Mutiny

            So – a brief blog update after a rough week, one that started last week by a disastrous and ridiculous detention of G by his fifth grade teacher for being late too many times, a detention we didn’t know about and which meant that he missed in the indoor soccer game with his Indonesian team that he was looking forward to so much. It set the cause of schooling for G back by three weeks, and he has been resisting school loudly, again, ever since. I talked to the teacher about how I felt about it, about the stupidity of detention for fifth graders, and insisted that we be given 24 hours notice the next time it happens (it won’t happen again – the latenesses up front were all out of adjustment, and the tardy that caused this detention happened because Laura and G were in the principal’s office explaining that G needed to leave early that day.) Sometimes, as a person who trains teachers, I bemoan some of the shortcomings of teacher education in the United States, but this year, when my children are being taught by untrained teachers who digress about the evils of abortion (in the fifth grade) or the flaws in evolutionary theory (in the biology class) I am grateful that my children attend schools in the United States where teachers have been professionally prepared to teach. That’s a shout out to Lisa.

            The worst part of the last week has been the rolling GI problems, which I will not describe in the meticulous detail I have aimed for in my writing here. However, yesterday, I thought that perhaps I was short for this world – somehow I seem to be recovering well today, which I would have told you yesterday was impossible. It started with Laura, who had a mild but extended illness, then S got hit hard, with a fever too, last week, and then me. On top of that S got badly sunburned over the weekend, completely due to lack of parental oversight. And along with all of it came a kind of mental exhaustion. G was suddenly entrenched in his hatred of school again, S spent a good portion of  our first Skype conversation with my parents complaining about how he didn’t like it here (he has not left the comparative mindset, the “this isn’t how we do it in America” brain) and had somehow convinced himself that we were going to send him home early. And of course I engaged in this debate with him, predictably and short-sightedly (Sue, I try, I promise). G was like a firecracker, inert and pleasant until the smallest thing sparked his almost non-existent fuse. And by Tuesday morning, I was ready to leave, give it up, proclaim failure.  In short, it was general mutiny, and I didn’t have the energy anymore to sustain enthusiasm for the venture.

            We’re not going anywhere, of course, and things aren’t a dark as they seemed just a few days ago. G has pulled himself out of it. S has been arguing eloquently and extensively with teachers who think the earth is 6,000 years old (they concede the math might be off by one or two thousand years) and that all wars are religious wars. He reports on these every night, and I am so proud of his speaking up at school for gay rights and religious toleration and Palestinian freedom.  Last night he put together, just out of a reaction against the school, a power point presentation about tolerance, starting with all the business about mosques in the United States. (Over here, there is an uptick in violent reactions against churches being built in some parts of Indonesia, unrelated to the United States, just another example of small-minded extremists spreading their joy and giggles). I worried at the beginning of the school year that S would feel like he had to hide a part of his character as a student in the school, not be himself, but of course S is irrepressible and he’s teaching his teachers more than they are teaching him, I think. We all seem to be healthy again. And in the midst of it all, we had a great outing to a rubber plantation, where we spent the night and met all sorts of crazy and interesting people who we’ll describe I’m sure in more detail in an upcoming blog.  I think we’ll muddle through, though I am still worried about the shield S has put up around this experience – I have to remind myself that we have only been here slightly over a month, and that even if that shield never goes away while we’re here it will when we return.  And most importantly, I have to remember not to micro-manage his experience or try to convince him to have a different one (Sue is laughing as she reads that part, I am sure…) This whole thing is still mind-blowing and exciting for me, provocative as a teacher (I’ll write about that soon) and challenging and disturbing and hard to process in so many ways. So I’ll embrace that, be grateful that the demon living in my intestinal tract has been cast out, and move on with my eyes open.           

            Oh – In case you read about the earthquake – I felt a distinct and somewhat alarming, but small, rumble on Monday night at about midnight. That was it, though the smaller volcano behind the bigger volcano next to us is increasingly active. Our maid assures me that that the larger volcano will protect us here. In any case, nothing happened even close to us to cause any concern.

Written by G (typed by Kirk)

I love Indonesia, but my class is a little weird. My teacher talks about politics and Obama, and I made up a new word called bozokus. It means "totally stupid, dude." Some strange things have happened to me also. I've "be-tailed" a few lizards and went to an awesome adventure park called Treetops. It is a humongous rope course and one of the courses is about a mile long. But there are about forty ziplines. The odd thing about Indonesia is they really like ziplines, but here they don't call them ziplines, they call them Flying Foxes. My friend has a zipline made out of a wire and motorcycle tires, and he also has two baby goats and his neighbor has a bunch of baby puppies. My Indonesian is coming along very slowly. I only know a couple words like "how are you?," "fried chicken," "fried rice," "fried beef." Notice everything starts with "fried." In this country, the only thing you cannot find fried in a giant pot of grease, is grease. I ate a coconut that had just fallen from a tree and was almost killed by a totally random coconut falling out of a tree and almost landing on my head. The friends I do have are exactly like my friends in Bozeman, which is good, because they are all good. Today I helped plan a birthday party for my friend's little brother. I have to say, I'm jealous. He's gonna have a good birthday party. Besides the fact that everything is covered in Spiderman stickers.
      I also have joined an Indonesian soccer team, but all the kids are way too good for me. My house is so big we're even going to install a badminton gym in our living room. It is three stories of "whoa this is too big" and if anyone were even to try to walk up to the top floor balcony they would be panting by the time they got up to the highest floor. This is just me, but I am assuming that everyone who is reading this article by now has gotten outrageously bored, so I'm going to finish with a "dada" which in Bahasa Indonesia means "goodbye" ("dada" almost means "breast" if you are in the fifth grade and you put "women's" in front of this you will be laughing all night long.) At the end of the day just be sure to tell your teacher "dada."
   P.S. A funny little comment is that "teacher" in Bahasa Indonesia is "guru". Shed some tears for me. Dada.
    (Don't ask me about the tears.)

Blog Hog

Contrary to popular belief, the kids and I are alive and well in Salatiga. We only got internet access at the house yesterday (and there was a power outage for most of the day today) so regular access to the internet has been challenging. The newly installed hot water heater flips the circut breaker whenever it kicks in, causing the entire wireless system to crash so we're still a bit in the figuring things out stage. Kirk figures a bit more prominently on the blog only because he is at his office every day and therefore can get on-line on a regular basis. This should in no way be interpreted as Kirk’s superior functioning capacity in cross-cultural situations, my disinterest in blogs, or anything else. Just his luck. Hopefully now that we are on line, we can do updates a bit more frequently and balance out the narrative!

We are settling in quite well and getting into a bit of a routine although a nasty virus has been working its way through our family. I got it first, passed to S. who missed 3 days of school and I think Kirk is the next victim. We were supposed to go to Yogyacarta this weekend but I think will have to pass.

Kirk and I are taking language classes three times a week at the University. Our instructor, Ibu Frances, is fantastic. She is from Makasar in Sulawesi and is really great fun. It is just the two of us in class so we can pretty much talk about whatever we want. Kirk has far surpassed me in terms of language skills but he still doesn’t know where the good vege lady is so in that sense, we’re even. He can speak better but he can't feed himself. HA! I have been practicing a lot with Ibu Kasum, our pembantu (household help). She is an excellent teacher and doesn’t seem to mind the fact that she has to say everything 20 times and painfully slow before I can understand her. Sometimes I want to just scream -- I am really smart in the US. Really! You have to believe me!

Despite his illness, S. is adapting remarkably well. The schoolwork is not too challenging and he has found a teacher with whom he has connected a bit, the theatre teacher who also teaches kindergarden. He will be a teacher's aide for her for the next couple of months. G.P. is still struggling somewhat. As long as you keep him busy, he’s fine! He will go anywhere or do anything. Once he remembers he’s in Indonesia, not in Montana, watch out! We did sign him up for an Indonesian soccer team which is great. He gets really good work outs three times a week and likes the kids who seem to enjoy the novelty of having a bule on their team. Add that to the fact that his transport to and from soccer practice is Pak Augus, the husband of his Indo teacher. Pak Augus rides a motorcycle (as does 90% of Java) really fast, and often lets Graham drive. It is funny how fast these things start to seem normal. I’m also spending one morning a week in Graham’s classroom which is helping I think.

Man with the power tools is back. We moved into our house because it was ‘done’ but there has been a parade of workmen ever since. It will be nice to have the place to ourselves. We did buy a sofa today so now we have a place to sit. That took about 4 weeks. All of the furniture here is built with Indonesians in mind (duh!) but they are considerably shorter than Americans. Seamus towers over Ibu Kasum! We did finally locate a 'standard' size couch only it was the week before Idul Fitri so Pak Andi couldn't give me a price on it because he was too preoccupied with preparations. Then we had Idul Fitri (two more weeks) and then the week afterwards, we had to catch up on everything we missed the previous three weeks. FOR A COUCH! Holly, mother of one of G's friends, drove me to the warehouse this afternoon where I slapped my giant stack of rupea on the desk and called for a driver to get the couch and I home. G. was a little disappointed. He wanted to build a badminton court in the living room instead of getting furniture. We'll break in the couch tonight with a veiwing of Percy Jackson (straight from Video EZ, our local video store -- 6 discs, 7 days, 80 cents. Gotta love it. I will write more when the noise stops…

I think I'm learning Indonesian, I really think so

September 23, 2010

            Three times a week Laura and I go to the Language Training Center on the sixth floor of the library at Satya Wacana University (where I teach) for our two hour language lesson from Ibu Frances, the Center’s director and a Fulbright fellow herself, having spent a year at Columbia University teaching Indonesian. She’s young, in her late 20s I would guess, perhaps early 30s, funny, vibrant and very smart, and she’s a hard driver, a great teacher quick with praise and careful in her corrections. We have a little workbook we are supposed to go through, and we do, learning how to talk about time and jobs and so forth, but she also follows us where we want to go and spins off on little linguistic discourses of her own. She is from Makassar, a city on the southern tip of the island of Sulawesi, and one of her largest pet peeves about the Indonesian language is the degree to which it is “Java-centric,” pulling in as standard rules that are created and used on Java, where most of the population lives: bits drawn from the Javanese language (the 8^th largest language group in the world with over 100 million speakers) and culture that the rest of Indonesia has to suck up and accept. (One gets the sense that outside of Java this is a common pet peeve about everything Indonesian.) The Center’s facilities are new and extremely modern and comfortable, and the view from the top is magnificent, looking over the volcanoes and the lush greenery all over the city of Salatiga: the palm trees and banana trees and gardens and hills, the red tile roofs. And we’re making progress, slowly, but I can go into the world speaking a language I knew nearly nothing about just one month ago, and there is something enormously satisfying about having that sudden experience.

            On one level, the Indonesian language provides immediate accessibility in ways I’m not familiar with in other languages I’ve learned (or tried to learn). For one thing, there are no tenses to hassle with. “To be” verbs, the perennial difficulty in many languages, are almost non-existent, there only on occasion and then appearing in only a couple of forms. And pronouns don’t change, for the most part, regardless of whether they are object or subject or possessive: Saya (I) is always saya, even when it’s me or mine.  If it’s clear in context, plurals aren’t needed, and if it isn’t, you just reduplicate (linguistic talk for repeat) the word: anak (child) becomes anak-anak (children), which does lead to a certain degree of cumbersomeness when you’re talking about, say, more than one universitas.

I’m nowhere near competent; I don’t think I’ve even risen to the level of incompetent just yet, but I can go out in public and find the things I need, provided I study four or five words that I’ll know I’ll need before I go out. I’m getting better at hearing numbers – usually now I only have to ask one or two times for them to be repeated, and I don’t have to have them written down anymore. The ‘e’ sound still reduces many of my students to polite but insuppressible giggles when I try to make it in my classes, but I’ve even managed the rolling ‘r,’ though when I hear it I often hear ‘l’ instead, and then mispronounce again. I’m not feeling overwhelmed by the slightest transaction, even though I am a little bored with the conversation pieces I’ve managed to acquire, telling where I’m from, how long I’ve been here and how long I’ll be here, about my family, about where I teach, about how basic my Indonesian language skills are, about how I like the Indonesian people who are nice and friendly and the country is beautiful and the food is delicious, about how I do not teach at the International School, though I do live near it, how I like to ride my bicycle.

But once all that is over, Indonesian does what all languages do, which is to say it gets really really hard. The weirdest aspect for me is the way in which individual words are constructed through a process of affixation. Start with a base word – hidup, say, for to be alive, to live – and then with prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes (a prefix and suffix at the same time) and sometimes reduplication you create words like hidup-hidupan (alive), menghidupi (support, provide sustenance for), menghidupan (invigorate, stimulate), kehidupan (life, existence), penghidupan (one’s way of life, livelihood).  There’s enough of a pattern in these affixes to make you think that you can figure out what it is, but that’s mostly illusory. When I’m reading, I can recognize that words with the circumfix ke- -an are nouns usually built from an abstract base, but this is a hopeless thing in conversation, where I simply hear hidup lodged in the middle of some sounds like its own word. Add to it that the best dictionary I have – a two volume set for English-Indonesian and Indonesian-English – makes you look up the word by the base form, so that you have to figure out the base, even though the base changes sometimes when an affix is added (tinggal, to live, becomes meninggalkan, to leave something behind, but you have to look it up under tinggal). This becomes almost comprehensible, as I have said, in reading, but in conversation there are so many me-s and ber-s (the most common prefixes, with multiple variations each) that I become immediately and hopelessly lost.

There are other features that are hard to get used to as well. The part about pronouns being easy fell apart a little when I learned that the language has over 70 variations for you, none of the regular ones being the form you get taught from convenience when you start to learn the language. You marks status and age difference, which is a tricky business inherently for someone who doesn’t like status markers in general (even though I live in a house that screams status marker and have a color of skin that screams the same thing here).  (Using Anda for you, I just learned, is a clear marker of someone just learning the language, but of course simply opening my mouth marks that just fine anyway). There is no pronoun for it so you simply repeat the noun.  There is an official Indonesian form, decreed by the Minister of Culture and Education, which is the Indonesian I am learning but not the Indonesian everyone speaks. (Ibu Frances is good about making these distinctions, however, as part of her campaign against Java-centricity.)

I am more cheerful these days about standing in front of someone staring in wide-eyed incomprehension as they try to answer my simple and practiced question, and I can negotiate my way through to understanding most of the time, at least on a basic level. Most people are patient if somewhat amused at my garbled attempts to communicate. There is progress, and while fluency seems a distant apparition from this perspective, I do imagine that before we leave the country, I’ll be able to have a conversation about something besides how long it is taking me to learn Indonesian. We’ll see, though.

Pictures, and almost no news

September 20, 2010

            Things are getting a little more routine here after the Idul Fitri Holiday, and we’re getting slightly more into the swing of things. I’ve decided not to write anymore about my frustrations with the kids’ school; they are predictable, in any case, and they all end up in the middle of Hell, literally, so there really isn’t any point. I will say that my early concerns that Seamus would have to put on some front to feel like he can fit in were unfounded – it turns out he just says what he thinks about stuff. He does say “Oh my goodness” now instead of the more blasphemous alternative, which is charming, really. Now we have to work in a more concerted way on his Indonesian language, and on getting him outside the confines (physically and psychologically) of the school grounds.

            We’re hoping to have internet access in our house sometime this week. Getting it has been somewhat of an ordeal, given our limited language skills and the necessity of a two visits now to the local Telcom office, where I have repeated my most uttered phrase (“Ma’af, saya belum mengerti.” – sorry, I don’t yet understand. Indonesians don’t like to say “not” or “no” – instead, they say “not yet,” or “less good” instead of “bad.” If I say “I don’t understand,” I think it sounds to most speakers like I have given up trying, and they feel a little bad for me.) When we have it, I presume there will be more posts than from only me, since I’ve been getting complaints about monopolizing the blog. In fact I am about to be slandered in this very blog, if my sources are correct.  Also, I’m tired of looking for other places besides home to write my posts – Indonesian internet is rather slow.

            I’m putting in a few pictures this time, a small sense of some of what we’ve been up to for the last week or so. I’ll post more later this week.

Laura and S at Bambu Bale, a beautiful and delicious restaurant near the small town of Kopeng outside Salatiga. We went there to try to go to a ropes course, but it was pouring rain, and we forgot all our rain gear, which is why S is so wet. 

S looking bewildered and G delighted by the concern of the women on the bus after we left our lunch at the above restaurant. They started hugging S and G because they were so wet and they were worried about them getting sick. The trip back to Salatiga, about 20 minutes, became a kind of bule comedy hour. Everyone found us extremely amusing.

G in hysterics at the attention, with his amused brother behind him, momentarily unhugged.

A  lovely tree frog waiting patiently at our back door one evening to be let out of our house. No idea how it got in, but it leaped with joy when we opened the door.

Laura and S on the ropes course that we finally visited, outside of Kopeng. This was a great day, with all kinds of ziplines and courses of varying levels - tarzan swings, tightropes, etc. etc. Strenuous and the perfect outing for everyone. Laura has never done anything like this in her life. 

G on one of the courses, looking out over the outskirts of Kopeng. Our local volcano is just to the right of the picture, sadly absent from this shot.

Ripples

I post this not to alarm anyone who might be reading this (hi Mom) - we are in no danger here, no threat, nothing. I simply want to make visible the ripples of a distant idiocy lapping upon the shores of our temporary island home. Here's a memo I got from the Jakarta headquarters of my organization:


U.S. EMBASSY JAKARTA NOTICE TO AMERICANS
U.S. Embassy Jakarta
U.S. Consulate General Surabaya
U.S. Consulate Medan
U.S. Consular Agency Bali
Warden Message:  POSSIBLE DEMONSTRATIONS SEPTEMBER 2010 DUE TO ANNOUNCED U.S. KORAN BURNING
SEPTEMBER 9, 2010
Americans are advised that there may be anti American, possibly disruptive, demonstrations to mark an announced Koran burning on September 11 in Florida.  We again remind Americans to exercise prudence and continue to take active, personal responsibility for their security.  We suggest that Americans monitor news reports, follow the instructions of Indonesian authorities and avoid demonstrations.  We remind Americans that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence.  Americans are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations.
Americans living and traveling in Indonesia are urged to register and update their contact information with the U.S. Embassy Jakarta, U.S. Consulate General Surabaya, U.S. Consulate Medan or U.S. Consular Agency Bali.  Registration facilitates the U.S. Mission’s contact with Americans in emergencies, and may be done on line and in advance of travel.  Information on registering can be found at the U.S. Department of State’s Consular Affairs website at http://travelregistration.state.gov and at the Embassy’s website at http://jakarta.usembassy.gov.  All Travel Warnings, Travel Alerts, Worldwide Cautions and recent messages are posted on the Embassy website.
For the latest security information, Americans living and traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Department of State’s Consular Affairs website at http://travel.state.gov, where the current Worldwide Caution, Travel Alerts, Travel Warnings and health-information resources can be found.  Up-to-date information on security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the U.S. and Canada, or, for callers outside the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.  These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
U.S. Embassy Jakarta is located at Jalan Medan Merdeka Selatan No. 4-5, Jakarta; the 24-hour switchboard telephone number is 62-21-3435-9000.  The telephone number of U.S. Consulate General Surabaya is 62-31-295-6400; U.S. Consulate Medan is 62-61-415-2200; U.S. Consular Agency Bali is 62-361-233-605.

SMS text:  Koran burning may cause demonstrations.  Avoid & stay abreast of news.

----

That's it - please, as I said, don't take this as something to cause anxiety in anyone. There is nothing in Salatiga, nor anywhere else (save a couple of protests outside embassies and consulates - I promise all my readers I will not in my manic curiosity seek one out just for the experience), that can be construed as threatening to us. We're in no danger, and the Muslim neighbors that surround us are nothing but incredibly hospitable and generous. But insanity begets insanity, stupidity stupidity, bigotry bigotry. Eight thousand miles is very very close.

On not returning the same way

(September 10, 2010)

(Kirk)

            Yesterday, a holiday, S Stepping Into the Light with the other secondary students at a school retreat, Laura and I kicked around for things to do, wanting badly to get out of Salatiga and explore the immediate surroundings: the mountains at the edge of town, or maybe the Municipal Pool (hot springs), somewhere close, away from the hordes of holiday commuters, explore a little where we live. While I rode my bike up to the Pasar Sapi (the beef market) G rode down to his classmate’s house, where the family we could call closest to being our friends live. Also here on at the Mission Language School, this family – four kids, one a little baby - are headed out to Kalimantan in a few months where he will be a jungle pilot. Religious and devout, they don’t lead with that, don’t use it to assume things about the world or themselves or the people they meet, and I am grateful for that. G came home saying that the dad had offered to drive us up to the trail head that leads about 1,000 steps down to the base of the waterfall, perhaps 15 miles up the mountain outside our town. He would help us figure out how to get back, using motorcycle taxis (ojek) and local busses. We accepted eagerly.

            Brad (not his name) drove us up the mountain in a small van he had bought off a previous missionary family. Forced to reroute because of an Idul Fitri traffic barrier, he got lost for a bit, circling around some neighborhoods along the edge of the city, and then got us back to the road to Kopeng, near the top of the smaller mountain by town, and close to the trailhead. It was raining by then, a hard rain, and we hadn’t brought our rain gear, and the closer we got the trailhead the clearer it was that the short hike was off. In any case, Brad said, parked at the trailhead in the deluge, the steps were dangerous in the rain, and in a heavy downpour you risk the chance of a flash flood at the bottom of the waterfall. He thrummed on the steering wheel and then said (this is when I knew I’d like him), “I don’t really ever like driving back the same way I came, if I can help it. It seems like a waste,” which sentiment is as close to a motto for the way I wish to be in the world as any other. “Do you mind if I try the van on the back road I took on my motorcycle yesterday?” Of course we did not, and soon enough we were headed down a steep rocky road winding through fields full of vegetables for miles – crossplanted with corn and tomatoes and peas and cabbage and beans and bananas and everything, lush and orderly, terraced, mountain springs carefully diverted to irrigate everything. Brad told us the region was famous for its vegetables, that everything we ate in Salatiga likely came from here. It was beautiful, even if any views were shrouded by the dense fog and the rain. Brad showed us a couple of other trails too, a way to climb to the top of the mountain called the Sleeping Elephant, and then he drove us back into town through a back way to our house, and we arrived home refreshed and more excited about where we lived. We walked through the rain to the noodle and chicken stand on the corner, where we had a great lunch, all three of us for about $1.40.

            Brad told us that everything in the city would likely be closed for the next three days, so we took the bus downtown to the main store and stocked up on food and beer (the details of my search for beer here deserve another blog entry on its own, a semi-consuming process that has had me scouting the large and small markets everywhere in Salatiga, a carefully constructed mental map marked with x’s for the Bintang [the Indo made beer] hotspots – lowest price so far at 20,400 rupiah (a little over $2) for a large bottle – by Indonesian standards that’s very expensive – our maid [who is our amazing cook too] makes 500,000 rp / month, something like $60…another blog entry in itself). When we returned home, the Ibu from next door knocked with dinner for us, a delicious chicken dish, with little packets of rice cooked in small packages woven from banana leaves, perhaps a return gift from our visit earlier this week, when we toured the houses on our block with gifts of cookies and huckleberry jam. (My dictionary translates huckleberry as “a kind of small raspberry” which is how I explained it.) Whatever the reason, the gift of the meal was one of the most wonderful gifts I have ever received. My language simply failed me as we thanked her again and again (“Terima kasih banyak, terima kasih banyak.”)  We ate the dinner in gratitude for one of the best days.

Graham, and some banana chocolate from the mosque treats

            At sunset last night, the last air raid signal marking the last breaking of the fast Ramadan brought on a cascade of fireworks; the mosques opened up with song and prayer that would be broadcast over the loudspeakers until three or four in morning. Things got even a little noisier as G was getting into bed, and I said I thought I’d walk around and see if I could find the drumming that sounded close by, and G got up to join me, perhaps a 15 minute delay in his bedtime. We walked up the alley that we live on to the main road, where trucks full of people, mostly children, and drums and lights and loudspeakers were driving, singing, drumming, celebrating. We saw one procession following a small model of a mosque being carried, many people with torches, also singing, and decided to follow it, though at a discreet distance, unsure of ourselves and not wanting to interfere. Suddenly, though, we were not following any more, the procession was around us, and a kind man with a little English talked to us and explained that they were from a nearby village, that they had walked here, that of course we were welcome to be walking with them, and then we at a mosque, and everyone insisted that we come in the mosque, and we were handed food, and everyone came to shake our hands, and welcome us into the building, and make sure we comfortable, and then a young woman named Carmen came to us and asked us for our picture and asked would we like to join them in the back of the flatbed truck for a drive around the city. “We will make noise and play drums and it will be a fun time,” she said, her English quite good.

Our very enthusiastic song leader

            And so there we were, G and I, in the back of flatbed truck, standing among a group of mostly children (smoking, many of them) who were singing the same song broadcast over the loudspeakers from every mosque in town, and banging on drums, and cheering at the crowds on the side of the street. We wound our way through town into a traffic jam with other revelers on trucks, everyone trying to outshout each other, the kids on my truck wanting me to take their picture again and again as they posed for me. “Mister, mister, photo,” they kept saying, and of course I obliged, and we drove around, maybe for 90 minutes, all over town, and then out of town and I think through their village, and then some more around town, G sometimes pounding on the drum, sometimes holding the side of the truck and peering wide-eyed at the crowds lining the street. The two of us made quite a sight – you could see the surprise in people’s eyes when they saw us standing there. We drove and drove, finally, perhaps, a little longer than I wished we would – G was tired and getting a little overwhelmed and I didn’t have my phone, since I’d thought we were just stepping out for a quick look before bed, so Laura had no idea where we were – and then we were back at the mosque, and getting off, and Carmen said, “Was that fun, sir?” and I told her in broken Indonesian that we would never forget it, and she said, “It is such joy, sir, such happiness. We are ending the fast. It is such a special time. We are so glad you came with us,” and then we got a picture with all the kids, and they shook our hands and thanked us and we strolled into the darkness of the night as they waved and went back into the mosque.

            G has been struggling at times, thrown into whirling dervish tantrums on occasion from the slightest thing going wrong or not as he wanted it, but in the last few days his experiences have opened him more and more up to this place. He cracked a coconut that fell from a tree on the school grounds and drank down the milk, announcing that now he had embraced Indonesia, and this morning, after he woke up, still shining from the magical truck ride, he sat out on the balcony wearing his batik shirt and calling out “Selamat pagi!” (Good morning) to all the people who strolled by in their Idul Fitri finery, and they looked up and greeted him back with large smiles, and his Indonesian language teacher picked him up this morning so that he could join her and her husband as they visited neighbors to celebrate Idul Fitri.  All night long the party continued, and it continues now, and it will through Sunday. 

The group from the truck, joining us for a picture after the two hour haul around town.

Syrup, and Grace, and Student Registration

September 9, 2010

(Kirk)

            Thursday morning, the beginning of a national holiday that runs through Monday, in honor of Idul Fitri. The whole country is on the move – 3.5 million of Jakarta’s 9 million people leaving the city, along with the rest of the island, driving, boating, bussing, training, biking home. Since Monday, the roads in Salatiga have been even crazier, and the main road from Solo to Semarang (two large cities that Salatiga sits between) more dense with vehicles than ever – for about ½ a mile every morning on my way to campus I pedal furiously down that two-line road conveying at least four lanes of traffic. I’m treated like a motorcycle, as long as I ride fast enough, and like an obstacle, when I can’t, and always like a pleasant diversion for the passengers who lean out the windows and wave at me. Yesterday, as I was preparing to turn right (from the left where they drive here) I merged behind a pick-up truck with a canvas top, and in the back were at least a dozen people who started gesturing and laughing with (it doesn’t ever feel like “at” – but it might be) me before I swung into the quiet road that leads me home.

            The newspaper leads with the stories of the five day mass migration. An editorial suggests that the government ban more than two people on a motorbike during these days, because the three or four to a bike that are a normal sight here inevitably lead to a marked increase in traffic fatalities. On trains, passengers are bribing officials to get placed into the cars designed for the elderly and disabled. The minister of transportation recommends that travelers be in top physical condition before making the trip, and warns that police are ordered to “shoot to kill” if situations on the road demand it. The stores are crowded with shoppers preparing for visits home and gift deliveries around the neighborhood – the most popular seems to be giant bottles of fruit-flavored sugar syrup – the kind added to espresso drinks- like the bottle of strawberry our neighbor brought us when we moved in. (She had 6 cases of syrup in the back of her car when she left for Semerang.)

            At night, the fireworks have increased – constant but still muted, like the US on July 2, distant explosions and circles of light through the dense palms and banana forests around our house. It’s the beginning of something, that much is obvious, and to be sure great celebrating seems in order after a month of fasting – I’ll be glad, too, when Ramadan is over, if only for the selfish reason that when I’m thirsty in public, I’ll be able to drink without appearing callous to the fasting people all around me.

At the devotional before the staff meeting yesterday (on record now as the most boring meeting I have ever sat through – they have TWO HOUR weekly meetings which include long debates over things that I have no stake in, like student registration procedures, though they also feature delightful Indonesian pastries and tea, which I will just go buy next week instead of attending the meeting) my Australian friend read from Paul’s First Letter to the Philippians, about the impossibility of doing enough to earn grace through works, no matter how accomplished or how moral. (I’ve never really liked Paul, who strikes me as the rule-giver determined to suck the joy out of the new religion and turn it into the hidebound, punishing-God dogma Jesus in the Gospels mostly seems to counter[except the parts where Jesus goes on about hell].) After he finished reading, he gave a short colloquy on grace.

            “I read this passage because it seems like an appropriate passage given the time of year. Here Paul talks about all his accomplishments, and how he could claim them as important, but they are not, they are as nothing, as like all other humans, he must rely on the sacrifice of our Lord for grace. C.S. Lewis, the famous English writer, once came into a room in Oxford where other scholars were debating what was unique about world religions. ‘Oh, Jack,’ they called to him when he came in – his friends called him Jack – ‘what’s unique about Christianity?’ ‘That’s easy,’ Lewis immediately replied, ‘it’s grace.’ During this time of the year,” my friend went on, “when others have been fasting to show their god how committed they are as a way of earning forgiveness, it is important to remember that our God gave us grace through the sacrifice of His Son upon the cross. We cannot earn grace through our works, through fasting or praying at the right times of the day. We are granted grace by the Lord through His incomprehensible love for us.” And then he prayed, and then the two hour Power Point about student registration procedures began.

            It struck me as an odd note at the end of Ramadan, a sort of spiritual one-up-mans-ship that I guess is a hallmark of religion. Other religions are an affront to Religion at their law-giving core, at the least because the laws are different (barbeque pork anyone?) and at the most because they worship the wrong sort of person manifested in the wrong body. It’s a tension that I have mostly evaded in my adult life in the United States, but that I viscerally remember from my childhood concerns with converting other people to believe the right thing that I believe in. Here, it’s back in spades, part of the national discourse, the political power struggles around religion that are central to this nation’s history.  My children are at a school where most of their peers are the children of missionaries, in Salatiga for a Mission Language School that will prepare them to head out to more remote parts of Indonesia – Sumatra, almost wholly Muslim island to the northwest of Java, seems the destination of choice. From morning until night the compelling cadences and ethereal sounds of mosques surround me – wherever I am – calling devotees to prayer. My students ask me what church I go to. The newspaper reports on mobs destroying a church in Jakarta, on Hindu devotees making a once every 35 year pilgrimage to a temple in Bali, on Christians protesting for equal rights in the main square of Jakarta (right nest to Sukarto’s last erection – see post 3). 

            Selamat Idul Fitri, everyone – on Thursday night here and around the world billions of people will celebrate the final breaking of the fast with all-night parades and fireworks (we’ve been warned that sleep is impossible on this night, which is a meaningful warning in a place where nighttime noises are the norm). They are done seeking forgiveness for the accumulated sins of the year, and they will gather as family and friends and eat and commune. We will join our maid and her family on Sunday for one part of her family’s three-day party, bearing syrup and snacks when we arrive to celebrate with them. And then on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, the cars and motorcycles and busses and trains and ferries will return tens of millions of people back to where they live, and I will drink my water in public during the day, and the arguments and righteousness on all sides will be present as we go about our “normal” lives, seeking whatever grace we can come by. on the move

            I taught my third class on Friday, and the first in my life barefoot. My Critical Reading Class (Monday, 12-2) and my Public Speaking Class (Thursday, 2-5) are in traditional classrooms, but the Academic Writing class (Friday, 11-2) is in a computer classroom in the library, stocked with an array of old Samsung PCs two to a table and three rows of tables across.  Before entering, my students and I removed our shoes and put them in a little cubby right by the door, I presume because the room is carpeted and rain here comes not as raindrops but apparently from endless faucets turned on full blast in the clouds and leaving on your shoes would ruin the carpet, much the way carpets quickly get ruined in the muddy springs of Bozeman. There was something delightful about teaching barefoot, I have to say, though I can’t quite figure out why I found it so pleasant.

            I also found the air-conditioning in the computer classroom enormously pleasant as well, because it staved off the cosmic outpouring of perspiration that joined me as I began my other two classes. It was like I had spent the previous 30 minutes sprinting in circles in a steam room, and then gone to teach. Some of this is the humidity – I’ve figured out that I need to wear a different shirt than I ride my bike to school in, and that I need to have a small towel at my desk to help me recover from said ride – and some of it was no doubt from the excited energy of my first classes in a brand new place, but it was a little ridiculous, my skin shiny, little beads of perspiration dripping down my face, a hulking hairy sweaty bule whose attempts to pronounce his students’ names were likely the comic highlight of their week. (That damn “e” sound – it kills me the way the sound at the beginning of “Adel” and “Abeer” struck me down when I worked with my students from the Middle East. The biggest laugh came when I pronounced as “wahoo” the name correctly pronounced “way-hugh”.)

            I had been warned by both teachers and students that my students would be incredibly resistant to speak, and that perhaps my expectations for a dynamic classroom with lively discussion were too high. I made it pretty clear that they’d have to talk, mostly because I didn’t come halfway across the world to hear my own voice some more, and they appeared no less willing to talk than my college students anywhere else – that is, they don’t expect to be asked to speak a lot, and when they are, they aren’t sure you really want them to, so it takes a little time. “You have this in common with my students from Montana,” I told them, about the apparently universal habit of immediately looking down and pretending to be busy when the teacher asks a question and no one wants to speak.

            There are more demands on my time as a teacher than I wanted there to be, and sometimes I get a little annoyed about that, but by the same token it’s not hard teaching, and I have two kids in school 5 days a week so it’s not like my classroom is keeping me from traveling. My university has no problem with me rescheduling classes when my kids have breaks, so we can go travel – we’re planning a trip to Bali in October. (This will be a very serious scholarly sort of Balinese junket, just so you don’t think I am being frivolous.) I was told by Tina, the woman in Jakarta who helps arrange all these things, that  this was not a job, it was a grant, but it’s feeling pretty joblike at the moment. However, I am also grateful to have extended contact with a group of young Indonesians because I know they will be a gateway for me into an incredible perspective on the place where we’re living, and I can already tell that it will be fun to teach, even with the frustrations. 

            Also, all of the classes are taught in sort of blocks, five or six teachers doing different sections, and all of the students have the same textbooks and are supposed to be on the same schedule and do the same assignments, in a much more rigid way that any writing program I have ever worked for or run. Anyone who reads this and who knows me as a teacher will likely find that funny, since I cannot even keep to syllabi and schedules that I create for myself as a teacher, but it does make it easy to prepare for class, and it looks like there won’t be an inordinate amount of time commenting on things. Truthfully, in these regards I am feeling like a glorified lecturer and like free labor for the University, but (another but) the same University paid for my family lodging for the first two weeks while our house was in final preparation, and they hired cars for us twice to Semarang and three times for errands around town and lent us a bunch of furniture and found two magnificent student translators to accompany us and bought us meals and paid our entrance fees to tourist sites and on and on with their generosity, all of which makes me feel a little petty about complaining because I am teaching three classes. The dean is teaching three classes. I have said, politely, that I wanted to talk about this more fully for the spring semester, but I might be as effectual in that as I was trying to bargain down the batik merchant in Solo (who laughed and rattled off a long bemused refusal, the only part of which I understood being “No, bule”).

            We’ve also moved into the house, which is a little ridiculous. There seemed to be some pressure to take the house we were offered the first go around, and we kind of gave into it; in retrospect we should have waited a little bit, because we ended up with a giant unfurnished house (three stories tall, brand new, much larger than the typical Javanese house), and now it’s a giant unfurnished house with three beds and a bunch of loaner furniture and a guard we don’t need. That part is a little frustrating – the gate closes at night and it feels a little like a bunker, and there are echoes when you speak. I’ll get used to it, I suppose, but I wish we had held out a little longer and looked for something smaller and furnished. My mission, now, is to not be the bunkered in ex-pat who lives in the rumah besar baru (giant new house) and yesterday afternoon we went as a family to a couple of the neighbors with some cookies and introduced ourselves and they invited us in and politely tried to make the limited conversation we are capable of making. Still, we learned their names, and they ours, and it felt less isolated already. Graham and I rode our bikes yesterday in the back alleys around our house – they go way back into the country forever, and we ended up outside our maid’s house because she lives next door to one of Graham’s friends from school. Her husband, Pak Jono (Pak is the honorific for men) invited us in an chatted with us and Ibu Kasom (Ibu, for women) came out and greeted us as well and the neighbors (Americans we met through the school who are here, like most of the ex-pats in the ‘hood, on mission work) came over and helped us translate. Pak Jono invited us over for an Idul Fitri celebration to mark the end of Ramadan next Sunday, which was a wonderful invitation and we of course accepted. I know enough Indonesian to ask “What can we bring?” which I learned was not the question to ask, though not in an uncomfortable way. Brian, the American man from next door, explained that they were embarrassed to answer the question, because they would of course say we should bring nothing, but that we should of course bring something, snack foods, perhaps a pound of sugar, things that would help them entertain the guests that would stop by during Idul Fitri.

            Also marking the end of Ramadan is a steady increase in noise. It seems like the calls to prayer have gotten louder and longer, and last night, at 3 AM, a procession went down the alleyway banging a loud drum and playing some sort of chimey thing and singing. It sounded like they were storming the compound, a little, but according to Ibu Kasom, they were just celebrating the end of an even longer fast, and we can expect it tonight and tomorrow night as well. I think this means that when Ramadan is officially over – not sure if it’s Wednesday or Thursday night – the noise will be even crazier: fireworks for hours, endless loud processions, great celebration which of course makes sense because after a month of fasting the return to normal daily life is a reason to party. We’ll see how that goes. Seamus will be off at a retreat to the school (This year’s theme: “Step Into the Light”)  for a couple of days at the end of the week, and I hope he enjoys that. He’s doing well at the school, making friends, keeping his head down, only saying a couple of controversial things (radical comments such as “I like Ellen Degeneres”), and generally doing well. Graham is a little nuts right now, either wholly embracing the experience, as yesterday when we cruised around on some single tracks through the jungle, or collapsing completely at the smallest of upsets, like he did this morning when we didn’t have the right tabs for his notebook, which took us 45 minutes to back him out of, a long depressing fit that is more about his disorientation than about school, I think.

            I have to get ready for class, my last for 10 days because of the Idul Fitri break, although we can’t really travel because there are so many millions of people traveling. Even the streets of Salatiga this morning seemed vastly more crazy than they have been, which will be the state of things for the next week. We’ll be able to explore the back roads outside of Salatiga, I hope, over the next week, and perhaps hike up some of the mountains (the one next to us hits 10,000 feet, which seems extraordinary to me, given that we’re 30 miles from the ocean here).

            Here’s the Jakarta Post reporting on protests about some buffoons in Florida:

Quran burners

Islamophobic insanity

(Kirk)


It's enormously surreal, and more than a little depressing, to watch my country descend even further into the basest and most ignorant Islamophobia that I can imagine. Here I am in the most Muslim country in the world, during Ramadan, and all the people I have met have been so welcoming and patient and generous. It's appalling the level of idiocy that passes for reasoned discussion about this in the United States, and it's clearly inciting violence and hatred in the worst traditions of my country. So far the most visible religious intolerance I have seen comes from the American Christians at the school here, most of whom appear to be here in order to convert everyone around them (one had the gall the other day to mention to Laura how many "unbelievers" there were in Sumatra - the fact is, more than anywhere I have ever lived, as far as I can tell, almost no one appears to be an "unbeliever." I've never seen so many committed believers. But of course "unbelievers" are people who believe the wrong belief). 

So, I can say it here, loudly, based on my experience here and my experience the last two summers with Middle Eastern students visiting Bozeman:  at moments like these, from abroad, the United States looks like a miserable small-minded country full of petulant religious baiters. To be sure, Indonesia has a history of religious violence as well, sometimes in the most extreme ways, but where I live, in Salatiga, a more Christian town than most, and where I teach, at a Christian University where we have prayers to begin and end our staff meetings, people from a variety of religious perspectives intermingle with respect and communal feeling. Restaurants that are open during Ramadan shade themselves from the street to respect those who are fasting, and clearly Muslim servers at the restaurants (Muslim women who work the KFC have KFC uniform headdresses) serve non-Muslims comfortably during fasting periods. We have mosques everywhere here - at least 10 in a mile radius from our house, always crowded at important times of the day and getting busier as Ramadan winds down and the most important Muslim family holiday of the year begins (Idul Fitri, which starts next week, and which will see 3.6 million motorcycles and 1.5 million cars hitting the highways to visit home - this on an island 1/3 the size of Montana...we'll be staying home). It's as obvious to most people that we aren't Muslim as it is that we aren't Indonesian, and we've never felt anything like disdain or pettiness toward us in our daily interactions with the people. One of Indonesia's national struggles, in fact, in its 65 years of nationhood, has been to come to terms with the religious diversity in the country, and the struggles flare up here now and then in more local ways (in the last week, on another island in the archipelago, several restaurants were closed by the local govt. because they served food during fasting time, and there are clearly anti-Christian actions happening all over the country on a fairly regular basis). But where I am living, where Christians are very visible and the largest church in the city is right across the street from the largest mosque, I have not seen evidence of such acrimony at all. 

It's infuriating, and sad, to listen to the usual crowd of buffoons make self-righteous noises about God and family and etc. all in the name of hating other people's beliefs, and I hope it ends soon, because people all over the world are watching.