Culture Shock

When I mentioned to a friend, an Australian who is in Salatiga on mission work and teaches in the department with me at Satya Wacana, that my children were enrolled at the Christian School, he said, "I'm a Christian, but in Australia, Christians aren't so concerned about the idea of the six-day creation as they seem to be in America," which comment I reflected upon when Seamus got the assignment in his biology class I mentioned in the last post. On Friday, the same biology teacher went on a tear about the close-mindedness of evolutionists, and said that intelligent design never mentioned God - as S reported it to me, she said that it might have been an alien - and that evolutionists brought too much emotion into the debate, and that more and more scientists were starting to come around to intelligent design. In his Bible class, when S asked "Can't you be a Christian and believe in evolution?" his teacher responded "Yes, but I don't have enough faith for that." Apparently the mention of evolution elicits great derision from his classmates, and a concern about the conflict seems to be a regular feature of the curriculum at this school.

There is no small irony in the fact that I have travelled 8,000 miles and the largest culture shock I am experiencing is with the Americans at my kids' school. It never bothered me that they would attend a Christian school - I attended, quite happily for the most past, a Christian university - and I am still working at keeping an open mind about it, but I confess that I struggle with the concept that intelligent design is a major topic in my son's biology class, and that others appear to be invested in making this a major academic issue. In fact "struggle with" doesn't quite get at the degree to which it bothers me - fortunately S seems more than anything highly amused by the whole thing, though it sours him a little on  about the school. But this is one day in to classes, and I am still committed to keeping an open mind. However, for the record, I am happy to agree with S that intelligent design is intellectual hogwash and that a biology teacher who puts it at the center of her curriculum might not be the most qualified person to teach science. We'll see how that goes.

In Indonesia, it is illegal not to have a religion, and my Australian friend (who speaks fluent Indonesian and volunteered to take us through the immigration process last week - we would have been sunk without him) told us that if people ask you what your religion is, and you don't have one (Unitarian Universalist, apparently, doesn't quite register as a religion here, according to him), said that you should say you are still searching. So yesterday, when a very nice man in the hot tub at the Grand Hotel Wahib told me he was a Christian, and what was my religion, I told him I was still searching. "At a crossroads, yes?" he said, and commenced to direct a long and pleasant conversation about religion with me. He also invited us to dinner sometime, which we will of course accept, even though I think he might be hoping to convert me. It's amazing to be in a place like this, during Ramadan, with call to prayer 5 times a day (the first at 4:45 AM). Religion seems to define all aspects of life here, though not in a way that I have found unpleasant or uncomfortable (except re: evolution, and that has nothing to do with my so far very gracious Indonesian hosts...).

(The Grand Hotel Wahib manages to be both new and crumbling at the same time - a kind of luxury establishment with a nice pool, water slides, a playground full of equipment that appears to have been cast-offs from old playgrounds -- it's full of springy-animals that simply collapse to the side when one sits on them, and there are faux Greek statues everywhere, one of them a pensive nude woman on a rock who seems out of place at a pool where most of the women are swimming in full body suits out of modesty. I'm writing this entry from the poolside, where we've brought the kids back to swim - it's just up the street from the guest house, and a decent cheap respite in the afternoon heat - with just enough that is familiar for S and G, whose difficulty at adjusting deserves its own post, later. From the top of the water slide you can see about a dozen mosques and three volcanoes.)

G and I bought bicycles yesterday, helped by the guy from the hotel, Yunen, who offered to go with us to help purchase them. He led us down the very busy main street and then into an alleyway that was full of live fish and fish tanks and mice and other pets for sale (and a million other things, and motorcycles and trucks and pedestrians) and then into a small entry way that led into the basement of the building where there were about 500 old bikes lined up and many men helping us look through them. We bought two bikes - full suspension mountain bikes that seemed in relatively decent shape - for about $45 a piece (I was a hilariously inept bargainer  - the conversation went something like this: he asked 450,000 rupiah, I said 300, he said 450, I said 350, he said 450, I said 400, he said 450, I said 420. He got 450). This morning when I got up to take an early morning ride around town on a quiet Sunday, the left pedal fell off, and Graham's front disk brake was clearly faulty, we noticed when he tried to ride it, so we went back to the bike store, this time alone, met by some of the same people. One older man in particular was happy to see us again - he had taken a shine to Graham, and sat with his arm around him while I tried to make myself clear by continually ruffling through my dictionary. I told him - at least I think I did - I was teaching at Satya Wacana (a Christian university, incidentally) and this excited him, and he pulled out his identity card to show me his name and to show me that his religion was Christian (printed right there on his card) and he shook my hand enthusiastically. I didn't say anything about the Unitarians.