Teeming With Lifestyle

Photos and Descriptions

2008-08-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Although the title of this section is essentially what my blog has consisted of all along, these particular photos stand alone without the assistance of much of a back story. These are all photos that I recently entered into an online contest. I hope you enjoy!

Caption: Becak-pooling!
Description: In front of the largest mosque in eastern Indonesia, a group of children split the cost of a 20 cent becak ride (pronounced bey-chak). Although much of Indonesia is plagued by environmental challenges such as deforestation, rampant water pollution, and excessive carbon emissions; incidentally these children combine two popular and environmentally sustainable practices that are common in the USA--carpooling AND bicycling!

Caption: Sailor's Delight
Description: This is a pensive moment staring out at the major shipping lane known as the Makassar straight. The distinct cloud formation that seems to be emanating from the ship on the horizon appears almost as smoke, and reminds me of how most Americans experienced this gorgeous part of the world over 60 years ago. Although the purpose and context of our journeys contrast even more deeply than the left and right portions of this photo, my grandfather must have taken solace in similar unspeakably beautiful tropical moments.

Caption: Welcome to our country, brother.
Description: This is one of my first days in Indonesia at an Islamic boarding school with male students aged 12 to 18. The glow of sunset just before maghrib (the sunset prayer in Islam) perfectly highlights the enthusiasm on my new friends' faces. Faced with such a warm welcome and immediate acceptance into their community as a "brother", I couldn't help but redefine some of the stereotypes I had previously held about Islam.

Caption: Sunglasses at Night
Description: My traveling companion and I received local permission to enter a limestone cave that served for thousands of years as the catacombs for the tribal elders. The scene is lit by a hand held gas lantern. Strange thing is, I had just lost my sunglasses, and I was on the quest for a new pair! Best to leave these undisturbed, this guy might need them where he's going.

Caption: New Friends!
Description: Traveling through the small villages of Indonesia is a bit like being inside a Mickey Mouse costume at Disneyland. On this adventure, my friend Ken Moore and I were met at every roadside stop with hospitality from everyone--and unadulterated pure enthusiasm from the children. These little ones used their curiosity to guide us to the foot of the majestic waterfall in the background.

Another Ending and Beginning

2008-06-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Muslim Indonesian Women

2008-04-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

A woman quietly prays inside of my favorite mosque in Makassar--Masjid Raya.

Wow. One could probably write volumes about the above 3 words. Here, I will try to elucidate some of the aspects of this topic that will be most intriguing to those back home, especially those who have not yet visited a majority Muslim country. Although it is quite difficult, I am attempting to remember how I felt and what attitudes I held about Muslim women before coming to this country, and direct my writing toward an audience that holds similar stereotypes. Of course, as usual, the explanation is supplemented with a liberal supply of personal anecdotes and photos.

By the way, I want to acknowledge that this thing has not been update for like....well...FOREVER! My apologies, I actually wrote this about a month ago, and since then I have been struggling to upload it. If you want some more photos, try this link http://community.webshots.com/user/jstrahl07

This is a time-lapse of one of the major intersections in Jakarta, from 5 AM until 12 PM. Nothing to do with Muslim Indonesian women, but still really cool.

The Jilbab.

A jilbab is a headcovering worn by Muslim women. In my city of Makassar, I would estimate that 70 percent of women wear some form of headcovering, be it a simple scarf, a jilbab, or a full birka (in order from most liberal to most conservative—a birka only exposes a small slit through which the woman can see). A woman wearing a birka is a rare sight, I usually see about 1 per week. Interestingly, Jane, a Fulbright ETA who lives in my same city but near the beach in a more modern community, has seen less than five to ten birka-touting females in the span of eight months.

My first stereotype was violated right away. In Bandung, when we were at our teachers’ orientation, there was a young woman in her late 20s, wearing a tightly wound jilbab. However, she also wore sagging western-style tomboy jeans, carried a digital camera with her everywhere she went, relentlessly flirted with some of the boys, was quick to laugh, and talked the whole time about how much she wanted to travel the world. I found this a little strange, because her behavior and even her style matched that of an American woman of the same age…everything except the jilbab. At this point, I’m not sure what I expected from a jilbab-wearing woman other than for her to be different. Perhaps this is why the similarities were astounding to me.

Okay, I had heard that Makassar is a more conservative Muslim area of Indonesia, second only to the providence of Aceh in northwest Sumatra. I thought maybe my friend from Bandung was merely an eccentric exception to my stereotype of the quiet and reserved Muslim woman who chooses not to show the world her hair. When I arrived here, I was initially terrified to even TOUCH a woman who was blatantly Muslim (i.e. wearing a headcovering). Yet as time went on, I discovered that, just as in Christianity, there is a very wide spectrum of levels of faith. I realized that just because a woman wears a headcovering, does not necessarily designate her as a devout Muslim.

Even more noteworthy, whether or not one wears a jilbab is dependent on situations and one’s outlook on life. I learned that many of the jilbab-wearers that I know now did not wear jilbabs in the past, when they were in high school or university. They only decided to wear a jilbab when the “time became right” or they “came to terms with their faith.” It is definitely not a black and white cut and dry decision to wear a jilbab, more like a fluid style expression. For some, wearing a jilbab could be our equivalent of a man wearing a tie to work. For instance, at the Pesantren, women wear jilbabs tighter than American women from the 1980s wore spandex track suits. Not a single strand of hair is exposed. Conversely, at the mall, the same women wear headcovers that are nothing more than loosely wrapped scarves, showing half of their hair anyway.

A very happy student, and a teacher wearing a jilbab that may be a little too tightly wound...

The minaret and some beautiful tropical skies outside of Masjid Al-Markaz, Makassar, the largest mosque in eastern Indonesia.

Now here is where the topic becomes juicy. The jilbab is widely used as a tool of sexual attraction and suggestion. I learned this from talking to men, women, and…personal experience. The men I talked to say they just love it when they go to a woman’s house and she takes off her jilbab (a headcovering is usually not worn in a private area like a house). Initially, I scoffed at this, thinking “those poor guys, they are crazy about seeing some girl’s hair! Just her hair!” Well, that was in the first three months. As time wore on, and the realities of living in an all-male Islamic boarding school began to set in, I found myself seduced by any opportunity to see a woman who usually wears a jilbab in the rare “hair exposed” state. I know, I know, it sounds pitiful, but would breasts be as attractive if all women always walked around topless?

Women here are acutely aware of this. If we talk of making progress with a woman in terms of the commonly used middle-school ‘base’ system…first base is holding hands, second base is kissing, home run is…well you know, then seeing a woman without her jilbab on is the equivalent of stepping into the batter’s box. I don’t actually know this from personal experience, but I have a few remarkable stories. For instance, I met a tightly-jilbabed woman at a coffee shop in the mall. She made an appointment with me because she, not surprisingly, wanted to “practice her English.” After a well-orchestrated and predominately English speaking interaction, she casually asked if I wanted to wash my hair. I was a bit taken aback as hair washing is not a typical American custom while walking around the mall. However, because of incredibly inexpensive service costs (a haircut is 70 cents!!), the salon is a pervasive element of life in Indonesia, especially for women. I found this suggestion particularly strange for a woman who keeps her hair covered for 95 percent of the day, but oh well, that’s just another one of the countless inexplicable aspects of this country. I just accept things for what they are.

I decided I wasn’t in the mood for a hair wash that day, so I just waited. I am a professional waiter (see previous posts) so I was sure to have a book in hand, and her time in the enclosed hair-washing station just flew by. After emerging from behind the barrier (presumably constructed so that boys could not get sneak peeks of womens’ naked hair), she said “Oh Meester Jooooonn!” and casually flicked her EXPOSED hair at me, shaking her head like a supermodel on Fashion TV. I laughed at the absurdity of this situation, but also laughed a little at myself perhaps for actually being attracted to her hair, only because I was one of the privileged few to see it. Throughout the rest of the day, her headscarf was consistently “accidentally” falling down. Alhamdulillah!! Send this lovely Muslim hair temptress back from whence she came!! She is clearly aware of the power she is able to wield, and the male’s undeniable attraction to all that is mysterious and unknown regarding the female body. Luckily, as an American, I have spent the vast majority of my life seeing a lot of female hairstyles. So, compared to the typical Indonesian boy who attends my Pesantren, I have a better-established resistance to this seduction strategy.

A glimpse into a musholla, a small "on-the-go" style prayer room. This one happens to be located in one of my favorite restaurants.

Dowry and Arranged Marriages

When I was riding on the back of my new friend’s motorcycle, a 30 year old English teacher, and he asked me if I had ever kissed a girl then proceeded to giggle uncontrollably, I knew I was in a different world. Turns out, among the lower-income families of South Sulawesi, the 30, 35, 40 year old kissing virgin is a prevalent, shall we say…issue. South Sulawesi is Bugis territory, a region dominated for ages by the Buginese language and culture, famous for their expertise in boat building and brilliantly-constructed stilt houses. They also require rather steep dowries before any respectable girl is permitted to marry. Combine this aspect of their culture with the “hands off until marriage” Islamic religiosity that came later in the 17^th century, and you end up with a lot of poor, sexually frustrated men who have confided in me. They just plain can’t afford to “purchase” a wife. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Islam permits up to four wives, so the very rich men in town may own four houses on one street, with a different wife occupying each one. I was literally told that a marriage proposal involves a lot of monetary bargaining between the prospective husband and the woman’s parents. The parents demand 30 million rupiah, the suitor bids low at 15, they compromise somewhere between 20 and 25. Yowza!

My other teacher friend is in his mid-30s, and he doesn’t have this problem. He already has a wife and two daughters. Apparently, back in his day, he had a number of different girlfriends. Unfortunately, although he was quite fond of his girlfriend, he felt obligated to obey his parents when they chose to purchase his cousin for him as his wife! This is actually more desirable than marrying outside of your family. Hmm...

Okay, well I hope you enjoyed my brief analysis based on some of my limited experience. A few caveats: Islam in Indonesia is not exactly the same type of Islam we are used to hearing about in the Middle East, precisely because it mixes so differently with local beliefs on the many different islands in this astoundingly diverse nation. Likewise, these stories are not a representative sample of the whole of Indonesia. In metropolitan Jakarta, about 20 percent of women wear head coverings, Bali is a Hindu area so a head covering is a rare sight, and the eastern island of Flores is so strongly Christian that it bares more resemblance to areas of South America than to Makassar. Modernization and western beliefs have also played a significant role in further distorting the convergence of all these customs defined by culture and religion. This is manifest in the concept of “free sex,” a brand new term in the English language that most Indonesians believe they imported from America (even though I had no idea what exactly this meant the first time I heard it). Turns out, “free sex” in this country is sex before marriage that you don’t pay for (i.e. not a prostitute). The mere existence of this term is a testament to the fact that all of the above-mentioned rules are not zealously observed by all members of society. The precise frequency of this particular phenomenon is still under investigation…

Two different types of Muslim Indonesian women.

Settlin’ in to the Big Mak

2008-03-12T23:38:00.001-07:00

“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.

Turnin' up da heat at the market in Makassar.

Also, I finally made it to the main tourist destination of South Sulawesi called Tana Toraja. This place is very beautiful and also quite unsettling. Here, they celebrate deaths with a lot more fanfare than births, and what better way to celebrate a death than with more death? Specifically, the slaughter of copious amounts of buffalo and pigs. Its an all around unsettling place. Lots of slaughter, lots of human skulls, yet incredibly unique, interesting and beautiful. Tough to describe in words so I will rely on this pictures to help convey a bit of the message.

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.

Flood Day!

2008-02-03T22:39:00.000-08:00

Well, last night I slept great, only waking up to the constant pitter-patter of rain on my tin roof. Every now and then, the rain gets so hard that it sounds more like the drumline from an 80s punk band, but for some reason all that noise puts me right to sleep. The only unfortunate thing is, at 6 AM, it’s really difficult to climb out of bed and face a whole day of teaching occasionally ill-behaved high school students. Ah well, it always works out after drinking 3 cups of coffee, eating oatmeal with copious amounts of palm sugar, and seeing the excited grins on my students’ faces as they anticipate Mr. Jon’s daily lesson.

This morning, however, was a different story. Same routine with the coffee and oatmeal, but when I walked out to the classrooms, there was only a smattering of uniformed students taking shelter under the awning of the mosque. Hmmm…well, jam karet (Indonesian for ‘rubber time’) is a particularly prevalent phenomenon on those rainy days. Suddenly, a student ran up to me through the torrential rain, and it looked like he had just escaped from the trenches of some aquatic warzone. After a few more scattered reports, word got to me that class was cancelled because of a waist high flood throughout the dorms of the senior high school students (our equivalent of grades 10 through 12).

Okay great, no class. So, I decided to return to my room and gear up. This meant: REI rain jacket, umbrella, highwater pants (actually normal sized pants for an Indonesian, but on me they are slightly longer than capris), T-shirt, and waterproof diving camera. I was going to do some investigative reporting on the massive flood that had recently struck the campus of Pesantren IMMIM. Little did I know, I was in for a real treat.

As an avid kayaker, recreational diver, occasional surfer and consistent swimmer—I love water. If there must be a natural disaster, a flood is my preferred medium of destruction. As I approached the dorm, I saw many students running in all directions, as if a fire had broken out. It was total chaos, and everyone was soaked to the bone. At the teachers’ houses, I noticed the irony of a clothesline, usually about head high, ‘drying’ clothes that were now only about 3 inches off the water. Teachers were frantically moving their most valuable furniture upstairs to escape the wrath of the canal that had surged over its banks. One of my best students beckoned me to visit his friends over at the senior dorms. When I arrived, I saw what is typically a soccer field inundated with water up to my hips. Several boys were in the water, laughing and splashing and attempting to play a much-impeded game of futbol. The rest were tentatively sheltered at the entrance of their dorms, the water mere centimeters from breaching the entrance which is typically about 3 feet off the ground. The students were soaked to the bone, shivering, and to me they looked like an old woman standing on a chair in the middle of a room in a futile attempt to escape a mouse. Several other students had taken the mattresses off their beds, and were paddling them around as makeshift boats. When I arrived on the scene, all hell broke loose.

Taking refuge on the high ground.

More often than not, in a dry environment, if Mr. Jon is around and has his camera, there is a lot of pushing and shoving to be the first one in all of his pictures. It’s a struggle for fame and attention. Adding the element of water was like pumping these boys full of adrenaline, steroids, caffeine, alcohol and cocaine all at once. The situation quickly devolved and became uncontrollable. As I approached with my camera, about 150 students jumped in the water and began violently and playfully moshing each other. Any student reluctant or unwilling to get wet was immediately singled out and forced into the water: either via irresistible peer pressure or the use of physical force. The demands that I jump in and swim were unrelenting.

Ahh…what the hell.

This is how I justified my decision. As a self-proclaimed water lover, I would be violating my own carefully constructed self image if I refused to jump in the water, right? Swimming was certainly not my original intention, as the canal typically carries what I believe to be sewage down to the lake nearby the school. Well, the germ theory of disease was sooo last century, and, in general, witchdoctors hold more credence with the people of this country anyway. Despite the little voice in my head (Uncle Tom) warning me about the myriad cocktail of endemic third-world waterborne tropical diseases found in Indonesia, the hundreds of loud voices of my students overpowered my good conscience. I quickly disrobed and transformed into a beast of an adolescent boy. It was a transformation to rival that of Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. As soon as Mr. Jon entered the water, all inhibitions were lost, and if there was a student even considering the prospect of NOT swimming, that was no longer a viable option. What happened next was a truly unique sort of Pesantren-style baptism, fueled by unparalleled excitement and unbridled teenage masculinity in a single-sex environment. No fewer than 60 students quickly joined hands and formed a circle around me, and then began to jump and chant as they ran around me. The running became faster and faster, the chanting louder and louder, and I facilitated the mob mentality by splashing a few of the students as they ran around. Suddenly, they unleashed an unrelenting torrent of splashes. Let me tell you, there is nothing more intensely fun than being simultaneously splashed with pseudo-sewage by 60 adolescent Indonesian boys. I could no longer stand. I fell to my knees, head barely above water, outstretched my arms, and begged for mercy. All the barbarous students then converged on a single point which was Mr. Jon’s sopping wet body. For a brief moment, I feared for my life. Then I began to physically dominate their genetically-predisposed and malnourished small bodies. These boys sure know how to make their own fun!

An Islamic (boarding school) baptism.

I still exist somewhere in the midst of that nastiness.

The mosh pit of madness.

After a few more pictures, a grand raft was specially constructed for my use, made with student’s belts, 3 mattresses, and 4 pieces of wood. They floated me on the raft as if I was some sort of Persian or Egyptian water god—I sat with my legs crossed in a meditative state as 12 of my minions carted me around the soccer-field-turned-lake. Again with the chants. This time “ca-nal, ca-nal, ca-nal”, they wanted to take me to the portion of the campus that still had current, the only spot where even Mr. Jon could not stand up—the canal. The raft soon became overloaded with boy bodies, and sank into the canal before we could get too far…oh well no time to worry about that. Too bad for whoever doesn’t have a mattress tonight!

Nothing like sacrificing comfort in the name of fun. In this case someone is not getting a good night's sleep for the next few weeks.

Muddy happiness. I'm on the 'boat.' "Ca-nal, ca-nal ca-nal!"

The arrival of Ustaz Ewan was the next major event (‘ustaz’ is ‘teacher’ in Arabic; Mr. Ewan, at approximately 5 feet, chubby, and balding, is one of the funniest people I have ever met. He also happens to have an insatiable appetite for sport and is the best badminton player I have ever seen). When he arrived, we ran toward each other screaming and giving high fives to all the students. Of course this entire 40 minute episode was punctuated by copious amounts photos and nonstop giggling. The soccer goals were still set up, and a few balls were floating around, so we decided to practice our semi-submerged bicycle kicks. After doing that for a while, and just generally roughhousing, the energy level was still incomprehensibly high. So, we barely organized a game of wading water polo, with about 40 people on each team. The general strategy of this game for my team was to throw the ball as high as possible and make Mr. Jon perform a sport feat by grabbing it above the heads of everyone else. A goal was always followed an inexplicable amount of roughhousing and dog piling. Looking back on the savagery, it is remarkable that nobody drowned.

The arrival of Ustaz Ewan was a joyous occassion.

Playing goalie in the...rain.

More insanity.

Go team! "Futbol" with our hands!

We had just scored the game-tying goal to make it 2 to 2, when the headmaster appeared on the dry side of the sidelines with an unmistakably upset scowl on his face. The crowd dispersed even more quickly than it had formed. In typical truth-bending Indonesian style, all the students immediately decided that they wanted to “take rest” even though they evidently could have continued playing for several more hours. Ustaz Ewan sulked back to dry land and quickly beckoned me over. All the students, now at the windows of their dorms at the behest of the headmaster, were still watching my every move. One moment of slapstick comedy remained...as I was walking back to dry land I unexpectedly encountered the canal, obscured by the brown muddy water I was walking through. I immediately fell in over my head, and the sound of uproarious laughter emanated from the dorms. This last little unintentional stunt earned a further shake of the headmaster’s head, and a typical ‘tik tik tik’ noise of reproach directed at the students. Clearly, it was time for me to return to my house, take a 30 minute long shower and some preemptive antibiotic medication. I don’t know if I earned myself any punishment…it’s typical for teachers at the Pesantren to maintain distance from the students and demand their respect. As for myself, being only 4 or 5 years older than them, I pride myself as a ‘nontraditional’ teacher. I make an effort to become familiar with their interests, plan interactive English lessons based on said interests, and, from time to time, completely cut loose and have some good old-fashioned physical non-language based fun. I would consider it an essential element of my job description.

Very happy to have the day off!

XB07

2008-01-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

At dawn, an Indonesian man adopts the preferred mode of transport as Gunung Merapi steams away in the background.

2007 was quite a year of acronym-based trips for me. Beginning with the highly anticipated SB07 (spring break) followed by the gargantuan and tremendously successful WAC07 (week after college). Both trips explored the magical realm of pristine beaches, fish tacos, endearing canines, and omnipresent sand that is Baja Mexico. As a capstone to the year 2007, and in homage to these epic trips, Elliott Vanderkolk, a seasoned Baja veteran and beloved friend, came to visit Indonesia to chalk up one more memorable acronym-07 extravaganza. This one, XB07 (X-mas break) earned a well-deserved place next to the other 07 trips—we even made a token hat (as is tradition ever since FB05).

Well, the past month has been another flurry of official and unofficial travel throughout the great and gorgeous nation of Indonesia. December 3^rd through 10^th was a reunion for all other Fulbright scholars. A conference of sorts where we “shared resources” and basically took comfort in the fact that we were not alone trying to adjust to teaching in this foreign land where sometimes everything seems the opposite of what it should be. It was great to talk to everyone, rekindle friendships and create new ones. This is a great group of people overflowing with profound and influential ideas, and the whole week renewed my confidence and sense of purpose for being here in Indonesia on this grant. Also, I can’t lie—one of the highlights was spending 6 dollars at the western food store to get my long-overdue chips and salsa fix. Hooray!

This is the quintessential Javanese countryside.

From Jakarta, Jane and I took the overnight train to Yogjakarta. “Jogja,” as it is affectionately called by locals, is touted as the cultural capital of Indonesia. As such, it is a rare gem of a city for this country, teeming with an uncanny amount of self-expression. Artful graffiti is everywhere, live music opportunities abound, public plays, concerts, fine restaurants, the works! This type of collaboration and vibrant artistic activity is what I find to be of value in a city (if it weren’t for that, why wouldn’t I just live closer to the mountains and rivers?) Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of public artistic culture in my home city of Makassar. Not to say that culture is nonexistent here, you just have to look harder. Living in Makassar, for the first time in my life, I am genuinely excited to ‘discover’ a new mall. I shamefully admit this, but really, going to the mall is THE activity for the Makassarese.

The stoic Jane assumes her meditation pose next to the ancient Buddha statues of Borobodur temple.

Elliott, fresh from solitary pinballing around the Bali climate change conference, was relieved to meet me in Yogjakarta and offload some of his amazing presents all the way from the USA (thanks everybody!). We went back to Makassar for 3 nights of teaching, meeting, and eating. Elliott got a first-hand look at the inner workings of Meester Jon’s classroom, and a gastronomical voyage around Makassar including stops for grilled fish, prawns, calamari, and the infamous beef-gut stew (Elliott temporarily retired his vegetarianism for the expedition to a country where this dietary choice is not well understood or catered to). Three nights in Makassar is too much for any tourist, so we continued the epic tale of XB07 from Medan, Sumatra.

Sumatra offers a wealth of beautiful views, both great and small.

Again, I will let the pictures tell most of this tale. If you want details, I will have to reveal them on a case-by-case basis. Only the cursory summary should be revealed here to the general public. We started in Berastagi with a good routine of early bedtime, early wake-ups (Elliott had a hard time sleeping through the call to prayer at 5AM…for me, at this point, it sounds like a lullaby) a diet of great tropical fruit, mountain-climbing, and finally ending the day with a hot-spring soak in view of the active steam-spewing volcano.The well-arranged and very delicious fruit market in Berastagi. Famous around the country. Free samples!

Negotiating the thickness of Sumatran jungles. Luckily, the heavy rains have carved out huge gullies like this one where we can stay underneath most of the thick brush.

Happy jungle trekkers.

Then it was on to Lake Toba, where we rented a motorcycle and spent the days cruising around the lake, absorbing the beautiful views and equatorial sunshine.

The Sipiso-Piso waterfall plummets of this cliff about a kilometer from its intersection with the north end of Lake Toba

A Batak style traditional hut near Lake Toba. The Batak people are famed for having recently been cannibals! Now they are just sort of Christian and have an affinity for arak palm wine.During our triumphant ride around the lake, we ran out of gas. Partially due to poor planning and partially due to a wildly erratic fuel gauge. No problem though. After a short hitchhike, we were sold this "bag o' gas" that Elliott is holding in his left hand. In his other hand you see our brilliantly improvised funneling system. We were back on the road in no time.The countryside around Lake Toba includes the omnipresent rice padi punctuated by perfectly cloudy skies and lush green mountains.

We still hadn’t had our fill of the jungle, so we took a hellish bus ride to Bukit Lawang where we encountered a great number of primates and other noteworthy jungle creatures (snakes, insects, leeches, a monitor lizard, giant birds that sound like helicopters, etc.) We spent Christmas day camped in the jungle, on a river, playing cribbage and calling our families with my cell phone. Yep, cell phones are such a huge part of this culture that the government has provided service virtually EVERYWHERE…even to jungle campers. From there, Elliott started his long, 4-day journey back to Maryland, which included many modes of transport from a short rafting trip on the river to international air travel.

Orang-utan (literally means forest person in Bahasa Indonesia)

Another of the many inhabitants of the jungle.

After Elliott left, Pesantren IMMIM was still on vacation and I was in no hurry to get back to Makassar, so I met up with fellow Fulbrighters once again at the hub—Bali. More specifically, Matt’s house in Bali. Matt is the one ETA with the good fortune to be placed at a school on the outskirts of the crazy tourist hullabaloo that is Kuta beach. Kuta is very “westernized,” which is to say standardized, by which I mean it could be anywhere in the world. The beach is okay, but I have heard that Bali’s other beaches are far more spectacular. I went with the other ETAs to Gili Trawangan, a small, party-oriented island off the coast of Lombok. We passed the time until New Years, which was a purely social occasion and I did not see any sights of particular note. After a grueling 20-hour boat-bus-boat-bus-airplane-taxi ride, I made it back to Makassar at 3AM on the 4^th.

I thought teaching was scheduled to resume again on the 5^th, but here I am, now it is the 14^th and I still haven’t entered the classroom (except to pose in a picture for the local newspaper). All of the students are here taking exams, and I spend most of my time in the mornings being confused about why we aren’t teaching, and what exactly I should be doing. The gust of wind in my sails from the Jakarta conference has faded into a slight breeze, and again I feel like a mere fixture here—a beacon of white skin and native fluency that conveys bragging rights for the Pesantren, but little else. I have been here a little over a week and I already want to leave again and continue exploring. Especially so because I am not teaching, and my only real interaction with the community occurs between the hours of 8 and 10 PM when I make my rounds walking to peoples’ houses on the Pesantren campus. Hopefully, as the teaching picks up, so will my attitude.A small creek we encountered in the middle of the jungle near Bukit Lawang. I proudly tout this as the cleanest body of water I have seen in Indonesia to date.

Global Warming and some real Indonesian living

2007-12-01T22:34:00.000-08:00

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 cobek²as 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!

2007-10-25T03:34:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-10-16T00:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-09-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

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!