Sumatra

And a lot did happen. I went with my American friend and her two children to her amazingly beautiful house in Sanur, Bali (with a swimming pool!) Then left from there to Jakarta where I met a Baha’i woman. We flew to Padang, Sumatra, then took a very long van ride to Bukit Tinggi, a beautiful town in the hills (Bukit means ‘hill’). Everyone we met wanted to know who I was and what I was doing there. The air was cool, the streets were clean (and complete with sidewalks and trashcans on every block!), there were flowers and horse-drawn carts everywhere. We stayed with the woman’s mother, Mrs. Astani. Mrs. Astani came to Indonesia with her husband from Iran the same time that the older Mrs. Soraya came with her husband. Both the men were doctors, and the government placed them where they were needed. I had a wonderful week visiting Baha’is in remote villages, hiking in the canyon, shopping in the market, touring the vast Japanese cave network (dug by Javanese slaves), and driving to the lakes next to the volcanoes on either side of the town. I even went to the zoo (a bit sad – and I got photographed more than the elephants) and sat in a park. The houses have pointy roofs that resemble cow horns, and the town is laid out around the ‘Big Ben’ of Sumatra – a clock tower called Jam Kedang (literally ‘big clock’). I also ate Padang food with my hands. It’s similar to Indian food, but with different ingredients. I much prefer it to Javanese food, but it’s very spicy. The people don’t speak much Indonesian unless they’ve been educated. The culture in Minangkabao, and the division between the classes is much less than in Surabaya. I later found out that a local person will never hire another Sumatran to do housework or any other ‘low’ work – they bring in the Javanese who they consider to be inferior. One of the Baha’i families I visited were Javanese farmers. Because of their ethnicity, they weren’t able to own land and had to give half their crops to the other members of the village. Despite this difficulty, they were incredibly loving and provided a whole group of us with lunch. In exchange, I taught several children, theirs included, how to sing “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and then explained (in Indonesian, which they understood even with my limited language ability) about how many people in the world don’t like other people because they have different noses or eyes or knees or skin color, but that Baha’u’llah – the founder of the Baha’i Faith – teaches that these differences should not be a problem. That our hearts are all the same and that we should all be like one family. Outside was a beautiful flower garden full of pink and yellow crysanthemums. People in Java don’t only have flower gardens if they are wealthy enough to pay someone to garden for them.

At the end of the week I spent the weekend in Padang (Padang is where the ferry leaves to the Mentawai islands which takes about 10 hours – of note to anyone who has read Dr. Muhajir). The first day I went with a girl to visit her Buddhist friend. Then we went to the family noodle factory. It was an experience. There were trays of what looked like screen doors with piles of bright yellow noodles drying in the sun. There were teenagers packing the noodles into bags outside under a covered area (no gloves, no hairnets, dirt floor), and inside were the mixing vats, nasty-looking steaming water, and piles of broken waste noodles. I turned down the offer to try some. We hurried to meet with some youth in the community and returned that evening to talk to the many visitors who had come to the house I was staying in. The next day we visited a Baha’is grave on a hill overlooking the sea and facing the Mentawai islands – really beautiful, then drove out to the beach. We visited a very old woman whose door opened onto the ocean. Her husband had made beautiful cross-stitch tapestries of scenes such as the Baha’i Holy site of Bahji. She fed us fried sweet potatoes and we proceeded to a tourist area on the beach with a legend about a man who left from that place to seek a fortune and forgot his mother, after which his ship sank and he was turned into stone on that very spot. It was a difficult drive with several children – seatbelts and carseats especially are unheard of – and I was glad to be going home the next day. Until the airline called and cheerfully told me that my flight had been cancelled. To make a long story short, I made it home in time to teach my Monday afternoon flute student, so it was just fine in the end.

Bojonegoro

Last weekend was pretty amazing. There was a Baha’i conference at the Soraya home in Bojonegoro. Our young friend Hanafi left his motorbike at our house and we took the taxi for an hour to the bus station which is in an area with what I believe are salt-drying fields. We waited at the bus station for an hour before some friends arrived, then we got on the bus. After about 2 ½ hours we arrived and piled into beceks. We drove through the dark streets lit by star-shaped lanterns in the colors of the Indonesian flag. For once we weren’t the only foreign guests – a German woman pioneering in Sumatra was there, in addition to several of the Soraya relatives including the counselor, George, his wife, and their niece from Austria in addition to Dr. Jesbieh’s husband, Abbas, and several past and present members of the National Spiritual Assembly. That meant that Greg and I escaped the special treatment we received on our previous visits – I’d been waiting for this opportunity! I went to slept in a room with at least 30 other women of all ages. Everyone was so excited to see one another that the lights didn’t go off until at least midnight and the chattering continued for awhile after. All night long people continued to arrive. When I woke up, I thought I was in a sweat lodge – it was dark, I was drenched in sweat, I could feel bodies close all around me, there was loud chanting (the pre-dawn call to prayer from the neighboring mosque), and all around me in the dark, women were whispering their prayers. I couldn’t believe how early it was – there were still stars out! We made an early morning trip to the graves of the elder Mr. Soraya and a friend. It was my first time walking around the town, even though it was our third visit. It was beautiful! Nearly every street was lined with mango trees heavy with fruit. So different from Surabaya. Later, I took my first Indonesian bath (mandi). Washing my hair wasn’t quite as difficult as I’d thought it would be, though it seemed highly inefficient. Basically there’s a small room with a trough for water – you use a plastic dipper to scoop the water out, but you can’t actually touch the water in the trough. I later had the opportunity to learn that most people take full baths every time they enter a home – a family I visited later was very concerned when I emerged from the mandi with dry hair even though we were staying at their house for less than an hour.

In any case, we weren’t able to get much out of the conference since it was in Indonesian and took place sitting on a very hard floor in a very hot room. But we did have a great time talking (in English) with the other foreigners. It was really refreshing to have intellectual conversations – we don’t get much of that. It also made us realize that the problems we’ve been facing (a lack of communication about events taking place and the inability to obtain straightforward answers) are just general cultural issues that everyone has experienced. It also helped us to understand what our next step should be. All decisions within the Baha’i community and within the Baha’i administrative bodies, take place through a process called consultation which has very specific guidelines. For example, it is the obligation of each participant to provide their views frankly and courteously. This is always a difficult skill to learn – in all cultures – but it poses particular challenges in places like Indonesia where giving any indication of disagreement is unheard of, particularly since it’s such a hierarchichal society. No one will ever oppose the ‘leading’ individual, even though the Baha’i Faith never has ‘leaders’. It makes unification within a group very difficult, when an agreement must be reached, but no one is willing to offer their opinion on a solution to the problem at hand – or even willing to admit that a problem exists! We learned that this key process is actually the first priority of the Baha’i community we are in, and we are in a position to help! So that gives us an immediate goal that we hadn’t previously identified. It was excellent to share experiences with people who could relate to everything we have been experiencing as foreigners living in Surabaya and could even relate to our feelings about being expatriates with different goals than so many in our population. Now we finally know who to go to when we need help or advice. It’s a good feeling.

We left the conference full of wonderful, sweet mangos (totally unlike the fibrous ones in America), and crowded onto the bus. There were a ridiculous amount of people jammed in with us. Vendors and musicians still managed to get on and off at every stop. We bought a really good chewy coconut cake and some water. We got off and got on a succession of equally hot and crowded bemos finally arriving at the home of a family we are particularly close with in Surabaya (the parents of Ari and Hanafi). I had never been to their home, so it was neat to see. The parents both sell snacks at markets and their house was full of boxes of breads and treats. The woman served us cold sweet green drinks and longans (similar to lychees). We recovered for a few minutes, then left to go to a wedding reception – one of the Baha’i men in the community had a daughter who had just gotten married. A tent had been set up in the middle of the street with the traditional throne on a stage for the wedding couple. We sat on plastic stools and were served a very spicy soto (chicken soup with noodles), bananas, and cinnamon-scented fruit with ice in syrup (es buah). The bride came out and sat with us – next to me, actually. She had white tuber-rose blossoms sews into her hair like a net and hanging down her back. She looked beautiful and smelled wonderful. Her hair was pulled back under the flowers, but she had wisps of hair painted on her face. Her eyelids were covered in gold glitter, and the face make-up reminded me of a geisha with a pale base and very bright lipstick. She had a lace blouse over a kind of skirt. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera. We pretty much just ate and left, but in leaving we pressed money in envelopes into the hands of her parents. The mosquitos were terrible!

Next week Greg is taking the 10^th graders to Jogyakarta to see the temples, work on a Habitat for Humanity house, see the volcano damage, and so forth. It looks like I’ll be going to Bali to stay with an American family. I have a one-way ticket, so who knows what will happen…!