Yesterday was the Indonesian 4th of July. There was no school but all the students and teachers were required to assemble in a field about a half hour from the school. There were many other schools there. All the students stood in lines with their schools and classes and all the teachers stood in rows together. Women on one side, men on the other. Every single teacher (except me) – there were hundreds, wore the same identical shirt. I have seen this shirt on Batik Friday and Saturdays. It’s light blue and printed with squares showing the national eagle and the 5 sided symbol of the 5 principles of Indonesia:
1. Belief in the one and only God,
2. Just and civilized humanity.
3. The unity of Indonesia,
4. Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives, and
5. Social justice for the all of the people of Indonesia.
When I filed my police report for the stolen wallet, I had to fill in my religion. Everyone is required to believe in God.
The flag ceremony lasted about 2 hours, during which time we all stood at attention and saluted the flag maybe 10 times when the announcer told us to. There was a medical tent and various people were carried on stretchers over there to rest in the shade. I am guessing that almost all of the participants at this event have been fasting for the last week. A rough guess was 5000 people and chairs for about 30 dignitaries under a tent. The days of me being a dignitary are long gone. I’m just a tall, old teacher without the right shirt. Thanks be to Allah, I did wear the right color. I had on a light blue jibab and blue shirt and pants with my school emblem on them.
Welcome to my world. Everyone automatically knows so many things that there is no need to mention them. Things like which shirt to wear, where the event will take place, when… etc. Some of these things I can get answers to, some of my questions are just dismissed. Maybe the person I am asking doesn’t know. Maybe they think it’s not important. Maybe they don’t understand my question. I have no idea. The most common English responses I get are, “Of course.” And “Never mind.”
One satisfying aspect of this cultural difference is that no one listens to the speeches because they already know what the speaker is saying. And I figure if I make an honest attempt to find out things and I wind up being clueless, so be it. Do what you THINK they want and watch and see what happens.
I don’t feel well today, kind of queasy and light headed. I felt great yesterday! I even ran a little bit on my morning walk. Maybe it’s all a part of the fasting process. Some Americans are surprised that I am abstaining from water as well as food during the daylight hours. It just seems so strange to us. Dieting – yea, we’ve all limited or tried to limit the amount of food we eat. But, water! My American mind says, “It’s sick and twisted and definitely not healthy to not drink water during the day.” I guess it comes down to the attitude that I want to experience this culture. In so many ways I am different, in this one thing, I can be the same as everyone else.
Some days it’s so hard being different. There are days when I think, “All it would take would be one phone call and I could be out of here.” Okay, 2 phone calls. I promised my friend I wouldn’t leave without a discussion with her first. All the physical discomforts are minor compared to the mental anguish of isolation. On this most densely populated island on the planet, I feel so alone. Ironic.
Actually, this is a part of the Peace Corps process – months of mandatory solitary confinement to help you bond with your community. So help me, God, I’m trying.
What I’ve learned is that the being thirsty is as much a part of Ramadan as the being hungry. The idea is to understand on a gut level, what it’s like for so many people in the world.
And I think part of the idea is just to unite in suffering. This reminds me of the Lenten abstinences of my childhood – 40 days of giving up something that you like. We kids usually gave up candy. My parents would give up smoking every year. I have no idea why but my Mom believed that Sundays were exempt and she and Dad would stay up till Midnight on Saturday so they could have that first cigarette and then smoke all day on Sunday, and just be tired and cranky during the rest of the week, when they didn’t smoke. The Muslims have the cranky part covered. For Ramadan you also are required to not be angry or unkind or gossipy.
I just kept thinking of 4th of July’s in America. Many people asked me, “Do you have this in America?” I explained to my friends that most Americans put up a flag and often we watch a parade and then we get together with our families to eat and shoot off fireworks. They wanted to know what do we do to honor the government. The idea of a mandatory public ceremony on a federal holiday where the people – on their day off – are required to stand at attention in a hot field for several hours without drinking water all day just goes against every thing that seems to make sense in terms of a celebration of Independence...
Today we have started the “Cottage of Ramadan.” That’s what my dictionary translation is. I asked several people and haven’t been able to find out what why it’s called that. One teacher told me “Students must stay in this building.” I googled it and it’s common in schools here. For the next week, we have no regular classes. Teachers are scheduled to supervise the students at the mosque or in the classrooms. Some sessions are for the whole school, in the mosque, the students and teachers sitting down. I sit outside on the porch of the mosque with the menstruating girls and a few of the female teachers. And we gab while the speaker inside with the microphone tells the group what they already know so they don’t have to listen to it. The sessions repeat every day with different teachers. One topic is BBQ. I told my English speaking teachers what this means to me and they laughed, it’s the s study of the language of the Qur’an. The students are divided into groups with names of the 4 wives of Mohammad and some of his friends or people who married his wives after he died. (I think.)
The one teacher who told me I shouldn’t touch the Qur’an unless I did the proper washing, just came and told me that his father died last week. Just when I start to get all huffy and judgmental in my mind, he tells me that he’s spent the last week with his family in a different city because his father died. And he tried to tell me in English. I really do appreciate every English effort. Maybe we all are suffering in our own way. Ramadan is just an external expression of the suffering.
A butterfly is flying around my desk. From where I sit in the teacher room, I look out the door at a beautiful bougainvillea bush with orange flowers. One week of Ramadan done and three more to go.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Ramadan 4 – Shaky Legs
The day before yesterday I was talking to Diana, a fellow PCV, and I mentioned that my calves were twitching. She said hers were too. I think it’s a reaction to not getting enough water or electrolytes or something. The 14 ½ hours in tropical heat without water or food produce some pretty strange reactions.
Now I am beginning to wonder about the earth tremors.
Ibu Nurul is one of my favorite teachers. She teaches Islamic studies, and most of the other teachers of Arabic and Islam are very serious, but Ibu Nurul smiles a lot! She was asking about my fasting and told me that had seen me at the Indomart. I explained that I had bought some peanuts to eat at night. She’s just so wonderful to talk to, even if our language skills are so small. I asked her about the earth tremors. In fact I was feeling one right at the moment. She didn’t understand so I looked up the word in the dictionary – small earthquake. She smiled and said, “No, there is none.” I said, “Yes, can’t you feel it, it’s very small, but definitely the ground is moving.” She said, “No, you are feeling your hunger and your tiredness.” Holy cow! I wonder how many of the earth tremors I feel at night are actually just my body shaking in the bed! Sometimes I’m aware that my heart is beating a little erratically, and that my legs are twitching, or cramping, but it just doesn’t seem significant.
Now I’m questioning What Is Real – if you can’t even trust your own sense of what is happening, maybe I’m loosing it. I’m not alarmed. (Maybe it wasn’t worth having.) I’ve been thinking this has been happening for quite a while. It began to solidify when I decided to “Do what they want and see what happens.” When you voluntarily give up thinking that your way is better, something shifts. When you begin to see that your point of view is just one color in the rainbow it just becomes much less important if you are blue or violet or green.
I have not completely given up me! No ego entrenched super woman out to do Great Things for the World is about to disappear. But something is happening.
There are still things I like and things I don’t like. Smells are the hardest to actually surrender to. I get an almost uncontrollable reaction to the smell of the food at 3:15 in the morning. There is just no way I can get some of it to go down my throat. That’s why I bought the peanuts – I’m just thinking of ways to keep the protein count up.
It’s 3:39 pm. This is my hard time – the last few hours before the evening meal – the time when I used to walk around my village and stop and buy ice cream - my own little personal internal air conditioning reward system for living another day in heat soaked Indonesia. Now I hardly have the energy to just even walk around at the end of the day. Forget it – I’m going walking!
7:19 and I’m well walked and well stuffed. I know my Weight Watcher buddies read this. I have no idea if I am still the same weight, but my clothes still fit. My family has a bathroom scale but you can get different kilogram readings by leaning different ways. There is a picture of a gorilla on it and the saying in English – “Look I am so strong!” I think the idea is that you hopefully gain weight when you step on the scale.
I spent some time this week following up on the homework I had given – Tell me about something significant event that happened in your life. What I realize is the students and I have a very different idea of significant or important. I tried to illustrate by asking. Is this statement important: ‘I eat white rice every day?” Every single student responded with, “Yes, that’s important!” When I give an example of being upset or surprised or angry – every one of them thinks that is unimportant. This Muslim culture has a lot to teach me.
The students wanted to write about their holiday trip to the beach or someplace else and all the pleasant things that happened to them and what they saw and where they went. Only a few students told me about anything tragic or what I would call interesting. I talked about significant - meaning that you are different after the event than you were before.
In a culture where unpleasant things are so carefully avoided and pleasure comes from doing group activities it’s difficult to elicit something actually individual from the students. There is security for them in a group response. They desperately want to copy something from the text book and only change it slightly to reflect their personal experience.
I think they really would prefer to read a magazine about white rice than a magazine about the trauma and drama of life. Yet there are a lot of soap opera type TV programs on Indonesian evening TV. Maybe it’s some sort of vicarious pleasure without actually participating in it. Like Americans don’t personally think it’s good to participate in crime but an awful lot of people enjoy watching crime shows.
I had a discussion with the sister in my host family and her husband about how I rarely see people here cry or get angry or upset and they said that is because good Muslims don’t indulge in those feelings. It’s wrong for them to let their emotions be too strong.
So I am asking my students – good Muslims, every one – that’s a requirement for admission to my school – to express something in a story that they have been taught to not indulge in. It’s a different world out here. I need to re- think this one.
Maybe a lot of my ideas are standing on shaky legs here.
Now I am beginning to wonder about the earth tremors.
Ibu Nurul is one of my favorite teachers. She teaches Islamic studies, and most of the other teachers of Arabic and Islam are very serious, but Ibu Nurul smiles a lot! She was asking about my fasting and told me that had seen me at the Indomart. I explained that I had bought some peanuts to eat at night. She’s just so wonderful to talk to, even if our language skills are so small. I asked her about the earth tremors. In fact I was feeling one right at the moment. She didn’t understand so I looked up the word in the dictionary – small earthquake. She smiled and said, “No, there is none.” I said, “Yes, can’t you feel it, it’s very small, but definitely the ground is moving.” She said, “No, you are feeling your hunger and your tiredness.” Holy cow! I wonder how many of the earth tremors I feel at night are actually just my body shaking in the bed! Sometimes I’m aware that my heart is beating a little erratically, and that my legs are twitching, or cramping, but it just doesn’t seem significant.
Now I’m questioning What Is Real – if you can’t even trust your own sense of what is happening, maybe I’m loosing it. I’m not alarmed. (Maybe it wasn’t worth having.) I’ve been thinking this has been happening for quite a while. It began to solidify when I decided to “Do what they want and see what happens.” When you voluntarily give up thinking that your way is better, something shifts. When you begin to see that your point of view is just one color in the rainbow it just becomes much less important if you are blue or violet or green.
I have not completely given up me! No ego entrenched super woman out to do Great Things for the World is about to disappear. But something is happening.
There are still things I like and things I don’t like. Smells are the hardest to actually surrender to. I get an almost uncontrollable reaction to the smell of the food at 3:15 in the morning. There is just no way I can get some of it to go down my throat. That’s why I bought the peanuts – I’m just thinking of ways to keep the protein count up.
It’s 3:39 pm. This is my hard time – the last few hours before the evening meal – the time when I used to walk around my village and stop and buy ice cream - my own little personal internal air conditioning reward system for living another day in heat soaked Indonesia. Now I hardly have the energy to just even walk around at the end of the day. Forget it – I’m going walking!
7:19 and I’m well walked and well stuffed. I know my Weight Watcher buddies read this. I have no idea if I am still the same weight, but my clothes still fit. My family has a bathroom scale but you can get different kilogram readings by leaning different ways. There is a picture of a gorilla on it and the saying in English – “Look I am so strong!” I think the idea is that you hopefully gain weight when you step on the scale.
I spent some time this week following up on the homework I had given – Tell me about something significant event that happened in your life. What I realize is the students and I have a very different idea of significant or important. I tried to illustrate by asking. Is this statement important: ‘I eat white rice every day?” Every single student responded with, “Yes, that’s important!” When I give an example of being upset or surprised or angry – every one of them thinks that is unimportant. This Muslim culture has a lot to teach me.
The students wanted to write about their holiday trip to the beach or someplace else and all the pleasant things that happened to them and what they saw and where they went. Only a few students told me about anything tragic or what I would call interesting. I talked about significant - meaning that you are different after the event than you were before.
In a culture where unpleasant things are so carefully avoided and pleasure comes from doing group activities it’s difficult to elicit something actually individual from the students. There is security for them in a group response. They desperately want to copy something from the text book and only change it slightly to reflect their personal experience.
I think they really would prefer to read a magazine about white rice than a magazine about the trauma and drama of life. Yet there are a lot of soap opera type TV programs on Indonesian evening TV. Maybe it’s some sort of vicarious pleasure without actually participating in it. Like Americans don’t personally think it’s good to participate in crime but an awful lot of people enjoy watching crime shows.
I had a discussion with the sister in my host family and her husband about how I rarely see people here cry or get angry or upset and they said that is because good Muslims don’t indulge in those feelings. It’s wrong for them to let their emotions be too strong.
So I am asking my students – good Muslims, every one – that’s a requirement for admission to my school – to express something in a story that they have been taught to not indulge in. It’s a different world out here. I need to re- think this one.
Maybe a lot of my ideas are standing on shaky legs here.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Ramadan 3 Mocca Syrup and other Words
When we break the fast in the evening, my family gives me hot mocca syrup. I asked if it was coffee and they said, “No, mocca is a fruit.” It’s really sweet and thick. They pour a little bit of it in a glass and add hot water. Maybe it’s date syrup. It’s the first thing they want me to drink after the 14 ½ hours of no food or drink. We also drink it at the 3:15 am meal.
And my Ibu mama gave me cookies to keep in my room! At first I thought it was a joke – give a fasting person cookies to keep in their room, but she explained, “No, this is for at night. If you are awake, go out on the porch and eat the cookies so no crumbs will be in your bedroom and you won’t have ants.” They are in a blue and red tin and are the exact same cookies you can get in the States – Danish Monde Butter cookies. I have fond memories of eating these as a kid. I always liked the pretzel shaped ones. Now, here I am, fasting for a month in Indonesia and I get a whole box to myself, to eat in the middle of the night!
Tomorrow, school starts again. I’m ready. I tried to translate what I want to work on this week:
“Receive from each child, key words, which are of particular importance to that child. Pleasant words won’t do. Respectable words won’t do. They must be words organically tied up, organically born from the dynamic of life itself. They must be words that are already part of a child’s being. No time is too long spent talking to a child to find out his key words. The key that unlocks himself. For in them is the secret of reading, the realization that words have intense meaning.”
I found this quote in some of my Peace Corps materials. I figure it will take me 30 minutes to explain what this means, get help from my team teachers in fixing my translation and talk to the kids about the words in Bahasa Indonesia that have meaning for me: sakti = spiritual power, fajar = dawn, etc. Words that stimulated me when I heard them. Words that set my imagination on fire. What is “spiritual power?” I want to know a society that has a word for that. Even if I can only scratch the surface of what that means, even if I can only inhale a little of that perfume, oh, how wonderful! And when can you say dawn is here? Is it now? Is it 2 minutes from now? Is it daybreak? Is it when it is still dark and you first sense dawn is coming? What does your word, “dawn” mean?
How can I find out their words? Are they Justin Beiber, World Cup Soccer, or True Love? Are their words Hunger, Thirst, Allah, or BFF? Last week I gave my 11th grade classes homework to write down 5 persons or things that are important to them. The 10th graders had to describe an experience that has made them different and tell me why. I have no idea if they will have accomplished those tasks, but I want to build on this exchange of ideas. I want to push them past the polite, expected responses into the realm of what makes us human, what motivates us to show up in a foreign country and reach out to people. I want to know them.
Classes will be shorter for Ramadan. I think. My team teachers may be more or less fixated on the poorly written text book. I try to incorporate into these lessons, whatever grammar or work the teacher is pushing for that day. For example, I chose past tense narrative for the 10th grade classes.
I like to begin each class with a song. I have taught the 3 different verses to “It’s a small world after all.” to 45 different classes! I have to tell you I’m a little sick of that song myself. But long range, what do I remember from my High School French classes. Very little. But I can still sing the song we learned! If I leave a legacy of songs and can persuade some teachers to focus more on the students and less on the curriculum, then Yippee!
Since I teach for such a short time to so many different students, I have some challenges. But I know what I’m good at. I’m a story teller. (I know you aren’t surprised.) But part of my job is to tell that same story to 15 different groups of children and with 2 different teachers, a little different each time, to keep the teachers engaged in the story too. And then get them (teachers and students) to share their stories. I love this job!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Ramadan 2 – Stuff Yourself at 3:30 AM
Last night I had a discussion with my ibu mama. Me: I want to fast. Her: Ha, ha, you want to fast! Me: Yes, I don’t know what time we can eat. Her: You can only drink (emphasis on drink) and eat between (2 vaguely familiar Muslim words for different prayer times.) Me: Okay, please say “Oma, Eat.” And I demonstrate knocking on my door. Her: Ha, ha, okay.
At dinner she tells me that she personally doesn’t fast. She
Stop – alert – the earth is shaking. This is the first time I’ve felt it during the day. It’s just a mild vibration. I’m on the 2nd floor of my house sitting in the den type room outside my bedroom. I feel these tremors at least once a week, sometimes more. They last for several minutes to a half hour or so and then I go back to sleep. Yes, the walls and floor are definitely moving.
Okay, back to the fasting. My host father does fast. My host mother told me that she has stomach problems and she must eat a little in the middle of the day. But yes, she would wake me up.
We had this discussion after I told her (in Bahasa, my host family doesn’t speak English) that I didn’t eat donuts. My family in America knows this story. 21 years ago I made a deal with God and gave up donuts in exchange for God helping my kids to not do drugs. The kids still get the choice, but the deal is that God would Help them in a special way. The deal expires when I am 80. I personally love donuts. When I was first married we would make-up after a fight by buying each other a dozen donuts. We reached a point where we could eat TWO dozen. Here in Indonesia they make things that look like donuts, have frosting on them and they call them donuts. I know the frosting probably doesn’t taste like real frosting, which helps. Anyway, I don’t eat them. I give them up as a kind of prayer thing. Also, implied in this little God bargain is the implication that I will live to be 80! And I do plan on having a big party and eating tons of donuts on Sept. 9, 2028!
So Ibu mama gets the idea that Christians also do this give up food thing occasionally for what I’m sure are strange reasons in her mind. I don’t know the word for drugs. I know the word for medicine, but that wasn’t right, so I told her alcohol, which is close enough. Donuts are a shape of cake. She knows I eat cake and bread, which is a very close relative of cake. Cake here is only slightly sweeter than bread. But now she knows no donuts.
She also knows that I drink tons of water – it keeps me from getting head aches. It’s silly. I pee tons more than any Indonesian person. She knows that limiting my water will be hard for me. And in truth I am waiting to see how that works out. Maybe for Americans, drinking water is a body regulation thing like wearing a jacket is for Indonesians. At the slightest hint of a breeze they bundle up with heavy socks, jackets, hats and gloves. Fasting means abstaining from food, drink, cigarettes, sex, gossip, anger, etc. during daylight hours. I’m going into this with only a weak commitment on the no water part…more of a wait and see attitude.
At 6:00 I eat dinner just like I do every day. When I go to bed there is lots of noise, loud speaker Mosque prayers, firecrackers, people talking, etc. So I plug in the electric fan and position it about1 foot away from my head. I do this fairly often anyway when it’s really hot.
I drink a lot of water and get up to pee and the house is fairly quiet, except for the 4 nursing students who live in the boarding house section of the house next door – sounds like they are having a party. Outside these still a lot of noise.
At 3:30 my Ibu mama knocks on the door, “Oma, eat.” And I stagger out in my night gown, sit down at the table and look at exactly what she knows I love for breakfast – noodles. And a hard boiled egg – I really had to do some negotiating to get her to boil the eggs and leave them alone, without then coating them in some mix and deep frying them and she know I like eggs this way much better than fried. Cold – all eggs are served cold here. I open it up; it’s a duck egg, slightly mushier white part and more yellow yolk.
I remember what my sister Pinky, told me: Eat protein. It will stick with you longer. My stomach does not want to co-operate but I force it. There is also a piece of very salty chewy stew meat. Sometimes I have to swallow several times to get each little lump to go down my throat. Ibu mama comes back in and is tisk-tisking and laughing because I haven’t eaten any rice. I drink two big glasses of water and go back to bed.
My host father has told me that I should Not go for walks during Ramadan because it will just make me thirsty. I counter with – I will not go far, just close. He acquiesces. In the morning I get up and walk a little and talk to my daughter who calls from America – great conversation! She’s ironing out the details of canceling my American credit card and getting a new one and we talk about the grandkids and I love it when I get to talk to her!
I come back inside – no school today or tomorrow – do a splash mandi bath and some laundry and get on the computer and read a little of The Noble Qur'an. I can’t believe its only 10:30 in the morning. My body clock says it’s the afternoon...
Will a month of not eating or drinking during the day be like 21 years of not eating donuts, where I only think about it occasionally? Or will it be like, “Oh my God, this is hard as heck, forget it!” I have no clue. I’m kind of curious.
At dinner she tells me that she personally doesn’t fast. She
Stop – alert – the earth is shaking. This is the first time I’ve felt it during the day. It’s just a mild vibration. I’m on the 2nd floor of my house sitting in the den type room outside my bedroom. I feel these tremors at least once a week, sometimes more. They last for several minutes to a half hour or so and then I go back to sleep. Yes, the walls and floor are definitely moving.
Okay, back to the fasting. My host father does fast. My host mother told me that she has stomach problems and she must eat a little in the middle of the day. But yes, she would wake me up.
We had this discussion after I told her (in Bahasa, my host family doesn’t speak English) that I didn’t eat donuts. My family in America knows this story. 21 years ago I made a deal with God and gave up donuts in exchange for God helping my kids to not do drugs. The kids still get the choice, but the deal is that God would Help them in a special way. The deal expires when I am 80. I personally love donuts. When I was first married we would make-up after a fight by buying each other a dozen donuts. We reached a point where we could eat TWO dozen. Here in Indonesia they make things that look like donuts, have frosting on them and they call them donuts. I know the frosting probably doesn’t taste like real frosting, which helps. Anyway, I don’t eat them. I give them up as a kind of prayer thing. Also, implied in this little God bargain is the implication that I will live to be 80! And I do plan on having a big party and eating tons of donuts on Sept. 9, 2028!
So Ibu mama gets the idea that Christians also do this give up food thing occasionally for what I’m sure are strange reasons in her mind. I don’t know the word for drugs. I know the word for medicine, but that wasn’t right, so I told her alcohol, which is close enough. Donuts are a shape of cake. She knows I eat cake and bread, which is a very close relative of cake. Cake here is only slightly sweeter than bread. But now she knows no donuts.
She also knows that I drink tons of water – it keeps me from getting head aches. It’s silly. I pee tons more than any Indonesian person. She knows that limiting my water will be hard for me. And in truth I am waiting to see how that works out. Maybe for Americans, drinking water is a body regulation thing like wearing a jacket is for Indonesians. At the slightest hint of a breeze they bundle up with heavy socks, jackets, hats and gloves. Fasting means abstaining from food, drink, cigarettes, sex, gossip, anger, etc. during daylight hours. I’m going into this with only a weak commitment on the no water part…more of a wait and see attitude.
At 6:00 I eat dinner just like I do every day. When I go to bed there is lots of noise, loud speaker Mosque prayers, firecrackers, people talking, etc. So I plug in the electric fan and position it about1 foot away from my head. I do this fairly often anyway when it’s really hot.
I drink a lot of water and get up to pee and the house is fairly quiet, except for the 4 nursing students who live in the boarding house section of the house next door – sounds like they are having a party. Outside these still a lot of noise.
At 3:30 my Ibu mama knocks on the door, “Oma, eat.” And I stagger out in my night gown, sit down at the table and look at exactly what she knows I love for breakfast – noodles. And a hard boiled egg – I really had to do some negotiating to get her to boil the eggs and leave them alone, without then coating them in some mix and deep frying them and she know I like eggs this way much better than fried. Cold – all eggs are served cold here. I open it up; it’s a duck egg, slightly mushier white part and more yellow yolk.
I remember what my sister Pinky, told me: Eat protein. It will stick with you longer. My stomach does not want to co-operate but I force it. There is also a piece of very salty chewy stew meat. Sometimes I have to swallow several times to get each little lump to go down my throat. Ibu mama comes back in and is tisk-tisking and laughing because I haven’t eaten any rice. I drink two big glasses of water and go back to bed.
My host father has told me that I should Not go for walks during Ramadan because it will just make me thirsty. I counter with – I will not go far, just close. He acquiesces. In the morning I get up and walk a little and talk to my daughter who calls from America – great conversation! She’s ironing out the details of canceling my American credit card and getting a new one and we talk about the grandkids and I love it when I get to talk to her!
I come back inside – no school today or tomorrow – do a splash mandi bath and some laundry and get on the computer and read a little of The Noble Qur'an. I can’t believe its only 10:30 in the morning. My body clock says it’s the afternoon...
Will a month of not eating or drinking during the day be like 21 years of not eating donuts, where I only think about it occasionally? Or will it be like, “Oh my God, this is hard as heck, forget it!” I have no clue. I’m kind of curious.
Ramadan 1- Zagat: Share Your Money
Ramadan has started. I think I’ll number these Ramadan blogs. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. Another one is Zakat – a certain fixed portion of your wealth that every Muslim is obligated to pay to the poor in the Muslim community.
Ramadan began at sunset yesterday. By that time I had already fulfilled my obligation to the poor and gave them all my money. This is how it happened.
I was riding a bus to a nearby town. I had met a woman at my stop who had seen me many times but hadn’t talked to me. We sat together and talked. She insisted on paying for my bus fare – 40 cents. I gave her a little card out of my wallet that I had printed up that has my blog site listed on it and we exchanged telephone numbers. She lives in between my house and my school and works at the fisheries dept. for the county. I put my wallet back in my backpack and zipped it up. She got off first and told the guy at the back of the bus where I needed to get off.
Indonesians are very worried that you won’t know where to get off the bus. And in fact this is a concern. Buses don’t really stop. They do a rolling stop so that people can hop on or off and they can continue on their way – the more people you pick up, the more money you make. The back of the bus guy (who helps you on or off and collects your money) tapped me on the shoulder and had me move to a seat next to the back door. This is common. He didn’t want to keep that bus idle while an old lady, white person, who obviously doesn’t know what she’s doing tries to get off the bus. At the stop before mine – there are no pre-determined stops – you just get on or off where you need to – but generally there are certain places where people often get on or off – any way – he asked me to change places to the last row. That was unusual. In retrospect, he may have been trying to position me in a better way for what happened next.
I always travel with my backpack on my lap, my arms wrapped around it for security. If it’s crowded, I wear it on the front, not the back. On long trips I keep my money buttoned into a pocket on my pants.
I wasn’t as careful this time. This was not a crowded bus. I kept my arms around my backpack as we traveled, but as we approached my stop, he signaled me to stand up and I put my backpack on. As I walked off the bus; there was a woman in front of me and a man behind me.
As we got off the bus I was aware that there was a disturbance about the woman. Sixth sense kind of thing. She got off but then waited a bit. I turned and began smiling and speaking with her in Bahasa – I’m a teacher. I’m from America, etc. Her face looked like this was a terrifying moment in her life. She clearly didn’t expect me to turn around and signal her out of the crowd of people and speak with her in her language. A motorcycle whipped around in traffic and picked her up. I was mildly aware that she and the man behind me were together but he totally blended in and didn’t stick out in my mind at all.
A real professional.
I walked about 5 or 10 minutes to a side street – not many people on the road and as I walked into the neighborhood a woman came running up to me and told me that my backpack was unzipped. I thanked her and zipped it back up. If there’s heavy stuff it sometimes comes unzipped, but there was no heavy stuff but I didn’t think anything about it. Angela, the PCV who leaves near me and I went to visit the new baby that her counterpart had. He is my vice principal’s best friend and we had spent some time together in Malang and I had been to his home before, the day we all went to the beach together. I had brought a gift for the baby. They had invited me to the 7 day old hair cutting, traditional blessing ceremony but I hadn’t been able to come. The baby was now 2 weeks old and a real cutie. Afterwards I wanted to pay for our lunch but when I looked for my wallet it wasn’t there.
I called our PC Security person, went to the police station and filled out an official form telling them that my American VISA card, my Indonesian ATM card, my Indonesian Univ. of Mohamadiah ID card and about $60.00 were stolen. This is a pretty significant amount of money – at my current rate of spending – it’s about a month’s worth of my average modest living. (My kids already know this – I am cheap. I just hardly spend any money on myself. I like to save it in case I need it, or someone else needs it.) It was so helpful to have Angela’s host sister there to translate everything. And Angela helped me get all the addresses I needed and we mailed the official document to PC in Surabaya. My daughter has cancelled the credit card, PC had the Indonesian bank call me to cancel the ATM card and it’s all taken care of.
Here’s how I think it happened. The guy who collects money on the back of the bus was a part of it. He had me stand up early, behind the girl, who made it look like standing up early was a part of what you do. I stood on the steps with the professional guy above and behind me. He must have unzipped my backpack while I standing there or as I was getting off the bus and took the wallet which was on top of the baby present.
So I’ve given my money away.
My host father felt awful. Held his hands in front of his face and told me that he was embarrassed for Indonesia. He feels that his job is to protect me from the evil in the world. Our home is a security fortress of locks and double locks and a big wall with broken glass imbedded in the top of the 10 foot concrete wall and barbed wire strung above that. I have heard the “Be careful” commandment every day from him before I leave the house.
I had some extra money stashed at home. I keep delaying making the decision about buying the bicycle, so I have plenty to hold me over till I get a new bank card – it’s supposed to happen in 10 – 14 days, but it could take a month or so.
As an interesting side note – while my daughter was in Africa, she also had her credit card stolen. I knew something was wrong – maybe this sixth sense thing is common in our family – asked the kids on my school bus to say a prayer / good thoughts for her (1st and only time I’ve ever done that.) and called Peace Corps in Washington DC (1st and only time for that too.) just to make sure they had my cell phone number correct. Then out of the blue, about an hour later she called me and told me what had happened. I told her not to get so upset, that I had lost my ID several times in life, and it can all be handled and that I had felt the trauma half way around the world.
I have now been lectured by many people about security and I assure you, I am, probably, the person best able to give the security lecture!
And I will be safe. The zakat is a yearly obligation and its fine with me if I get to voluntarily decide who gets it next year.
And all this does fit in with my philosophy of nothing happens by mistake. I learned a valuable lesson, will share the lesson with my fellow PCV’s and the “accomplice” girl on the bus was clearly being presented with a moment in which she can choose an outcome for the rest of her life. As I begin this month of prayer and sacrifice, she’s the one I’m praying for.
Ramadan began at sunset yesterday. By that time I had already fulfilled my obligation to the poor and gave them all my money. This is how it happened.
I was riding a bus to a nearby town. I had met a woman at my stop who had seen me many times but hadn’t talked to me. We sat together and talked. She insisted on paying for my bus fare – 40 cents. I gave her a little card out of my wallet that I had printed up that has my blog site listed on it and we exchanged telephone numbers. She lives in between my house and my school and works at the fisheries dept. for the county. I put my wallet back in my backpack and zipped it up. She got off first and told the guy at the back of the bus where I needed to get off.
Indonesians are very worried that you won’t know where to get off the bus. And in fact this is a concern. Buses don’t really stop. They do a rolling stop so that people can hop on or off and they can continue on their way – the more people you pick up, the more money you make. The back of the bus guy (who helps you on or off and collects your money) tapped me on the shoulder and had me move to a seat next to the back door. This is common. He didn’t want to keep that bus idle while an old lady, white person, who obviously doesn’t know what she’s doing tries to get off the bus. At the stop before mine – there are no pre-determined stops – you just get on or off where you need to – but generally there are certain places where people often get on or off – any way – he asked me to change places to the last row. That was unusual. In retrospect, he may have been trying to position me in a better way for what happened next.
I always travel with my backpack on my lap, my arms wrapped around it for security. If it’s crowded, I wear it on the front, not the back. On long trips I keep my money buttoned into a pocket on my pants.
I wasn’t as careful this time. This was not a crowded bus. I kept my arms around my backpack as we traveled, but as we approached my stop, he signaled me to stand up and I put my backpack on. As I walked off the bus; there was a woman in front of me and a man behind me.
As we got off the bus I was aware that there was a disturbance about the woman. Sixth sense kind of thing. She got off but then waited a bit. I turned and began smiling and speaking with her in Bahasa – I’m a teacher. I’m from America, etc. Her face looked like this was a terrifying moment in her life. She clearly didn’t expect me to turn around and signal her out of the crowd of people and speak with her in her language. A motorcycle whipped around in traffic and picked her up. I was mildly aware that she and the man behind me were together but he totally blended in and didn’t stick out in my mind at all.
A real professional.
I walked about 5 or 10 minutes to a side street – not many people on the road and as I walked into the neighborhood a woman came running up to me and told me that my backpack was unzipped. I thanked her and zipped it back up. If there’s heavy stuff it sometimes comes unzipped, but there was no heavy stuff but I didn’t think anything about it. Angela, the PCV who leaves near me and I went to visit the new baby that her counterpart had. He is my vice principal’s best friend and we had spent some time together in Malang and I had been to his home before, the day we all went to the beach together. I had brought a gift for the baby. They had invited me to the 7 day old hair cutting, traditional blessing ceremony but I hadn’t been able to come. The baby was now 2 weeks old and a real cutie. Afterwards I wanted to pay for our lunch but when I looked for my wallet it wasn’t there.
I called our PC Security person, went to the police station and filled out an official form telling them that my American VISA card, my Indonesian ATM card, my Indonesian Univ. of Mohamadiah ID card and about $60.00 were stolen. This is a pretty significant amount of money – at my current rate of spending – it’s about a month’s worth of my average modest living. (My kids already know this – I am cheap. I just hardly spend any money on myself. I like to save it in case I need it, or someone else needs it.) It was so helpful to have Angela’s host sister there to translate everything. And Angela helped me get all the addresses I needed and we mailed the official document to PC in Surabaya. My daughter has cancelled the credit card, PC had the Indonesian bank call me to cancel the ATM card and it’s all taken care of.
Here’s how I think it happened. The guy who collects money on the back of the bus was a part of it. He had me stand up early, behind the girl, who made it look like standing up early was a part of what you do. I stood on the steps with the professional guy above and behind me. He must have unzipped my backpack while I standing there or as I was getting off the bus and took the wallet which was on top of the baby present.
So I’ve given my money away.
My host father felt awful. Held his hands in front of his face and told me that he was embarrassed for Indonesia. He feels that his job is to protect me from the evil in the world. Our home is a security fortress of locks and double locks and a big wall with broken glass imbedded in the top of the 10 foot concrete wall and barbed wire strung above that. I have heard the “Be careful” commandment every day from him before I leave the house.
I had some extra money stashed at home. I keep delaying making the decision about buying the bicycle, so I have plenty to hold me over till I get a new bank card – it’s supposed to happen in 10 – 14 days, but it could take a month or so.
As an interesting side note – while my daughter was in Africa, she also had her credit card stolen. I knew something was wrong – maybe this sixth sense thing is common in our family – asked the kids on my school bus to say a prayer / good thoughts for her (1st and only time I’ve ever done that.) and called Peace Corps in Washington DC (1st and only time for that too.) just to make sure they had my cell phone number correct. Then out of the blue, about an hour later she called me and told me what had happened. I told her not to get so upset, that I had lost my ID several times in life, and it can all be handled and that I had felt the trauma half way around the world.
I have now been lectured by many people about security and I assure you, I am, probably, the person best able to give the security lecture!
And I will be safe. The zakat is a yearly obligation and its fine with me if I get to voluntarily decide who gets it next year.
And all this does fit in with my philosophy of nothing happens by mistake. I learned a valuable lesson, will share the lesson with my fellow PCV’s and the “accomplice” girl on the bus was clearly being presented with a moment in which she can choose an outcome for the rest of her life. As I begin this month of prayer and sacrifice, she’s the one I’m praying for.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Dancing Parade
Today I am going to veg out. For my Indonesian friends who are reading this – that means act like a vegetable – be lazy – do nothing strenuous – hang out at the house all day.
Yesterday I danced for 3 hours in a parade. I thought I was volunteering for a school program that would last 10 minutes and then walking in costume to a carnival at my town. I began to get suspicious when my host mother insisted that I take 2 boiled potatoes and a hard boiled egg and lots of water with me to school when I left at 9:00am.
The English teacher had come to my house the previous day to consult with my host mom about my costume. I wore a traditional outfit for an East Javanese Jaipong dance. My co-teacher has my camera. When I get it back, I'll try to add a picture.
At 11:00 the woman who told me to be there at 9:00 showed up. I am used to this. It’s like going to a doctor’s office. No matter what time a person very clearly tells you in both Indonesian and English, it probably will not be at that time. That’s okay, at school I read through a Highlights magazine that my friend had sent me from the states and got lots of good ideas for simple classroom activities during Ramadan, the fasting month, when I’m assuming the students and me, the teacher, will have a lot less energy.
Then the students began arriving. Each one of the dancing girls was so beautiful. Two teachers were in charge of putting makeup on them – to lighten their faces and using rosy lipstick and purple eye shadow transforming them into beauty queens.
Then we all got in a train! Yes, an amusement style train. A guy cranked a lever on the front of the engine, it sputtered to life and 30 dancing girls, (I was one of them) and another teacher were pulled along in two carts after the engine. We went a round about way following a truck blasting music so loud that speaking was impossible and wound up in front of the town park were we got off. For a while we all hung out in the park and watched as the beginning of the parade started.
I just re-read that sentence and it sounds so peaceful and organized. There’s no way I can describe the chaos and confusion and watching a teacher throw up and listening to mind numbing noise and keeping my eye on the black jacket, earrings, spiky hair boys who were hovering around my girls. (Relatives, boy-friends, trouble makers?) Laughing at the various teachers who showed up in crazy costumes and seeing the high school kids with their bikes all decorated. I’m guessing maybe 300-400 of our 850 students were there (on a Sunday) in various costumes. And maybe there were 20 or 30 schools represented. And no bathrooms.
Then a lot of our male teacher started blowing whistles and we all stood in rows. This began to look suspiciously like the beginning of the marching parade. We traditional dancing girls were located right behind the truck filled with 12 FOOT high speakers pointing directly back at us. (I am not making this up.) Thank God I had insisted on being in the last row! AS THE MUSIC BEGAN I tried to adjust my brain to THAT LEVEL OF NOISE. We did our dancing and followed along behind the music truck – not a pickup but a huge industrial truck with a generator and a sound system that was so loud that the people on the street put their hands up to protect their ears as we came by.
For 3 hours we danced behind the truck, weaving through the streets of my village. People were packed 8 to 10 deep on both sides of the street for the length of the parade – several miles. It began to make sense. I wasn’t going to a carnival! I was in the carnival! You could see the smiles and pointing as the people that we passed realized that the tall dancing girl in the last row was a foreigner! Some knew me and yelled out, “Oma.” Others just stared. The men on the truck began to sense what was happening and over the brain blowing blasting noise of the symbols and bells and sensuousness of the traditional music came wave after wave of announcement: “Send your sons and daughters to our school and they can be taught English by our English Teacher from America. Look, she can also do traditional Jaipong dancing!” I smiled and waved.
It was a slightly overcast day. Thank you, Allah! At various points some boys from our school would walk into the dancers and give us water cups or little pieces of candy. My friend, the English teacher, who had roped me into all this, was riding on a motorcycle behind our group. She did walk a lot of the way and helped to keep an eye on the cannons in the military group behind us. They liked to bring the cannon right up behind the dancers and blast us with the noise. Of course we were so deaf we couldn’t hear a thing.
We danced in unison for 3 hours! This is a lot harder than I can describe. Three steps forward, bend and sway to the left while raising you right hand in a sweeping motion and taping your right toe next to your left foot, then repeat on the other side. Watch carefully because the change in music is not obvious as we all move into the various parts of the dance together. The tilting the neck from side to side part always drew a lot of smiles. I think you have to learn this maneuver when your neck is still supple enough to get the vertebrae to move sideways. But I generally got the hand motions right and the bending and swaying and all. Occasionally I got distracted by someone in the crowd who’d come rushing up wanting a photo, but I pretty much kept up with the teenagers.
As the parade ended, I got my backpack, and knew I was 30 minutes from home. It took me twice as long to walk as it usually does because every body part was exhausted. I came home, ate a few bites of dinner and then went to sleep at 7:00pm with a splitting headache.
It’s now the next morning and I only have a slight ringing in my ears. And a new appreciation for the word “carnival.” And a realization that I live in a town where several hundred thousand people will stand for 3 hours to watch an Independence Day parade. And a new understanding that I really am different. In that sea of several hundred thousand faces not one other looked foreign. America, yesterday I gave my best to represent you. Today I’m recuperating.
My average day
I kinow I haven't been posting much lately. Here are some things that I wrote for the next group of volunteers in Indonesia and for Peace Corps National.
Information for Volunteer Activity Description (VAD) - Volunteer Comments
What it’s like to be a PCV in Indonesia or an average day in my life:
I wake up at 4:30 with the prayers from the mosque; by 5:00 I’m out the door. This is the only “cool” time of the day and I like to enjoy it. It’s still dark but there are lots of people out on the street, buying food from the backs of motorcycle carts and bicycle carts. I walk to the singing rice fields – this is the only place near my town where I can be alone and Sing My Heart Out, as loud as I want, then I walk the 25 minutes back to my house, take a splash bucket bath, eat the breakfast that my ibu mama has prepared: white rice, fish heads or fish tails, friend egg, vegetable soup and today a cold guava – tomato juice! I dress for school, long shirt that touches the top of my closed toe shoes, long sleeve shirt with a collar that buttons up to my neck, and the modified jilbab that I negotiated to wear at my Madrasah High School. I cover my hair, my forehead and my ears, but I leave a little neck exposed along with my hands and face. I walk 20 minutes to my school and arrive to shake hands and then put my hand to my heart with all the female teachers and fingertips together, nod slightly to all the male teachers. By 7:00 I am teaching English with one of my two team teachers. I teach 600 students in 15 different classes of 40 students each, 1 or 2 hours of English every week, plus a class of English for teachers and English club for students. I use the time at the end of the day to walk to town, buy minutes for my cell phone, materials for games, occasionally a new jilbab or batik shirt, (Fri and Sat are batik days at my school) print up some pictures from home or print off materials that I need for class from my flash drive, gab with my Indonesian “town friends” and buy Ice Cream – only 30 cents and I figure I walk almost 2 1/2 hours a day, so I deserve it! Then I walk back home for another mandi splash bath, dinner, lesson plans, check email and I’m in bed and reading with a flashlight under the mosquito net and the window open wide by 8:30. Welcome to my world! I hope you accept this invitation from Peace Corp. Because the program here is so new, we’re a small close knit group of PCV’s and would love to have you join us!
Colleen Young, Indo4 2010-2012
Subject: Re: Peace Corps 50th
Quote about how PC has opened my eyes or influenced me:
Before Peace Corps service I was a contented grandmother to 2 grandchildren in my little corner of Salt Lake City. Now I am a grandmother / teacher / story teller / cheerleader / life guide for 579 Muslim High School students (450 of them girls) at a Madrasah in the heart of Indonesia. Every day I ask, "Who is the teacher and who is the student?" My students teach me generosity - After a 3 hour community march they were all given a box with water and 2 little snacks. I saw them share their food with the woman who was collecting the trash. They teach me patience - Even if their teachers do not attend the class, they clean the room and peek out the door watching to see if someone will come. They teach me joy. They insist that I am "beautiful." When I say, "I am already old." They say "No, Oma (grandmother) your spirit is young." I think they are right. I am becoming younger.
Information for Volunteer Activity Description (VAD) - Volunteer Comments
What it’s like to be a PCV in Indonesia or an average day in my life:
I wake up at 4:30 with the prayers from the mosque; by 5:00 I’m out the door. This is the only “cool” time of the day and I like to enjoy it. It’s still dark but there are lots of people out on the street, buying food from the backs of motorcycle carts and bicycle carts. I walk to the singing rice fields – this is the only place near my town where I can be alone and Sing My Heart Out, as loud as I want, then I walk the 25 minutes back to my house, take a splash bucket bath, eat the breakfast that my ibu mama has prepared: white rice, fish heads or fish tails, friend egg, vegetable soup and today a cold guava – tomato juice! I dress for school, long shirt that touches the top of my closed toe shoes, long sleeve shirt with a collar that buttons up to my neck, and the modified jilbab that I negotiated to wear at my Madrasah High School. I cover my hair, my forehead and my ears, but I leave a little neck exposed along with my hands and face. I walk 20 minutes to my school and arrive to shake hands and then put my hand to my heart with all the female teachers and fingertips together, nod slightly to all the male teachers. By 7:00 I am teaching English with one of my two team teachers. I teach 600 students in 15 different classes of 40 students each, 1 or 2 hours of English every week, plus a class of English for teachers and English club for students. I use the time at the end of the day to walk to town, buy minutes for my cell phone, materials for games, occasionally a new jilbab or batik shirt, (Fri and Sat are batik days at my school) print up some pictures from home or print off materials that I need for class from my flash drive, gab with my Indonesian “town friends” and buy Ice Cream – only 30 cents and I figure I walk almost 2 1/2 hours a day, so I deserve it! Then I walk back home for another mandi splash bath, dinner, lesson plans, check email and I’m in bed and reading with a flashlight under the mosquito net and the window open wide by 8:30. Welcome to my world! I hope you accept this invitation from Peace Corp. Because the program here is so new, we’re a small close knit group of PCV’s and would love to have you join us!
Colleen Young, Indo4 2010-2012
Subject: Re: Peace Corps 50th
Quote about how PC has opened my eyes or influenced me:
Before Peace Corps service I was a contented grandmother to 2 grandchildren in my little corner of Salt Lake City. Now I am a grandmother / teacher / story teller / cheerleader / life guide for 579 Muslim High School students (450 of them girls) at a Madrasah in the heart of Indonesia. Every day I ask, "Who is the teacher and who is the student?" My students teach me generosity - After a 3 hour community march they were all given a box with water and 2 little snacks. I saw them share their food with the woman who was collecting the trash. They teach me patience - Even if their teachers do not attend the class, they clean the room and peek out the door watching to see if someone will come. They teach me joy. They insist that I am "beautiful." When I say, "I am already old." They say "No, Oma (grandmother) your spirit is young." I think they are right. I am becoming younger.
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