Sara and Lee . com

Every day here is full of new learning experiences, and while I can’t say we always handle them correctly, or even well at all, this one went pretty well….I think.  It’s hard to tell, as even when people here are annoyed, they are smiling!  This past weekend we had our small fridge delivered, as is standard here (it certainly couldn’t ride with us on, say, the bus).  We were told at the shop that it would be delivered in the “siang” part of the day, ie middle of the day between 10 and 3.  Then they said something about noon.  I gave them my phone number so they could call if anything weird came up. 

As it happened, on delivery day we were not able to get home until 11AM, siang but well before noon.  I thought this would be ok, as I had not received any phone call from the driver or anything.  However, upon arriving home, we found the delivery truck in front of our house with the delivery men sitting on our porch talking with the neighbors (asking them where we were).  Apparently they had been sitting there for an hour waiting for us, waiting rather than calling to see where we were.  They were annoyed, though smiling, and made a point of telling us that siang started at 10.  One of them then went to smoke while the other unloaded our fridge.  There was a current of annoyance in the air and we felt pretty bad about it.

At this point, we had the bright idea to try and be hospitable, so even though all our stuff is still in bags on the floor (no furniture yet in the new place), we managed to scrape together some glasses of water and little cookies, which we offered to the delivery guys.  Though they had looked like they were about to leave (and SHOULD have been in a hurry, given how long we made them wait), the appearance of food and drink seemed to cheer them up a bit and instead of leaving, they stayed sat around and chatted, accepting our meagre fare.  When they did leave (maybe 15 minutes later), they seemed much happier and less annoyed with us.  Moral of the story?  Always, always have food and drink on hand.  Maybe I’m finally learning some manners

Hey all… Sorry for not giving any updates. Here is a short list of things I’ve been doing:

1. Been on vacation from teaching
2. Moving to a new place (moved in last week)
3. Went to Surabaya to celebrate Idul Fitri with the family that hosted us when we first came to Yogya
4. Went from Surabaya to Bromo-Semeru-Tengger national park – saw big volcanoes.
5. Came back to Yogya, and have been trying to settle into new house. Bought refrigerator, TV (now I can watch bad Indonesian TV – lots of overly dramatic, ghost-filled, violence ridden soap operas called Cinetron), and furniture.
6. Been applying to graduate schools. I have been trying to gather my materials, letters, of recommendations, and overcome the writer’s block needed to crank out a statement of purpose. I’ve been spending way too much time in Internet cafes lately waiting for application webpages to download.

Each of the above bullets are blog-worthy articles in and of themselves, but right now I am primarily concerned with the last bullet. Deadlines are rapidly approaching and I am trying to get up to speed on concepts of Language Acquisition, Linguistics, and Computational modeling of the prior two topics as fast as possible, so that I can create a solid graduate school story. To the few readers out there. Sorry for not being more entertaining.

Last week there was a holiday here.  Well, duh, Iedul Fitre, you say, the end of Ramadan fasting and the biggest Muslim holiday of the year here in Indonesia.  That’s true, but there was another holiday just before that, the day that occurs each month, when Kliwon (a day on the Javanese calendar) falls on a Thursday.  On this day, if you have sex it is said to make you more lucky, strong, etc.  Gosh, I wonder who made up THAT rule?  Anyway, it is a night of increased prostitution activity.

A side note on my organization’s activities:  each month two members go to popular prostitution areas to test CSWs (commercial sex workers) for STDs and HIV/AIDS, and to distribute condoms.  It’s hard to say whether the condoms are used, but the turnout is usually pretty good, 30-40 CSWs, so it seems they definitely appreciate the service.  They also (hopefully) gain awareness of how to protect themselves in general, and if they do have STDs, they get treated for them.  There is a “motivator”, a wonderfully friendly and funny woman who sort of looks out for the group we serve in the area and encourages them to get tested.  

 Together with my coworkers and a couple of past VIA volunteers, I headed to the nearby (~1 hr away) Parangtritis beach, a popular spot for CSW activity.   There were 9 of us in our van, mostly just observers like myself, along with two women who would be performing STD testing.  Later I learned that another van of my coworkers was coming, with about 6-8 people in it.  This seems to be sort of one of the ways that my NGO works, there’s a lot of just going to places to observe and sort of maintain social connections even if you are not directly involved in activities.  In the US this would be more likely to occur on the phone maybe, but the culture here seems more interpersonal and face to face.  I was initially sort of worried that our presence would be sort of a huge spectacle and disrupt the…..um….”workplace” for these women, but I didn’t need to be….the customers were not going to be deterred by a little thing like extra people around! 

I’ve never really spent any time with prostitutes before, so I was a bit nervous.  It was sort of uncomfortable seeing these people, some of whom were MY AGE but looked much, much older and more tired, having to make a living like this.  We peeked into an empty room at the house (think brothel) we were at, and it was bleak, just a mattress on the floor, a bulb on the ceiling, and maybe a poster or two.  Maybe shelves for clothing too, I didn’t want to stare too long.  Odd to actually be seeing a place where, well, you know, business goes down.  I couldn’t really see the attraction to it, but judging by the pairs of women and men who walked by us, eyes downcast, there’s demand.

We hung out at this house for a while on the back porch, drinking tea and listening to the very drunk college aged guys next to us sing and try their English phrases on us.  One of them kept saying “You’re very beautiful” to me, and which point I would always respond “You’re very drunk”  Laugh, laugh, laugh.  It was not unlike a college party type atmosphere, but made me a little uncomfortable nonetheless because since coming to Indonesia I have not seen anyone drunk like that.  Also uncomfortable because while these guys just looked like typical college party-aged kids, you could be pretty sure that they were going to go to prostitututes later.

Down the hill slightly from the back porch was a dark, huge ringed in area (maybe the size of a football or soccer field, though sans bleachers of course!) where we could see shadows of people milling around.  This, we were told, was where the CSWs would meet their customers.  This, my fellow volunteers and I decided, was something we would like to see.  One of the men in our group decided to go with us to protect us. 

The ringed in area was, indeed, very dark, though there was enough dim light to make out peoples’ faces.  Immediately after stepping in we noticed that men would sort of slowly gravitate in our direction.  In the middle of the ringed in area was a small temple area, where people were burning flowers in celebration of Kliwon.  We went there to look and after standing for 20-30 seconds, were surrounded by men.  In fact, anytime we stopped walking for more than about 5 seconds, the men would slowly move in, walking like zombies, a slow purposeful shuffle, usually from more than one direction.  I tried looking at their faces, in their eyes, and saw….nothing.  Nothing from them that would indicate that they recognized me as a person, no spark of “hello”….nothing.  Like I was, to be trite, a piece of meat.  I tried looking at the faces of the CSWs and saw the same thing, blankness.  None of the nervousness that I was feeling, nervousness that was slowly being replaced by fear.   I don’t do well watching horror movies, especially those that involve zombies, and this (unless you believe in zombies) was probably the closest I will ever come.  It was an amazing experience.  We didn’t really trust that the guy with us could protect us if anything bad happened, so at this point, after 5-10 minutes in “the pit”, we formed a train, hands to shoulders, and walked out as quickly as we could.  Returning to our porch with the drunken guys was quite a relief.   THEY at least were funny!

To give an idea of how full the beach area was that night, when we got in our van to go home, we had to drive through throngs of people, men mostly.  We were going at the speed of a very slow walk, as were they.  Many of them would peer in our windows or put their hands on the car as they passed.  Again, like zombies!  I don’t know how the CSWs do it, what in their lives happens to drive them to this, how they can endure this sort of environment (and worse!) every night without dying inside.  Maybe they can’t.  I left that beach quite a bit more proud of what CD Bethesda does.  While my part in the organization is and probably will continue to be mundane, at least I can see now one of the ways in which they try to have a positive impact on the community.  I hope it works…

Are you an American living in Indonesia? Want to fast for Ramadan, but don’t know how to take part in the morning Sahur (breakfast) ritual? Follow these simple steps, and you’ll be on your way to fasting like an Indonesian, only not really.

Step 1. Plan to go sleep around 9:00PM or 10:00PM.

Step 2. Really go to sleep around 11:00PM.

Step 3. Wake up at 3:00AM.

Step 4. Really wake up at 3:05AM.

Step 5. Prepare breakfast

Step 5. Try to stay awake

Remember you have it easy. Some women (yes, it’s just the women that do the cooking in Indonesia) begin cooking at 1:00AM until Sahur starts at 3:00AM. You can lighten your load by making your rice the night before.

Step 6. Admire your work

Most Indonesians don’t eat omelettes like this for breakfast. They may still eat eggs, just not cooked like this. They most definitely eat rice. You should do the same. If you are smart and have time, buy tempeh the night before to supplement your sahur.

Step 7. Stuff your face

Step 8. Keep stuffing your face.

You may find this difficult. The important thing is to remind yourself this is supposed to make it easier to get through the day. Suppress any urge to stop eating, even if you don’t normally eat breakfast. Keep at it. If it helps, remind yourself that’s it’s the afternoon back in the U.S.

Step 9. Now tank up on water

Since you won’t get water all day, it’s important to drink it now.

Step 10. Continue to tank up on water.

Like stated before, you need the water to last you all day. Continue to drink until you feel like throwing up. It’s really important for the next steps.

Step 11. Go back to sleep

Now comes the hard part. With your belly full of food and water, try to go back to sleep. It may take up to an hour to doze off again.

Step 12. Dream away.

By this point all that water has left your stomach and has now filled your bladder. All your subconcious can think about is wanting to pee. Every dream will be about going to the bathroom, or about really needing to go to the bathroom. You should really be worried about wetting the bed.

Step 13. Wake up to pee

This may be the longest act of urination you have ever participated it. If you did everything correct it should feel like all the water you recently drank has just exited your body.

Step 14. Wake up to pee again (2 minutes later)

This should ensure your water reserves are now depleted.

Step 15. Go back to sleep.

There’s not much time. Hurry!

Step 16. Wake up.

You slacker. It’s already 5:30. You didn’t even pray like the rest of the Muslims. Get up and get ready for work. The rest of your day will be spent thinking about food, sleep, and drink.

As Sara has already mentioned we decided to puasa (fast) along with the students, staff, and the rest of the Islam world, but only for the past week.  If you’ve been reading chronologically you’ve already seen her perspective, so I thought I’d share mine.

The hard part is not definitely the hunger.  I’ve eaten much less on a Saturday afternoon in the U.S. because I had forgotten to eat.  Most of the difficulty comes from thirst and exhaustion.  Especially after several hours of teaching.

This past week I had the junior high schoolers which equates to a non-stop run of classes from the morning until afternoon.  I also have a very physical style of teaching with lots of slapstick antics, rabble rousing, and general sliding (yes literally sliding) around the classroom.  Even though I only work for a few hours, I am usually drained, even without fasting.

The lesson this week was based around the game Simon Says.  I’m not sure if this was an insensitive thing to do while these kids are fasting.  I did get some complaints after long sequences of “Simon says touch your toes”, “Simon says touch your head”, “Simon says touch your toes”.  Oh well, I was tired too, and these kids still play sports during Ramadan.  20 minutes of Simon says shouldn’t kill them.

Our decision to fast seemed to impress everyone at the pesantren.  Every time the students heard I was fasting, they would give me a round of applause, and then ask “Are you hungry?”  The teachers called me strong, and the staff decided that instead of my usual walking and riding of the bus, someone would have to drive me home every day last week.  I also was told that God would give me “pahala” i.e. a reward me for my efforts.  Nevermind that I’m not Muslim, and didn’t do any requisite Ramadan prayers. Oh well, at least I don’t break the fast with strips of bacon.

After our successful day of fasting (no food or drink all day) at the pesantren, Lee and I decided it would be appropriate and interesting to try and fast for the whole week.   I wasn’t sure how my coworkers would react, as I work at a Christian organization, but it turns out they were very supportive, asking me each day if I was still fasting, and upon hearing yes saying “Good, good.  Strong!”  As it turns out, some of them are Muslim, who knew?  A typical day of fasting for me consisted of:

3AM – wake up to cook breakfast (Lee)
3:15 – wake up (Sara) and eat breakfast (both), being sure to drink 4-5 glasses of water
3:40 –  try to get back to sleep
4AM – very loud call to prayer from nearby mosque
4:15 – Actually get back to sleep
6AM (or 7, or 7:30 – as week went on) – wake up and head to work
10AM – crave tea
2PM – notice that veins are standing up the backs of my hands from dehydration
3PM – Drink/snack stands start to appear along all the streets of Yogya.  They are exclusively for Ramadan.
4:30PM –  walk/stumble back to bus, buy drinks/snacks along the way and stare at them longingly
5:30PM – Arrive home
5:40PM – Air-raid style siren.  Buka puasa!  Buka puasa!  (break the fast).  Inhale the drinks and snacks I bought.  At this point, anyone who is on the road pulls over to drink and eat.  It is quite fun to watch, if you happen to be out then
9PM – start talking about how it would be good idea to go to bed
11PM – actually go to bed

As the week went on, I definitely noticed that I was feeling weaker and less functional at work.  After one week, we’ve decided to go back to eating and drinking at will.   I don’t know how people here manage to do this for a whole month, other than the fact that I’m pretty sure many have motorbikes and don’t walk for an hour or more each day like I do.  And then there are the people who do this or worse their whole lives, who never have big meals when it comes time to break the fast, and who regularly wake up before dawn and work hard labor jobs all day.  This is but one of the things here that have made me think hard about just how wasteful and spoiled I am.  When we were in Thailand, I asked one of the university students there what she would do if she were “queen of all the world”  She said “I would take all the people in Africa and put them in America and put the people in America in Africa”  There’s some wisdom to that…

This past weekend Lee and I went to the pesantren (muslim boarding school where he teaches) to spend the night and see how the students there celebrate Ramadan.  Everyone was amazingly hospitable as always.  As soon as we got there we were shown to a very nice bedroom in a big house, clearly one of the nicest rooms on the whole campus.  I am virtually certain we displaced someone important the night we stayed there, oops.  Then, while Lee walked around with his fellow male teachers, a couple of the female students took me around to see their dorms, classrooms, campus, etc.  A couple things that struck me were:

1. These girls live 12 to a room, in 6 sets of bunk beds.  And people in the US think it’s hard to have one roommate in college…..
2. Even though these girls didn’t know me at all, they loaned me their clothes, after determining that mine didn’t look quite right.  Or maybe they thought I would be more comfortable in theirs.  I also wore ratty sandals with the intention of changing into others I brought when I got there but never got the chance.  One of the girls saw my sandals and INSISTED on switching with me for the day, saying that I would be more comfortable in hers.

After this, we were taken to break the fasting (buka puasa) around 6PM with delicious fruit soup.  Then the kids ate at their normal canteen while food was brought in for me and Lee from street vendors.  I had basically just finished eating when one of the girls who showed me around before came trotting up with a set of white prayer robes.  “Put these on” she said, and I did, figuring I would wear them to watch them pray.  Little did I realize that the plan was for me to pray with them….for 30 minutes. 

I lined up in the packed room with the others, standing at the end of my loaned prayer mat.  The prayers were a complicated thing, easy enough to follow along with the movements, but I really don’t know what it all meant.  I felt very out of place, except at the same time not because nobody could see me as I was enveloped head to toe in prayer robes.  There were several repetitions of the same thing, involving standing, speaking in Arabic (which I obviously did not do), then sort of bowing, standing again, then kneeling and lowering head to floor a couple of times, then whispering more arabic prayers, then getting back up and doing it all again.  Or, at least that’s what it was to me, because I had no idea what was going on.  It was very communal, and very VERY hot in that room, but I didn’t feel anything particularly spiritual about it and in fact stopped lowering my head to the floor after the first time because it just didn’t feel quite right to me.  It’s one of those things that I am honored to have had the opportunity to try, but definitely not something I ever imagined I would do (and I seriously hope that there was nothing insulting about the fact that I took part)

After that we walked around and watched the students study Arabic and the holy Qur’an, which they did until their curfew (9PM).   Then it was off to bed because we would have to be up at 3AM for Sahur (meal before fasting starts….fasting starts around 4AM)  Of course for the students, curfew just meant they had to be in their dorms…they still had homework to do, sometimes until as late as 1AM!

Sahur came all too early with music blasting from speakers.  It is a testament to my tiredness that I slept through said music and was only awakened by Lee’s alarm.  Remember, I am the person who had to sleep with a fan in the US….  After we ate, we went and watched the students pray again, around 4AM.  It was especially cool to see on the girls’ side of campus, because in their white prayer robes they flitted around like ghosts in the dark, very pretty and almost surreal….except that many of them just watched us watching them pray instead of actually praying   so we decided to cut out a little early.
Once prayers were done, the students had to study the holy Qur’an until 6 or 7AM.  Lee and I took that opportunity to sneak back to our room and sleep.  Classes for the students started around 7:30, and we watched a couple of English classes where students were listening to music and writing down the words.  What music you ask?  A song called “Edelweiss” and then Bob Marley   Regrettably at some point the tape broke (or….was accidentally recorded over by the teacher when he meant to hit rewind) so Lee and I had to sing the songs for the class.   For those who know us, you KNOW we can’t sing.  Poor students!  I cannot imagine having bad singing foreigners in my class in junior high, I would have laughed and laughed, but these kids were unfailingly polite.  Lee took this opportunity to teach them that in America when someone sings poorly, you cringe and cover your ears.  Here, you grab your stomach in pain….

Then we got to see a 12th grade Arabic class focusing on interpreting the prophet Muhammad’s words.  We had asked to see a math class, as we might have understood the material, but, well, something got lost in translation I guess.  The interesting things from this class were:

1. There were no seats for us.  No seats for the Americans?  No problem!  A couple of the girls went to share chairs with their friends so we could use theirs.  It could not have been comfortable for them to try and learn like that, but they didn’t seem to notice
2. There was a wasp’s nest on the ceiling, complete with buzzing wasps.  Nobody seemed to notice or care, not even the girls sitting directly under it
3. Lee and I neither speak nor read Arabic, so the class was basically unintelligible to us.  This did not stop the students from loaning us their books so we could “follow along”  They would patiently point out what page we were on so we could, I dunno, read along with them I guess.  Even the teacher came over to make sure we were on the right page!

Classes were over at noon, so the students could do more praying and holy Qur’an reading before their afternoon Arabic and Qur’an classes.  At this point Lee and I decided to go home and sleep.  These kids have it hard!

View photos from our night and day at the pesantren here.