Indonesia: Life In The Islands

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.

posted by Caitlin @ 6:22 PM