Global Warming and some real Indonesian living

A few weeks ago, I took a quaint little side trip out of Makassar to Central Java, where Ken Moore, another Fulbright teaching assistant, lives and works at Pesantren Radatul Ulum. This required a flight from Makassar to Surabaya, Java, and then a “4 hour” bus ride (according to Ken, or Kenmore as friends affectionately call him after the popular brand of appliances). Actually, I realized something very important about Indonesian culture as I attempted to arrive at my destination. The act of waiting comprises a significant portion of one’s day. Just waiting. Nothing else. Not reading, not really talking, not listening to music, just waiting. Maybe squatting on one’s haunches. Still waiting. Tell the salesman at the bus station that you don’t want an English as a Second Language study book, or oranges, or donuts, and continue waiting. Waiting. Well, you get the idea.

The succulent meal offered to me at the bus stop. Yum!

As a moderately well-traveled member of my generation of world travelers, I have come to expect this type of situation. Get on a bus at 2:30. A bus that is scheduled to leave at 3:00. The bus does not actually leave until 7:00. What do you do? Well, luckily I had a book on hand, a fully charged Ipod, and, if all else fails, I have developed the handy ability to sleep nearly standing up through any situation that would be considered by an American as an interminably frustrating long wait. One thing I did not count on was a full bus with the largest Indonesian man I have ever seen (maybe the only Indonesian who could beat me up) sitting next to me, and his adorable 5 year old girl bouncing up and down on his lap/her dance floor. I suppose the extra weight and movement was too much for the poor seat to handle, because at approximately hour 2 of a 9 hour bus session the entire seat detached from the floor and we fell suddenly back into the laps of the couple behind us. From then on, either I or the nice big Indonesian father had to clutch the seat in front of us just to keep ours from falling backward. This meant no reading, and certainly no sleeping as my muscles were in a constant state of exertion. After a long stop for dinner (see above) I finally arrived in Ken’s Pesantren at about 1 AM, nearly 14 hours after leaving Makassar for a journey I had expected (and hoped) would only take half the time.

It was worth the jaunt however, as Kenmore’s Pesantren situation provided me with an interesting perspective on my own. His Pesantren is significantly larger, with male and female students, which made it almost impossible for us to teach in the female classes because of the excitement level associated with our presence (something I am finally still not completely used to). They asked me questions amidst the jumping and screaming and clapping. The two most common questions were: “Can you sing a song?” and “Are you married?” Classic. The enthusiasm was so overwhelming that class time really wasn’t too constructive. Luckily, they invited Kenmore and I to be keynote speakers for a portion of the week-long celebration of the Pesantren’s anniversary. The speech audience: only the female students from the Pesantren and other surrounding high schools. The speech topic: global warming.

Okay, how do you speak to a bunch of devoutly Muslim Indonesian girls about their role in helping to fight global warming? We decided that visual aides were a definite must. No other speech I have yet seen in Indonesia has used a visual aide, so we thought that might really set us apart as the global warming “experts,” or at least presentation-giving experts from America. Kenmore found a great graphic explaining global warming on the internet (via his cell phone), and we decided to break every cardinal rule of presentation delivery and just read exactly what was on the screen so we could be sure that they might at least have a chance of understanding what we said.

Two tall Americans, one really short Indonesian, and a very important seminar topic.

In college, there was nothing that aggravated me more than attending a lecture where the speaker had not properly prepared the technology component of their presentation. Eventually they awkwardly ask, “Does anyone know how to work this thing?” and then make a horrible joke about how technology actually makes our lives more difficult and never works blah blah blah. Therefore, even though we prepared for the speech only for about 10 minutes, we were meticulous about making sure that the projector worked and the computer loaned to us by an Indonesian teacher was cued up and ready to go. Everything was set, we thought we would be speaking shortly, then a 45 minute prayer session began, with various girls stepping up to the microphone to recite portions of the holy Koran. Kenmore and I just sort of spaced out through that part, as we hear the recitations five times daily, and when we thought it was our turn, we stood up to begin reading our speech (turns out, they still had several more minutes of prayer planned, but we thought we had received the signal so everyone just let us start speaking). Much to our dismay, inexplicably the computer had permanently shut down at some point during the prayer. No way to turn it back on. So we were left standing together at the podium, gazing out upon hundreds of star-struck hopeful visages of teenage Muslim girls all wearing headscarves and uniforms, with their eyes so full of anticipation one would have thought they were at a concert of The Backstreet Boys. Luckily, Kenmore had a back up plan and we used our charisma and native English fluency to speak for about an hour about global warming. I’m not sure if we were understood without any visual aide. When it was all said and done, Kenmore put it this way: “That’s probably the worst speech I have given in recent memory, yet simultaneously the most praise I have ever received for anything I have ever said.” Apparently there is no positive correlation between admiration for us and comprehension of the speech itself. Out came the cameras, and we were required to pose in about 45 minutes worth of photos. Exhausting really. I’m glad I’m not a real celebrity every day.

Our starstruck audience shortly after we delivered our mediocre speech.

So, since going on that amazing tour of Indonesia’s eastern islands during the Ramadan holiday (see below) I have been living in my Pesantren for the longest continuous period of time so far. Some days, I really thought I might be going crazy. Honestly, it was definitely the hardest time I have had living in a foreign country to date. The romanticism and novelty of the experience had faded, and I was left feeling only incredibly lonely on a day like Thanksgiving when no one at the Pesantren could even understand my description of the holiday.

Other days were great and I feel like I have made some good friends here despite all of our differences. My teaching has improved significantly. At the beginning of the year, the only way I could get the students to say anything to me was if I sang an Indonesian song “Aku mau jawaban, cukup satu jawaban.” This means “I want an answer, just one answer is enough.” It’s from a pop song about love by two Asian girls, but if I make my voice high enough my students love it and respond with cries of delight. Only then, after significantly embarrassing myself, would they stop with the blank stares and feel comfortable enough to speak to me or answer my question. Now, we all know each other better, partially because I took pictures of all 270 of my students and I am attempting to learn their names. Before, if I said ‘Muhammad’ I was addressing over half of the class by name, but I have since decided to establish a more personal relationship with the little guys. Also, participation is greatly increased by Meester Jon’s class participation policy. This policy transformed my classroom from a library into a carnival. Instead of staring at me blankly as before, today I had about 25 adolescent boys mobbing me in competition to be the first to answer my grammar question. How did I do it? Food.

My students like nothing more than food. One day, after giving a test, I brought them a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The effect was similar to feeding overly aggressive swans and ducks at a duck pond. When one goes to a duck pond with a loaf of bread, and word gets out amongst the ducks that one possesses said bread loaf, the situation quickly devolves into a scene from an Alfred Hitchock movie. An aggressive duck knows no boundaries, biting on one’s fingers and also discovering and raiding the bread bag that is the source of the deliciousness. At that point, one needs to stop breaking the bread into bite-sized pieces, cut one’s losses, throw most of the loaf 10 feet away, and escape with one’s life and fingers intact. This happened in my classroom. With humans.

My students. Shortly after the peanut butter and jelly incident. Note the difference between the all-male Pesantren and their female counterparts pictured above. I'm in there somewhere.

So that brings me to the participation policy. I asked each student what his favorite food is, and most of them said some of the local Makasssarese specialty dishes. Delicacies like coto Makassar which is a beef-gut soup served in a brown broth with…rice! Other favorites include nasi goreng aka. fried rice, and udang cobek-cobek or udang cobek² as my students write it. This is shrimp with an incredibly delicious local sauce that comes from the Buginese culture. I’m not sure if they like it that much or if they really just like it when I say “cobek-cobek” but hey, it motivates them. So the system is that they are awarded participation points for each answer they give me, and the participation prizes are different foods which increase in value as the points increase. The top prize, at 50 points, is udang cobek-cobek at Pantai Losari (the cool spot in town right on the beach) with Mr. Jon and…da da da ta! Miss JANE! Miss Jane is Jane Erickson, another Fulbright scholar living in Makassar, a female with legendary beauty around these parts (within the Pesantren that is). What better way to motivate a bunch of boys at an Islamic boarding school than to offer them food and a date with an American… ahem… supermodel?

They always get really excited about pictures.

In general, my lessons have been really fun for me and them. We have taken several field trips out into the nature surrounding Makassar…one 3 day trip to Bira beach and one day to the Bantimurung waterfalls. Hiking around a bunch of waterfalls with 12 of my students was better than anything I could have hoped to imagine when I thought about what this experience was going to be like. It’s actually really easy to be a good teacher here because everyone is so enthusiastic to have me around, and most of the other English teachers don’t devote any time and/or resources to lesson planning. That's not necessarily their fault. They get paid a pittance and most teachers I work with need to teach at 2 0r 3 other schools which means they have over 40 hours of classroom time a week. When I’m not in the classroom, the student’s English lesson consists of them sitting silently and attempting to memorize a four paragraph speech. They are evaluated on how much they are able to memorize. That’s it. That’s the whole class. Worse yet, if the teacher doesn’t show up, which happens frequently, they just have to sit in the classroom for four hours. They can’t leave. They just wait, and wait, and wait. I think teaching English is great because you can really do anything as long as it is happening in English. Memorizing is the last thing I would like to do in class, so instead we listen to songs, look at pictures, talk about what they call “romantic situations” and so on. “Umm…meester Jon, could you tell me how to do the romantic situation with the girl?” A couple times, I referred to myself in third person as Mr. Jon and the class filled with a chorus of ‘yeah, ya, yeah’ at the mention of my name. At the end of every class, I am mobbed by 30 to 40 students who all want to shake my hand, and ask me a question like “Meester Jon, when you go back to your country the America?” When I assure them that I won’t be leaving until the end of next May, a smile spreads across both of our faces.

My students with Miss Jane in front of the ridiculous statue that serves as an entrance to the Bantimurung waterfall nature park. Actually quite beautiful.

English Camp!

During Lebaran, after I was fully satisfied that I had been to enough group buffet sessions, I organized a trip for 11 students in the 6^th grade (our equivalent of 12^th grade) to travel four hours to Bira beach for some English-based activities and R and R. I quickly realized that an English immersion trip was definitely out of the question with only one native speaker, as the conversation would have been quite brief and one-sided. All in all, I probably learned about as much Indonesian as they did English. Still, we all had a great time roughhousing and engaging in boyish activities—swimming, fighting, competitions of all sorts, sports feats and the like.
This male bonding moment brought to you by sports.

We spent most of the time riding 12 of us in the back of a truck.

I learned a few more things about Indonesian culture while hanging out with the boys. Although the two main destinations of the trip were a pool and the beach, and all of these guys live on an island, I was shocked to realize that very few of them can swim! Crazy. Also, our cultures are completely opposite when it comes to ideal skin color. All Indonesians want to be as white as possible, which leads to the popularizing of whitening skin products and a distinct fear of direct exposure to the sun. Conversely, I am happy to soak up some rays, and ours is a culture of tanning beds and SPF 5 tanning oils. Classic example of the grass always being greener on the other side I suppose. Actually, after reading a little about Indonesian history, I discovered that whiteness is a positive ideal deeply ingrained in their culture. It has its origins in Dutch
colonialism, when the Dutch would strictly deport anyone white who was under a certain income level in order to maintain the strict dichotomy of white wealth and mastery vs. native poverty and servitude. In today’s world, go to any mall in Indonesia and 90 percent of the models in every picture will look nothing like any Indonesian. They are almost all white models from the western world…occasionally I will see a very white face with Asian features. This is the ideal of beauty that upper-class women strive for when going to wedding celebrations. They whiten their faces with so much makeup that each one looks like an expressionless porcelain doll.

Hanging out yet simultaneously fearing the water at the local pool near Bantaeng.

Combine the fear of darkening skin with traditional Islamic conservative values, and it means that 75 percent of the people at the pool and on the beach swim or wade fully clothed. About half the guys are afraid of getting tan, while all the women wear sweatshirts, jeans, and headscarves in the water! My students refused to play a game with me outside after 10:30 AM because the sun was too strong.

Saving money on sunscreen.

We were gone for three days and I think I spent a total of about 10 dollars. By far the cheapest vacation I have ever been on. This was facilitated by the unconditional hospitality of Pesantren alumni and students’ parents that live along our vacation route. We only paid for one meal the entire time. After 32 years in existence, the Pesantren has formed an extensive alumni base throughout the province of South Sulawesi. Alumni meetings with one’s high school are all but unheard of in the United States, but talking with many of the alumni I found that they were born in a particular town, went to the Pesantren for four years, moved back to their town, started a business, got married, and had kids. Conversely, my parents met in Maryland, lived back east for a while, had my brother, moved to Colorado for four years, came to Oregon and had me. This 3,000 mile family relocation is unheard of for an Indonesian. Many of the people I meet here have not even been to Jakarta. Although from our perspective we may be inclined to pity them— don’t. This permanence is a reflection of our different ways of thinking about the world. They are completely happy here in South Sulawesi and, in fact, they don’t really
understand my desire to travel to other areas of Indonesia. When I went away to Lombok and Flores for Ramadan, many people assumed that I had gone to Tana Toraja or Bantimurung, two destinations within a short drive of Makassar.

Sharing a meal in one of the student's houses.

On the way back from Bira beach, taking public transport, I was sharing the front seat with the stick shift between my legs and my head bouncing against the ceiling for a full 4 hours. Thirteen people in one Kijang SUV is the Indonesian idea of efficient transport (you will NEVER see a single mom driving a giant empty suburban in this country!) The discomfort is exponentially amplified by physical contact with other bodies, no air conditioning, and 100 degree temperatures with about a 90 percent humidity factor. Meanwhile, the family behind me had three kids on their laps, who took turns passing around a plastic bag and vomiting into it about three inches behind my head. This astonishingly uncomfortable situation received no comment from other Indonesians in the car as we rode for four hours sweating it out in complete silence. Needless to say, I was relieved to arrive back at my house, crank up the AC, kill the roaches that had accumulated over the past few days, hop in the cold shower and take a deep breath.

Idul Fitri at MY House

Actually, the title is a little misleading because I celebrated Idul Fitri just about everywhere in Makassar except my house. I initially wanted to have some people over, but I realized that I couldn’t possibly compete with the mass cooking skills of a seasoned Indonesian wife. For those of you unfamiliar with Islam, Idul Fitri is the day that marks the end of Ramadan—the fasting month for all Muslims. Basically, this means that everyone is really stoked to munch on a grand buffet of their favorite foods during daylight hours. The week after Idul Fitri is known as Lebaran, and (from the perspective of an Indonesian anyway) it is a full schedule of the following:

1. Wake up early as always. Usually, everyone gets up for the call to prayer at 5 AM. Lebaran is no exception, because we want to get up and out so we can eat as much as we can!

Wait a second. Here I have to digress about the waking up thing. I have realized that the students at my Pesantren actually have no concept of sleeping in. They never do it. They don’t look forward to their day off so they can sleep in, because they get up at 5 for prayer regardless. I consider sleeping in to be one of the primary activities of an American high school student (other primary activities would include flirting with members of the opposite sex and experimenting with drugs and alcohol—2 activities that also certainly do not occur within the context of an all-male Islamic boarding school.)

2. Go wake up the American guy, drag him out of his house, and put him and his inquisitive tongue (which we can’t understand) into a cramped van with 12 other people or just make him cling to the back of a motorcycle.

3. Speed off to house number 1 with a crew of about 20 Pesantren teachers and staff. The person who lives here is a relative of one of our friends or something like that. When we walk in the door, the food will be ready and waiting, we need to shake hands with everyone (that totals about 40 handshakes) and make sure to comment on the height and whiteness of the American guy. If we are really shocked or particularly honored by the American’s presence, we will begin an unrelenting and interminable cell phone photo montage in every possible place with each possible combination of people at the party. Luckily for Mr. Jon, this doesn’t happen every time.

4. Silahkan makan. Makan! Makan! Please eat! For some reason, we always want Mr. Jon to be the one to start off the buffet line, and he must try a little of each dish (even the weird bouncy meatballs—luckily for me, I like food a lot and I can eat a good amount of it, so an eating holiday is certainly not the worst case scenario).

5. After no more than 20 minutes of eating and quick conversation in Bahasa Indonesia, we leave as rapidly as we arrived, but not before shaking everyone’s hand again. Pile back into the van and onto the motorcycles, and let’s roll to the next house!

Some of my Indonesian female friends in full formal Idul Fitri garb. Don't worry mom, they're all already married.

From my perspective, it took about as long to shake hands on the entry and arrival as the actual time we spent eating at each house. Nevertheless, it is quite efficient, especially given that one day I ate five meals before noon. The female head of the household never eats with the guests on these occasions, she is too busy setting up folding chairs, distributing individually packaged single-servings of water, and refilling the buffet from giant pots she brings out of the kitchen. This holiday is clearly about being all-inclusive. The more people at your house, the better, even if you don’t really know who they are. I tried to explain that we frequently do the opposite for Christmas in America—we always bring cookies and treats to our friends, relatives, bosses, and coworkers, but meal time is reserved for the closest family and friends and often takes place over a period of several hours. It certainly was nice to see everyone’s house and eat their food on the buffet tour, but I felt like meaningful conversation never came about because we spent most of the time engaging in the formalities of greetings and salutations. Still, throughout the whole week, when not touring buffets, everyone else was spending some good quality time with their families (though not around the Christmas tree). I spent some good quality time by myself reading and watching movies in my air-conditioned room. It is infinitely inexplicable to the typical Indonesian Muslim that I am able to live by myself, which brings me to my next subject.

Being a single male home-renter in Indonesia brings about some unique interactions and funny looks. Because I am tall and can grow a lot of facial hair, everyone assumes that I am much older than 22. Even when they find out that I am 22 (asking someone’s age, weight, marital status, or religion is not considered offensive here) they are surprised that I have not yet found a wife. The next questions, followed by laughs and/or looks of sheer bafflement are the following: Do you cook? Do you do laundry? Do you go shopping? Wait, you cook? How can you cook? What do you cook? Tik tik tik. The “tik tik tik” is the most common Indonesian noise, made by pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth and flicking it against the back of your front teeth while inhaling to create pressure. As far as I can tell, this noise is reserved for situations in which they are very impressed (like when a 3-point shot is made on the playground) or when someone is being rude or violating cultural norms (like when my friend Jane shows a little too much skin or the driver of my pete-pete almost crashes). So they are either impressed or disappointed…in ambiguous situations like the marriage conversation it is hard to tell how I am being judged—only that I am certainly being judged. Several of the men have suggested that they give me their Indonesian wife in exchange for one of my American girlfriends, and my quest to find an Indonesian wife has become my chief source of humor in a language where I still sound like a four year old.

The facilities: Kitchen and bathroom. Note: I am way too tall for that bathroom door.

So home-renting in Indonesia comes with a certain amount of social implications, but these pale in comparison to the logistical challenges of living in my house. Other creatures squatting on my property and sharing my living space are my primary concern. As far as I can tell, my house is the most infested of all the ETAs. John, a fellow ETA, stayed in my house for two nights and assigned the accurate yet hardly endearing title of “bug kingdom” to my humble abode. So far I have confronted roaches (I kill about 6 a day), ants, mosquitoes, frogs, giant spiders, a snake, rats, cats, geckos, flying bugs that I have never seen before etc. Just last night I was straining pasta into my sink, and poured the boiling water down the drain. Seconds later, as if someone rang the roach fire alarm, they started crawling out of every crevasse in the kitchen sink area and running for their lives in all directions!! Luckily I was Johnny-on-the-spot with the toxic spray and was able to chemically exterminate all of the stragglers. It was a triumphant victory and no doubt a significant blow to the bug kingdom, though I must admit I lost a lot of my appetite.

Attempting to wash dishes in my Leprechaun-sized kitchen. I have hit my head countless times on that cabinet as well as the doorframe in the background.

I have included some pictures of my house as it was the moment I first walked in the door on August 16^th. Pretty stripped down, though I do have AC (amazing and essential!), a washing machine, a fridge, western toilet (i.e. not just a hole in the ground) and a gas stove. Any of you who went to my dorm room or apartment in the last four years will know that I couldn’t live with the bare walls for long, so I am slowly decorating. I plan to take another set of pictures the day before I pack everything up, so I can see the impact my presence made on the place. Since these pictures were taken I have acquired a microwave, toaster oven, wok for stir fry, DVD player, and an Ipod speaker system. It almost feels like home, except when I have to engage in an aggressive bend just to get down to the level of my kitchen sink to wash some dishes (see photo). Also, two of my doors are too small for me to walk through with a good posture, so sometimes I feel like I am living on a submarine. The house itself is actually quite spacious, a little too spacious, because there is one room that is still completely empty. I just can’t think of any thing to put in it. So far, it is my secret planning room, devoid of furniture but covered with maps on all walls. It instills me with desire to take leave of the bug kingdom and explore more of this fascinating country—especially as I notice movement out of the corner of my eye, look down, and see another creature denizen of the kingdom scurry across the floor.

My living room. Clearly a couch deficit.

Travel Time!

From the standpoint of an unyielding optimist, an Indonesian domestic airline experience could best be described as ‘therapeutic.’ Firstly, the fact that, of the dozen or so domestic carriers not a single one meets FAA regulations gives one a feeling of hopeful resignation walking onto the airplane. Hopeful, as in hopefully we won’t die today, and resigned, because there are only two ways to travel in Indonesia…and boats are about twenty times slower and just as likely to sink as an airplane is to crash. Couple that with the ten or so mildly to extremely catastrophic earthquakes that have struck various areas of this country in the two months since I arrived and I am given a fatalistic and existential perspective on life—the prospect of myself dying on this airplane is just one of the many random chances of death I face on a day to day basis. As long as this philosophy of hopeful resignation is adopted before every flight, instead of being terrified when my ID isn’t checked, there is no scanning of carry-on luggage, or the plane happens to bounce twice on the landing; I disembark with a new appreciation for the birds and the trees and the heat and humidity and even the hustlers trying to get a piece of every tourist’s pocketbook while walking out of the terminal. Really, quite therapeutic. No wonder why belief in a higher power is such an integral part of this nation’s culture.

However, the Indonesian flying experience is not all dark clouds with silver linings that provide philosophical or spiritual epiphanies. Arriving in Mataram, Lombok was undoubtedly the best airport experience I have had and probably ever will have in the world. Walking along the runway into the terminal, a very nice man in broken English quite sincerely said, “Thank you for visiting Lombok.” This not being my first time traveling in a country where my white skin is an immediate indicator of wealth and ignorance toward local prices, I winced as I expected him to force me into a taxi cab, carry my bags demanding an exhortative tip, or try to sell me a dumbed-down tour package of the island. A brief discussion surprisingly revealed that he was simply a dentist returning from a business trip—a Lombok resident that was truly pleased to see a resurgence of tourist activity on his home island (the island’s economy has deteriorated as tourism wanes in Indonesia due to various factors including the Bali bombings of 2003). After this pleasant conversation, I stepped into the terminal and was dismayed at the fact that my bag had actually arrived at the baggage claim before I did. Unbelievable. I walked at a reasonable pace from the airplane to the baggage claim, and my bag had already magically arrived. I still don’t know how they did it. This is a country so notorious for delays and general temporal misunderstandings that they have a well-known phrase--jam karet--literally meaning ‘rubber time’ to describe this universal Indonesian tendency for tardiness.

One other baffling contradiction that works in great favor of the tourist is that, although no one checks your ID when you get your ticket and carry-on bag screening is occasionally deactivated, airport personnel are meticulous about making sure that the bag you take out of the airport matches your claim ticket. In other words, you may have to worry about a bomb or a knife or a gun on the airplane, but you certainly won’t have to worry about someone else making off with your bag at the baggage claim—a bag, mind you, that was delivered in an impeccably timely fashion. Turns out I have flown a half a dozen times since arriving in Lombok and I have never had an ID checked, yet also have not yet waited more than 3 minutes for my bag to arrive at the claim carousel. Once, the security guard looked at my friend Jane’s ticket, politely asked, “Are you Jane?” she simply responded affirmatively and walked on through. That's just a brief description of flying in Indonesia. Just ask me sometime if you want a detailed description of traveling by car, bus, boat, motorcycle, or on foot. All transport methods in this country are equally unique and idosyncratic.

As you may have guessed by now, I have been doing some traveling lately. For the past month my students and I were released from the Pesantren by the Ramadan holiday and I was given the opportunity to see some of the country. Unsurprisingly, I immediately gravitated toward the natural wonders, of which Indonesia is in no short supply. Basically, from Sept. 12th to Oct. 12th I was climbing mountains, relaxing on beaches, snorkeling, riding on boats, in cars, and on motorcycles, diving, reading, fishing, taking pictures, and spending some quality time with other American Fulbrighters. It was a predominately great experience, and here I will proceed to tell the story of the month in little detail with a great many pictures to support my travel tale. I have included a great many pictures because reading a list of where other people have been and what they have done is frequently only interesting to the person who is writing said list. Nevertheless, some of you may be genuinely curious about where I have gone and what I have done, so I have provided the following pictorial outline in the most interesting way possible, pausing only to delve deeper into my travel experience in order to relate stories that I believe are generally appealing and interesting to people other than myself.

Gunung Rinjani dominates the landscape of the small island of Lombok. First goal of the trip: get to the top.

Although it violates my self-image as an independent, self-sufficient, and mildly hardcore backpacker/mountain climber, we had a guide and porters for this 4 day hike. In retrospect, that was a very good thing because this mountain is steep and this national park is not developed enough to include switchbacks in the trail. The porters packed our food and some supplies, the most interesting of which was a live chicken. We were fascinated by this chicken, probably because the average American does not encounter live chickens in day-to-day life, and we always knew the location of the porters from the resounding ‘squaks’ of protest the chicken produced every fifth step. In general, here in Indonesia people are much more intimately familiar with the source of their food than we are in the United States. Later on in the journey, we saw pigs and goats scream in protest as they were tied to the roofs of buses. Rather than bringing a cooler with a frozen chicken breast on our three-day boat ride the captain simply brought 3 chickens and hand fed then every day (well, on the third day there was only one left to feed.) These and many other more grotesque scenes of blatant animal abuse were at first shocking to the American eye, because we live in a country where we can buy a Costco pack of 24 chicken breasts, 5 pounds of hot dogs, or two large packages of bacon. Here, if you want meat (which everyone does), you need to buy the animal, tie it down, take it home, raise it, kill it, and cook it. The concept of animal rights understandably does not cross the mind of someone raised in this culture. I must admit, animal rights began to seem a little absurd as I observed many markets and small towns where the humans were struggling to survive—with little regard for the animals.

Becky and I sympathize with the tied-down chicken that is soon to be dinner.

Summit sunrise: check.


First foray into freshwater fishing on the crater lake.


Pretty good view I guess.

Next stop: the beautiful beaches and relaxed party atmosphere of the Gili Islands.


Sunset over Gunung Rinjani--from the boat.

Goodbye Lombok. A three day ride on this boat took us to the land of Komodo Dragons. The boat ride was interspersed with stops for fishing and snorkeling.


There’s one!

Now we move on to a deserted island for 2 nights of camping and more (unsuccessful) fishing. This island was deserted, so we owned it for 3 days!

Off the boat and into the car for a drive through the mountainous and culturally rich center of Flores island.

The marketplace in Ruteng, Flores.


Traditional village, traditional crafts. Really, really traditional. This was a great experience.

A traditional woman pictured making traditional handicrafts in the traditional manner.
Two of the three different colored lakes of Gunung Kelimutu. Another summit sunrise.

Now onto Manado for a much-needed week of remaining stationary (traveling is exhausting) and diving every day!

Wonders from the underwater world.

Okay, that’s a good general pictoral recap of the travels. For many more pictures and commentaries please see my Webshots account.

http://community.webshots.com/user/jstrahl07

After a month straight of traveling, I came back to Makassar and looked at the map of Indonesia, realizing that I have still only seen a very small percentage of the country. Although I came away with loads of fantastic pictures and great memories, I still have a strange feeling that I cannot even comprehend the potential for exploration this country has to offer.

The tiny boxes and arrows indicate areas I have explored so far.

1.6 million people…16 stoplights.

If my calculations are correct, that means there are enough stoplights in the city of Makassar to serve 4 intersections with a light facing each way. Of course, who says that we need a signal for each lane? Can’t we just drive based on context clues? Maybe we should just rely on an obnoxious musical horn to get us through the intersection. That is hardly an exaggeration. In some areas, rather than invest in a stoplight, the government has erected concrete barricades to direct the flow of traffic to either the left or right. Want to go straight? Take a left and then a few blocks later make a death-defying u-turn straight into the onslaught of oncoming traffic. Needless to say, this type of behavior makes navigating the city both exhilarating and extremely difficult.

The busy street in front of Pesantren IMMIM--note the blue pete-pete on the left.

My days on the town begin with the most difficult transportation feat—crossing the street. Long gone are the days of safety patrol volunteer students outside of the school ensuring a safe crossing after a short wait under any circumstances. The first time I watched a student at the Pesantren cross the street, I closed my eyes and winced because I literally thought I was going to witness the death of an adolescent boy right before my eyes. Since then, I have learned that one just needs to walk into the street…there is no such thing as a crosswalk and even if there were it would most likely not be heeded. There is no chance of waiting until the traffic is clear both ways on a four lane street, you could be there for hours. The best thing to do is to work your way across one lane at a time, sucking in your gut and standing perpendicular to the broadside of the passing cars that whiz within inches of your face blaring some bastardized version of “Mary had a Little Lamb” on their modified air horn. The cars may not have bumpers, or four windows, or even reliable breaks…but one thing no Indonesian driver can do without is a loud, fully functional horn that lets everyone know that they are joining the masses in the eternal struggle as one of the many grains of sand looking to squeeze through to the bottom of the traffic hourglass as quickly as possible. Police officers’ liberal use of whistles accompanied by hand signals during rush hour only serve to exacerbate this veritable cacophony. The entire traffic situation is complicated by the fact that I still instinctually look the wrong way when crossing the street, as this colony was one of the European ones where everyone was required to drive on the left side of the road.

Day trippin' inside of the colorful pete-pete.

A politically correct and culturally sensitive statement would classify the traffic rules as “innovative” or “representing the closeness characteristic of a collectivist culture” yet I would lean more toward “completely chaotic and virtually nonexistent”. However, one truly innovative aspect of the transportation system is the sheer variety of vehicles willing to take you somewhere for a small fee. The main mode of transport is the pete-pete, the Indonesian bus, which is really just a small van with two benches facing one another in the back. Despite its size, these vans have an amazingly large capacity, and the driver will vociferously pack ‘em in as he strives to earn more fares. It costs 2,000 rupiah (25 cents) to travel anywhere in the city on these things, which could be up to 10 kilometers. The only catch other than the cramped conditions is the extremely loud techno remix of the popular American pop song from 1998 blasting from the 250 watt stock bass system that seems to come standard in these vehicles. By the time you squeeze out the side door, you are completely disoriented and over stimulated, and it is hard to know if you just rode a bus or are desperately clinging to reality after emerging from a bad trip in the moshpit of a hardcore rock concert.

Bule party in transit.

The pete-pete have set routes, they don’t go everywhere in the city, so if by the time you dismount you still haven’t reached your final destination don’t fret. Most likely, you have arrived at a street corner with a small army of becak drivers on hand eagerly shouting “haaloo meester”, clapping, and banging bells—all enthusiastic displays that serve to signal that they are ready and willing to pedal you to your destination. A becak is like a bicycle rickshaw with the nimble legs of the driver steadily powering a rear wheel connected to a wobbly, two-wheeled carriage in front designed to hold two small passengers. The front-mounted carriage means that you get a great view of the city at a slightly-faster-than-walking pace, yet you are the most vulnerable part of the vehicle and frequently exposed to near collisions with other larger and more powerful vehicles sharing the road. Once, on a particularly fruitless becak ride, I looked to my right and saw a full-sized tour bus bearing down on us with the driver laying on the horn. My heart ricocheted off my sternum, backbone, stomach and throat like my chest cavity was momentarily a racquetball court. I actually thought I was going to die. Looking back on it, that would have been one hell of a way to go, in a smash and flurry of bamboo and flimsy metal, leaving the driver stranded in the middle of the road on his accidental new unicycle.

John riding the becak in style.

Finally, undoubtedly the most exciting “way to go” (very true to the double meaning of the phrase...'to travel' and perhaps 'perish') is by ojek—a motorcycle taxi. Motorcycles are definitely the preferred method travel in the cities of Indonesia, they probably make up 60 percent of the vehicles on the road. Quickly weaving in and out of traffic and braving potential head-on collisions while making a risky pass is all in a day's work for the experienced ojek driver. To quell your misgivings the driver will provide a helmet that is only slightly thicker than the plastic of a disposable water bottle and Indonesian-sized for a head that is about the same circumference as my palm. Nevertheless, the ride is exhilarating and you feel like you are taking part in a real cultural event as you cling for dear life within inches of fellow motorcycle drivers and passengers on their daily commute. Rest assured mom, I only take an ojek under dire circumstances.

Street scene in Bandung, West Java. Note the abundance of motorcycles. Also one of the rare stoplight sightings.

Of course, there are a few private cars and some taxis...though my personal view is that if you take a taxi when public transport is an option you have “copped out” and resigned to the fact that you are an ignorant and uninformed bule (gringo) who would rather rely on your pocketbook to get yourself home rather than your sense of direction and very limited language abilities. Needless to say, this attitude has wasted hours of my life riding in circles on the pete-pete; and then it hurts that much more to resign myself to the taxi when the clock strikes 11 PM and I am still no closer to my (new) home.

Selamat Datang ke Rumahmu Meester Jon!

Welcome to your house Mr. Jon! Wowza! Living and working at a Pesantren (Islamic boarding school) is near to the most extreme type of culture shock I can possibly imagine. Pictured above is the mosque in the center of campus. I live alone in my own house, yet simultaneously I am a member of the Pesantren community, consisting of 900 outstandingly enthusiastic male students (grades 7 through 12) and a slew of teachers and faculty who are equally if not more eager to interact with a big, tall, white American.

Everyone here has a different expectation of me, some contorted and exaggerated schema they developed in anticipation of my arrival, most frequently incorrect or impossible to fulfill. The director of the Pesantren expects me to teach from 5 AM to 10 PM, the English teachers treat me as a living textbook, hoping I will immediately transfer my fluency to their untrained tongues, and the students’ respect for me creates a general atmosphere of extreme shyness punctuated by outbursts and celebrations when I perform sports feats during recreation time. The latter is not too difficult on the basketball court given my height advantage, yet the superhuman expectations inevitably result in disappointment. When 100 high school boys lined up to watch me dunk on the basketball hoop, and I never quite performed the one-handed hanging massive air time dunk they expected from someone who comes from the same country as Kobe Bryant, the look of jaded dismay across their faces made it seem as if their grandma had just died. Similarly, I received a glance of alarmed consternation when I responded to one of the teachers laughingly stating that no, indeed I did not pack an LCD power point projector from America in my suitcase.

Case in point. August 17^th: Indonesian Independence Day. Who better to say a few words on the day dedicated to the independence of their country than the American guy? This ceremony was followed by a series of nonstop sporting events, of which I was the constant center of attention. The first event was a sport that I have since deemed dance interlude soccer. It took a while to explain the rules, but eventually I figured out that I was unanimously voted by the teachers to play striker (the most difficult and glorified position) but the twist was anytime somebody played this crazy traditional Indonesian music the game was put on pause and all players on the blacktop field needed to dance by themselves in place. Ultimately my dancing role as striker inspired more awe than my mediocre soccer abilities.

As soon as I leave my house, privacy is nonexistent. Everywhere I go on campus I am surrounded by a radius of short, young Indonesian boys in uniform five deep. When I engage the one in the front in conversation, he carefully crouches down and slinks to the back of the group, the space he left quickly being filled by two more eager uniformed bodies. Even when I am not surrounded by students I am confronted with constant stares that, once looked upon, pretend that they never existed.

Miscommunication is rampant. I can go through an entire day and be almost sure that nobody has fully understood what I wanted to say. Communicating with the English teachers is especially difficult. Today, all 11 of them met with me to talk about my teaching schedule. Rapid and lengthy exchanges in Bahasa Indonesia were interrupted by brief sentences or sometimes mere single words in English for my benefit. I felt like a terrified and helpless bunny rabbit locked in a cage with a pride of lions arguing over who gets the first bite. Ultimately, very little was resolved and I still don’t really understand my teaching schedule. Oh well, we will see how it goes.

Although it is tough, for now I am reveling in the experience of culture shock. This is a very genuinely different world, legitimately off the beaten path, an experience that many people my age purportedly strive for yet rarely achieve. It feels good; I am privileged to have this opportunity, although it is at times very lonely and intensely uncomfortable. The good side of the coin is that everyone’s enthusiasm for my presence has rubbed off on me. Although I may never understand them, and I feel more alone than ever standing in a crowd of hundreds of bashful Indonesians, I can’t help but smile at how privileged they feel just to be in my presence. This smile causes a chain reaction of reciprocal smiles and then for a few spare moments each day I feel the loneliness momentarily dissipate. Reason enough to wake up again at 5 AM and hop straight into that cold shower—exhausted, gasping with the shock of the water, and dizzy at the overwhelming possibilities the day may bring on a planet that I can scarcely still believe is my own.

First Day of Work

Straight of the plane and onto a bus, we sped through the renowned capital city of Jakarta en route to Bandung, a mountain retreat built by the Dutch so they could escape the heat—now the fourth largest city in Indonesia. A 35 or so hour commute, little food, even less sleep, and the social pressures of meeting thirty other Americans with whom I am sharing the Indonesian experience exacerbated the surreal feeling of this final leg of our journey. Rice paddies, trash
fires, insane traffic and formulaic conversation (So what school did you go to?) made the ride seem short compared to the excruciating jaunt from the United States to Singapore. Since arriving, we have risen early every day only to spend most of our time in a classroom setting learning how to be culturally sensitive and not get ourselves killed in this place. It is an agonizing experience for recent college graduates fresh from a summer of recreation to have their day filled with structured activities and presentations from 8 am to 5 pm. The hotel feels a bit like a summer camp where everyone has their own room and we “interact casually” during and after dinner, staying awake much later than is customary for the piously Muslim Indonesian. The problem is the jet lag. Even when I arise with the sun, my body can’t seem to get over the fact that 4 AM here is 10 AM in the States, so I wake up feeling fully rested even if I had gone to bed only two hours before. Rather annoying.

The only real event to report so far is my “first day of work” experience, a report especially dedicated to the former members of the private residence. I am one of the special English Teaching Assistants who was placed in a Pesantren—an Islamic boarding school—which basically means the American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation thought I was qualified to handle the most extreme version of culture shock available in this country. When a Pesantren is mentioned, all of the Indonesians in the room begin to ooh and ahh like the institution itself is as mysterious as an obscure archeological find or as mythical as a secret style of kung-fu reserved only for the most learned masters. I had no idea until today.

Bandung is a city in Java, in the midst of many population centers and Java is probably the most “touristy” island second only to the infamous beautiful beaches of Bali. Nevertheless, the majority of English teachers at the Pesantren I visited had never spoken to a native English speaker or even seen one—except on American Idol. Even more shocking, the students (from elementary to high school) had spent most of their lives within the confines of the Pesantren forbidden to leave the campus. Their only connection to the outside world: internet and a monthly visit from their parents. This is a co-ed Pesantren, but the boys and girls are absolutely prohibited from talking to each other ever! Imagine graduating from high school and leaving the Pesantren at age 18 never having exchanged a word with a member of the opposite sex save the occasional bashful glance. That is a different kind of life.

The students treated me like I was Carson Daly on an episode of MTV’s Total Request Live…begging for photos and screaming with delight. Their exuberance was more invigorating to me than shotgunning 5 rockstar energy drinks. They were hanging on my every word, and the girls screamed and giggled with delight and embarrassment when they found out I wasn’t married. All of the teachers treated us as celebrities as well—following us around the campus shooting video, imploring our assistance in teaching English, and taking as many pictures of us as possible. We were incredibly honored guests. They brought out their finest food and even took us on a tour back to the female dormitories, a place where my friend the male teacher had not once set foot during his six year tenure on campus. When it came time to leave, the principal was begging us to stay and live there to help teach the students and staff. I can’t stop thinking about those two hours. In terms of “cultural experiences” it is my single greatest. Unfortunately, there are no teaching assistants scheduled to be placed there, but the visit really boosted my confidence and excited me to teach in my Pesantren in Makassar. Check out a few of the photos from the Pesantren visit. Big smiles from everyone!