“Big Mak” is the preferred term of endearment amongst Fulbright scholars for our hardly-humble and humongous hometown. Indeed appropriate for this particular blog entry, for, despite numerous hardships, this place is predominately and remarkably endearing to me on a daily basis. I say “predominately” because I will never find public urination endearing, and I say “remarkably” because I am one of the few Americans who actually really likes it in this city. Others, less-endearingly, refer to it as “the armpit of Indonesia.” It may have garnered this undeserved reputation because of its size yet remarkable lack of not only culinary variety, but a cohesive expatriate community and a self-expressive artistic scene.
One of Makassar's most endearing moments. A mosque, a becak, a motorcycle, and an overabundance of small children. Oh Indonesia!
Nevertheless, the almost obscene amount of pride that local people have for their city is not entirely unfounded. On first glance, it appears to be relatively cultureless…at least it is not up to snuff with our preconceptions of Indonesian traditional dances, skilled craftsmanship, and masterful gamelan performances. The endearing qualities of Makassar lie in its people and their enthusiasm. My students, the teachers I work with, and the friends I have made here are all such interesting characters that sometimes I feel like I am in the middle of a Steinbeck novel. The fact that I feel this way without even sharing a common language is a real testament to their hospitality and general good-nature. Just last night, I felt so comfortable at the Pesantren that I was able to spout some comedic commentary on a portion of the teachers’ badminton game in front of about 100 students in three different languages—English, Bahasa Indonesia, and Arabic. Every wisecrack or funny gesture led to the now common chorus of “yea ya ya’s” from the student peanut gallery, and midway through the game, the director of the Pesantren and religious leader of the community turned to me and said “You are like a real Ustad now.” Ustad is an Arabic word meaning something like teacher and respected brother, and I didn’t need to say anything for him to know that was one of my proudest moments of this entire experience.
Drying rice on the roadside.
Traditional boat-like Torajan house.
Well, it has been so long since I updated this thing that this entry is bound to be slightly incohesive. I mentioned above that some hardships have ensued. You may remember that the last entry entailed a detailed description of a colossal and joyous flood event at the Pesantren. Well, needless to say, I was not so joyous when, via a number of absurdly ridiculous coincidences, my computer got wet and refused to turn back on. I won’t go into all of the details here, but not having a computer as an outlet for my writing (not to mention the MASSIVE and significant loss of all pictures and music) was a major psychological blow that took some time to recover from. Internet cafes are just too dirty and hot to actually do any real thinking. I am currently writing this on a friend’s computer.
On a more positive note (often to the chagrin of those back home) I have shaken my e-mail addiction and have taken to checking only about once every four or five days. I still love everyone and miss them a lot; it is just logistically quite difficult to keep going to an internet café, trying to write an e-mail of substantial length. This frees up a lot of time for activity within the Makassar community, of which Meester Jon is in no short supply. Just last week, I was on a national radio program (in Bahasa Indonesia!), a local radio program, I tutored the owner of my Pesantren in English, taught at the Montessori school, and started an English conversation group at the nearby university! I now have a legitimate friend group of Indonesian people, which really enhances the experience. Then, I went on another field trip with the students from IMMIM—full of sports feats and high pressure impromptu performances.
This time we went to stay at a brand new Pesantren that was built in Pangkep about 45 minutes outside of Makassar. At the Pesantren, I ate with the students, slept with the students, and even went to the mosque with them for prayer (though I just sat there and watched). I gave a speech about how I am not afraid of Muslims, and made sure to highlight the good things I had noticed about the local Muslim communities (and sort of gloss over the few bad things…if you want more info on that ask me later). Honestly though, coming to this country has been almost an unconditionally positive interaction with Indonesian and Muslim people, so the speech was not hard to come up with on the spot. The real memories began on the way home however. We left Pangkep and I was under the impression that we were on our way more-or-less straight back to Makassar, when suddenly my public bus packed with about 18 students took a little detour to an intense water park called “Dunia Fantasy” or “Fantasy World”. Essentially, this is an entirely unregulated area, a veritable fantasy where any boy who has a desire to break the rules doesn’t even have to because there are none. This place is so different that it warrants some elaboration.
Not surprising for an island nation, Indonesians love fishing. So…a fishing pond is included in amongst all of the waterslides and diving boards (an interesting side note, Indonesians call waterslides the ‘water boom’, I was about to find out why). These are no ordinary pools and water booms however. The pool was huge, beyond Olympic sized, with a liberal allotment of about 3 meters of ultraslick white tile surrounding it, with a ditch surrounding that. So, as most of my students were running full tilt along the side of the pool, I could picture them slipping and careening either into the pool (hopefully) or the opposite directions into the treacherous ditch full of brown water for “foot washing.” The pool was not chlorinated, the underwater visibility was only about half a meter, and so much water had been displaced from it that it was at least a meter below full capacity. That really wasn’t the kicker however. The craziest thing was that over the deep end, three platforms of various heights had been constructed for the implicit purpose of inciting extremely dangerous masculinity contests. The LOWEST of the platforms was a high dive, about 6 meters off the water. To access this high dive, one must climb a ladder, walk a plank about 6 inches in width OVER CEMENT(!) for about four steps, then finally walk out onto the end of the diving board and attempt some sort of crazy skin-stinging flip. I visibly cringed as my students raced up the ladder to be the first to jump off, and coordinated simultaneous jumps of six or so bodies colliding in mid air. The second highest platform was about 12 meters…definitely enough to make you feel like you are falling for a WHILE. The third floor, although technically closed, was still in use by the most brave of waterpark attendees. I’m not sure how high it was, but I am guessing about 70 feet or 22 meters!! Throughout the day, after various (mis)communications, I found out that it was closed because someone had recently died jumping off of it into the water. So it was definitely really high. Indonesians report news like that with a laugh and a smile, and another daring jump.
The real interesting episode for Meester Jon was when it came time to try out the top floor of the “water boom” (mom you will not like this). Compared to some of the waterslides at Raging Waters in Southern California, this waterslide looked pretty tame so I thought ‘ahh, no sweat.’ My entire way up the ladder I was greeted by chants of “mis-ter-jon mis-ter-jon mis-ter-jon!” so by the time I got to the top, I was surrounded by about 20 of the demanding youth who insisted that I go first. Okay, so they gave me a big push, and I was going fast…too fast. I conjectured later that I was probably the largest creature ever to have descended said water boom, and I once again paid dearly for exceeding the recommended size limit of this country. This time, I went up on the side of the second-to-last curve, was catapulted into the air, and landed back in the slide, dislocating my left knee after what seemed like an eternity of airtime. By now, I am Jonny on the spot when it comes to knee dislocations, so I was able to manually reset it before hitting the bottom. Thank goodness because, at the bottom, there was literally (no exaggeration whatsoever) a foot of water to fall into. The splashdown proceeded to bruise my hip and tailbone quite severely, all to the ignorant cheers of the students who were demanding that I go again from the top of the slide. “No way!” Add these several injuries to a horrendous sunburn and a head cold garnered from the unchlorinated water, and I realized that I am not yet (nor will I ever be) cut out to keep up with these Indonesian Islamic boarding school adolescents.
