16 days in Yogya

Hi there,

I’ve been in Yogya for 11 days, and have 16 hours of formal Bahasa Indonesia study under my belt. I passed my first exam, so on paper I can appropriately greet and take leave, describe the color of objects and their relative location, count, tell time, dates, prices and phone numbers, shop for and order food, shop for basic toiletries, order a cab, and give directions. Today in class we introduced past and futures tenses into my repertoire, and also there was an earthquake. I was supremely ready for the former, and despite Indonesia’s notoriously high incidence of tectonic activity and very minor nature of today’s, completely taken aback by the latter.

I try to work on my conversational skills, making an effort at homestay dinners and fitting in Indonesian soap operas when possible. (The “cinetron” are very much in the Venezuelan school, i.e., deliciously overdramatic.) The homestay situation is nice. The family is very welcoming, totally open to my plopping down to join the Ibu (mother) with her cinetrons and very willing to talk to me and the other homestay guests when we manage to string some basics together. My room is comfortable with a private bathroom, I don’t have a curfew, and dinner, included in the weekly fee, is consistently amazing. (Favorites so far: tofu stuffed with vegetables, battered, and deep fried; whatever eggplant dish was happening two nights ago; and the fried potato balls.) I usually eat lunch at the language center “canteen,” and between the usual lunch and dinner fare have quickly come to need two solid plates of rice a day.

A little cultural note, a gem of a reminder as to why learning a language is central to knowing a culture. When someone asks for your order in a restaurant or asks you what you had to eat, they ask simply “With what?,” rice and a vegetable dish being implied. One word - lauk - encompasses protein dishes and non-rice carbs that come on top of the rice and veg; to express a humble apology for the low quality of food offered to a guest, one says, “We don’t have any lauk.”

So far my life here is quiet and mostly limited to the mile or so stretch between homestay and the language center, including my gym membership at a hotel that includes pool access. (For multitasking, few things beat reviewing vocab flashcards poolside.) I’ve left the immediate neighborhood a handful of times, for drinks (read: Bintang beer – wine and liquor are tough to find and very expensive) and live music one night, for dinner and a gallery opening another night, and for a long completely disorienting walk one of my first days.

Despite the endless deluge of motorbikes on the main roads, Yogya strikes me as a fairly relaxed city, easy enough to navigate and with people eager to help. Now that I’m more oriented, can string together a sentence or two, and crossing the street causes me minimal stress, I need to start heading further afield around Yogya. It will have to wait until after my 5 days back in Jakarta for Christmas, though.  Off to pack for that early flight tomorrow…

xo

M

My first week

Hi everyone,

Although I still feel terribly transitory – and am, in fact, since tomorrow I leave Jakarta for Yogyakarta to start my Indonesian classes – it doesn’t seem possible that I arrived in Jakarta only 5 days ago. My stay here feels sort of timeless in a way that makes me sure I was right to come. I’m writing this from an open terrace, listening to the rain patter on the foliage and to a pushcart vendor pass by on the street with his bell ringing. From the same spot this morning, I heard the dawn call to prayer and yesterday, the dusk call to prayer mixed with the sound of children playing in the courtyard and a different vendor advertising his own wares. Each moment has brought a feeling of contentment that I haven’t felt for a long time during still moments.

Certainly the five days have brought much less tranquil moments as well. Jakarta traffic is infamous for good reason and its street layout mostly lacking logic or order. Walking to dinner one night in Central Jakarta was like a bad dream: after dark, the pouring rain keeping me focused one step ahead, crowds and crowds of motorcycles barely whisking past me, while what might as well have been sewer water rushed over my feet. The taxi ride home was even more worse; at my most alert, I have little sense of direction or distance in this city, and right then my jet lagged body thought it was 6 a.m. after an ill-advised all-nighter. My scattered thoughts concluded multiple times that I would be driving in circles forever, shivering from the overzealous air-com, enveloped in what seemed like infinite and fast moving city lights.

Mostly though, my time has been spent in much more pleasant ways. Food, of course, is one reason: I kicked off my stay in Jakarta at the city’s reportedly tastiest affordable dim sum establishment  - and sure enough dreamt during my jet-lag nap later that day about the crispy kale with garlic and chili. The meals at home have also been truly superb; half the time I don’t know what I’m eating other than the white rice and the other half of the time it’s been pan-fried tempeh from heaven or shrimp that I will request for my last meal or rendang beef that melts in my mouth. Even the night of the endless drive, a friend of a friend (whom I am delighted to have met) and I shared a meal of gado gado, vegetables and rice cakes and egg and peanut sauce and solidly one of the meals that puts food in Indonesia’s “plus” column.

Otherwise, I took a long walk around the neighborhood, toured the National Museum, attended an embassy luncheon and a dinner party. (Our dinner conversation touched significantly on predictions regarding WikiLeaks: what various Indonesia documents will say, how officials will react, and who will play Julian Assange in the movie.) I’ve been in an out of a few malls – sadly, Jakarta's version of plazas or parks – standing by while friends bought a phone chip for me and a portable 3G modem, watching expat and well-heeled Indonesian patrons go in and out of an overpriced California Pizza Kitchen, listening to a live band cover an assortment of American top 40 songs vintages 1975 - 1995, and meeting with my new supervisor. I also met with the coordinator and staff at the national offices of the NGO where I’ll be working and visited the offices of the organization funding my work. All work-related meetings were useful and seemed to bode well for my doing really interesting work while I’m in Indonesia, and staying awhile to do it.

Until Yogya,

xo

M

Pre-departure reflections. Reading up.

Hi everyone,

Since I graduated in May, I have been to 5 countries and 20 states plus Puerto Rico and DC, including two road trips with my sister that together connected the coasts. I have slept on 36 different beds (using that term loosely, of course), and shared conversations over food or drink with at least 124 different people.* This hectic and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants unemployment contained many truly wonderful mini-adventures and celebrations and reunions and quiet moments with friends and family.

And yet let's be honest here: it's high time for me to do something or another with these six-month-old Masters degrees. Pending the Republic of Indonesia granting me a visa, I will head to Jakarta in early December, migrate to Yogyakarta to take Indonesian language classes for a couple of months, and then start on my assigned project for a very cool Indonesian NGO.** Hopefully more projects will follow.

I'm going on a short-term contract, meaning that the length of my stint depends on how well I pick up the language, and  - more so  - on how much the people funding the initial contract and at the NGO like me. Thus far, I have mostly managed to view this slightly precarious situation as "exciting" and "sky's the limit." There is no question that going to Indonesia means constant opportunities to learn. In fact, I turned down a different job offer based largely on my gut feeling that after 6 months in the position, I would coast along without new challenges or learning. The lesson: I sure as you-know-what better make the most of this opportunity.  At the very least, I hope for these letters home to be a record of my efforts in that regard.

***

After I broke the news to my grandma that I was going and she realized that earthquakes and volcanoes were not enough to deter me, she asked me to tell her something about the country. I don't have any personal experiences to share as yet, other than my impressions from a visit in 2006: I'm looking forward to eating consistently crave-able food and to year-round warm weather, not so excited about equally constant humidity or Jakarta traffic. For Grandma and anyone else who's curious, here are a few other tidbits I've picked up so far:

From A History of Modern Indonesia:

• Indonesia's is the the 4th largest population in the world after China, India and the U.S.
• Its 19,000 islands span a geographical space as large as the U.S. and contain 200+ culture/language groups
• The country has the largest Muslim population in the world, with significant Hindu, Buddhist and Christian minorities, underlying traditions of animism or ancestor worship, and a long history of religious tolerance
• People aiming for an end to Dutch colonial rule started to promote a version of Malay as a unifying national language in the 1930s; Bahasa Indonesia is now the official language and lingua franca

From The World's Women 2010:

• About 3% of women smoke cigarettes daily, compared to 58% of men
• Less than 25% of women complete high school or higher, although more than half of the people who finish college are women

From the Human Development Report 2010:

• About 20% of Indonesians are considered poor on the combined dimensions of living standards, education, and health
• 29% of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day

From the Lonely Planet: Indonesia:

• "Indonesia is an infinitely varied mosaic ... remote islands, exotic cultures, teeming cities, perfect beaches, captivating wildlife and extraordinary arts are just a few parts of the bigger work of art that is this huge and diverse nation."  

I look forward to telling you more from actual experience.

Happy Thanksgiving,
MMS


*Yes, I counted. Making the original list helped with a tidge of insomnia on bed number 15-ish and I was so awed/horrified that I kept the tally going from there.
**I won't go into details about my work situation on this blog, for the same reasons I won't use my name, or yours, or those of people I interact with. I am conscious of the potential professional ramifications of writing publicly about work, and of my social work ethical obligations not to break confidentiality or share other people's stories without their participation.