Indonesia: Life In The Islands

The Final Saga Part I

**I wrote the following in March, right after I had been forced to leave Malang. I wasn't allowed to post it while I was still in the country because of reasons that will come up later**

At the beginning of March things reached a boiling point at my school over the whole Pak Teddy issue--among other things. The night before everything went down I decided to report Teddy to my organization and the principal for his repeated sexual harassment. My showdown with him was actually precipitated by another, more frightening event.

On that Tuesday Teddy pulled me out of class for practically no reason at all, as he is often wont to do. This time he wanted the key to the front gate of my house. The owner wanted to see the garden so that he could put the house on the market after I left. I don't know what real estate information he was getting from the garden, but it seemed like a typically strange Indonesian request so I wasn't too fazed. I gave Teddy the key with the express instructions that no one go in my house without my permission. How could they? Teddy wondered aloud. You have the only set of keys.

That's a textbook case of foreshadowing right there.

Teddy gave me the key back later on and reassured me that everything had gone fine. The owner saw the garden, no one went inside, happy happy happy. I finished teaching, worked with the debate team, went out to dinner with Layne, and then went to bed.

I woke up the next day at 6:30 am, a relatively late hour, and stumbled into the kitchen to get some coffee and toast. The following might sound like I'm neurotic, but I've been living alone in my Indonesian house for seven months now. I know how I leave things in my kitchen. First I noticed that the door to the toaster oven was open and the little tray was inside. I always shut the door and never use the little tray. Then I looked at my loaf of bread and noticed the heels were missing. One of the principals I live by is that I never ever eat the heels of the bread, so unless I was cramming carbs while I slept, someone else had been eating in my kitchen. Lastly I ran over to my computer and saw that my iTunes and photo programs were open, when I KNOW I closed them on Tuesday morning before I went to school.

I've had the pleasure of experiencing the cliche "her stomach dropped" before in my life, but this time I could literally feel myself starting to get sick. Someone had been in the house, which meant someone beside me had keys. I hadn't searched the house before I went to sleep, so for all I knew someone had been in the backyard or the back bedroom which I always keep closed. I forced myself to search the whole house, shrieking preemptively every time I went around a corner or opened a door. Luckily, there was no one in the house with me.

At this point I became mildly hysterical and placed a phone call to my poor mother in the US, who was in no position to do anything. I called my organization, but it was still before 7 am and they weren't open yet. I angrily punched in an SMS to Teddy.

Me: "did someone go in my house yesterday???"
Teddy: "yes."

No explanation. Just yes. I called Suharyadi and informed him I wasn't coming to school until I knew who had another set of my keys. Remember, I only gave Teddy the gate key--he didn't have the actual house key. At least not one I gave to him. I called Suharyadi and told him I was calling my organization.

Me: I'm calling A---.
Suharyadi: No! Don't do that!
(Teddy's audible voice in the background: "Tell her no one went in")
Suharyadi: Pak Teddy says no one went into your house. Please come to school.
Me: He already told me someone did.
Suharyadi: (whispers with Teddy)
Me: (losing temper) IF TEDDY WANTS TO SAY SOMETHING HE CAN GET ON THE PHONE HIMSELF.
Suharyadi: Oh, Mr. Teddy is not here yet.
I hang up.

I wrote an e-mail to A--- detailing what I knew so far and also a general rant about Teddy. Suharyadi, after several phone calls, came over to my house to deal with my female insubordination. By this point Teddy had decided to blame the intrusion on Andi and Imron, two guys my age who work for the school. They used to come clean my house in the beginning of the year, but they starting going through my computer and other personal belongings so I told them to stop. Suharyadi claimed it went down like this:

Andi and Imron went with the owner to see my house, but they had no keys. Luckily, my neighbors have had keys this whole time (lucky for them, at least) and gave them the keys. They showed the owner the garden, he left, and then Andi and Imron decided to go into my house, make sandwiches, watch TV, and use my computer for a few hours. No big deal right?

This was said in a calming voice with a smile.

I informed him that yes, it was a big deal, and I didn't believe it. I went to my neighbor's house and asked her if she had given the keys to Andi and Imron. She said she didn't even have keys to my house. I burst into tears. Then her maid declared that she had a set of keys (??) to my house and SHE had given them to Andi and Imron. My neighbor had no idea her maid had my keys. This conversation was in Indonesian and seemed incredibly suspect to me.

Suharyadi seemed relieved and took this story as validation of Andi and Imron's guilt.
Me: "Um, I gave Teddy the key yesterday. Why couldn't they have used that?"
Suharyadi: "Uhhh...you did?"

Once again, Teddy had lied. Something shady was going on, and I wanted to know how many copies of my keys existed. No one seemed to know. At this junction I asked Suharyadi to leave so I could call A---.

Suharyadi: "NO!!! The principal is very sad. He wants you to come to school now." The phone had been ringing every few minutes since he arrived. They were dead set on me not calling my supervisor. I said I was anyway. Suharyadi repeated his request. I said no. This went on for about ten minutes. He is eerily persuasive. Finally I said yes and went to get changed. I told him to wait, and NOT LET ANYONE IN THE HOUSE, especially anyone from the school.

I come out of my bedroom and there are Andi and Imron sitting in my living room. He called them and told them to come over and explain. I just said I was sad and hurt and then they left. At this point I refused to go to the school again, but Suharyadi just stared at me until I acquiesced.

So we had a meeting with the principal. They screamed at Andi and Imron and claimed the problem had been solved. I wanted to know why Teddy hadn't given them the key in the first place. The principal (who I THOUGHT was a very nice man) just said it wasn't an issue. So I moved on to bigger fish.

I told him that I wanted to report Teddy's behavior toward me for the past few months. At this point Suharyadi got incredibly nervous and tried to talk me out of saying anything. He finally agreed to translate. I told the principal about the comments, the touching, the fact that students AND teachers had approached me to tell me that Teddy was making me look bad, and the attempted massages and invitations to sleep at his house. The principal had three things to say:

1) Teddy sees Americans acting a certain way in movies, so can he really be blamed for thinking that way about me?
My response: sometime I see in movies that Americans kill Muslims, could I kill Teddy?
Point conceded.

2) Teddy thinks of me as his child, so he is only touching me as a father would touch his child.
My response: my father would NEVER touch me like Teddy does, nor try to talk to me about sex incessantly. Also, I am a twenty-two year old female co-worker, not his child.
Point conceded.

3) Teddy probably only touches me as a friend, like patting me on the shoulder before class.
My response: a short and extremely uncomfortable demo of the touching.
Point conceded immediately.

Final argument--Teddy is an Islamic man and a good Islamic man would not do these things. I couldn't argue with that because at that point I was too tired and upset to get into a religious and philosophical discussion in Bahasa Indonesia. I just smiled and put my head in my heads. The principal, Suharyadi, another vice-principal, and the female teacher in the meeting immediately apologized and said they would talk to Teddy as well. He would also apologize.

Good, right??

On Monday, my supervisor, who had been out of town all weekend, called me to confirm my e-mail about Teddy. She was shocked and went over the points with me--I said they were all true, but we had worked them out. She called the principal solely to check that Teddy had apologized (he hadn't). She called me back right afterwards and said the principal had said I was lying and had made the whole thing up. I was shocked. It would have been one thing if the principal had never believed me--but he had apologized and said he supported me. So this was all news to me. She talked to Teddy too and he also denied everything and called me a liar, started screaming over the phone (as he usually does when someone opposes him) and she told me to leave the school immediately because he was pissed and looking for me.

(Sidenote--Teddy is not that big a guy, but when he screams he's really frightening. He also is pretty good at intimidation--see, "No Matter What the Language, Money spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E)

So I walked out. She called back a few minutes later and said the US Embassy had decided to pull me out of my school and possibly Malang as well. I guess the rationale behind this (which was explained to me later by the US Embassy) was that Teddy could easily turn the charges back on me. I guess a few years ago a similar situation occurred and the man told police the woman had used black magic on him to seduce him--and the woman was put in prison. So if Teddy wanted, he could claim I used my bule black magic on him and he had tried to resist me. At the end of the night I got the word that I had to move out of Malang for good by the end of the week.

The next morning I woke up when my supervisor called. Apparently my school had sent several e-mails over the course of the night and were calling her office repeatedly to stress that I was lying. They were also calling me from all different numbers, trying to get information they could use against me. The Embassy decided I had to move out of Malang that day. So in four hours, I packed my whole house, decided what to leave behind, bought a plane ticket to Jakarta, and said good-bye to Malang. My neighbors, who were involved in the initial break-in drama, knew everything that was going on. One of the hardest things was leaving them. Since I've gotten here, the Putus have been my family. Made, the fourteen-year-old girl, is like my sister. Eka, the fifteen-year-old, is one of my students and adorable. I went to say goodbye and just lost it when their mother started crying as well. These people aren't stupid--they know we'll probably never seen each other again.

Three of my favorite students somehow got wind of what was going on and showed up at my house (I also don't know where they got my address). Have you ever had three young girls stand in front of you crying and pleading with you not to leave them? I tried to be as vague as possible about what happened (more on that later) but just that I needed to go to Jakarta to work out a "problem." Then they decided to clean my whole house for me. Top to bottom, sweeping, mopping, everything. They cleaned for two hours while I packed. They also skipped school to come over, which I wouldn't usually condone but since I didn't work at SMA 3 anymore I couldn't say anything. Wenti, Indah, and Ratih hugged me, made me pinky swear I'd come back say good-bye to them before I left Indonesia, and left me in a cab going to the airport, leaving my little house behind for good...

Labels: and goodbyes, lies, threats

posted by Caitlin @ 1:53 AM