Naw-Ruz

Like last year, we decided to invite everyone we knew for a Naw-Ruz party. Naw-Ruz means ‘New Year’ and marks the end of the Baha’i month (19 days) of Fasting and the first day of spring (the vernal equinox). Baha’i days start at sunset, so the party was the night of the 20^th and began with breaking the last day of Fasting for our Bahá’í guests. Last year we had a pot luck, but it meant that at sunset we only had rice, fruit, and cake – entrees came later with guests who weren’t Fasting! So this year we decided that we would provide the food. At first our maid wanted to cook – she’s a fabulous cook – but we would have had to buy big pots and woks and cook all day together because we discovered we’d invited over 100 people. So we ordered up 100 boxes of traditional yellow rice, tempe sambal goring (really good sweet-fried tempe with peanuts and chiles), perkedel (mashed potato cakes), roast chicken, and green beans. We also ordered hundreds of traditional cakes, mostly green-colored pandan-flavored. And I bought 9 kilos of rambutans, plus piles of dukuh, green apples, and green oranges. Only about 65 people came, so we had plenty of food, and the party was great. We played ‘human bingo’ again this year, and this time people really got into it. Unfortunately, only about 4 teachers from the school came and none of the students came, so the crowd was not quite as diverse as the year before. It was great, though. And incredible to be able to buy that much food for not nearly as much money as you’d think! We printed pictures of spring to try to give our Indonesian friends a sense of what the first day of spring meant – we put them up on the wall, showing snow-covered fields, then mud, crocuses blooming under the snow, cherry blossoms, and finally fields of flowers and green. It’s hard to appreciate warmth, green, and flowers, when every day is hot and lush.