Another Ending and Beginning

note: This was written on May 25th, but my internet access has been so limited that I just now posted it. Also, there are some other good pictures added to the "Muslim Indonesian Women" post.

It seems like every May, something significant is happening in my life. My birthday is May 30^th (the end of the month, which is the beginning of a new year in my life). Last year May was the month of MAYhem, which was a clever way of defining the unbridled debauchery of the end of a glorious four years at Claremont, and this year my contract ends, a new phase in my life begins, along with what could possibly be my best voyage to date. Right now I’m in an ultra-modern mall in Jakarta, a place where I can’t afford most of the goods that are sold, a far cry away from the congested and stifling atmosphere of the Makassar MTC mall, which in terms of price and organization is equivalent to a giant multi-vendor thrift store. The past week has been an uncontrollable rollercoaster of culture shock, drastically different lifestyles, and new perspectives on what is the “real” way to live. No…I haven’t actually figured it out yet.

Is this the "real" way to live?

My time bonding with the members of the Pesantren culminated in my tearful speech in Bahasa Indonesia, and a great poem by one of my best students, incorporating all of the slang I had taught him (“Mr. Jon, you are my homeslice, I love you G.”) I wore a suit and tie during my speech for all of the students and Pesantren staff, then quickly ran back to my room, put on some orange, gray, and white camo pattern pants, aviator sunglasses, a student-made T-shirt, and a gangster style hat with the words “pimp juice” embroidered on the front, in order to sing, jump around, and headbang as the star of the song played by the student rock band. It was an appropriate representation of the two lives of Mr. Jon. One formal and procedural, with plenty of speeches beginning with the words “yang terhormat…” (the honorable) and then an interminable listing of names of all of the important people present in the audience. Another, the life of Mr. Jon as an IMMIM boy, a pseudo-student at a modern Islamic boarding school, someone who swims in the disgusting floodwaters, plays basketball during recess, and makes jokes to the students about jumping over the wall at night. It seems that both were quite well received, and I was indeed sad to formally break ties with the place that, despite being completely unfamiliar to my former self, has now become my second home.

Bonding with teachers...

...and students.

That night, I stayed up until 3 AM talking with the students, and was quickly awakened by the Direktur of the Pesantren at 6 AM the next morning, because I was about to embark on the trip of the lifetime. The Direktur is 60 years old, and ever since he was old enough to function independently, he has awoken at 5 AM for subuh prayer, so sleeping in is not even a concept that enters his mind. I was told to quickly prepare my belongings, stop by his house (next door to mine) for a quick and spicy breakfast, and then we were on our way with his wife, child, and three other members of the Pesantren staff for an eye-opening 3 day journey around the villages of South Sulawesi. The most English this group speaks are the words “thank you” and “let’s go Jon” so I was in for a real immersive experience. I thought I was adjusted to this culture, hardcore, speaking the language fluently, ready to deal with any level of discomfort, and no longer needing the comfort of western amenities and interactions, but this trip took cultural differences to the next level. The culture shocked me harder than any dangerously faulty Indonesian electrical outlet.

It didn’t help that I began the trip with an extraordinary sleep deficit, coming off of the social stress of saying goodbye to Makassar, and simultaneously being needed by everyone to an even greater degree. Usually, just because I am the tall white guy that everyone wants to befriend, and it is literally my job to be nice to everyone (which sometimes can be A LOT harder than it sounds), in terms of my social life I feel like William Wallace being drawn and quartered with a rope tied to each limb. In these last few weeks, my friend groups in Makassar have been more like wild packs of hyenas, vying aggressively for even the smallest scraps of my time, and leaving behind an exhausted and emotionally drained skeleton of a person. This is how I felt when I got in the car with the Direktur and his family, I was in no condition to fluently and exclusively speak a foreign language for the next three days straight, not to mention arising with everyone else at the call for subuh prayer. Wheww!

Here I have to go into a digression about language. For those of you who have never lived in a foreign country where you know the language, but you still don’t speak it naturally, speaking in a different language is a lot like driving a car. If you are driving, your actual physical body is doing very little exercise, but your brain is constantly receiving and processing information, identifying hazards, subconsciously watching your speed, listening to the radio, navigating, etc. Consequently, 8 hours of driving, even though you are really just sitting there, is overwhelmingly exhausting. It’s the same way with speaking a foreign language. You must be acutely aware of the each word someone says, trying to identify different accents, and contextually define the few words that you may not know. Even if you know the definition of the word, sometimes the way they put it together just doesn’t make sense to a native English speaker. I will give you some of my funniest and favorite examples.

Sudah sampai? Literally means “Already until?” If you directly translate that, it makes very little sense. Hmm…a good indirect English translation of this would be “Are we there yet?” or “Have you already arrived at your destination?”

The addition of the prefix pen- to a root word turns that word into a noun. Hiburan means “entertainment” so penghibur is “an entertainer”. I talked in previous posts about the propensity of Indonesians to sit on the side of the road for hours and just sit there, watching the road like Americans watch television. Duduk means to sit, so penduduk should mean a person who sits, but it actually is used in the context of jumlah penduduk (jumlah means quantity). So instead of jumlah penduduk meaning something like “the quantity of people who are sitting” it actually just means “population.” In other words, the entire population of the country of Indonesia is literally defined as “sitters”! I was delighted to learn this, given that it jives so well with my conclusion that Indonesian people spend an overwhelming amount of time sitting.

Finally, slightly more disturbing but strikingly representative of the condition of the country, is how the language distinguishes between urination and a bowel movement. Where we would say “number 1” or “number 2” an Indonesian says buang air kecil or buang air besar. I would translate buang air as “to throw away water” or “to get rid of water” whereas kecil means “small” and besar means “big”. So a bowel movement is literally “getting rid of big water”, this makes a lot of sense, given the fact that I have had the runs for about all but 2 of the last ten months (too much information?? Woops!)

This is my friend Anton the security guard. He doesn't speak English, and I can't really understand him when he speaks Indonesian, so we communicate exclusively with one-word sentences.

Okay, back to the journey into the villages. This trip was conversation based, not necessarily activity based. By this I mean the vast majority of our time was spent sitting in a car, or sitting in chairs and just talking. Listening and understanding became extremely difficult. Phrases were sometimes a huge struggle for me to contextualize. Properly forming a sentence of my own was hard enough, but doing it quickly enough and fluently enough to fit it into the context of the conversation was next to impossible. Add to this that most of their conversations were in Buginese, the local language of South Sulawesi, which bears no resemblance to Bahasa Indonesia. When they wanted me to understand something, they would subtly switch to Indonesian without warning, and expect me to be all caught up on the context of the last 25 minutes of Bugis conversation. We went to about 20 different houses, at each one, we would go through a ritual of sitting down on a bunch of couches, and I would have to try all of the food before they allowed themselves to eat. They carefully monitored my reactions and proceeded to explain all the processes for making said food, and all of the names of the different cakes in Bahasa Bugis. It was exhausting, and I was so full that I was bursting at the seams. I literally had to undo my pants to absorb more cake, and I was not allowed to leave the house until I tried it all. Consequently, I learned a few of the most important words in Bahasa Bugis, mandre beh pah means “eat cake” and messona means “I’m too full!” After all that cake, I felt like vomiting, a feeling that was not aided by the frequent roadside stops to allow Dede, the Direktur’s son, a chance to empty his puke bag that he had been perpetually filling the entire trip.

At one point, we drove the car right to the bank of a fast flowing muddy river about 200 meters wide. Okay, now what do we do? There were some concrete pillars in the middle of the river, the beginnings of a bridge foundation, but it looked as if the project had been abandoned several years ago, with only a tattered Indonesian flag sticking out of the rusty rebar at the top of the pillar where the bridge should have been. Shortly after noticing this, I saw a wooden platform carefully being motored across the river by three men. Then, to my utmost shock, the driver of the Pesantren car nonchalantly drove right onto the plank, which made it sink to only about 2 feet above water level. This didn’t seem to make anyone else nervous. In fact, we loaded the plank with several more motorcycles, and all of our bodies. I was sure if an accident occurred I would have the strength to swim to shore, but was equally sure that no one else in my party even had the faintest idea of how to swim. No one worried too much though, and after a few minutes I found that we had been deftly and dryly motored to the other side. Who needs a bridge anyway?

Bridge is not yet (and will probably never be) completed.

Once we crossed the river, we were REALLY in the villages. The unofficial title of the trip was bule masuk kampung which means “the foreigner enters the villages”. When people saw me, instead of erupting in the usually enthusiastic “hello meester” that is an essential part of my daily existence, they literally just froze with an expression of deer-in-the-headlights style shock. My saving grace was that I was traveling with a band of locals, back to their roots, and we had to stop about every 500 meters to say hello to a different family member. I finally made a joke that about half of the jumlah penduduk in this particular regency are family members of the Direktur or somehow connected to my Pesantren. It was hardly an exaggeration. We met an alumnus of the Pesantren who has the largest sandal selling operation I have ever seen. He spent an hour searching his entire warehouse for shoes that would fit me, and finally just ended up giving me three pairs, none of which actually really fit, but it would have been rude of me to decline his hospitality.

The Direktur caught in a pensive moment. A very intelligent man that i respect immensely.

One day, we hiked 3 kilometers through the rice paddies to arrive at the family empang, a pond that is encircled by narrow berms of dirt on all sides, crisscrossed by treacherous little wooden plank bridges. (Sorry about all of the Indonesian in this post, but for the past week that is the only language I have been expressing myself in, so it just makes sense right now). Once there, we proceeded to catch fish and crabs—traditional style! I loved this. I climbed a coconut tree, and we had fresh fire-grilled fish and crabs for lunch, washed down with delicious sweet coconut water! Then came the heat. There was no wind, and in the 2 PM direct tropical sun I started to get heat exhaustion. I can honestly say that I have pinpointed that moment as the hottest I have been in my entire life, and it was excruciating. At that point, I was really craving some AC, or at least some refrigeration, but alas it was no where to be found and I had to tough it out. They said I should bring my parents next year, but I am positive that my mom would be miserable in that environment.

Soaking up the sun, practicing my "Indosquat", and catching crabs.

The delicious fruits of our labors.

Now I’m in Jakarta, sipping on a Mocha Freeze coffee drink, enjoying the AC and WiFi internet. A far cry from life in the kampung. I went straight from the villages onto an airplane and out to Singapore for just over a day, where I spent most of the time in the airport. Singapore is the most diverse place I have ever seen. All signs are written in seven or eight different languages. There is no such thing as a domestic flight out of the Changi Airport in Singapore, an airport that has been touted as the most modern in the world. This airport really feels like the center of the world, an essential stopover for anyone who is looking to cross the Pacific Ocean to the east, or the vast undeveloped stretches of China and the former Soviet Union to the west. It was an amazing feeling to walk around the airport, seeing people of all different shapes, styles, sizes, and colors, and really feeling like a part of the global community. People here paid me no heed. The exact opposite reaction to the villager’s frozen stares I had been subject to just two days ago. A Chinese girl sings an Alanis Morissette song with a perfect American accent. Shiny bald-headed monks in orange robes ride the sky train with Saudi Arabians who wear clothing that looks like they just stepped off their camels. Asian girls wearing shorts that are about 3 inches long and have smiles wider than their hips stand next to fully covered Muslim women wearing socks with sandals so as not to scandalously expose any skin. A German face of disgust when he finds his flight has been delayed, sharing his disappointment with an Indian couple, the woman in full traditional garb with a dot on her forehead. English, my own native language, takes on forms and accents that I never knew existed. Even though it seems like no one ever stays here, everyone is just passing through, all the inhabitants treat their city with the utmost respect. It seems like no one has EVER spilled a drink in the metro. Even chewing gum is outlawed, and I felt like I could eat a meal off the concrete. Actively seeking a piece of litter was seldom successful. The fines for smoking or littering approach 500 dollars. Standing inside the check-in terminal at the Changi Airport, I felt like I could not see the bottom few inches of the wall at the other end of the building, because of the curvature of the Earth (slightly exaggerated, but still the largest indoor environment I have ever seen).

I’m about to embark on a trip to the island Lombok, back to Makassar as a tourist, then on to Maluku and the spice islands for some snorkeling and spearfishing. Like the past week, it should be interestingly punctuated with stark contrasts between modern wealthy urban lifestyles and extremely rural areas. Places where money hardly has value because bartering is the basis of the tiny economies. The experience of transitioning between the two “builds character.” The ability to do so is known as privilege.

I've seen more of their country than they have.