Little Things Part 2

In my ongoing effort to enlighten people from home on the many quirks of life in Indonesia, here is part two in my series, “Little Things.”

Car-washing – for the privileged few who own cars (as I’ve mentioned, they are outnumbered by motorcycles by a 100-to-1 ratio) washing them appears to be the most symbolic activity one can do to show pride and status. In my kost (which is what my ‘apartment’ complex is called) there are 2 car owners; one car is a Nissan, the other is a Mercedes. I am not exaggerating when I say these owners wash their cars – thoroughly – every single day. Did I mention that the cars are usually washed at 6am, and the activity is what wakes me up every morning? Because the courtyard in my kost is covered by a plastic shelter, every single sound is amplified to the nth degree, and splashing water sounds like Niagara Falls. When these men wash their cars, their facial expressions indicate that they believe they are carrying out brain surgery or some other equally crucial endeavour, and you had better take note of how important they are. To their credit, these cars usually look pretty good, despite the fact that the Mercedes driver appears to be the worst in Asia (a difficult feat to be sure) as his front bumper has been missing on more than one occasion. For the record, motorcycle-washing appears to be not quite as obsessive, but still quite common. Eventually, perhaps when I have conducted more research, I will tackle the subject of ‘road-washing’ – similar to the Italian-Canadian tradition of ‘driveway-washing’ yet even less environmentally responsible.

Prayer – Living in Canada, which Homer Simpson good-naturedly refers to as ‘America Junior,’ I have a certain amount of apprehension towards Islam, given the rhetoric and propaganda we are fed so regularly by the US media. My ignorance leads me to try to understand this religion a little more. In the Muslim faith, one is required to pray to Mecca 5 times per day, at set times, the first at 5am, and the last just before sunset. At InterAksi, the staff performs this task in a room just off the main office (which is at such an angle that I can watch them conduct their prayers through the door, though I admit it feels like I am spying on something personal). They lay down a little carpet, and perform a series of activities – at times standing, kneeling, sitting, and bowing – that appear to have some set order. They don’t speak, so I am led to believe that prayer is a silent activity, despite the fact that elaborate singing is broadcast (at typical eardrum-splitting Indonesian volume levels) from every mosque in the city at each prayer time. The men simply pray whereas the women are compelled to don a white robe (is it called a burka?) which leaves only their faces uncovered. Friday prayers are the most important, and the world shuts down for them to occur; businesses close, traffic literally disappears, and mosques fill with men – women are not allowed. I have occasionally felt brave enough to ask questions about Islam and about prayers, but because of the language barrier, I am yet to understand the real essence of Islam. So far the gist of what I have gotten is that the prayers are arranged to accommodate an elaborate car-washing schedule.

Rice – Indonesia is not the place to be if you don’t like rice. To Indonesians it is such an important staple that they feel a meal, no matter how large, is only a snack if it doesn’t contain rice. This is part of Suharto’s legacy, in that he felt every man, woman, and child needed rice and it was a symbol of the Indonesian state’s ability to provide for its people. A campaign was launched to educate Indonesians about the value of white rice, and that if they were eating it regularly, their needs were being met. So, in a misguided attempt to give sustenance, thousands upon thousands of acres of land were turned into rice fields, despite the fact that much of the agricultural land had originally been dedicated to much more nutritious crops like soybean. Unfortunately, despite the fact that much of the protein in the Indonesian diet comes from tofu & tempe, which are soybean-based, 95% of the soybeans consumed here are imported – from the United States! The opinion is that the whitest rice is the best, and people will actually climb up on displays of bags of rice to look through them, tossing bags aside at random, until they find the ‘whitest’ bag in the pile. Imagine their chagrin when I sheepishly say I try to avoid white rice as there is diabetes in my family an

d I have to watch my starch intake. Peoples’ facial expressions indicate to me that they think I am even more insane than when I try to refuse plastic bags in stores.

Ants -- we Canadians are no stranger to these industrious insects. We should consider ourselves lucky, however, that we have Winter, in that it compels us to ensure our homes are sealed from the elements, and that the cold helps control the variety of ants to which we are exposed. In Indonesia, many 'windows' are simply holes in walls; granted they usually look nice, with wooden frames and decorative work, but they are just open air. Also, as previously mentioned, doors are rarely closed. The variety of ants is also huge, ranging from tiny little things you can barely see, to giant, angry, red monsters whose sharp, vice-like jaws are clearly visible, and are extraordinarily effective. One has to maintain a constant state of vigilance to ensure they are not overrun by ants here. The slightest crumb, particularly if it contains sugar (as everything does in Indonesia), attracts an army of ants, and disturbing them is generally not a good idea as they defend themselves mercilessly. Even the lizards avoid them; I have seen them curiously approach trails of ants marching by the hundreds -- which I assumed would be a smorgasbord to them -- but they get a wary look on their faces (OK I made this up as lizards' faces are really not that expressive) and turn away in a 'get me out of here' fashion. It is not uncommon to find ants crawling on your arm, or on your clothes, or on your computer monitor or keyboard (I imagine that under my keyboard is an ant graveyard, but I try not to think about it too much). The locals seem to just accept the ants and get on with life, pretending they are not there. I'm not sure how they do this, and I doubt I will be in Indonesia long enough to develop this skill, as for now, I am on the warpath, locked in a battle I can't possibly win.

Omens

I have a fairly narrow view of the world; I am not a religious person, and am generally not shy to admit that I embrace no spirituality whatsoever, a sensitive topic, to be sure, but I tend to enjoy a little controversy now and then. I do not believe in fate, or in a ‘meaning of life’ – in my opinion, we are all just a cosmic accident. I rarely if ever believe that the universe is trying to tell me something, but once in awhile a ‘curiosity’ occurs that challenges my belief system (or lack thereof) in a tiny, almost imperceptible way. One of these incidents occurred to me in the early stages of my trip to Indonesia but I had forgotten about it until recently.

There was a massive storm in Solo the other night while I was meeting at the house of one of Solo’s expats and business owners. Our meeting took place in his courtyard under a beautiful antique teak shelter. During our meeting we needed to go inside to escape the fury of this storm (which had winds so strong it managed to follow us inside regardless) and I forgot my laptop bag outside. Fortunately I had left the laptop itself at home and brought the bag only so I would have access to paper, pens, etc to take notes during my meeting. When I remembered to retrieve the bag, I had to climb my way across the remnants of the tree that came down in the courtyard as a result of this storm. The bag was soaked and I needed to dry it out. The contents were undamaged but it was so wet that even after a day in the powerful Indonesian sun it was still damp. The next day, when I did a further search in the bag, reaching down deep inside, I found a little piece of newspaper I had torn out of the Globe & Mail on the plane to Chicago.

While reading the newspaper on the flight I happened to spot an ad from the government of Canada announcing a new online system for Canadians traveling abroad to register themselves in order to be informed of emergencies in their host country and at home, which was coincidental enough, given the timing, though not enough to change my entire belief system. However, when I got to the horoscope section – for fun and nothing else, believe me – I saw this:

“Taurus (April 21 – May 20): There will be times over the next few months where you wish you could just get up and leave, but with so many people depending on you that really isn’t an option is it? Tough times call for tough individuals and tough tactics. That’s your cue.”

I don’t remember tearing this horoscope out of the paper, but there it was, soaked through but not destroyed, in the bottom of my laptop bag. I will openly admit, I have read the horoscope about 30 times since I found it… but that doesn’t mean anything, right?

Adventures in Jakarta

The Indonesian government recently introduced a new law proclaiming that all foreigners in the country must register themselves with the federal government in Jakarta. This means each foreigner is obliged to actually travel to Jakarta to have his photo and fingerprints taken within 90 days of arriving in the country. There was no way around this law, despite that fact that I, like all VSO volunteers, have already registered with more authorities than I can count and have had more fingerprints taken than Martha Stewart. VSO viciously opposed this new law as the expense to send 45 volunteers to Jakarta for a 3 minute procedure is outrageous. No matter – it fell on deaf ears and we are all obliged to go. For the record, government policies such as this are causing countless smaller and less well-funded NGO’s to close up shop and leave Indonesia forever; they simply can’t afford to operate any longer. It’s a very sad state of affairs.

My day to go came this week. VSO has engaged globally on an effort to become more ‘green’ and this means we are trying to minimize air travel. This is exceedingly difficult in a nation that is an archipelago of 17,000 islands! Word came down that anyone stationed on the island of Java (where Jakarta is located) would take the train rather than fly. Lucky me – I now had to take a 9-hour train ride, spend 5 minutes in an immigration office, and then take a 9-hour train ride back. Really it didn’t matter to me as I had a good book and thought it would be an interesting way to see more of the countryside of this beautiful island. Incidentally the island of Java is roughly the same size as Vancouver Island but has a population of 120 million people!

Luckily I had another volunteer, Denis, with whom to travel. Denis is also placed at Interaksi and has been there for nearly 2 years. His command of Bahasa Indonesia is very strong and he even looks like a local (he’s Filipino). His knowledge of local customs and protocol is excellent so he comes in very handy. I was about to find out how handy as on the train ride to Jakarta I came down with a very nasty illness.

It started with me just being cold, which was understandable because the air conditioning on the train was set at ‘meat locker.’ I realized soon that the shivers were coming from inside me and were just a little too intense. Still I assumed that once I got back into the humid late afternoon air in Jakarta all would be well. I was wrong and I just got progressively worse, dizzy, disoriented, weak, head pounding, chills that would not quit, despite the fever that I estimated at about 104 degrees. I remembered killing a mosquito in my room a few nights earlier and knowing that he had got to me first as there was a significant amount of blood when I squashed him – my blood. Of course I had thoughts of malaria or worse, Dengue fever, running through my head at this point.

Denis and I checked into the hotel (the appointment at immigration was set for 9am the following morning) and I just crashed into the bed, fully clothed, unable to get warm. Denis took such good care of me; he went to get me some noodles and paracetamol (the asian equivalent of ‘chicken soup’ and advil) and insisted repeatedly that I needed to eat something. Unfortunately I couldn’t. He checked my temperature constantly and knew what to look for. I drifted in and out of sleep, waking up each time with a start as if I’d been slapped. Sometimes I was freezing cold, sometimes boiling hot (incidentally one of the symptoms of Dengue is frequent fluctuation between hot and cold). Sometime during the night the trips to the bathroom started and things just got worse from there.

We made it to immigration the next morning on time and I even managed to smile a few times. Somehow Denis had informed the agent before hand that I was sick and everyone asked how I was feeling. We were out of there in 5 minutes and just went back to the hotel. I had to request a late checkout as there was no way I could wander the streets of Jakarta until 8pm that night (our train home) without keeling over. I had been looking so forward to seeing Jakarta as it was the biggest city I had ever been in, population estimated at around 17 million and thought it would be so interesting. The one interesting thing I saw was a commuter train on a raised platform, maybe 100 feet above the streets absolutely covered in people – hundreds of them hanging out the doors, on the roof, everywhere, all looking casually relaxed and apparently thumbing their noses at the fact that this is an earthquake zone and one shake and they were all done.

At 6pm, after many more hours of fitful sleep, we checked out and headed for the train station where I discovered that there are apparently sadists employed by the city’s public works department. The ‘benches’ that you must wait on while waiting for your train are nothing more than a series of metal tubes, some parallel to the floor, some perpendicular, that are placed just far enough apart that there is significant weight at each tiny point where your body meets the metal, and just close enough together that there is no way to let any of your natural curves fit. I decided to lay down lengthwise on one of these, which was quite a spectacle. I close my eyes and tried to drown out the yelling coming from the overhead PA system (Indonesians couldn’t talk quietly if they tried and there is only one volume level – maximum). I heard Denis say the word “sakit” (sick) on many occasions, assuming that he was explaining to people why the lazy gule (pronounced goo-lay – it means ‘paleface’ and it is how I am often referred to here when people don’t think I can hear) was taking up 2 spots.

The train finally came and mercifully I managed to sleep most of the way home. My fever had broken and I was feeling a tiny bit better (perhaps the 3 immodium I took before leaving the hotel?). Denis and I decided together that I probably don’t have Dengue or Malaria as neither of those illnesses was likely to recede so quickly and it was likely something bacterial, perhaps something I had eaten. So I decided not to go to the doctor but rather just go home to take one of my super-duper Canadian antibiotics and hope for the best.

It was later that day when I again woke up in a haze that I realized my wallet was missing. I panicked as I was sure I had it in my bag on the train, but I had slept most of the way -- anyone could have unzipped the front pocket and removed my wallet without being noticed; it would have been so easy. I found out later however that it was right where I left it, on the side table in the hotel room in Jakarta. In my delirium I hadn't even noticed I had left it, despite the fact my glasses had been resting on top of it and they were now firmly on my head. The hotel would graciously send it to me, after taking out enough money to pay for the courier, and after asking me how much I would like to 'tip' them for keeping my wallet safe. We settled on an amount and it should be arriving today. Given the powerful hold Murphy's Law has had on me over the last 72 hours, I'm officially holding my breath until it's in my hands.