Daily Life

for Chris

6:00 Alarm goes off. It’s already bright. One of the funny things about living on the equator is the light does not change from season to season. The sun comes up at 6:00 and the sun goes down at 6:00. Every day. That was an adjustment. You can’t mark the year by the light. I didn’t realize how much I was accustomed to that. While 6:00 for me is ungodly early, it is well into the day for many Indonesians. Morning call to prayer starts at about 4:30. Then the roosters get going. Most Indonesian kids start school at 7:00 am so they are up and around early and the motorcycles start buzzing. And you have the hawkers. They are out early as well so that they can beat the heat of the day/or the rain depending on the season. There are the regular hawkers, the vegetable guy and the orange lady, who walk up and down the streets with unimaginably large loads of goods. Then there are the carts. These include the bread cart, the mie ayam cart, the ice cream cart, the bakso cart, etc. Some are fixed on motor bikes but most are pushed by hand and every type of thing has its own call so that if you hear a yelp, it is vegetable guy, the bell is for bakso, the repeated whack on the wooden thing is noodles, and the callaliope music is for Swiss Bakery. How they decide on this I have no idea but it is pretty much city-wide and with everything else going on it makes for a very noisy morning.

The kids don’t have to be to school until 7:40 but we have to start getting them up early if there is any chance of them getting there on time. We have two showers but only enough power for one water heater so if both kids get in the shower at the same time, or you have too many lights on or try to make toast while someone is in the shower, it blows the fuse. So mornings are a little bit of a juggling act. Breakfast is usually toast and eggs. Cereal exists but comes only in two varieties, cornflakes and super sugar chocolate bombs. I did find a box of granola once at a store in Semerang but it was $9 so I didn’t buy it. Most everything comes with gobs and gobs of sugar in it. But, we are making due. Graham has gotten really into cooking this year and makes a pretty decent fried rice (nasi goreng) so he will do that now and again but he’s still working on the clean-up end of things.

7:15 The Selzer kids walk by the front window. They are like a human snooze button – when we see them, it means the kids have to move their butts, find socks, collect their homework and get to school. School is only a 5 minute walk but mine are pushing it every day to get there on time.

7:30 I take a shower and try to figure out what I am going to do that day. Several days of the week this means shopping. I have to go more than once because there is only so much you can carry on the back of a motorcycle or on the ankota. Those are the city busses. They are pale blue and are about the size of a Ford Econoline van with the seats ripped out. At rush hour, there can be up to 25 people smushed in the back. But during the day they are pretty empty. Besides the carrying limitations, we have no storage space here and frankly, I don’t know what you’d store that wouldn’t be rusty, rotten or moldy by the time you used it.
I have got the shopping thing down to a science now although it took me a while. Get off the bus at Raymayana, the department store, stop at the fruit lady for fruit. There is one that I always go to. I don’t bargain with her although I probably should. Frankly, I feel a little ridiculous arguing over a 40 cent mango. Sure, maybe I could get it for 30 cents, and I know it’s part of the game, but I still feel ridiculous so I just pay what she asks and she always gives me really good fruit. Down the street to Ada Baru for coffee, tea, and dry goods, to the pasar for vegetables, and pass Wonder Bakery on the way home for bread. Start to finish takes 2, 2 ½ hours although I am known to get distracted along the way. Love the flower lady, the snack shop, and there are these household good shops that are the Indonesian equivalent to Target I guess, lots of cool cooking utensils, strange tools, batik. I can waste a lot of time there.

Ibu Kasum does most of the shopping for dinners. She is our pembantu. Pembantu is the Indonesian word for ‘helper’ which is really pretty absurd because the pembantus do pretty much all the work in people’s homes. They should be called ‘doers’ but that would leave the mistress of the home with no identity whatsoever so ‘helper’ it is. In addition to shopping for dinners, she does all the cleaning and the laundry. She usually cooks one big meal per day, some of which she brings up to the boys for lunch and the rest we will eat for dinner with whatever else I have. Her specialty is chicken and rice. I will augment it with a vegetable or salad of some sort. Seamus and Graham would argue that ‘specialty’ is a stretch since that’s all she cooks. But it is GOOD chicken and rice and I am grateful to here for making it because I sure as hell couldn’t.

Cooking here is a challenge. My kitchen is about 10-square feet with a tiny table on which we have all of our dry goods stored and dishes stacked so work space is non-existent. The stove is a two-burner propane stovetop with two settings: barely warm and good-bye eye-lashes furnace blasting hot. Because it is constructed for Javanese, the stove top comes to my knees. And shopping is tough. Western ingredients are hard to come by although I am getting pretty good at making things that taste familiar out of Indonesian ingredients. Shopping for meat poses particular challenges. Meat is sold in the pasar on the second floor and it is hard to miss because when you enter the second floor you see rows upon rows of carcasses hanging from hooks. Now I’m not usually squeamish, but the butcher shop area at the pasar gets me every time, especially if it’s hot and later in the day. Note to the wise, if you are homesick at all, do not go the the pasar after 11:00 on a warm day. And my Indonesian is still pretty rudimentary. Negotiating and describing meat cuts with Javanese ladies at the pasar is definitely pushing my linguistic envelope.

11:45 That brings us to about lunch time. Ibu Kasum brings the boys their lunch at school in these cute little divided containers. All of the pembantus in the neighborhood do this and you can tell when it is 11:45 because you begin to hear the jingling of gates and one by one this parade of pembantus start walking up the street towards school with their baskets of goodies. Its social hour for most of the pembantus and they chatter on in Javanese while they amble up to school. One of my favorite parts of the day.

Filling the days was a bit easier before Spring Break. Kirk and I were taking language classes three times a week with the incomparable Ibu Frances. Ibu Frances is from Ambon and runs the Language Training Center on campus. She is young, beautiful, amazingly bright and a great instructor. Unfortunately, since spring break our schedules have not meshed well so we have pretty much abandoned our classes. Kirk is still doing workshops, etc. at the University which keep him busy but I have struggled to find opportunities for me here. Volunteer gigs have not worked out well and socially, Salatiga is hard.

Part of it is the language thing. Many people speak rudimentary English but my bahasa really sucks. It’s hard to figure a way in when you can’t really talk. That is tough. Most of it though, is cultural. The non-profit sector here is about as different from the one in the US as, well, as everything else. Why I did not anticipate that, I’m not sure. I did try to get my foot in the door of a couple of non-profits but to no avail. Part of it is the way they work here is so dramatically different than the way we work in the -US, I couldn’t get traction. I literally could not recognize where to insert myself. 20 years of experience in non-profits and I could not figure out what to do with these guys. I think there is a really interesting dissertation in here but I’m not in the place to do it. The people I did manage to connect with wanted one of two things: English lessons or money.

While I speak very good English, I am not a teacher of English. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I agreed to sit in on a number of conversation classes at the University but don’t know that I was much help. Regardless of how clear I was in my intention, each time I entered a new classroom, the instructor would ask what I wished to lecture on. When I replied that I was happy to assist in whatever way they needed me but was not a teacher of English and hence did not lecture on the subject, polite exasperation is how I would describe the response. In the classes in which I did participate, l served as a cultural ambassador of sorts answering questions like: In America, everyone is rich, ya? Why do you force people to leave home when they finish high school? and my personal favorite reoccurring theme, Is it true that in America all the people have the free sex?

As for the money end of things, well that was just as baffling. Philanthropy, understandably, does not exist here in the same way in which it does in the states. Most foundations appear to be covers for incredibly wealthy movie stars or corrupt politicians. Actual funding for non-profit organizations comes mostly through international aid organizations and embassies of which I have no understanding whatsoever despite my best efforts. And since I could barely understand how most of these organizations functioned on a daily basis anyway, it made helping to create a pitch pretty tough. Early on I was asked to do a workshop on fundraising for a group of artists which I gladly did. (I did confess upfront that my only experience was in American non-profits and had not been in Indonesia long enough to understand how much of it would transfer.) My audience was very polite and asked some thoughtful questions but I could tell that something was amiss. Only later did I realize just how ridiculous I must have sounded talking about things like transparency and sound management when corruption is so rampant that the president’s own mother is in jail for it!

Social structures as well are difficult to negotiate. Javanese socialize in very different ways. First off, most of them work pretty dang hard so hanging around drinking coffee or leisurely walks are pretty much out of the question. They also (generally) live in pretty tight quarters, often with multiple generations. I think the need for socialization is often covered before they leave the house in the morning. And cross-gender socializing is nearly unheard of. That is not to say that the Javanese are not social because they very much are but most of the socializing occurs and neighborhood meetings (where they are don’t even speak Indonesian – they speak Javanese) and special events, weddings, funerals, circumcisions and the like. You’d never casually ask a Javanese family over for a potluck. They wouldn’t know what to do with you.

And then, or course, we have the cultural challenges of the kid’s school. I assumed this would be a good place to meet people as I have spent many an hour in the kid’s classroom in Bozeman. And while I have made some very nice friends at the school, it would be a stretch to say that we have been embraced by the community. I have spent an hour in the classroom each week which I have enjoyed but that’s about it. Outside the classroom is not much different. At first, the paranoid in me thought that it was because we were the ‘non-believer’ family on campus but as time has passed I think the reason is far less nefarious. Most of the families are on the same tract as it were. They go to the same language school, go to church together, the women attend the same bible studies, etc. They are here for the same reason – it is a missionary school after all. And socializing naturally happens in and around those activities. Since we don’t participate in these activities, we don’t socialize with them. Which maybe is OK in the long run, but I still find it weird.

I don’t mean to make everything sound completely dire. I have made some very nice friends who I am really enjoying. Ibu Maria is the Indonesian teacher at the kid’s school. She and her family have become good friends. Rebecca is an activist and volunteer from Australia which whom I have become close. She is married to a Javanese man and has, in all likelihood, the cutest baby on the planet. Laura, the principal of the elementary school is my walk buddy. She is from Boise and has a very western sensibility. Ginger another mom from the school is a great partner for adventuring. She and her husband are leaving Indonesia after many years with there 3 kids and she’s trying to cram in as much as she can. She also has flawless Indonesian making her a terrific partner in crime.

But that said, I have been homesick a lot. I miss Montana. I miss my house and my dog and my garden and dry air and cold. Mostly I have missed being a part of a community. I have missed having a place and something to do. I have not been able to find that here. I have been able to fill up the days. I have done lots of reading, some good writing. I have bought lots of batik. Taken some great photos. But it is different. I am not and never have been a very good person of leisure. If I had to do it again, would I? Of course, in a minute. The kids have learned a ton, it has brought us closer as a family, I have seen and experiences things that before this trip were completely beyond my imagination. But if I were to do this again, I would approach it very differently.

3:00 The kids get out of school and it is the familiar routine of swim practice, soccer practice, homework, dinner, etc. We did not buy a television but don’t seem to have difficulty finding ways to pass the time and our lovely neighbor Ibu Retno is very generous with hers. So Seamus has been able to keep up on American Idol and yes, I did watch the royal wedding.

On the weekends, we try to leave town, both to see more Java but also because, as noted before, there is not much to do here. Semerang is a favorite day trip, boasting several malls and an American movie theater. Yogya in the other direction is a favorite as well. A bigger city with several universities, it has a really cool vibe, lots or great art and fun shopping. We can always seem to fill up a weekend in Yogya. I think the hardest adjustment next year is going to sitting still. We have had the kids on the move so much, trying to pack in as much Indonesian culture and territory as possible, they both are a little lost when there is not a clear agenda. It will be interesting to see how that works itself out.