an open mind, we serve a purpose. It's enough to just have the real experience and to lose yourself in the experience of others. Isn't obliterating stereotypes that all Americans have a lifestyle like Paris Hilton or that Indonesian Muslims are ultra conservative and hate the influence of Western culture an excellent purpose? Maybe you will also keep an evocative blog or channel your fresh perspective into some project your school or community might actually use. That's nice too. I can't speak for everyone but these are all reasons enough for me to stay.

 

*For a seasoned perspective on the Bali Nine executions see Elizabeth Pisani's recent blog post discussing the political atmosphere surrounding them).