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Monday, July 11, 2016

Suka duka (Ups and downs)

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. 


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:
  1. I want to eat Indonesian food while I’m in Indonesia and I am not a very good cook, even with familiar ingredients.
  2. 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.
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 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.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Taking the long way home

A poster in the Peace Corps office in Surabaya.
Part 1 of the journey home: Close of Service

Why did I join Peace Corps? As I sit in a quiet, cool, clean hotel room the day before my official close of service I think that one of the answers to that question is because I learn best through direct experience. Distancing oneself from the immediate influences of culture by sheer physical boundaries, as far as planes, trains, boats, buses, horse and buggies and your own feet will take you, is a kind of learning; a very important kind that is not emphasized enough in our product-oriented work styles. For me, the accumulation of knowledge isn’t just enhanced by a personal application of the subject, it is dictated by it.

The above picture is a few of us volunteers with Country Director Nina (far right) ringing the gong during our close of service "ceremony" in the Peace Corps lounge with staff. Ringing the gong is a time-honored tradition with Peace Corps volunteers to say "so long and thanks for all the fish" to the Peace Corps staff.

Part 2: Traditions of death and moving on
6/14/16

It has been a week since I left Karawang, but only four days since I left the main island of Java via plane from the foreign eastern city of Surabaya. Chad, a friend from Peace Corps who I'm traveling with, and I flew to Makassar, capital of Southern Sulawesi, then took a ten hour bus ride to Rantepao, where some of the more hardy tourists go to see the fascinating funeral rituals of the Torajan people. Today is our final day in Rantepao and I don’t think either Chad or I are feeling terribly motivated to “make the most of it”. Tomorrow, Insy’allah, we will take an early plane to northern Sulawesi. I say Insy’allah (meaning God-willing in Arabic and used with the same frequency as "bless her heart" in the South) because Indonesian travel can be 1-3 hours on either side of your ETA on a good day. Suffice it to say, travel in this country can be very nerve-wracking for the itinerary-focused among us. Once we arrive in the north part of the island, we will still have six days in Sulawesi, then early on the 21st we fly to Bali, where we will go our separate ways back to America.

I wonder when the feeling of leaving Indonesia will hit me. As long as I’m still speaking in Indonesian with locals and walking on solid ground here, the inevitable departure feels a long ways off. The locals and my Indonesian friends back on Java both declare me fluent but that is only because they’re impressed with my ability to communicate my thoughts and show off one or two Torajan words that some local kids splashing around in a river taught me on our second day here. They wouldn’t say the same if they were to look closely at my grammar, or lack thereof. The respected title Ibu Guru, "miss teacher", still follows me around, like when our local guide introduced me to some Torajan locals as ibu guru from Bandung (they refer to the more well-known cities around the area that I lived in, like Jakarta or Bandung, since many people in Sulawesi would not have heard of a smaller city like Karawang). I enjoy that most people in Toraja Land have been eager to talk with me in Indonesian instead of in broken English. It’s selfish, since my reason for being here in Indonesia is to teach English, but I feel we have a more complete conversation that way.

The words in Torajan language that I have picked up so far are:
  • Misa (Torajan) – satu (Indonesian) – one
  • Da-dua (Torajan) – dua (Indonesian) – two
  • Kurre semanga’ (Torajan) – terima kasih (Indonesian) – thank you very much 
Just “kurre” means thanks and can be used informally but our guide made a big deal of how Torajan people are very expressive and always say thanks from the sky and the earth. He told us that Torjan people are also the most connected with the land, the most in touch with their ancient traditions, the most ceremonial and also enjoy the spiciest food of any other region in Indonesia (a claim that I've heard many times before in each new region I've travelled to). He was very proud of his culture, to say the least.

Busyness, doing a rushed job of something, begging off from house guests because you have work to complete: none of these are Indonesian qualities. Quite the opposite. Most Indonesians I've met take pride in their culture and their traditions. Generally-speaking, Indonesians are "people people". They are also extremely proud of their region and country, in that order. This is my second jaunt off Java and Indonesia opens up yet another several hundred layers. It may seem daunting, given the diversity from region to region, to just go travel around other islands, but bahasa Indonesia, the national language that Sukarno enstated as part of his nationalist agenda to unite the islands, is still the glue that connects the inconceivably large area that is Indonesia with the outside today: all 17,500 islands (only ~1,000 of which are inhabited), which contain 34 provinces, ~300 native ethnic groups and more than 700 languages and dialects. As a traveler, you can get along with surprisingly little bahasa, which speaks to the welcoming attitude that most Indonesians have towards tourists.
In every place I’ve visited, religion plays a driving force in people’s lives. Back in West Java, my experience was mainly with Islam, but on our routes through southern and northern Sulawesi and then Bali we've met Protestants and even some Buddhists in Sulawesi and Hindus in Bali. Yet in the places where it seems the whole town will gather in mosques and churches, culture still trumps religion in dictating people's way of life.

If ever you wanted to see an especially good example of a pocket of the world where tradition erodes the boundaries of religion, race, culture and even time, Tana Toraja (Tana meaning land, so I will hereafter refer to it as Toraja Land) in Central Sulawesi would be the place to go. Here is one of the most interesting examples still thriving in the world today.
As this fascinating National Geographic article explains, life revolves around death in the mountainous highlands of Tana Toraja. In a place so lush and green and beautiful it is strange to think that people are so focused on the afterlife, but maybe it's because they live in a self-described Eden that their journey to another world becomes the largest preparation of Torajan people's lives.

Even after a member of the clan "dies" by medical standards, they are only referred to as "sick" until after their funeral is held. This can take a year or even longer, during which time the family and friends still share their lives with the "sick" person, even bringing them food several times a day, and save up money for their funeral. Do they expect the corpses to eat the food? No. I think the author in the article I mentioned above explained the traditions beautifully, describing how Torajan people see death as more of a process. Keeping the dead in sight for such a long time doesn't mean that they're in denial, rather, death is a part of life, a presence throughout their lives and it, too, takes time and deserves attention. In the end, they don't fear death as much as we do because they interact with it. They don't try to hide it behind hospital curtains and closed doors.

During the year when the deceased is still "sick", families save up money for an elaborate funeral ceremony called a tomate. Relatives living in Singapore, Australia or even further away are obligated to return to Toraja to participate in this funeral ceremony if someone in their family dies. It is not like a wedding invitation or a simple "come if you can." They have to drop everything and come. This may be the first time that many family members even meet other members of their family.
Chad and I got to see the first day of a tomate ceremony during our stay. The whole ceremony can last up to a week. A week of gruesome animal slaughter and bloodshed, by our Western (double) standards.

Small houses with roofs shaped like buffalo horns are set up around a large field. Family clans sit in the different houses, which are numbered to facilitate orderliness with such a large amount of people. Everyone watches the family procession to the main house, then a priest speaks into a microphone about the deceased. The funeral we saw was for someone's grandmother. Your level of status will dictate how many animals are sacrificed. Buffalo are sacred to the Torajan people, because they believe the deceased must ride on the backs of their spirits to the second world. More to come on that.

One family sits in their tongkonan (the small houses with the buffalo-shaped roofs) and watches other families arrive and socialize. Numbers and letters correspond with that family's importance in relation to the deceased's family, with one being the building that the deceased' closest relatives sit in.

Food servers come through, passing bound pigs lying on the ground.

People from the government come around and mark the pigs and record which family gave them for taxing purposes. Very close records are kept of the weight, size..etc. of each animal because families are required to reciprocate in kind when one of theirs dies. These records are carefully kept and can be accessed years later, whenever your time comes.
On our second day of touring with an official guide he took us to see the deceased's final resting place: big rocks.
The little people you can sort of see are wooden effigies made by special wood carvers. They're usually made of wood from the jackfruit tree and are supposed to guard the deceased. This was one of the most famous rock graves in Toraja, called Lemo.
To understand many of the customs of Torajan people, you must first understand their beliefs in the Afterlife. Our guide explained the Second World to us, drawing a map in the dirt in front of a tree which contained baby graves. As proximity to the heavens is paramount in Torajan burial traditions and reveals status, babies, who are holy, are placed in trees to quicken their path to the second world. Again, Torajans do not believe in burying their dead in the ground.

Death is anything but sudden, according to Torajan beliefs. Rather, it is really looong road trip. After hanging around their families' house for a year as a spirit, pickling nicely in formaldehyde inside their sick body and receiving regular attention from the family as if they were still alive, their casket is brought to a prepared arena. A man with a microphone will speak over all of the 50 or so clans who have assembled on the clear breezy day, usually in June or July; family that has travelled a great distance and has a lot of catching up to do with people they sometimes have not ever met, and talk about the deceased's life. At some point, several strong men will carry out the casket with the year-old "sick" person and place it in the center of the arena, which is surrounded by the small houses pictured above. They will cover the casket with an old cloth before bringing out the buffalo. The handler will speak a few soft words into its ear as they tie it to a stake in the ground, lift the rope through it's nostrils skyward so it can watch the passing clouds and then thrust the blade through its neck with a sudden decisive gesture.
A few dozen sacrificed buffalo and pigs later, the spirit of the deceased is now ready to make their journey to the second world, called Puya. Our guide assigned roman numerals to the earth, which he is pointing to in the picture above, and to Puya. In between the two spheres he drew a road and described it as a long, cold journey through a mountainous pass. The spirit of the dead would need a buffalo to ride and pigs to eat along the way, thus the sacrifice. When I asked whether the spirits of the animals received a place in Puya as well, he drew a wider circle around World II and said they hang around outside.
Part 3: Island paradise

Chad and I not only saw cultural wonders, but natural ones as well. After making it to the airport in Southern Sulawesi with a surprising amount of time to spare, we flew north to the capital of northern Sulawesi, a city called Manado. After watching kids jump off the docks into the murky, polluted water for an hour or so, and after a bumpy ferry ride which caused Chad to swear off all non-air travel ever again, we were in paradise, aka Bunaken Island. We didn’t have time to see the city center or meet any locals who weren’t at the place we were staying, but we were social with the fish while on Bunaken!
Thoughts from under the sea: the underside of the ocean surface is like an undulating blanket of stars: brown particles of sea plants and trash catch the luminescence of the sun. Right up until the drop off, the water is clear and thoughts pop into my head in small bursts of color and twisting designs. There is a veil of grit, from beyond which anything can emerge: a sea turtle swimming nose-first to take a breath at the surface, parrot fish, flashes of blue windows on the sides of fusiliers, two large box fish meandering along, a few large tuna and more.
We caught a small current and were swept over the coral garden for a few seconds, not very quickly, but I felt like I was flying. I got a look at the immense scale of the reef we were on, which went down for miles. With all the ferns and small vine-like tree plant things drifting eerily in the currents, and the massive diversity of life pecking, clouding around, digging, co-habiting and peeking out of this vast, living tower that was the coral reef, I felt like I was discovering a subterranean prehistoric garden of unearthly delights.
Careful not to brush the coral with my fins, we left the coral garden behind and swam into that blue nothingness, through clouds of grit, until a blue ladder appeared, attached to the underside of the boat. Once you’re skimming the waves in the boat and the water is pouring out of your ears in small waterfalls, you look out at the long, even sheet of blues and wonder at the uniformity of it. As soon as you’re above the surface, it’s hard to remember the details of the color and the fish you saw. It would be a good idea to invest in a guide book on the marine life or even a gopro. Without proof in front of me, I feel like I’ve left a world behind and not taken anything with me except for feelings and impressions. It isn’t a bad feeling and when I close my eyes, clouds of fish pass across like shadow puppets behind a screen and it’s enough to know that the memory’s in there somewhere.
On our second evening, Chad and I went for a sunset snorkel in the resort’s awesome “front lawn” and saw two large grey animals beyond the edge of the reef that looked at first like dolphins, but with flatter and more rounded noses. Chad caught sight of their tales, which were shaped like a dolphin's. We looked it up and thought we might have gotten very lucky and seen pilot whales, but our hosts at the hotel and other guests unanimously agreed that they were more likely sea cows, or manatees. The staff said there had been a sighting of two pilot whales two years prior and then they turned up dead last year. Even so, it’s hard to tell because they returned to the murky beyond as quickly as a dream dissipates into darkness (or, more precisely, in the time it took me to try to get Chad’s attention).

We took the resort’s boat back to Monado after our thrilling marine adventures, and then an 8,000 rupiah (sixty cents) bus to Tomohon an hour away, a interesting mountain town from which we could base our day trips to volcanoes, extreme markets and other hiking.

Part 4: The origins of Indonesia
6/23/16
The feeling of leaving has finally hit me. We are now hanging around Ubud and there’s plenty of hippie new-age stuff to do and monkeys/rice paddies/temples to see but it feels a little contrived. Ubud is full of leisurely wandering to the next object of wonder, following the line of tourists, jostling for elbow room and selfie space. I thought of Elizabeth Bishop’s line from her poem Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance: “the Seven Wonders of the World are tired and a touch familiar, but the other scenes, innumerable, though equally sad and still, are foreign.”
I would highly recommended watching a traditional Balinese fire dance while in Ubud. Dancers act out a story from the Hindu epic, the Ramayana while a chorus of men chant the storyline and sway dramatically. Continuing with our cultural theme of the trip, we saw many Hindu water temples and small offerings in the forms of flower/snack baskets left out in front of stores and homes, which the ants and other insects accepted on behalf of the god spirits.

A few days later, during my two day layover in Kuala Lumpur, a cab driver asked me if I knew where the word Indonesia came from. Embarrassed, since I'd lived there for two years, I admitted I hadn't given it any thought before. The cab driver, named Krishna, told me that Indonesia meant “nation of hindus”: Indo = hindu and nesia = nation. It suddenly felt appropriate that I had worked my way from west to east, where the most ancient culture of Indonesia had been pushed to, before returning to the west.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Hold on

I am going home soon. This thought passes through my mind in moments of nostalgia, when I think of how my perspective has changed in the past two years and the freedom that this time has afforded me to discover crucial elements of living. It also comes in moments of panic, when I picture the faces of friends I have made, the seemingly chaotic but beautiful puzzle of culture and customs that I will leave unfinished, and all that's left to be done in my remaining three months, and in moments of exasperation, when reading Indonesian news about politicians backing anti-gay demonstrations or sitting at an english camp being reminded that the foreigner's role is sometimes that of a zoo animal. 

Sometimes I say to myself, I will be leaving this complex country soon; leaving it's entitled men who have such a long ways to go in terms of how they treat other human beings - namely women (see: mandatory virginity tests for female police officers, child marriages, female genital mutilation), it's it's curious dual acceptance and rejection of western culture and going back. Back to a place where people don't shout "foreigner" at me every day. Back to a place where I won't always be out of step.

I sometimes stop and think to myself what a rare experience living here still feels like. Getting lost in Jakarta on a hot bright day, trying to find my way to the laptop service center, walking alongside all the working people, the buskers, the street hawkers, asking and recieving 7 million conflicting directions (but always recieving help when asking for it). Rambutan sellers spray their crimson hairy fruit with plastic water bottles poked full of holes in the cap. People peer out of a literal hole in the wall where they eat their meatball soup. Sundanese culture is not very present in the capital city. Many people have moved here from smaller towns and villages to work, making it more versatile than desa life.

The thing I want in my last three months is to hold on to this experience while I still have it. When I start thinking of Indonesia as the "bad boyfriend" Elizabeth Pisani calls it, I remember all the things that keep me coming back for more:

Namely, my zaney, awesome students (posing for letters to our penpals in Durango, Colorado):


Bad-ass people I've met along the way (a tour guide from Kalimantan who is also an activist and very eloquent about Indonesian issues): 

Small victories in bureaucracy: 
(The proposal for a youth empowerment camp set to take place this April 8-10. Myself and three other volunteers have been working very hard to send 16 students from each of our schools to a fun and educational weekend with workshops on topics like health education (particulalry puberty coming of age stuff that they definitely don't hear much about elsewhere), environmental leadership, animal rights, a career panel, applying for scholarships...etc. Getting this proposal signed, stamped and approved by my school and the local Ministry of Relgious Affairs, which oversees Islamic education, was literally a full-time job from January until the end of February. Having finally turned it in to the office who will write us a recommendation letter that makes our camp legal, I can now say "eat my dust, bureaucracy.") 

And my second family: 


So, as it is with the relationship that you know must end soon, my resolve is to hold on while it is still in my grasp: be with the family when I can, immerse myself in projects this last semester, travel a bit at the end and eat as many kilos of mangosteen as I can before I leave.