Will Wonders Never Cease?
Tuesday morning when I arrived at school after the long weekend, the kids in my first class told me that there was no English the rest of the week due to the start of Ramadan. The different classes were going to spend the week practicing hajj (the journey to Mecca) and studying the Qu'ran. I didn't think I could possibly be on vacation again so I asked some of the other teachers--yup, the rest of the week off. One of them took me to buy a bus ticket to Bali. For $11, I can sleep on a huge airconditioned bus that goes across Java, on a boat to Bali, and then finishes in Denpasar. I'll be on the beach in Bali tomorrow morning for the sunrise! I'm going to try to get to Ubud while I'm there to attend some sessions of the Ubus Writer's Festival. Hotels should be about $4/night. Unplanned vacations and amazingly low prices--who wouldn't love Indonesia?
Retreat From Sanity, Part Deux
Laughing at schoolbuses, SMA 3 transported 900 kids 2 hours up a mountain in 22 military convoy trucks. That is, unless the students wanted to take their motorcycles (and a few friends on back) along the winding, pothole-riddled, vertical roads. That was allowed and even preferable.
Even though I insisted that I like Javanese food, the women who cooked for the retreat very nicely made me some “American food” at mealtimes. Each day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was given five (five) sandwiches made of bread, chocolate sprinkles, butter, and peanuts. They were enak sekali (delicious), but 30 pieces of bread a day was a little much. Everyone else watched me eat them and commented on how bread must keep Americans slim, so I felt like I was propagating a giant lie.
Day 3 was a little slow, so my attempts to entertain myself went approximately as follows:
07:00—wake up to the sound of the mooing cow next door.
07:30—eat five bread sandwiches.
08:00—fun with frying—make various shapes out of batter and boiling oil.
08:30—chase the chickens and ducks up and down the road.
10:00—give up on catching a chicken.
10:02—do a television interview about the retreat. Wardrobe—dirty red t-shirt and cut off jeans. Was asked to do the interview in Indonesian, but 8 seconds was too short so was allowed to throw in some English. Babble about loving animals and nature, while squinting into the sun. Everyone cheers.
10:09—drink Sprite and hang out on a bench with various village men. They don’t speak English, I don’t speak Javanese. We smile a lot.
13:00—first military convoy arrives for the trip home. I wait hopefully for them all to arrive so we can pack it up and go home. The final truck comes four hours later.
17:00—I get into my car. Along the way home we pass several students who are stranded because their bikes stalled out. We wave and Pak Tedy says, “Sampai besok!” (See you tomorrow!)
It’s kind of liberating to let everyone worry about themselves. Although it might seem like I’m complaining, I actually had a great time with everyone from the school—I mean, it IS a retreat, why have any rules?
Things That Should Concern Me:
1. Riding on the back of a motorcycle
2. Riding on the back of a motorcycle with somone who doesn't speak any English
3. Riding on the back of a motorcycle with somone who doesn't speak any English into oncoming traffic
4. Riding on the back of a motorcycle with somone who doesn't speak any English into oncoming traffic with a giant hamper full of my dirty laundry on the motorcycle seat in between us
5. Riding on the back of a motorcycle with somone who doesn't speak any English into oncoming traffic with a giant hamper full of my dirty laundry on the motorcycle seat in between us and actually feeling like it is a normal and safe thing to do.
Retreat (From Sanity)
The last three days I’ve been on a retreat for SMA 3 students and teachers in the mountain village of Bedhol. The experience was eye-opening in more ways than one—I saw how differently Indonesian schools operate as opposed to American, spent a lot of time getting to know the teachers and students, and was exposed to many more Indonesian and Javanese customs. The village itself was at the top of a mountain in an absolutely beautiful location—but it was also very poor. The streets were made of dirt and dust was everywhere, and the leader of the village told me that Bedhol was the poorest place on the mountain. Despite that fact, the villagers made us feel extremely welcome and opened their houses to us—literally. The students slept six in a bed on the floors of the houses, while the teachers slept 2 or 3 to a bed in other rooms—except me. I really think the teachers at SMA 3 believe Americans will freak out without privacy, because they gave me my own huge (comparatively) room while everyone else, including the principal, shared with at least one other person. I felt bad, but volunteering to share only makes people awkward and it’s not worth getting into.
Bedol is surrounded by taller peaks, and the villagers make their living by farming. There were cabbage patches, chili pepper fields, and lots of grisan (a type of flower) in the grrenhouse. It was hot during the day, but surprisingly cold in the mornings and the middle of the night. The streets were overun with chickens, roosters, cats, and ducks. I met the town "cow" (actually a bull, but no one seemed aware of that fact) and got to hold some baby lambs. It was far removed from any place I've ever been, but the natural beauty was amazing.
I’m going to write more about the retreat later, but now I just want to focus on one thing that really disturbed me.
After dinner and among-among (chatting) with the teachers on our second night, I decided to go watch the music and art festival the students were hosting with the villagers. It was held outside in the courtyard of the local elementary school. There were a variety of school bands playing first, and they were good enough that it was really fun to watch them (even though the songs were in Indonesian and I knew about every 10th word).
After the music, some men from the village moved everyone back into a semi-circle. They brought out two drums, one large and one smaller. The boy behind me said we were going to watch some kind of martial arts. The next hour frightened me so badly I left the arena in tears. As we stepped back, all of a sudden students started pushing and jostling one another. Two men were locked together inside the crowd, one struggling to get free. From what I could understand, the man who was struggling was possessed by a spirit. Other men grabbed him and ripped off most of his clothes, and then the man fell down onto all fours and started creeping around the perimeter of the circle. His head kept lolling back and forth, and the look in his eyes was completely blank. As he crawled around the circle like some kind of weird spider-animal, another villager, acting as a tamer, came over and whispered into his ear. At this point, two men were beating the drums solemnly. I think the thing that made the whole experience so spooky was the vibe of the crowd. The students and villagers were whispering uneasily, as if just like me, they didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Just then, there were some screams from the other side of the circle as another man became possessed and spun around uncontrollably. Immediately five men ran over to subdue him, pinning him to the ground and taking off his clothes just like the first. At this point I was incredibly scared and asked the boy behind me what we were watching. Hs name was Bagus, and earlier that night he had declared himself my protector. I don’t know if this translated exactly, but he said we were watching an exorcism.
As the two men crept inside the circle and occasionally lunged toward the crowd, causing screams and pushing, the man in the middle whispered to them and tried to calm them by holding their faces. People on the sidelines petted their heads when they came by, like they were some crazy animals who needed to be tamed. While the two possessed men were going around the perimeter, the promised “martial arts” was taking place in the center. Men performed some karate and jujitsu moves as they mock fought with each other and moved in sync.
Halfway through this performance, another person from the crowd became possessed. This time it was a younger boy. All the students and villagers gasped and pushed to get away from his writhing and lunging body. I was scared out of my mind, and I felt the hands of the students on me, pulling me backwards. They were saying, “pray to your God for safety, pray to your God for safety,” and Bagus literally picked me up and tugged me backwards away from the possessed boy. Once I got back I started to cry because I had never seen anyone look the way he did. His face and body were so tortured as he threw his head side to side, his eyes flashing around but not really seeing anything. He started to foam at the mouth as he moved quickly but stiffly across the circle. Some of the students saw me crying and ran over to hug me, but they were shaking, and I could tell them were just as scared as I was. A bunch of the girls started to sob and the older boys had to escort them out of the courtyard. The students near me told me to leave, but I wanted to see what was going to happen next. Some of the girls held my hands and arms and whispered to me that it was extremely safe and they would protect me. Whenever the possesed men came toward me, I was immediately gripped on all sides and pulled backwards.
At this point, more villagers brought costumes for the first two possessed men to put on. One was dressed as a bull, the other a tiger. The tamer stood in the center and cracked a giant whip as the costumed men moved irregularly. I got another big scare when the man dressed as the bull lunged again, and it took three men to pin him down and calm him. There was definitely something going on with these villagers, they weren’t just acting. The crowd was on edge the entire time, as if most people were poised to run if something went wrong. Eventually the tamer cracked the whip and forced the possessed men and boy into a room out of site. The martial arts continued in the middle, but I had seen enough—Bagus and his girlfriend walked me home. I tried to extract from them exactly what had happened, but the language gap was too big. They used the phrases "genie" and "spirits," and when I asked if the men were possessed by the devil, they said no. I think they were in a trance of some sort, maybe brought on by the drums. The students I passed on the way home all wished me good dreams, but there certainly weren't going to be any sweet dreams after what I had just saw.
Phew. Anyway, tomorrow afternoon Layne and I are making an exodus to see some of the other ETA's in Yogyakarta for the weekend (we have Monday off because it's the start of Ramadan). I'm so excited to see another part of Indonesia even though we have to take a bus eight hours to get there! Be back Monday night.
A Delicious Salad
After a few confusing weeks, Layne and I have discovered that Indonesians use the English word “salad” to describe pretty much anything that is put on a plate together. It could be fruit, vegetables, liquid—it doesn’t really matter. For example at the Tugu Hotel, under the category “Salads” is the following:
Duck Crepes
Ceasar Salad
Mixed Salad
Fruit
Pizzettes (mini pizzas with different toppings)
I mention this because I have some random thoughts to put down. Here, without further ado, is a salad of my experiences.
1. Andi and Inron, the two men from the school who come and clean my house twice a week, are really nice guys. They give me motorcycle rides, kill my spiders, climb into my ceiling to poison my rats, and feel comfortable enough to eat the food out of the fridge when I'm not looking. But my favorite thing about them is their flair for interior design. I think they must be into feng shui, because everything I come home and they’ve been there cleaning, most of the furniture has been rearranged. It’s a table here, a sofa there—but it always makes the house look bigger and more agreeable. If I move something they respect the decision for a few days, but eventually the offending object has to be brought back into symmetry with the rest of the room. I’m working on writing a note in Indonesian asking them to describe their methods—because they really have a skill for it.
2. Last week I asked the students in each of my grade 10 classes to write down ten words in English and Indonesian that I could study to learn their language. A lot of them wrote the same words—pen, beautiful, dog, etc. It was anonymous so that no one felt pressure to write really complicated words. Well, that may have been a mistake since I think I have a budding psychopath in one of the seven classes. Here, verbatim, is the list someone composed out of all the words they know in the English language:
kick: menendang
hit: memukul
run: berlari
scratch: mencakar
bite: menggigit
kill: membunuh
knife: pisau
gun: senjata
saw: gergaji
axe: kapak.
Themed writing, perhaps?
3. If you look closely around Indonesia, you’ll start to notice that there is an abundance of swastikas. Now, that might seem anti-Semitic, except for that fact that very few people here are familiar with the Jewish faith—in fact, the only thing they seem to know is that it’s connected in some way with the war in Isreal. They’re always shocked when I reveal that Judaism is a popular religion in America. So I finally asked Win Swastika (concidence, coincidence), Layne’s friend, what the four-pointed figures mean. I had forgotten that Hitler had taken an existing symbol and turned it into a sign for hatred when he came to power in the Third Reich. The swastikas in Indonesia represent the original meaning of the sign—each of the four points stands for a word. The words are love, life, light, and luck. It’s actually very beautiful when you think of it that way—but for most of the world it will always have the very different and dark connotation.
4. Tomorrow my entire school is going on a retreat to the mountain town of Betul (I think that’s the name). My information on this giant three day undertaking is extremely limited. Here’s what I gathered today:
When asked what I should pack, 99% of respondents answered, “clothes." The other 1% said “bra.”
We will be running in the mountains at 5 or 6 am.
We will be taking baths in a river
It will be nothing like America, but I shouldn’t be scared and everyone would try and help me (this was said very earnestly by an adorable year 10 girl).
We will eat rice.
5. Speaking of rice, I made an American-in-Southeast Asia faux pas today. There were huge bags all around the school that male students were huffing and puffing to move into wheelbarrows. Looking at them, I came to a valid conclusion—they must be bags of cement for some work in the school. I said to the female student next to me, “hey, where is all that cement going?” She looked at me strangely and replied, “that’s rice for the retreat.” Oh right—100 pound bags of rice. I should have known.
Air Tejun di Batu
This past Saturday Layne and I went with Pak Habib to see a waterfall in Batu. We had gone with him our first weekend to buy flowers, but we went higher up the mountain this time. I’ve come to the conclusion that Pak Habib collects expatriates. Among the people he brought to the retreat were: Layne, myself, Max (an Indonesian boy), S. from Uzbekistan, P. from Slovakia, N. from Germany, D. from Poland, and H. from Russia. I refer to them by their initials because their Eastern European accents made their names close to impossible to catch.
I think we were expecting a small hike to the waterfall—but when we got to the camping site it was jammed. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people camping overnight and milling around the entrance area buying food, chatting, and shielding their faces from the giant clouds of brown dust that were everywhere. We walked a little ways up the mountain and realized that, as usual, we were an English teaching tool. Pak Habib had taken us to the campsite of about 100 first year English students at Universitas Mohammadiyah and put the foreigners into groups to speak with them. They were really sweet, as most people have been, and anxious to learn about America (partially, I think, because he had just assigned them a paper on American culture).
We started hiking toward the waterfall and I became aware of another difference between American and Indonesian cultures. In America, school-sponsored trips usually try to have some modicum of safety involved—whether it’s the location, transportation, or chaperoning. Not here. Pak Habib was the leader, and I think all of the students had camped overnight with no teacher (they’re younger than American freshman—some were as young as sixteen, and most were seventeen). The walk was pretty steep—people (including me) fell repeatedly down the side of the mountain we were trying to descend. The girls were wearing heavy clothing and Muslim head scarves, so it was difficult for them to balance. Most people had also chosen to wear flip flops, which turned out not to be the optimal shoes when crossing a river or climbing up a mountain. Girls were pitching forward down the mountain path as they walked and I would try to catch them, only to fall further down myself. We finally made it to the waterfall in one piece.
It was really beautiful, although smaller than I’d imagined. There was so much dirt around the area that the pool at the base of the waterfall was brown, but the water coming over the edge looked pretty clean. True to form, I slipped as I was going down to the edge to take a picture and almost fell onto the rocks at the bottom. Everyone shrieked at the thought of the boule hurting herself, but I reassured them I fell all the time and it was no big deal. Two brave guys went in and took a shower, complete with shampoo, but the water was freezing and we had to hike half an hour back and then ride two hours home, so I declined.
Walking back the sun began to set, and when we arrived at the entrance of the camp it was pretty cool (for Indonesia). We sat around for a while as some people ate, but Pak Habib strongly warned Layne and I not to eat anything or we would certainly contract parasites. The night before I had eaten a bunch of hamburgers from a street vendor and felt fine, but then I saw some of the plates they were serving food on and reconsidered. S., the Uzbekistani, said that he was in Indonesia to learn the language and work on translation. He said he spoke Uzbekistani, Russian, English, and was now starting Indonesian. Apparently he completed all of his undergraduate and graduate work in translation by the age of 23 and was working on translating English books directly into Uzbekistani, as opposed to English—Russian—Uzbekistani. Since his English wasn’t that great I don’t really know how well that project is working out for him. He also claimed that there’s a big Indonesian population in Uzbekistan, a statement whose truth I seriously doubt. He hit on the seventeen year old freshmen girls from the college and he was pretty sleazy, so I didn’t talk to him too much. He’s staying at Pak Habib’s for a year.
A guy named Curtis was also there. Curtis is from Texas, but he has been living in Indonesia for almost two years. Apparently his family pays for him to be here (which wouldn’t cost too much) and he just wanders around learning Indonesian and talking to people. He doesn’t take classes, just hangs out and visits different places and families. He was slightly odd as well. He asked me if there was a rich, high society contingent that lived in Rhode Island, similar to the one in New York. Then he asked what people did for fun there. In two years he’s been back to the States one time.
He’s not the only strange expat we’ve met. People who stay overseas for an extended period of time away from their home and family have something a little odd about them—whether it’s the questions they ask or the way they behave, it’s just strange to me that they essentially turn their back on their upbringing and spend their future in a place where, like it or not, they will always be a foreigner. Maybe they like the sensation of always being watched and standing out—I don’t know.
Anyway, the waterfall itself was beautiful and the hike was some much-needed exercise! The pictures are of me at the waterfall, and a view of Batu on the way up.
The Putus
My adorable neighbors: Kiki (the boy), Made, and Esa (the baby)
Time Management
Today is Sunday. Sunday is the only day Indonesians have off from work and school. One would assume they might sleep in. Here is the story of two American girls' Sunday morning in Malang.
(Note: I was sleeping at Layne's because we were being picked up there at 10 am for a batik expo.)
4:00 am: The mosque next to Layne's house begins playing call to prayer. Nothing unusual.
4:30 am: This may have been a dream, but I could have sworn some speech was given in Indonesian over the loudspeakers for about 30 minutes.
5:00 am: My cell phone rings. I pretend it's a bad dream.
5:04 am: My phone rings two more times. It finally occurs to me that there might be an emergency in the US and I pick it up. It's a boy named Jaya, a university student who teaches economics at SMA 3. Here is an approximate transcript of the conversation:
Jaya: Hi Miss America!
Me: What? Who is this?
Jaya: Jaya!
Me: Who? Oh, Jaya...are you OK? What's wrong?
Jaya: It's 5:oo, time to get up, Indonesians get up very early, time to wake up! (Another phone in the background rings. It sounds like he is at a concert or a party. He answers the other phone and I hang up.)
5:07 am: I receive an sms from Jaya, reading: Wake up in the morning good for your body. come on miss america wake up...he.he.he.(J)
5:08 am: I turn off my phone.
6:00 am: Layne's house phone rings. The second time she gets up and gets it. It's her grandmother calling from the US. Layne talks for a few minutes, then hangs up.
7:00 am: Her house phone rings again. We ignore it.
7:30 am: Her house phone rings again. Layne answers it. It's a teacher from her school saying that he is coming to her house to pick her up and take her on a day long retreat for one of the classes at her school. They mentioned this to her two weeks ago and she said she would go, but then no one said a single thing about it, including time of departure, until that morning.
7:34 am: The doorbell rings. The teacher is here. We are still getting dressed and trying to wake up.
7:35 am: Layne goes on retreat and I walk in search of a mikrolet.
I think sleeping in is one of those concepts that might not translate.
A Few of My Favorite Things
Well...some of them. Here are four things that make my house in Malang different than anyplaceI've ever lived:
1) mosquitos: they are everywhere, they are huge, and they are
loud. These guys can wake you up out of a dead sleep by buzzing in your ear. I've embarked upon a healthy solution--I spray my hair and pillows with DEET before I go to sleep so they leave my face alone. My legs, arms, and core are still fair game.
2) volcanic ash: I've never been much of a housekeeper, but when ash from a nearby volcano is coating my table and computer screen to the point that they're gray and no longer transparent, I know it's time to channel my inner French maid and attack with my feather duster.
3) whatever animals are living in my attic: I tend to think it's bats, but who can really be sure--something is scratching around up there. I get a second opinion tomorrow. Good thing there's a flimsy lock on my bedroom in case t's a rabid raccoon or something (although I don't think raccoons are indigenous to Indonesia--so it's probably just bats).
4) my baby lizards: as i type this I can see one running around outside the door. They're really little, probably two inches long, and I only see them if I catch them running out of the corner of my eye. They are nice houseguests, although if one runs on me when I'm sleeping I don't think I'll appreciate it.
well, sugung dalu, my mosquitos, bats, and lizards want to go to bed now--and since we all sleep together, it's lights out.
Supernatural Delight...
Besides religion, there’s another thing many Indonesians believe in—ghosts. Here’s an Indonesian ghost story (non-fictional account?) as told to Layne as told to me:
People can go to visit shamen and “buy” ghosts—for a large enough sum, the shaman will give them the ghost trapped inside of a rock. The shaman summoned the ghost after 40 days spent praying and meditating in the forest. Once someone has purchased the ghost, it belongs to them and will do their bidding. Most people use the ghosts to steal money out of houses at night. In return for his services, the ghost expects to be fed breast milk by the woman of the house. If the woman doesn’t have a child, then she has to give birth to one so she can provide for the ghost. Of course, buying the ghost is not without its spiritual price—the act of owning the ghost guarantees that you go directly to hell. Shamen can be either good or evil—but buying a ghost costs you your soul.
This isn’t an isolated belief. I took an anonymous survey today in my class of year 11’s—the questionnaire was on things you might fear, with Yes or No beside each one. After they completed the questions, I collected them and passed them back out randomly so no one would be embarrassed. First of all, the biggest fear (before flying, heights, or bugs) was deep water. Turns out half the kids in the class couldn’t swim. But the real surprise came when we were talking about being scared of the dark. I said I was scared of the dark because a murderer might come get me, and asked why they might be scared. They all started murmuring that it was because of the ghosts. All of a sudden the goofing around stopped and it was very serious. They were scared of the dark because they believed the ghosts were there. When I asked how many of them believed in ghosts they just looked at me. It was suddenly clear that they all did. Every last one of them.
Later on this afternoon, I was hanging around in one of the offices after my classes waiting to be taken to the tailor’s so I could have my offensive skirt lengthened. I asked Suharyadi if he had ever heard about shamen selling ghosts.
“Oh yes,” he said, “certainly shamen can give people ghosts.”
“But what if they use them, do they go directly to hell?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes, of course, right to hell. They had a ghost.”
This was all spoken about in a very matter-of-fact way. Apparently ghosts are people who are meant to go to hell but don’t want to leave yet. They are different than spirits, which are good souls that haven’t gone to the afterlife yet for some reason. I’m still trying to understand all of the details.
I asked if I could go to a shamen and Suharyadi became very nervous, like I was planning on buying a ghost and he feared for my soul. I was just wonderingif I was allowed to go—I really don’t think Javanese shamen and their ghosts are anything I want to be messing around with. Things were a little serious for a second—but then Pak Tedy started showing me how to do bird calls with my hands and all was forgotten.
Lazy Sunday
Well...kind of. Lazy for my neighbors means up at 7 am instead of 5, so we had plans to go swimming at eight. Fortunately the street noises woke me up at 6:30, so the early alarm wasn't an issue. I went with Made and Miming to Araya, a fitness and pool complex about 10 minutes away from our neighborhood. We had a great time, spent three hours just swimming around and eating fruit. I showed them cannonballs and how to walk on their hands underwater, tricks that were met with wonder and amazement. There was a waterslide too, and I decided to go down on my stomach like Miming. Well, Miming is a 9 year old, 60 pound girl and I unfortunately am not, so I ended up rubbing off the skin on my hip bones with some exposed tubing. Felt great haha. The unimportance of time in Indonesia was demonstrated again today when we were forty-five minutes late for our ride home and no one seemed to care. I think the driver (some relation to the Putu family) was half an hour late himself. The downside to this attitude is that is takes FOREVER to do things, like rent movies. To rent 5 movies this afternoon took almost an hour because everyone just hangs out and chats and doesn't seem to care what time it is. I still need to shed my attachment to correct time and appointments.
One of the other teachers, Ibu Dwi, had told me that she was coming over today to take me back to the tailor's to collect my uniform. I had dropped the material off on Friday night, along with a horrible sketch of what I imagined the uniform should look like. I assumed Ibu meant sometime in the morning or afternoon, but she actually showed up after seven. Before we went to the tailor's we went to Matahari and MATOS to close down her two jewelery kiosks. Her husband, niece, and son were also in the car. When we finally reached the tailor, the two kids were asleep. No problem, we just left them chilling out in the car on the street while we went inside.
Now, I thought the purpose of this uniform was to make me look conservative, or fit it, or something. BUT the way the sketch translated into fabric I don't think that will be happening. The skirt is an A-line cut that is literally
painted onto my body. I can barely move my legs enought to walk--and there is also a slit up the back! The top is a little button down jacket with short sleeves that barely covers the beginning of the skirt...but the best part is the GIANT SHOULDER PADS. I demanded they be taken out, but after negotiations and calls to other teachers who spoke some more English than Bu Dwi, I agreed they could remain on a trial basis. So from the bottom down I look like a cheap call girl, and the top up like Paula Abdul from an eighties music video. It really is one of the most absurd outfits I've ever seen...but I kind of love it.
After we left we went to a padang restaurant where they served food from Sumatra. Padang means that you get a bunch of different dishes and choose what you want to eat. Once again the whole time we were inside eating, we left the two sleeping babies in the car by themselves. I don't know how people can keep telling me that Malang is so dangerous when they leave little kids alone by themselves at night. The food was good but of completely indiscernible origin. So Ibu Dwi whipped out her electronic dictionary and translated what I had eaten:
ayam: chicken (that was fine)
some form of beef:I couldn't be sure what part of the body
liver from some animal:I took one bite and almost vomited, so I didn't ask
there was some confusion about a dish, and I heard the word
anjing, which means dog--and I was horrfied that I had just potentially eaten a puppy. I almost started to cry and said "
saya punya anjing, saya tidak makan anjing" (poorly spoken, means "I have dog, I can't eat dog." I should have said had...R.I.P. Patches Kunkel). The dictionary then showed that I HADN'T eaten dog, only cow legs. I never thought I'd say that eating cow legs was a relief, but...
I tried to be open-minded and try everything...but I did have to draw the line somewhere. You know those posters they show you in D.A.R.E. of the lungs of people who have smoked for years and died of lung cancer? Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what cooked cow lungs look like. I stared at them and even went as far as to poke them with my fork, but nothing less than $20 (maybe $15) was going to get me to eat them.
So it was an adventure. Tomorrow I really start teaching, so I need to prepare a lesson plan for my class from 12-1:30. It's almost September 11 here, so I'm definitely going to discuss that, no matter how touchy a subject it might be. We'll see how it goes!
Language
I'm really starting to think that people in Indonesia have been blessed with tremendous language abilties. For example:
Everyone can speak Bahasa Indonesia, the national language. Bahasa doesn't seem too hard to learn (so far!) because there are no tenses and you repeat most words to make plurals. Those words are my favorite, like:
bunga-bunga: flowers
kadang-kadang: sometimes
anak-anak laki-laki: boys
Bahasa is fun to pronounce, but hard to understand when spoken really fast.
After that, a lot of people in Malang (which is in East Java) speak Javanese. Javanese is spoken by over 100 million people across the Indonesian achipelago. It is VERY complicated, not only due to the difficult pronounciation, but because there are three distinct forms of the language: low, middle, and high. Depending on the social situation, you have to use the correct form of Javanese. The Javanese I know so far is limited to:
maturnuwun or
kesuwun: thank you (I don't know what form)
sugung enjing, sugung siang, sugung dalu: good morning, afteroon, night
sami-sami: you're welcome
Javanese words also start with
ng- a lot, a sound I find impossible to make.
Besides these two, many other people speak their "mother tongues," or their ethnic language, like Bataknese, Muduranese, or Balinese. My nighbors Pak and Ibu Putu speak Balinese, and their kids, Made and Eka, told me it was so hard that they hadn't picked it up even after 10 years of hearing their parents speak it everyday.
After
that, Indonesians start to learn English. By the time they take English in primary school, they're working on their fourth language.
And Americans complain about having to learn two!
I Wonder?
Here are some of the questions I've been asked by various people since I've been in Indonesia:
A student in my year 11 writing class: "Do you believe that America is an evil country?"
An e-mail I received from a man who worked at the Aryduta Hotel:
"Syallom,
Cait, is it possible if i ask u about ur religion ? if not you may refuse to answer my question ok, sorry. i want to ask a lot about free sex, cause if i watch movie from hollywood, i saw that very easy for having sex in america, is that simple like that ? Especially on movie "virgin at 40" thats why i want to ask you about this.
C u next time
Fredy"
Teacher at SMA 3: "How people are atheists in America? No God?"
I really can't think of a politically/actually correct answer to any of these. I usually invoke the old standby, "America is a free country, you can do what you want," which doesn't really mean anything. Hard stuff!
Reflections on Religion (so far)
Indonesia is 90% Muslim—in fact, it’s the largest Muslim country in the world. Like I wrote before, there are five calls to prayer everyday, and followers must wash themselves before every time they pray. It really is a lifestyle, more so than most religions I’ve been exposed to in the United States. The other day in Bu Moerdiati’s class, she was going around the room asking the students what they liked to do after school. I would say that over half of the class said they preferred to study Islam over sports, clubs, or hanging out. It was something they were proud of, guys and girls alike, and perfectly normal. I can only imagaine what would have happened in my high school if someone had declared they liked to read the Bible and go to Church more than anything else. And I went to a Catholic high school!
Today I was reading essays that Suharyadi’s class of year 10’s had written. The topic was “My Daily Activities.” Every single essay I read was focused around prayer. Examples:
“In the morning I wake up at 4:30 am to pray Fjar, then I go back to sleep.”
"In school I stay with my friends so we can pray Zuhr together.”
“I go home and pray Asr, then I work on my homework.”
“I take a nap and wait excitedly until it is time to prayer Mahgrib.”
“I pray Isha and ask for blessings, then I go to sleep at 7:30.”
It’s really very admirable and humbling to see the respect and reverence people have for their religion. The students and teachers at the school know that I’m not Muslim, but they have never forced anything on me. They understand my questions and answer them very patiently. I think they’re happy that I’m so interested. Like today, Pak Tedy told me he was fasting. I asked if it was a Muslim holiday, and he said no, he just chose to fast on Mondays and Thursdays because it took the toxins out of his system. Not every Muslim had to; it was a personal choice he made to feel closer to God. Whenever the male teachers are with me and leave to go pray, they explain where they are going, why they are going to pray, and tell me not to be uncomfortable. Of course I’m not uncomfortable at all, but I really appreciate how open they are about their religion and their willingness to educate me about it.
While I’ve been very favorably impressed with the morals and behavior of followers of Islam, I have had some weird experiences with Christians. Two of the teachers (that I know so far) are Christian. Since one of the first questions I was asked last week was my religion, word has gotten around that I’m Catholic. Yesterday in the teacher’s room, Pak Bambang (a very popular name here, it is NOT pronounced bangbang as I thought haha) sat down next to me and asked if I was Catholic, so I said yes. Then, in front of all the other teachers of different faiths, he exclaimed, “Ah! I knew you believed in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!” I can’t really portray his tone, but the way he said it he sounded validated—like he had just looked at me and known instantly I wasn’t Muslim. What if I had been? He started asking me if I wanted to go to church with him (I’ve noticed that people don’t distinguish much between different branches of Christianity), but I promptly shot that down by saying I only went to Church on Christmas and then he changed the subject.
I did go to another teacher’s church yesterday night to watch Bataknese dancing. It was reminiscent of Balinese dancing to my untrained eye (although I’m sure they’re very different!) with intricate hand movements and beautiful costumes. It also reminded me of Hawaiian dancing because there was a lot of emphasis on the movement of the hips. I met a lot of people who again, were very nice. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the teacher who invited me (!) but she told me I was her third daughter which I found touching. I was late because I couldn’t find the church, so she left the dance and came up the street on a motorcycle to make sure I was OK. I met her son, Ariel, and he invited Layne and I to come speak at his university about being ‘cultural ambassadors’ between the US and Indonesia. It’s funny because Layne and I don’t consider ourselves ambassadors, but we keep getting referred to that way.
Ibu walked me back to the top of Jalan Bromo so I could catch a mikolet home. She started warning me about giving talks—even though her son had just asked me to do one. It turns out that she didn’t think I should give talks at Muslim universities, like Mohamadiyah University near Johanna’s house. She was saying a lot of things about how it would become a political statement if I were to speak to Muslim audiences. Now my (and her) entire audience each day (students) is Muslim. I really don’t see the difference between talking to a Muslim group about teaching English or a Christian group about teaching English. She made Islam sound like more of a political group than a religion. Some of what she was saying was pretty paranoid and made me a little upset—she said that over the last 10 years, Muslims in Indonesia have been burning Christian churches down and killing people. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but the fact that she was trying to turn me against the religion and those who followed it was not appreciated. I told her I would keep my political views out of any talks I gave and that seemed to satisfy her.
Joining the Motorcycle Gang?
Day 2 of school today and I watched two more classes. Thankfully, the first one didn't start until 8:15, so I could sleep in another two hours. The students in the second class were extremely talkative and spoke excellent English--even when they whispered in the back they were doing it in English. Halfway through, Bu Moridiati decided to tell me the history of SMA 3. Apparently during WWII when the Japanese took over Indonesia from the Dutch, the school had been a prison for Dutch soldiers. A camera crew from Jakarta had come to Malang the year before to film a documentary about the ghosts that still haunted the building. Then the girl next to me motioned toward the red and beige tiled floor. "That is the red from the arm," she said, pointing at the red splotches and making a slashing motion across her wrist. Oh right...blood. I looked closer at the floor and realized that it had originally been beige, but was now covered with the remnants of blood stains. Bu Moridiati just laughed and said they 'couldn't be sure' that those were blood stains, and then the class continued. But the more I looked, the more it sure looked like blood to me...
I had mentioned to Suharyadi that I wanted to ride a bike to school instead of take a taxi when I wanted to sleep in. I very clearly said
sepeda, the word for bicycle. But I guess he heard
sepeda motor, because around 10 he and Pak Tedy took me to the Honda dealership to look at motorcycles. In Indonesia, motorbikes outnumber cars and buses about 5 to 1. They can snake around traffic and pedestrians--more than once I had to jump off the sidewalk in Jakarta because motorcycles were using it as another lane during rush hour. I would NEVER ride a motorcycle there. But here, it really seems to be the only way to get anywhere quickly and inexpensively. Mikrolets are cheap, but can take triple the time. Taxis
should be cheap, but I've found that they charge a minimum price of Rp20,000 for foreigners and refuse to turn on their meters. The bikes at the Honda dealership were smaller--not like Harleys or anything. They were about half the size and more like mopeds. They're also 1/3 of the price they are in the US, and when I leave I could resell it for 75% of the original value. A nice little blue bike caught my eye, but I decided I should probably learn how to drive a motorcycle before I invest in one...
So later that day I tested that waters. I went to visit Layne's house for the first time and took an odessey across Malang. Two mikrolets got me about a kilometer away from her house with no idea how to get to ikan nus 2. I waved my piece of paper with the address at men who were sitting and eating meat off bones of some sort. They offered me a becak (like a riskshaw except the 'driver' pedals you forward instead of runs) or the back of a motorcycle. I very bravely chose the bike.
Now I don't know proper motorcycle riding etiquette, but I'm pretty sure clutching one shoulder as hard as I can and screaming "pelan, pelan!" (slow, slow!) at the top of my lungs is not it. We were literally going so slow that the motorcyle was wavering from side to side and we could barely maintain our forward momentum. It ended up taking us almost 10 minutes to ride the one kilometer to Layne's house. She was sitting on her steps as we putted past at about 3/km per hour. I wish she had taken a picture.
We were feeling brave, so then Layne's neighbor and fellow St. Yousef teacher, Win Swastika (yes, that is his actual family name) went and got his mother's motorcycle to give us a taste. I managed to get on and putt forward and around a turn on my first try; I almost felt like this could be something I would be able to handle. Full of hubris I climbed off--except I had forgotten to put down the kickstand and the weight of the bike knocked me over into the dirt. I can just see that happening at an intersection in Malang in front of rush hour traffic. People think we are odd enough as it is!
So enough about motorcycles. I went to lunch with Pak Tedy and Suharyadi after scoping out the bikes, and there I made two grave errors:
1) I drank a delicious mixture made of coconut slices and some other liquid I assumed was coconut milk. Halfway through the meal Suharyadi informed me that they don't have coconut milk here and it was just water with the fruit slices. I saw the tap they were getting the water out of, and I feel confident in saying I now probably have about 1,354,345 parasites.
2) I made a
joke about how I wished I had a uniform so I didn't have to buy new school clothes. It was OBVIOUSLY a joke, I said I wanted to wear a little tie and maybe some knee highs. Everyone laughed, it was a JOKE. But I guess some subtleties of my humor were lost in translation, because when I got out of my final class this afternoon Suharyadi came up to me with a big smile and told me Principal Tri was
so happy I had decided to wear a uniform. I could have the same one the other women were wearing. Another teacher sitting nearby commented that I would look beautigul in the uniform. False. The fabric is a heninous shade of green that will only make me look jaundiced and the cut is extemely unflaterring (which I suppose is the point). I did manage to leverage my extreme height compared to the other teachers and extract a promise that I could visit a tailor and have it fitted to my body. I wasn't particularily pleased this afternoon about the situation, but the fact that everyone was SO happy about my wanting to wear a uniform gives rise to two conspiracy theories:
Either:
1) My outfits the first few days were assaults to good taste and decency and demand I be given more structure concerning my clothing choices, or
2) They secretly wanted me to wear a uniform all along but didn't want to offend me, and by offering to wear one I look like a team player.
I like to believe #2.
Who's Afraid of Public Speaking?
I haven’t felt this nervous for the first day of school since ninth grade. I woke up around 5:15 this morning to steel my nerves and mandi. It was honest-to-god chilly in my house this morning—American-below-70 chilly, not Indonesian-below-90 chilly. Every time I poured a bucket of cold water over my head an uncontrollable huge shiver ran though my body.
By the time I finally warmed up and got dressed, it was almost time for my neighbors to come get me. I could hear Made saying “excuse me…excuse me” through my locked gate as I slathered on eye liner and grabbed my bag. Not being totally prepared made my stomach crunch into an even tighter ball.
Once we reached school, Made and Eka escorted me to the principle’s office and then the 13 and 15 year old left the nervous 22 year old alone on her first day. This morning was the school wide flag ceremony. All of the teachers and students arranged themselves into formations on the basketball court—about 30 teachers and 850 students. There was a marching/military group that made their way around the court at the start of the ceremony. It was interesting yet slightly creepy to see these young boys and the girls in Muslim head scarves marching so seriously and reverently in front of their peers. They raised the Indonesian flag as a choir of sorts sang what I assumed was the national anthem. There was a series of commands and statements read by members of the marching group, and then Principle Tri stepped up to the mike. He said a number of things I couldn’t catch, and then he motioned toward me and said my name. Everyone cheered! I waved and debated curtseying in my long pleated skirt, but fortunately decided against it.
THEN next thing I knew, everyone was motioning to me to go out to the stage. Suharyadi whispered that I had to make a speech. Um, how about a warning?? Fortunately I didn’t have time for my fear of public speaking to come raging back full force, and I just walked to the stage in my little white shirt, black skirt, and high heels (I mention what I was wearing because everyone else, including all of the teachers and maintenance workers, were wearing uniforms) and just freestyled. I’ve learned from going to other classrooms that you should always say that you are happy to be in a country as beautiful as Indonesia. That elicited a giant cheer. I said I was American. Another cheer. I said I wanted to help everyone learn English as long as they would help me learn Bahasa Indonesia. I said I was so happy to be at SMA 3 for nine months and then giggled nervously into the microphone. 850 huge cheers. Apparently at that point I was supposed to stay on the stage while someone led a military salute in my honor, but since we didn’t drill at my middle school I got confused and skipped off. There was a lot of motioning and Indonesian-speaking trying to get me back onto the platform, but I escaped to the side.
After my early morning embarrassment, I worked out my schedule with Suharyadi and Moedinari, another English teacher. I’m teaching about 18 hours a week, with some extra hours scheduled to help the teachers with their English. Indonesian teachers of course have to use the English terms to teach Biology and Physics, so the subject teachers were desperate for me to teach them some phrases. Lots of them came up to me just to talk and try to improve their grammar. I spoke to them and helped them for about four hours, and then I went and watched my first class. Ibu Moedinari showed me into a room of about 38 tenth graders who all cheered when they found out I would be their teacher. I sat in the back row and chatted with one of them during class, his name was Rizky and he was extremely shy. I told him Rizky meant dangerous in America and he had the coolest name I had ever heard. He blushed uncontrollably and smiled—I don’t actually know how much English he understood because he never spoke to me haha. All of the kids kept turning to look at me and there was an air of excitement in the room at the thought of a change, maybe less work! Bu Moedinari used mostly ditto worksheets to have them speak and write, and my job is to get them to focus on conversation. I want to start with games and move toward working together in teams to try and spark some excitement for learning English. My Indonesian has improved 200% just from the three days I’ve been in Malang and the more I learn, the more I’m anxious to know. I need to get them to feel the same way about English.
I went home around 1:30, 7 hours after I had gotten there. This week I’m just observing my classes, feeling what level they’re at and seeing the topics they have to cover for their national exams. They take the exams in year eleven, so I have to aim some of my lessons toward that.
Tonight Johanna, Layne and I went to the famous Tugu Hotel Malang. Every time we mentioned Malang at AMINEF the Executive Director, Mike McCoy, would tell us to go to Tugu. Now I know why! The hotel is partially an antique store, with beautiful pieces from China, Hindu, and Buddhist religions. We took a tour that led us through the Persian room, the French room, Indian, and various Asian themes. The walls are mostly painted red which seems a little extreme, but it worked because of the soft lighting and decorative wall art. They had some fabulous paintings that I would love to get prints of for my (as of yet) barren walls. We ate a great dinner in the French/Italian restaurant, and I carbo-loaded to make it through the next few days on fruit and water.
I had a breakthrough in Indonesian today. I’m forced to use it at school to try and make teachers understand English, and suddenly everything I’ve learned came flowing back to me. I learned some more key phrases like “saya pikir” (I think) and really started to be able to compose more complex sentences. Then, the ultimate validation: I had a heated discussion with a cab driver and two men at the Tugu Hotel in Indonesian, insisting my house was close to the hotel and that the driver should know where it was. In the car on the way back we spoke a little, and he told me I spoke very good Bahasa Indonesia! Excellent ending to the day.
Life in the Public Eye
This afternoon, I went walking down my street to explore Malang a little (and find some of the watermelons I had seen on street stands, or warungs). Malang is known for its apples, and I finally ate one. It was good, very sweet and juicy—but I maintain that New England apples are better. I walked over a bridge and looked down into a valley with a river and lots of trees and vegetation right in the middle of the city. I tried to find a warnet (internet café) to get some cheap surfing time, but the directions the watermelon vendor gave me led to nowhere. Literally, the street just ended. Lots of staring, people beeping their horns and screaming hello at me. It’s a little strange not to be able to go anywhere without drawing a crowd—for example when I was buying apples, people came over to watch me garble my Indonesian numbers and not understand kilos. It doesn’t really bother me, just makes me aware that I can’t do things like pick my nose and hope no one notices—because they definitely will haha. The streets are really uneven and I was wearing flip flops, so of course I kept stumbling. People watching me thought this was by far the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. They point and laugh, even when I turn around and look at them. So then I just laugh too—what else can I do?
I went to dinner with my neighbors tonight. We tried to go to Pizza Hut, but that place was jammed. Thirty minute wait for a table! Pizza Hut is a sit down, kind-of-nice restaurant here. Instead we went to Steak n’ Shake, which I’ve actually never been to in the US. It was pretty delicious, or enak sekali, if you will. The mother and father are really happy I’m here and teaching English to their two older girls, Eka and Made. The youngest daughter Miming doesn’t know much English and she is pretty shy, but she managed to ask me if I liked Britney Spears. As soon as I told her I saw Britney Spears in concert we became fast friends. On the way home Eka told me I looked like Princess Diana, which is blatantly false but a lovely compliment nonetheless. When we got back to Mayjen Woyono all of the people who lived with them came out to see me—uncles, friends, some other young men—apparently they had been wanting to talk to me, but since we have no language in common I had to use my standard phrase of “saya belajar bahasa Indonesia, lalu kita berbicara” (I am studying Bahasa Indonesia, then we will talk). Pak Putu told me now I was a part of their big family, and they would all take care of me. Everyone was very genuine about wanting to make me feel at home.
Tomorrow is the first day of school, and I’m starting to get a little nervous about forty pairs of eyes on me! Made told me that my height is an advantage, so maybe I can stare menacingly down at any errant students. There is a flag ceremony tomorrow morning (first Monday of every month), so I leave at 6:15 am. Oh man.
Mandis and More
Since today is the only day of the week most people have off from work and school, the streets stayed pretty quiet until around 7:30 am. I woke up at nine to experiment with my mandi—the Indonesian version of the shower. There is no showerhead, only a faucet with a square basin underneath it. It isn’t a bathtub, just a container for the water from the faucet. When you mandi, you dump buckets of the water over your head onto the floor and then it flows down into a drain in the corner of the bathroom. I got down onto my knees and investigated the slope of the floor, but I still don’t really understand how all of the water flows to the right corner of the room—it looks pretty flat to me. The floor dries about 20 minutes after you’ve “showered.” The water isn’t freezing cold, but it’s not room-temperature either—it’s somewhere in between. It was vaguely refreshing this morning, but I doubt tomorrow morning at 5 am when I get up for school I’ll be quite so enamored of dousing my whole body with buckets of cold water.
Johanna, the Fulbright English Teaching Fellow stationed in Malang, invited Layne and I to her house today to meet some of her friends. The ETFs work at universities around Indonesia instructing English teachers and improving the TOEFL scores and speaking skills of students in the universities. Johanna’s house was pretty far away from mine, and her friend couldn’t find my road to come get me. Thirty minutes and no cab either, I walked out to the main road to try and find some way to the other side of town. One of the blue public transport vans, or microlets, started motioning frantically at me and pulled over, so I hopped into that. Turns out I was on the wrong one to get to Johanna’s neighborhood, but they transferred me to the correct one. The vans have open back and side doors, and there are benches around the inside. About ten people can fit on them, but at one point a woman got on and basically just sat on my lap because there were no other seats. I finally reached Istana Gajayana and for the entire half hour trip the flat rate was Rp 2,000, or 25 cents. Apparently these little vans go over all Malang and up to the mountain towns for that much.
Johanna’s friend Pak Abib and his wife wanted to take us to Batu, a mountain town, so we could buy fresh flowers. We made our way up the side of the mountain in an SUV (a majority of people here drive the largest cars possible), passing more flower stands than I’ve ever seen. Batu is the town right after Malang, halfway up one of the mountains. We bought potted flowers and hanging plants, and for some reason Layne also bought a cactus to put in her house haha. For about $9 I bought two red, tall flower plants to put by my front door, a plant vaguely reminiscent of a poinsettia, and a hanging pot of beautiful purple flowers. I brought those to my neighbors when I got home to thank them for helping me set up my house.
Getting Used to Life Alone...
I must be right next to a mosque, because the call to prayer was in my ear this morning haha. After it woke me up I was able to go right back to sleep—it’s just the initial start of the singing that jolts me awake. It’s going to be impossible to sleep late here (a good thing!) because the streets and people get so loud by the windows. Students in Indonesia have school on Saturdays as well, so around 6:30 I started hearing them head off. Luckily AMINEF made it clear to our schools that in America, there is no school on Saturdays. So we have the whole weekend off whew.
Pak Tedy and Surharyadi had told me to be ready around 9 or 10 so we could go meet the leader of the neighborhood. Indonesian neighborhoods are divided into sections, with about forty homes in each one. I found out today that each section has a theme, and the streets are named after that one theme—for example, Layne’s theme is fish (haha) and the theme of my neighborhood is heroes. So my street is named Jalan Mayjen Woyono, who was an important military figure in Indonesian history (so I’ve been told). That little bit of knowledge made understanding directions a LOT easier.
Around 11 no one had showed up to take me anywhere (jam karet: rubber time) so Layne called and said her friend Win would take us to the Malang Town Center (Matos) to get some things for our houses. I thought I had been stared at a lot in Jakarta. Wow. Layne and I were blatantly looked at the entire time we were there (it didn’t help I broke a glass in the Hypermart). It isn’t glaring, or weird looks—people just honestly haven’t seen foreigners for a while, if ever, and want to see how we are different. If you smile, almost everyone smiles back immediately. If you make an effort to speak Indonesian and say selamat pagi, or good morning, they really appreciate it. Layne and I bought things like blowdryers, toaster ovens,and trash cans—every bit of electronic equipment I brought from the US is worthless here, even with a converter. The different voltages blow the fuses. Luckily my computer charger works, but that’s the only thing.
We ate lunch at Indonesian KFC (Win, like most Indonesians I’ve met, seems to think that fried chicken is an American girl’s best friend) and instead of biscuits, they serve rice. They also serve spaghetti and a strange soup. It was interesting, but a soda has never tasted as good as it did there. My ayam (chicken) was good too. It’s reassuring to know that KFC spells delicious in every culture.
I came back and unpacked, and then Suharyadi and Pak Tedy came over about 6 hours late. They never said anything, so maybe I misunderstood them the day before. We unpacked some more, they brought it a TV and a TV stand (even though I said I didn’t need it and it only gets about 10 channels, all in Indonesian or Javanese) and then I showed them my teaching books from the US. They were really happy and took them to be photocopied. There are no copyright laws here, and every book can be photocopied for about Rp 30,000, or $3. I copied a bunch of ETA’s books before we left Jakarta.
Suharyadi heard me talking about how I liked dogs, and he immediately offered to find me a puppy. One of the men from the school, Andi, who was there nailing mosquito net, or tirai, over the windows, said in Javanese that he could find one. Then my neighborhood, Bu Putu, walked by, and said that she had a puppy I could have. I went over and looked—this dog was hysterical. They said they had traveled to Surubaya, about two hours away, to buy it, but it looked like they had found it in the gutter. He was missing all the hair on his legs, and the hair on his body was long and matted. He was some sort of terrier, but I honestly couldn’t begin to guess. She offered the dog to me, but it was obviously the children’s dog! There are four children in the family—Eka, Made, Kiki, and Esa. Eka and Made have been coming over to my house to speak with me and practice their English—Made’s is very good. They are beautiful girls, with dark skin and long black hair. The Putu family is Balinese, which means they’re Hindu, not Muslim. The house I live in is actually rented from them by the school. Kiki is a six year old boy, and Esa is a beautiful baby with lots of jewelry. Brownies (the name of the dog) was Kiki’s, so of course I said I didn’t want to take him away. Andi is going to look for another puppy for me, and Ibu Putu said her family would take him when I went back to America. She asked me to help her learn English and if I wanted to go to their Balinese village next time they travel to Bali. Of course I said yes to both requests!
MALANG!!
I am in Malang! The flight here was short and surprisingly not too bumpy—Layne and I flew Sriajaya Air, which had a different terminal and seemed slightly unsafe. Once we got above the Jakarta fog though, it was a beautiful ride. We could see the water and the coastline, and we flew past a smoking volcano! I happened to look out the window as we were coming into Malang, and a volcano was billowing smoke into the air. No one else on the plane seemed to think it was cause to panic, so I didn’t either—but we were pretty close to that volcano.
The Malang airport is only a year old, and previously used for military planes. So there was only one runway and the terminal was a small building with two rooms. We waited for our luggage to be “offloaded,” meaning it was driven to the side of the room we were in and dumped on the ground. Once we had our bags, we went outside to meet the people from our school. They were ecstatic to see us! My contacts were Pak Tedy, the vice-principal of SMA 3 Malang, Ibu Haryadi, and Suharyadi, a younger English teacher at the school that I’ve been e-mailing for a few months.
We stopped briefly at a mosque so Pak Tedy and Suharyadi could pray—it was Friday, the holy day for Muslims. Men must go to the mosque at noon, but women pray in their homes. I sat in the car with Ibu and used my limited vocab to tell her my age and religion (one of the first things she asked). The men only prayed for a short time, and then we drove to SMA 3. Malang is beautiful, full of trees, wide streets, and a cool breeze, thank God. One more week of Jakarta heat and I would have lost it. It’s surrounded by mountains and Layne and I can’t wait to go hiking.
We reached the school and went inside to meet the principal and some of the other teachers. The principal’s name is Tri Soeharno, which is funny because that was the name of Indonesia’s first president after they won independence from the Netherlands. He told me to call him Pak Tri though. He really doesn’t know any English, and he read a letter out loud that someone else must have prepared—it was written in English, but he didn’t know how to pronounce any of the words. There were a few other male teachers there, and besides Suharyadi, none of them knew passable English. And, to make things more difficult, they don’t really speak Indonesia either! They know it, but since I’m in East Java now, most people speak Javanese. I’ve learned a few phrases and it is MUCH harder than Bahasa Indonesia. The words are close to impossible for me to pronounce or distinguish when I hear other people speaking. I’ve gotten offers from a few teachers to teach me Javanese if I teach them English, so hopefully I can make some progress.
They told me they had gotten me an American lunch and then gave me fried chicken, which I thought was really funny. After we ate Suharyadi took me on a tour of the school. It’s very bright and nice, some of the classrooms are open air and there is a big courtyard/playground in back. It’s painted yellow and orange, so the sunlight illuminates most of the rooms. I met a few students and their English is really very good—much better than the people at AMINEF had led us to believe. I’m excited to work with them and try to help them to achieve fluency.
After the tour and a short walk around the block, I finally went to my house! Pak Tedy, Suharyadi, Pak Tri, and his wife all came. It’s one story and the floors are all made of beautiful white and pink marble. There is a kitchen, three bedrooms, a living room, and a greeting room in front. Two men who worked for the school kept running in and out, bringing in more furniture—I had no idea where they were getting it from. First they had a tiny bed in my room—smaller than a twin and too short for me. They asked if it was OK, and I said yes, but I guess not quickly enough…because they shouted a bunch of Indonesian and ran outside, and a few minutes later there was a queen size bed in my room. With cow sheets on it haha. There’s no frame so I’m essentially sleeping on the floor, but I think that’s how people sleep here so it’s OK with me.
Everyone is so anxious to please me, it makes me feel a little guilty. They want things to be perfect for me, and they really bend over backwards to help. We went shopping after setting up the house and they insisted on paying for me, even though I’m sure I’m getting paid much more a month by the US government then they make in a few months working in Malang. While we were out I met an Australian guy who just finished Mohamadia University, and of course since I was the only other bule he had seen in a few months, he came over and introduced himself and invited me to a party at his house in a week. Pak Tedy was really cute, he immediately pulled out his phone and got the Australian’s number, and then told me that I was like his daughter and he would protect me. He wants me to go to his house sometime soon and meet his wife and five children.
I spent the rest of the night organizing, but I’m still missing lots of things like a fridge, stove, dressers, and power strips, so there’s only so much I could do. The street is very loud at night—I guess I didn’t realize that when I was staying on the ninth floor of the Aryaduta Hotel haha. But the noise isn’t too bad, and the air is fresh, so it doesn’t really bother me. Around nine the power started going out sporadically, so I went to bed.
