I’ve always loved that part of a trip where you finally get to where you are going after weeks and months of planning and waiting and build-up, and the instant you lay your eyes on the place, the landscape that was so vivid in your imagination suddenly disappears. No matter how hard you try to recall what you thought the place was going to look like, it is simply gone.
I’ve already experienced this more than once on this trip. Upon leaving the airport in Semerang for the 40 K drive up to Salatiga, I looked forward to twisting and turning our way through village and jungle, maybe in an old model Land Rover. But this vision was quickly replaced by two full hours of Central Java’s answer to Seattle’s North Aurora -- used car dealers, gas stations, hardware stores, mom and pops of every variety -- seen through the back of a minivan. Salatiga didn’t look anything like the Disney set I‘d hoped for, although in Salatiga’s defense, it has quieted down considerably now that Ramadan is over, and our house, Rhuma Besar, is as far from traditional Javanese as you can get.
There has been sort of a parallel experience with Kirk and the kids. While planning this trip, Kirk and I talked at length about the goals and expectations we would bring with us: things like instilling in our children a sense of adventure and an appreciation for the standard of living they enjoy in the western world, building closer bonds among the four of us and learning to rely on ourselves and each other. When we hit the ground, and saw where we were an how we would be living for the next 10 months, all of those lofty ideals flew right out the window! Like those imaginings of the physical place, I knew they were there. I had meditated on them and written about them and talked about them until I was blue in the face, but at that moment, I couldn’t recall a single one. The sheer force of our new reality took over.
For instance, what if we didn’t know where to eat? Where our next meal would be? No problem! I imagined. We are westerners, we have cash, we will come together and find a solution and be cheerful adventurers! Turns out, not knowing where your family’s next meal is coming from really sucks. Its incredibly stressful and frankly, hungry kids do not make good team members. It is especially challenging when you can’t speak the language and everyone you ask gives you a good five to seven minutes of frenzied pantomime and dictionary fumbling before they throw up their hands and walk off. I imagined that this would be such a learning experience for my kids, but what I forgot to figure into the equation was that with learning experiences often comes pain, and confusion, and difficulty! It is hard enough to see your kids struggle under normal circumstances but when you see them struggling under circumstances that you put them into willingly and with intention, it’s awful. Imagine poor G, who has never complained about school once in five years suddenly having stomach aches every morning so that he doesn’t have to go. Imagine S struggling to find friends that he feels he can be his true self with. Imagine S trying to be someone other than his true self!
This weekend however I got a glimpse, a brief but very needed reminder of why we wanted to do this in the first place. We spent the weekend at Borobodur, a 9th century Buddhist temple and one of the largest in the world. It is truly an awesome sight. Borobodur is only about 60K from where we live but without a car, we simply hadn’t figured out how to get there. So on Saturday morning, in quite good spirits everyone, we marched over to Pasar Sapi with our backpacks, flagged down a bus for Magelang and headed out. It took us nearly 3 hours to get there on public transport but was so worth it. The kids were totally amazed by the temple -- neither them have ever seen anything remotely like it and they were appropriately awed. Elaborate carvings wrap the entire structure, telling the story of Buddha and the spread of Buddhism across Asia. It is mind-boggling to image it being built in the 9th century but no less so to learn that, in the 1980’s, it was completely dismantled like legos and reassembled to prevent further damage. In 1996 Mt. Merapi blew up and knocked half of the stupas over. It has been stripped by vandals, blown up by revolutionaries, and there it sits, like it has for centuries, as if nothing ever happened.
We walked clear to the top which offers extraordinary views of the valley and surrounding volcanoes. It wasn’t exactly the contemplative experience that one would imagine from the brochure but was great fun nonetheless. Get to the top and it is packed with hundreds of Indonesians -- families on holiday, snacking, laughing, smoking, having picnics. I have been in train stations during rush hour that were less hectic, but at the same time, there was a decidedly festive atmosphere about the place. We were pretty much the only bules in the place so everyone wanted their picture taken with S and G who were incredibly good sports about the endless photo shoot. I don’t know if there is a Muslim equivalent to the Christmas photo, but if there is, my smiling family will be on countless refrigerators throughout SE Asia.
The weekend was not without its problems to be sure, but for some reason, they started to seem, well. . . manageable. G only threw one huge public fit which may not sound like the makings of a successful weekend but honestly, it was a huge step forward. The kids slept in the same bed with only about five minutes of whining, complaining and kicking each other. S started to come out of his shell, in this case urged on by the ibus in the market with whom he loves to bargain. He would argue any price with anyone, even if he didn’t want the merchandise. We finally had to ask him to stop speaking Indonesian which was definitely a first because we didn’t want any more knick-knacks. G, who is having such difficulty making friends at school, can start conversation with anyone, and did! By the time I unpacked the bags, he had befriended a couple from Sweden and sweet-talked the guest house manager into a ride on his motorcycle.
On the way home, the ancient, overcrowded bus we were riding on died and, despite the approximately 20 guys underneath the bus with large tools that bang, it would not start. Two weeks ago this would have literally plunged our family into a state of complete panic. There would have been lots of crying and yelling and frustration all around. This time, I distracted the kids with some popsicles from the local warung while Kirk negotiated with an ankot driver who took us over the pass for about $10. (Ankots are city busses which are about the size of a Ford Econoline van only with the seats ripped out. During rush hour you can fit about 20 Indonesians in one.) It was a gorgeous drive -- we had the ankot all to ourselves and it was one of the clearest days since we arrived. Magelang and Kopeng are big agricultural areas and the terraced hillsides were so beautiful. Four white people in a city bus whizzing down the hillside is a pretty unusual sight and we were greeted with waves and hollers the entire way. It may not have been what Spalding Gray dubbed ‘the perfect moment‘, but it was one of the first times since I arrived that I got the sense that we were headed in the right direction.
I’m not naïve enough to think that we are all done with the learning experiences or the temper tantrums. Far from it. But I am increasingly aware that a certain degree of naiveté, or maybe just some dumb, unfounded optimism, is not really a bad thing on a trip like this. Now that I know where to buy bread and peanut butter, I can start trying to reconstruct some of that internal landscape that I had originally envisioned for myself and my family, the part that disappeared when reality hit, the part with the adventure, and the exploration, and self-discovery, and try to remember what it was supposed to look like.
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