These Are A Few Of My Most Hated Things
Two, to be exact. Daily life as a bulé in Indonesia has its annoyances (see, “An Indonesian Day,” below), but I’ve been able to get used to/basically ignore a lot of them—like the tendency for people to be an hour late for meetings, the staring, the comments about my weight, skin tone, and outfits—but these two are quickly growing to be unbearable.
1. Ants
Part of the reason they make me so upset is because there’s a certain mystery to them. I can’t find their main hole, I can’t eradicate them, and I sure as hell can’t spot them coming. I’ll be drinking a Pocari Sweat, put the can down for ten minutes, and when I look at it again it’s swarming with ants and there will be a trail of thousands of them stretching across the floor. I follow the trail back, but there isn’t really a point of origin. They don’t seem to be coming from inside the wall or under the door; occasionally I catch them coming in through the windows, but more often than not I can’t find anything.
If they were just on my food it would be one thing—but they seem to want to eat me as well. One thing I’ve gotten quite skilled at is plucking ants off myself, crushing them between my fingers, and flicking their carcasses onto the floor. I take a certain sadistic pleasure in this activity, almost as much as when I go ant stompin’. Ant stompin’ is a fun little game I’ve created where I put on my sneakers, throw on some beats, and dance around the house until I’ve crushed all the ants under my feet. A fellow ETA recently wrote on her blog about the joy it gives her to spray Raid Floral Fresh when she’s ambushed by swarms of insects. I experience that same joy every time I go ant stompin’.
The worst is when they crawl on me when I’m sleeping. Have you ever woken up covered in two hundred tiny black ants? Because I have and I wouldn’t recommend it.
Last Sunday I devoted the entire day to cleaning my house top to bottom. Mopping, bleaching, sweeping, dusting—I’ve never cleaned so much in my life. I went to bed satisfied that the ants would not find a crumb of sustenance.
Even though I’m not going to a cubicle, when I get up at 5:30 am and it’s already 85 degrees, I usually have a little case of the Mondays. My one small joy is Honey Stars, a delicious Indonesian cereal that is way sugary. My box of Honey Stars is one of my most treasured possessions, so I quarantine it hoping the ants go for the other food in the kitchen. This Monday I gleefully removed the box, with its cheerful Honey Bear, from its seat of honor on top of the TV and poured myself a big bowl. I sat down with my coffee and lifted my spoon—only to realize that there were hundreds of ants teeming in my precious bowl of deliciousness. There were so many I couldn’t even consider picking them out and eating the cereal anyway. I had a low food moment in October when I paid $7 for Philadelphia cream cheese only to unwrap the silvery foil to reveal maggots and mold—but this took the cake. Seeing my Honey Stars defiled reduced me to tears and made me 30 minutes late for school. I think I need to do some extra ant stompin’ this week to release some major endorphins.
2. The second thing is even more trying than the ants because unlike insects, I can’t kill Pak Teddy when he upsets me. Pak Teddy (as some of you might know) is the vice-principal of SMA 3. The thing that makes me most upset about him is that he’s a stereotype of a Muslim man. He continually makes comments about me becoming his second wife, since his first wife “is very fat now and no longer good.” I’ve met her, and she’s a beautiful woman who has gained weight because she’s given Teddy five children in seven years. Teddy repeatedly asks me to sleep at his house, even though I’ve refused and told him it makes me uncomfortable. He insists that he is incredibly holy because he fasts on Mondays and Thursdays and had made the haj to Mecca—yet over the course of the last seven months he’s lied to me, threatened me, made inappropriate comments on a daily basis, and called me an infidel. If I only met him and then left Indonesia, all stereotypes a lot of Americans have about Muslim men would remain intact.
Here’s a classic day with Teddy. I was sitting in the English office reading a dictionary since it was the only thing I could understand. A man came into the office and wanted to know my name. Like he does with all male visitors, Teddy told him I was single and looking for an Indonesian husband. He laughed uproariously and left the room. OK, good one Teddy, except then I had to spend an hour sitting next to this man, having a broken English/Indonesian conversation, while he hit on me and kept touching my arm and leg. I try to be polite most of the time, but when he started asking me about sex I got up and left. Like I’ve written before, not only would these things be wrong in the US, but an Indonesian man would NEVER talk to an Indonesian woman like that. So the fact that I’m working and having to deal with this is, at least partially, Teddy’s fault for bringing it up in the first place.
After I switched seats the man got the message and left. Teddy then came bounding back into the room and over to me.
Teddy: Can you tell me in English about sexual intercourse?
Me: What?!
Teddy: I do not know what it is. Please describe to me.
Now, Teddy is a BIOLOGY teacher, so he damn well knows what sexual intercourse is. I put my head phones and gave him a heinous look, which he ignored. All the other men in the office were laughing, but the one woman, God bless her, was horrified. She went up to Pak Teddy and talked in rapid-fire Javanese for a while. That’s how I knew he was way over the line—the women at my school never criticize Teddy. When she was done he came over to me, still with that stupid smile.
Teddy: I am so sorry I asked about the sex.
Me: No problem.
Teddy: The sex is funny, yeah?
Me: No.
He saw I wasn’t going to play along and went back to his desk. Next thing I know he’s asking me how to pronounce the phrase “female reproductive organs” and wants me to look at diagrams of both sexes. I said no, THEN he drew a picture of a female chest, and under the pretense of “learning vocabulary” asked me what the various English words for the parts of the female breast were. I’m sure he was legitimately teaching the reproductive organs, but since he teaches the class in Indonesian there wasn’t really a reason for me to have to sit and write the word “nipple” on a piece of paper because he has terrible listening comprehension and couldn’t understand when I just said it.
Teddy also claims that because he is a biology teacher, he’s an excellent masseuse. I sprained my ankle last week and he continually grabs my foot with his hands and tries to massage it, on his hands and knees, in front of me. He always wants to give me reflexology on my hands for my “stress.” Again, not anything he offers to ANY women at the school, just me.
After the motorcycle incident (too long to recount, I wrote about it my entry, “No Matter What The Language, Money Spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E) I told Suharyadi I didn’t want to talk to Teddy anymore. After a series of text messages (see, “There Is A Land Called Passive Aggressiva) I relented and said I would deal with him on a professional level. That worked for about a month and now we’ve backslid to the same old shit Teddy used to pull.
This Saturday, I was doing a favor for Teddy by going to visit SMA 1 Bangil, a school an hour and a half outside of Malang. It wasn’t so much for him as the other school—they were trying to become an international school and wanted to motivate their kids to speak English. So I agreed to go on the condition that we not leave early in the morning and that I would not go alone with Teddy.
The day before, Teddy called me five times and sent me three messages saying that we’re leaving at 8 am (a relatively late hour) and I CANNOT be late. Fine, I can wake myself up, I’ve been doing it since I was 10. I set my alarm for 7:30.
7 am: Teddy calls.
Teddy: Are you awake?
Me: No, you said 8.
Teddy: Get up and eat breakfast right now. No late!
Me: FINE.
So I get up and eat breakfast, get dressed, and sit on my couch waiting for Teddy.
8:30: I SMS him.
Me: where are u? u said 8. i am ready now.
Teddy: have meeting. there in 10 min.
After I watch an entire Amazing Race episode, I text him again. No response.
10:00: I send Suharyadi an angry message.
10:15: Teddy calls.
Teddy: Hello! You must be ready! No late!
**Note** Jam karet, or rubber time, is an accepted part of Indonesian culture. But I’ve asked around and making someone wait more than an hour or two is pretty rude, even by their standards. And I wouldn’t really have been mad at all if he hadn’t called and woken me up so urgently. So I felt justified yelling at Teddy a little.
Me: I AM ready, I was ready at 8 when you said to be.
Teddy: Oh, are you mad?
(the answer to this question, in Javanese culture, is ALWAYS no.)
Me: Yes!
Teddy: Oh, I sorry. I come now.
10:30: He gets to the house. I stomp outside and get in the car. There is no one else.
Me: Um, are we getting the other teachers?
Teddy: No, all sick. Just us!
Greeeeat. Teddy then proceeded to put on the Avril Lavigne cassette and “sing” along to it. And by sing I mean he keened like a hurt puppy in a way that wasn’t relevant to the tune or the words of the song. In between whines he screamed into his cell phone, sent text messages while going 80 miles an hour, and shifted gears in such a way that his hand was always on my arm. No matter how many times I shifted away from him and looked out the window, the arm always made its way back.
Bangil was great—I was sweaty and grumpy as all hell when I got there, but the kids spoke fantastic English and had lots of questions. We only stayed an hour then hopped back in the car since I had “a conference at Layne’s school” I had to go to at 3 (I always have to have an fake event after something with Pak Teddy, otherwise he invariably drives me to his house and tries to make me sleep there). Even though it was monsooning all the way home and the roads were flooding, Teddy continued to text message and look at everything except the road. When I got home I promptly checked myself into a hotel and got a massage.
Teddy, you make me crazier than ants in my favorite cereal. And that’s saying a lot.
Labels: you make me hate teddy bears
And Today In Disturbing Safety News:
I've only flown into the Malang airport one time, and I have to say that I was not impressed. It's a military airport that only recently started taking a few daily flight from Sriwijaya Air and Merpati (whose unofficial slogan is, "It's Merparti and I'll Die if I Want To). When we arrived Layne and I noticed a
handwritten poster that showed the pilot what runway we were supposed to land on. We didn't really think about it too much since it was our first time in Malang and we were promptly rushed off to our new schools and houses (or in my case, rushed off to a local mosque so the four men who picked me up could pray).
Johanna, who uses the Malang airport quite a bit, has been covertly gathering information about its operating standards. First she found out that the airport closes each day at 5, so when airport officials tell you a Malang flight is delayed and its already three pm, you're out of luck for the day.
More recently, she uncovered the reason for the early closing hours. It turns out that the Malang airport has
no communication system or navigation equipment, so all flights, including 200 passenger commercial flights, are landing based purely on the pilot's visuals. In fact, Layne's neighbor's flight was rerouted to Surabaya one day when it was foggy--we assumed it was because the runways were wet. Actually, the pilot couldn't see the ground and would have been, absolutely literally, flying blind.
So that must be the reason for the poster. The pilot starts descending, and then checks out the poster of the day to see what runway is clear for him to land on.
I don't even have a little snarky wrap-up comment for this. I'm just going to teach you an Indonesian word I use quite a bit, usually in a questioning tone while pointing at a plane, bus, or other mode of transport.
berbahaya: dangerous
Labels: navaigation systems are for wimps
A Delightful New Twist on the Name Game
I’ve been at SMA 3 for six months now, and my name still hasn’t been standardized. I get called Cait, Caitie, Miss Caitlin, Miss, and C on an everyday basis, and there’s still an annoying large percentage of the school staff who insist on calling me Cath.
I also get introduced a lot. I didn’t realize this until a few months ago, but SMA 3 is apparently one of the best schools in Java (although I adore my students, the thought that their English is the cream of the crop in Indonesian makes me shudder). At least once a week Pak Teddy and Pak Pri, the vice-principal, conduct tours of the school for visiting teachers from all around the archipelago. Last week there were 30 teachers from Banda Aceh, the province hit hardest by the 2004 tsunami. In December there was a large contingent from Sidoarjo, the area near Surabaya that is slowly but surely being destroyed by hot mud. I always get pulled into the teacher’s room for at least a few minutes to just generally act like an American and so the school can show off their white person status symbol..
When Pak Pri and Pak Teddy introduce me they like to switch it up Sometimes I’m, “the Fulbright scholar,” or “the AMINEF worker.” For the teachers from Banda Aceh I was, “the native speakers who works here for us and is going to move to Indonesia to live in Malang (false).” Usually the words “native speaker” are combined with some version of my name.
But today, in front of 25 teachers from Jakarta, Pak Pri stood up and announced, “This is Caitlin, my best friend in the world!” Then he handed me the microphone.
I started laughing, but I’d be remiss if I didn't say I was a little touched as well.
Best friend in the world?
I had no idea you felt that way about me, Pak Pri.
Then Pak Teddy joined in with, “Yes, she is also my best friend too.”
The teachers from
Jakarta were just nodding happily and waiting for my 7 second spiel in Indonesian.
So maybe this is my new standard introduction: Miss Caitlin, best friend to older Indonesian men everywhere.
At least it's better than Cath. I'm not a bag of urine, people!
An Indonesian Day
I had one today. Complete with all the frustrations and inconveinences. I woke up around 5 am when my counterpart at my school, Suharyadi, sent me an SMS. This is what it said (remember, this is a co-worker):
Hi, how r u? I need your help. I need to borrow one millions rupiah. I will give it to you in April. I need today.
I rolled over and went back to sleep. One million rupiah is more than $100 and double his monthly salary. There was no way.
7 am: Johanna sends me an SMS saying she's throwing up and can't come to my school on Monday for a workshop. I send out messages to the people at my school and go back to sleep.
10 am: a spider bites my leg so I get up to put ice on the bite. I SMS Suharyadi and ask what he wants the money for. Response:
"My baby is very sick. I need to buy him extra milk."
I felt guilty about that. What if his baby was dying? But still, milk costs about 50 cents for a gallon. $100 was a little excessive. I asked him if he has taken the baby to the hospital, and he said no, he wasn't that sick. Well, OK then. I said no, I couldn't loan out money to co-workers. His response?
"OK, I hope Alpha lives."
THAT just made me angry. I sent him a terse message explaining I wasn't responsible for his baby's health, and if the baby needed to go to the hospital that was one thing--but I wasn't giving him $100 for milk. He didn't respond. This irritated me because the week before, Suharyadi had begged me to tell him how much I made per week. He said he wanted to understand the conversion rates between American money and Indonesian. Apparently he forgot to factor in that I've lived in Indonesia for seven months now and I know how much things cost here.
After that, I got dressed and realized my house was in sorry, sorry shape. I hobbled around (I fell hiking the other day and may have sprained my ankle, x-rays tomorrow) and surveyed. A power surge three nights ago blew out all my light bulbs except for two, so I have to read with a flashlight. The ceilings are too high to replace them myself, so I'd have to locate a ladder. The floors were dirty and needed to be swept and mopped. The front garden was extremely overgrown since I'd been gone the whole month of January. The night before the taxi driver told me he saw a snake in there. Something needed to be done, and not by me.
So I called this guy that my friend knows (real safe, right?). He helped me clean up perhaps the worst kitchen disaster I'd ever seen in January. When I went to Bali with my family in December, in our rush to leave Malang my fridge came unplugged. Unfortunately, there was a huge watermelon inside. When I came home three weeks later, the watermelon had been rotting and cooking in the sun. It smelled like a combination of stomach acid, extremely dirty socks, and burning trash. I had to move into Layne's house for a week while it aired out. So this guy (I don't know his name) cleaned the watermelon up for me for an exorbitant price of Rp. 50,000.
So he came over at 1. Now, I never had a maid or anything in the US, but I
believe the point of paying someone to do something is that you, yourself, do not have to do it. Apparently he didn't prescribe to that school of hired help. He asked where the brooms were, and then handed me one and told me to sweep while he cleaned the garden. So I hopped around on one foot sweeping the bug corpses, volcanic ash, and general dirt out of the house. When he finished with the garden (no snakes to be found! hopefully they aren't already in the house) we went shopping for light bulbs.
This was another large part of a typical Indonesian day. Two women in a tiny shop sold me six very expensive light bulbs, reassuring me they worked. We get home and...surprise! Three of them were broken. They were also all in 100 watt boxes when it turned out they were only 40 watts. Now, I ask you, why would they do this? I clearly wanted to buy light bulbs, I wanted to buy them there...why not just sell me functional, appropriate wattage lightbulbs? But three was what I had, so I held the ladder while nameless helper replaced the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen lights. That still left the porch, front bedroom, and back in darkness, but it was better than nothing.
Then nameless helper filled up a bucket and gave me a mop so I could mop my own floors while he toted the grass from the driveway across the street and lit it on fire. He came in and finished the job, and I moved into washing my own clothes in my mandi. It took me about two hours, and when I finished he had eaten two candy bars and a piece of pizza out of my fridge.
Five hours after we started, I escorted him out and paid him (when I picked up my purse to get the money, I realized it was, for some inexplicable reason, completely full of ants). Nameless helper seemed to want to hang out in my house, but he smelled and I wasn't amused. At least I got some exercise--mopping on one foot is pretty taxing!
I returned the ladder and machete (to cut the grass) to my neighbor's house. Their dog had just had puppies, and I went to see them...only I got too close and the mother, Stephanie, attacked me. Luckily she didn't break the skin and everyone laughed nervously and motioned for me to leave.
Now it's 8 pm and I'm sitting, sweating, and trying to think of a lesson plan for tomorrow. I have to appreciate the symmetry of this day--I was just biten by another spider and SMSed again by Suharyadi. He wanted to know if I was sick. I said I was fine, how was Alpha? I waited anxiously for the response, scared he was going to say the baby had died. Instead, I get this:
"Oh, he is so fine, thanks for asking!"
Oh, no problem. All in a day's work.
Labels: just one of those days
TIDAK NARKOBA
The word narkoba isn’t listed in my dictionary, but its cousins, narkotica and narkoses, mean narcotics. From what I gathered on Valentine’s Day, narkoba is a general term for all drugs, alcohol, and sexual activity that will ruin your life should you choose to engage in them. According to my students, not only can narkoba kill you, it can give you AIDS, make your head explode, and cause you to be so immoral that you will go to hell.
Ah, Valentine’s Day. I’d spent the previous week asking all my students to be my Valentines and telling them dramatically exaggerated stories about my Valentine’s Days, starting in middle school and working my way up. Inspired by a fellow Fulbrighter's blog, I invented a fake boyfriend named Biff who was both the love of my life and the bane of my existence for three years. The year 10s were especially appalled by the Valentine’s Day when Biff forgot to ask me on a date, made me pay for dinner, and then cheated on me. I must be a fantastic storyteller, because after each telling a few girls in the class would come up and hold my hands, like I was going to start crying.
**Inappropriateness alert**
After asking one of my classes to be my Valentines, one of the fifteen-year-old boys who sits in the back nodded and winked suggestively at me. I would like to say I reprimanded him, but I laughed instead. No wonder the men here grow up to be such terrrible sexual harassers! They start practicing young.
***
So this was the buildup for Valentine’s Day. I got up at 6 am, washed and dried my hair before school for the first time in several months, and got dressed in a pink and green outfit. I bought candy for my students and hopped on an angkot. On the way there, I noticed about 300 people wandering the streets by my school with huge signs. It was odd, but I’ve been conditioned to ignore things like that now.
I went into the school for third period and realized that no one was in class. Kids were racing motorbikes in the street, playing music, and there appeared to be a soccer tournament going on in the back. I walked into the front office.
Me: um, is there any class today?
School Employee: umm, maybe. There is maybe not.
Me: Today. Class? Yes or no?
School Employee: Nervously laughs.
Then some kind of bell went off. I went to the back of the school to see all the students lined up in the courtyard in military formations, all carrying posters and wearing t-shirts instead of their uniforms that said “Prestasi, Yes…Narkoba, No” which translates to. “Achievement, Yes…Drugs/Sex/Immoral Actions, No.” Everyone shrieked with joy when they saw me, and someone handed me a bull horn. The students looked at me expectantly. What the hell was going on?
Luckily, one of the other teachers took pity on me. “Say Prestasi in speaker, then Narkoba.” Alright.
“Prestasi.”
“YESSSSSSSS”
“Narkoba?”
“NOOOOOOO”
I led this cheer for about five minutes, then the students wanted me to take pictures with their various signs. My favorite one said, “Join With Drugs, Feel Happy In Hell,” which was poignant, I thought. There were also illustrations of bloody skulls, used syringes, and other narkoba paraphernalia. A few of my students remembered what day it was in my alternate universe and gave me some candy. One boy wished me a “very sexy day,” and although I don’t usually let them say sexy he seemed to be using it very innocently, so I just said thank you.
Someone else took over the bull horn and screamed “AYOOOOO,” which means, "let’s go." Suddenly all the students surged forward, shaking their signs and screaming “TIDAK NARKOBA.” Out of nowhere, the teachers all put on blue baseball hats with gold seals. This clearly was something that had been in the works for a while.
Why had no one told me?We paraded to the center of town, Tugu Circle, where I had seen all the people that morning. Things started to fall into place. All of the elementary, junior high, and high schools from our district were gathering this morning to scream "TIDAK NARKOBA" together. There were about 3,000 people milling around, seemingly without any kind of organization or plan. There were no activities planned (except maybe a concert? No one seemed to know) and you could leave whenever you wanted. I walked around, heard a bunch of "Hello Misters" from the younger kids, and then bought my teachers some flowers. Typically, they were horrified that I had sent $4 on flowers for them. Finally I spewed some line about how money doesn't matter when it comes to those important in your life, and they accepted the flowers. They also made me pose with two Indonesian policemen and give them flowers while they took pictures. And I wonder why Indonesian men think Americans are prostitutes?
Finally I felt like I was suffering from heat stroke so I went back to the school. After they kept me there for another two hours insisting that classes were going to start again, I spotted the students leaving. I went home and fell asleep until my date with Johanna and Layne at Tugu that night. I wore a low-cut and inappropriate dress and Johanna and I spent the night drinking wine and fielding questions about why we were alone. At that point, I was too tired from TIDAK NARKOBA to expound on my Biff story. Someone took our picture for the newspaper--I can only imagine what the caption was.
SELAMAT VALENTINE'S!
Finish This Sentence:
On Valentine's Day, SMA 3:
a) wore pink
b) exchanged candy
c) gave Miss Caitlin the day off
d) canceled classes and went a citywide anti-drug rally
The answer, of course, is d.
More to follow.
Four Kunkels and a Communist
Recently, a copy of this picture showed up in the SMA 3 newsletter with a headline reading, "KELUARGA KUNKEL BAGUSSSSS!!!"
Translation: The Kunkel family is good. I agree.
Me, Looking Confused on Any Given Day
This particular moment of confusion took place while Emily and I were trapped in an elevator in Bali, but this face makes an appearance pretty much everyday.
I Told You Dogs Were Better Than Cats
From an e-mail sent out by the US Embassy:
It is critically important to avoid contact with sick or dead poultry. This is particularly important for children. Most human cases of H5N1 have occurred through direct contact with sick or dead poultry.
Additionally, there have been confirmed reports that
wild and stray cats have been shown to carry H5N1. While there have been no documented cases of feline-to-human transmission of H5N1, it is important to avoid contact with wild and stray cats, and to ensure that domesticated cats do not eat or interact with sick or dying poultry, or enter areas where there is an outbreak of H5N1 in birds and poultry. Domesticated cats which reside mainly inside a residence should not be at risk for catching H5N1.
Question: If you contract bird flu from a cat, is that still bird flu or does it change into cat flu?
A "Rizky" Situation
So my contact at SMA 3, Suharyadi, just had a baby boy. That in and of itself would be good news, right? Except he never told me his wife was pregnant. In fact, he's never mentioned his wife. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I distinctly remember him telling me when I first arrived in Malang that he wasn't married yet. Turns out he's been married for over a year and his wife was three months pregnant at the time he denied her existence.
I wouldn't find this as strange in the US, but the people I work with want to know
everything about my views on family and marriage. They know my views on religion in marriage, what kind of children I'd like to have, whether I think boys might be better than girls (Pak Teddy initiated this discussion, of course), things I hadn't even thought about until they pressed me on them.
So while I'm thinking everyone is just very open and curious, he's lying about the fact that he's married? And when I asked him about the child, he seemed embarassed I'd found out. In December he covered the fact that his wife was giving birth by telling me he was visiting his brother in Probolinggo and that's why he missed class. Pak Teddy let it slip that he was at the hospital with his wife.
PLUS he named the kid Alpha Rizky. Maybe he's raising him to be a spy and wanted him to have a covert birth as well?
Labels: secret childbirth
