The Fast started last Friday. Baha'is fast for one Baha'i month (19 days) of the year, from March 2 - March 20. Before that was Ayyam-i-Ha, the Days of Joy, and we celebrated with parties after we got back from Lombok. I went to my friend Vena's boarding house, and Greg went to a party at Pucang. The fast is from Sunrise to Sunset, which is always almost exactly 12 hours so close to the equator. We don't have to deal with the new daylight savings time, thank goodness, but we do have lots of heat and humidity! So we started by going to Malang where it's nice and cool (er) with my friend Pritta. We visited her aunt and uncle (our friends before we met Pritta) and had a very nice time walking around, going to a waterfall, and buying flowers to plant in front of our house in Surabaya. Then it was time to start the real week. On Monday, I accepted a job teaching English at a school in Sidoarjo. I was asked to talk about "American Culture" to motivate the students to progress in their English studies. Not knowing what to talk about, I asked the students to tell me what they already knew about Americans. For example: Americans are white; Americans are rich; Americans are beautiful. Then I talked about each point they'd brought up with an emphasis of the diversity in America. It's odd - I've never really even liked America, and spent my whole life looking at the mistakes that have been made. But talking about the diversity in America (granted, it's not always a pretty picture), really made me wish that every one of those Indonesian students could go there and see what it's like. The students were really shocked to know that there were poor people in America, and that there were lots of different skin colors in America. Every class had a big debate when we got to "Are all American's beautiful?" because it's a hard fact here that white skin is beautiful and black skin is not. I told them about all those Americans who pay for tans - it was hilarious. The kids spoke better English than I thought they would, thank goodness, but were surprisingly disrespectful and had side-conversations through the whole class. Apparently that is accepted and if I got 'stern' with them and asked if they wanted me to go on, the teacher would tell me to be patient. Whatever that's supposed to mean. So after shouting for 6 45 minute classes, it was time to go. But first we had to make a stop to see the mud, which I still hadn't managed to see. It was pretty incredible. Whole villages have been wiped out, and all you can see is this:

I know it’s been a long time. Not having internet at home was one thing, but when the closest hotspot (the Supermal) didn’t have internet for three weeks, it really threw me off. But now I’m back to tell you about my more recent adventures in Indonesia. I suppose that before I do that, I should just remind you all that Greg and I are fine and unaffected by the more recent disasters in the country. If you haven’t heard of those more recent disasters, don’t bother looking them up. I’m just saving you the stress!

After a stressful year thus far, Greg took a day off work and took me on a surprise vacation for Ayyam-i-Ha. I had the choice of it not being a surprise at some point, but I like surprises, and didn’t find out where we were going until we got to the airport. Actually, even knowing the name of our destination city didn’t help me at first (“Where’s Mataram?”) but I found out eventually. We went to South Lombok near the town of Kuta (not Kuta, Bali) to a Novotel resort. It didn’t seem like my thing at first, and we had to complain about our room, but by day 2 it was an incredible and relaxing vacation. We were there for three nights, and after our complaint, were able to stay in our own thatch-roofed hut very close to the beach and to the amazing raised swimming pool. We spent the whole time walking on the beach, reading, swimming, and eating. The beach was off of a tidal bay, so when the tide was out there wasn’t any water. But when the tide was in, you could swim very far from shore and the bottom was only 6 feet under. It was beautiful. I finally was able to swim a few strokes of butterfly. We ate breakfast on top of a hill, and got to try weaving (both of us) when a woman came to sell cloth on the beach. It was really fun, but very hard on the shoulders.

There was no internet in the country of Indonesia for three days. Can you imagine? Now there is a connection but it is VERY slow.

We had arrived home five days before we had told the maid, Iis, that we would – we had planned to travel more, but returned since Greg was so sick. When we arrived the house hadn’t been cleaned, the cat was hungry, the plants were droopy and she wasn’t there. Right before we’d left, she told me she was getting engaged over the holiday and requested one day off. The engagement was shocking to me, since it was proceeded by the numerous conversations we’d had about planning for the future, saving money, agreements between couples, and her previous comment that her short-term boyfriend was “nothing serious.” But her parents were putting a lot of pressure on her since she was already old (20) and her younger sister wanted to get married. In any case, we left a note asking that she talk to us if she came home, but she came home, said thank you, took her things and left. We don’t know why, and we asked her to stay – she said she’d call and never did. Apparently this is a pretty normal thing here. Now we’re back to doing things the American way – by ourselves. I sure wish the house was smaller! Or that it was carpeted and we had a vacuum! It takes 2 hours just to sweep and mop just the downstairs!

There sure are a lot of accidents around here. Here’s a part of a report from the Jakarta post about a recent train derailing:

“At the time of the accident, I was asleep under the seat of another passenger because the train was overcrowded and lots of people were standing. All of a sudden the (fourth) car, which I was in, lost power. Later the car somehow became uncoupled. People started screaming in fear," said Sri Lestari, a 16-year-old student who was in the car that plunged into the riverbed.

Police said the train was passing over a bridge spanning the Pager river near Rancamaya village in Cilongok district when the accident occurred.

Railway officials said the car had a maximum capacity of 106 passengers. However, they also said economy class trains were officially "allowed" to exceed the maximum passenger numbers during peak traveling times.

"We allow up to 50 percent more passengers than the maximum capacity on economy-class trains. That's normal during every Idul Fitri holiday season," Soemino, the director-general of state railway company PT KAI, said.

He could not say what caused the accident. "We are still investigating."

"Winter" Break

After the semester ended we took off for a real vacation on the small island of Bunaken in Bunaken National Park north of Manado in North Sulawesi. The park preserves the underwater wildlife and reefs and includes five islands. That means that fishing is closely monitored and only line fishing is allowed, people can only dive with certified guides trained in protecting the park, and lots of research is being done on coral re-growth and so forth with foreigners keeping track of everything and starting to involve the locals, too. We flew the same Adam Air flight that got lost the next week. To date (January 10^th) it still hasn’t been found. In any case we arrived and found the people at the airport much calmer than Surabayans and were picked up by our hotel, driven to the boat, and boated to the island. We stayed at a place called Froggies which is known for being very ecologically friendly. At first I was very disappointed at the lack of showers or hot water (this was supposed to be a relaxing vacation, after all!) but by the second day I got over it because the staff was so helpful, the food was so good, and the diving was so amazing. The staff was so well trained that I felt like we were in another country plus laundry was included in the room rate, and there was excellent fish at every meal and cookies and things for in-between meals – nice after a dive. Greg and I had a dive guide assigned to us and with only one exception we had the boat and crew to ourselves so everything was on our time schedule. It turned out that our guide, who was really excellent at pointing things out to us, had discovered a species of seahorse only a few years before. The diversity of underwater life that we saw was incredible, ranging from nudibranchs to seaturtles, mandarinfish to napoleonfish, and phosphorescent plankton lionfish – particularly on our night dive. The whole experience was incredible. We dove 6 times, mostly in Bunaken Bay but also near Manado Tua, a small cone-shaped island with a cloud rainforest covering the top. Most of the people staying at Froggies were much more serious than us, though, some of them diving 4 times a day and staying for a month. After four days, we moved to the island of Siladen to do nothing but beach. We could walk almost all the way around the island on the very nice beach, saw rainbows on two days, and saw totally amazing things just snorkeling off the beach like trumpet fishes, a purple nudibranch, and both a male and female boxfish, not to mention the swarms of red, purple and blue damselfish, schools of angelfish, and rainbow-colored parrotfish. We originally checked into a place that was literally a cabin with a bucket on the beach, but decided to splurge for a place equally close to the water’s edge but with a shower and hot water. The only other guests at that hotel was an Italian family who didn’t speak any English. Greg learned important phrases like “prego” and “bon giorno,” and the last night during a sing-along, they sang “o solo mia” and thought our laughter was hysterical.

After three days of very pleasant beaching, we took a tiny outrigger back to Manado sitting on bags of smoked fish. We saw several dolphins surface a few times. When we got to Manado we took a bemo and then a bus to Tondano in the mountains to visit a Baha’i family. We had a wonderful visit, and the family was really friendly and welcoming. We ended up staying at their house (ousting the woman’s younger brother from his bed in the alley) and got along well, considering that they didn’t speak any English. They are a young couple about our age with a 1-year-old daughter. I went with the woman, Bahiya, to the ‘market’ and was amazed to find foreign items like peanut butter and frozen fish sticks. While we were staying, we visited some friends of theirs, a Christian minahasa family. We went to their house in a horse cart. It was a beautiful trip, since every house was covered in Christmas lights with Christmas trees in every window. The air was cool and misty, so it even felt like winter time! The family had a celery farm – celery is used as an herb in Indonesia: the leaves are used and the stalk is discarded, so it’s grown to have as thin a stalk as possible – the whole area smelled like celery. We had a good time with them and sampled several types of prepared fish. The next day we went back into Manado where we had lunch with a Baha’i visiting from Jakarta then flew to Jakarta for the youth conference.

We arrived, got on the bus toward Bogor (where the US president visited earlier in the year) and sat in gridlock traffic for four hours. Unfortunately, one of the fishes we’d sampled didn’t agree with Greg… He got sick on the bus and spent the whole trip in agony. We finally arrived in Bogor and I found a taxi to Puncak. The taxi driver made a point of telling me that he liked Americans. We checked into a strange hotel with air vents in the walls (but it had Western facilities) and Greg spent the next three days there, drinking gallons of tea and bocari sweat (the Indonesian one-flavor gatorade). Throughout the Baha’i youth conference, the 150 youth practiced presenting key messages through use of the arts – poetry, painting, drama, music, you name it. I was able to go to the conference on New Year’s Eve. Each locality had prepared a song, dance, drama, or presentation to share, and there were youth from 42 locations in Indonesia. Fortunately, there were only 20 presentations, but as it was we finished at 2 am and completely missed the ‘welcoming the new year.’ The performances were amazing with all sorts of traditional clothing and languages and some very silly skits and songs, too. The last performance, from Mentawai (a small island that once had 5,000 Baha’is living on it), did a traditional dance of calling the spirits. They beat drums and bottles, sang, released nutmeg oil, and did a dance that looked very Native American while wearing armbands made of palm leaves. Afterwards, everyone went outside for roast corn (jagung bakar).

We stayed at George and Shiela Soraya’s home (along with 20 or so youth who missed their train home) before leaving the next day for the airport to return to Surabaya. I had a long conversation with a young woman about the challenges that youth face in America vs. Indonesia.

We didn't see much of Jakarta, but we met a lot of Baha'is including two counsellors from Malaysia. One is also the counsellor for Cambodia, and it was pretty incredible to hear about the huge numbers of people becoming Baha'is in a formerly non-religious country. It's such a global religion, in form and function, and it's great to see. In Jakarta we visited a home where over 30 children and jr. youth from a nearby village were singing songs about world unity and learning about how to eliminate prejudice.

Back in Surabaya, we plunged into the planning of a special 'open house' for the parents of the students in the virtues class we've been involved with. Four mothers came. We began by telling them about the Baha'i principle that all religions come from the same God (whatever the name) and thus there were many ways to pray. After prayers, we talked about the necessity for moral education - if school can make you into a doctor, what will make you into a good doctor? If school can make you into a policeman, what will make you an honest police man, free of corruption (a big issue here)? Immediately, the mothers began grinning, and saying that since they spent all their time in the market, that their children were lacking in this aspect and they were so happy to have sent their children. Their first response was to thank the teachers profusely. One of the mothers who had been sending her children (model students), had been previously concerned that there wasn't any writing and learning going on. When she learned about the activities, she asked if she could bring her neighbor's children. The activities include crafts, drama, songs, science and so forth to illustrate virtues like generosity, truthfulness, perseverance and cleanliness. In short, the response was so good that the man living in the house forgot all about his fears of having too many children coming to his home for the classes - in fact, he hadn't wanted to have the classes at all less than a year ago. It was wonderful, especially since so many Indonesian adults are so reluctant to make any changes in their lives, constantly living in a world of fear - only recently were people free to study what they wanted and belong to the organizations that they wanted. In fact, even now there is a complex social structure that involves neighborhood heads. Within the city, each block has a man who is in charge of the goings on in that area. The people must inform him of all events, pay dues, and go to him for their id cards. If he doesn't like the people coming to your house, you are endanger of being visited by a corrupt policeman or two looking for bribes at the least. This is the law as it was set up during Dutch rule and this is how it continues, keeping everyone in a constant state of fear of their neighbors. When we decided to have children's classes at this house, the resident was mostly afraid of what the neighbors would say. Now that the neighboring mothers had such a positive response, he's overcome a little of that fear, and it feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted.

In other news, we will be returning to America next July. We had thought of staying a third year -because it will be hard to leave the community we've gotten to know and because it means saving a good deal of money - but Greg was informed that he in fact did not have the option of returning. It's not a good boss, or a good job, so it's a good thing, though the feeling is quite negative. Greg certainly wasn't informed of this loss of option in a very professional manner and no event lead up to it - absolutely no words of either praise or punishment have been bestowed upon him from the higher powers this year. Which is too bad, since he had at least one student score a 5 on the AP exam last year and this year is teaching overtime without the pay so that more students can fit the AP class into their schedules.

So until we return, we have a lot of places to travel to! We won't get to them all, and it's always a tough call if we should spend time with friends on the weekends or abandom them to travel on our own. The mud keeps us from any weekend destinations for the time being, but we're going to do some diving in Bunaken National Park in North Sulawesi over the winter break. (Winter - hah!) From there, we're going to a Baha'i youth conference outside of Jakarta, then up to Sumatra since Greg hasn't been. Later we're hoping to get to Cambodia and maybe Thailand and maybe even Vietnam, then hopefully India before we go to Haifa, Israel for Baha'i pilgrimage with my parents and brother. So much to see and so little time! We'll have to scrap both the plans to return via Europe and the trans-siberian railway and also Island hopping through Papua, New Zealand, Samoa and Hawaii towards California. And there are still all those islands and cultures in Indonesia!

My birthday weekend we tried to drive to the beach, but we didn’t realize the mud had overflowed the dam again. The toll road was closed and of course there weren’t any signs or people helping to divert the traffic. There were some random people waving their arms so we followed them – turned out it was just the locals coercing people to drive through their village. This gave them the opportunity to set up a road block outside the mosque with some boys with buckets asking for money. We found our way back to the road which would allow us to turn around and spent 5 hours sitting in traffic to go the total distance of 4 kilometers. The sunset was beautiful over Mt. Arjuna in the distance, and when it got dark we could see the steam rising from the mud over the wall of the dam closest to us (we couldn’t actually see the mud – fortunately for our travels). We finally were able to get to Malang where we almost checked into a very nice hotel at a golf resort. The man at check-in was not very honest though, and upped the price 20% after we settled so we decided to just go back home. On the way there was a regular police stop and when we started again the headlights in the car were dead. Fortunately the high beams still worked, but it meant that people were flashing their brights at us on the very small, windey road all the way back. Around midnight we drove through the small town of Krian. As we edged past a becek we noticed a very strange cargo – hoofs sticking out of the sides. Once we got past we saw that it was loaded high with cow parts illumined by our tail lights. We passed three beceks without saying a word to each other. Eerie.

I watched TV all day Saturday, which was an experience. There were very tragic soap operas and lots of footage on Bush’s eminent arrival in Bogor, outside of Jakarta: People with Bush masks and ropes around their necks, groups wearing T-shirts that said “Osama bin Laden”, burning flags, and so forth and so on. They don’t ever show that sort of thing in America – that’s one thing I learned living in Ireland and a reason I hardly every watch the news: Media is very biased.

My birthday weekend we tried to drive to the beach, but we didn’t realize the mud had overflowed the dam again. The toll road was closed and of course there weren’t any signs or people helping to divert the traffic. There were some random people waving their arms so we followed them – turned out it was just the locals coercing people to drive through their village. This gave them the opportunity to set up a road block outside the mosque with some boys with buckets asking for money. We found our way back to the road which would allow us to turn around and spent 5 hours sitting in traffic to go the total distance of 4 kilometers. The sunset was beautiful over Mt. Arjuna in the distance, and when it got dark we could see the steam rising from the mud over the wall of the dam closest to us (we couldn’t actually see the mud – fortunately for our travels). We finally were able to get to Malang where we almost checked into a very nice hotel at a golf resort. The man at check-in was not very honest though, and upped the price 20% after we settled so we decided to just go back home. On the way there was a regular police stop and when we started again the headlights in the car were dead. Fortunately the high beams still worked, but it meant that people were flashing their brights at us on the very small, windey road all the way back. Around midnight we drove through the small town of Krian. As we edged past a becek we noticed a very strange cargo – hoofs sticking out of the sides. Once we got past we saw that it was loaded high with cow parts illumined by our tail lights. We passed three beceks without saying a word to each other. Eerie.

I watched TV all day Saturday, which was an experience. There were very tragic soap operas and lots of footage on Bush’s eminent arrival in Bogor, outside of Jakarta: People with Bush masks and ropes around their necks, groups wearing T-shirts that said “Osama bin Laden”, burning flags, and so forth and so on. They don’t ever show that sort of thing in America – that’s one thing I learned living in Ireland and a reason I hardly every watch the news: Media is very biased.

Flores

Last week was the Idul Fitri holiday (the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting). I had the idea of going to the islands of Flores and Komodo, so when I heard that two teachers were already planning a trip we joined rather than create our own. They were going through a tour company, which I’d never done, but it seemed so much easier that we went along with it.

We left Friday after school and flew to Bali, spent the night, and flew out again in the morning on a very small prop plane. The plane flew low enough to see the islands as we passed over them, the Gilis, Lombok, Sumbawa, Rinca, and thousands in between. We landed on the West coast of Flores and immediately got on board our boat, Feliana, which had wonderful cozy cabins and great lounging areas. The food was good too, although the fruit all had an odd mothball flavor. The spent two nights on the boat – the going was very smooth and mostly motoring, though the crew did put up the sails for show on the first day. The first day we hiked on Rinca island where there were tons of Komodo dragons. We also saw lots of buffalo including one carcass that had been breakfast that morning for a few of the giant lizards. They’re like snakes and only eat about once a month. It was dark when we returned to the boat to play cards. We got up the next morning at sunrise and took another hike on Komodo island. There weren’t many dragons at all, but we did see lots of deer, wild boar, and some very cool birds. It was very hot but surprisingly fall-like with leaves crunching under our feet. Strange, since it’s currently supposed to be spring in the southern hemisphere. After our hike we cooled off in the ocean off the pink beach. The sand was an even mix of red and white grains with not a speck of trash, the water was tourquoise, and the current was cold so we saw a lot snorkeling. It was incredible. We could have stayed all week. Unfortunately, we only got to stay for a short time. We were off to a second beach on another island – there were hundreds of islands all around at all times. This beach was definitely not as nice. The snorkeling was good – I saw a huge eel with brown spots, but the current was very fast and the beach was dirty (Greg saw a hyperdermic needle. Ugh.) Back at the boat we (especially Greg) jumped off into the water until sunset, when we went back to the beach for a terrific tuna barbeque. On the way we watched thousands of fruit bats leave the mangrove island we were anchored next to. On the way back, the little motor boat lit up the phosphorescence in the water and it was totally amazing. The third day we woke up and immediately hoped in the water to snorkel towards the beach. It was amazing, and the beach was also beautiful (though not pink). I thought I’d found some sort of exotic species of nudibranch or something but they turned out to be blue-lipped clams hiding in the rocks. The fish were amazing and it would have been great to be on the other of the tour’s boats, the live-aboard diving boat, Felicia, which I’m sure cost a small fortune to stay on.

After breakfast on the boat, we were taken to shore and immediately shuttled into a car with a guide and driver for the Flores part of our week. Most of the passengers in the car fell asleep right away, and we drove until around 1 when we got out of the car to look at a rice field in the shape of a spider web – each family has a triangular section and everyone places offerings in the center. We asked the guide how long before lunch and he said “soon.” We had fried rice around 2:30, then kept driving and driving before we stopped for dinner around 8. We all had soup and ginger tea. By then we knew each other quite well and were in total hysterics laughing at just about anything. Carol (the High School math teacher that was new the same year as Greg), Clea (the new Kindergarten teacher from New York City of Pakistani decent but adopted by white Americans as a baby), Greg and I played all the car games we knew, and our country by alphabet turned into Surabaya by alphabet and eventually diseases by alphabet. Our hotel was pretty basic, and at this point I realized that someone was making a lot of money if we were eating fried rice, staying in cheap rooms, and we had a guide that had yet to speak more than a whole sentence in English to us. We called the tour company representative we’d arranged the tour with to ask for a breakdown of expenses upon our return to Bali. We had hard boiled eggs and toast, then drove the windy, bumpy roads to a traditional weaving village. The village was very traditional with grass roofs with figures on the roofs and ceremonial houses for each clan in the center. The weavings were modern and clearly bought dyes. I did buy a small one with a horse motif when I finally found a woman who could speak Indonesian. Driving back we lost two lug nuts on the back tyre and had to wait a while for the driver to figure out how to get the car up the hill. We stopped at a beach with black sand and blueish-green stones, but quickly pressed on to lunch at 4:30. Poor planning on the part of whoever designed our itinterary. The guide answered Greg’s question about the stones by explaining that the water made them blue. A likely story. We had a good lunner? of Chinese sweet-and-sour fried fish and squid and finished with ice cream since we were waiting for the driver to return with lug nuts for the car. At around 8 we thought we were stopping for directions at a church, but found out we were staying with the Franciscan nuns (most of Flores is Catholic). The rooms were clean, and had mandis but no showers and no hot water. The beds had pink sheets with rabbits printed on them. Unfortunately for the nuns, we were unable to eat the free meal since we’d just had a huge lunch. But we were in time for the dinner entertainment of dancing by the orphans. The Dutch tour group also staying there seemed to have a pretty good time.

Then came the day we’d all been waiting for – the day to see Kelimutu, the famous three-colored lakes. We were instructed to be ready to leave by 3:30 am, so the four of us grouped in the dark at 3:15. The nuns invited us to have tea, bread, and bananas, which we did until about 3:25 when we elected that Greg go find the guide and driver. He found two little nuns knocking on a door and assumed that was our guys. He spent the next 5 minutes or so banging on the door and yelling. Finally the driver emerged and without apology asked if we were all awake. We finally left close to 4 and had a very scary, fast drive around the side of the volcano in the dark as the driver tried to beat the sunrise. We were pretty surprised that there was a long hike up to the crater – though I suppose that’s obvious – so we hiked as fast as we could, only just missing the sunrise. It would have been too dark to see much, but it was a major bummer. We hung out at the lakes for a few hours. One lake was milky turquoise, the others were coca-cola colored. I guess the souls of the young go to one lake, the old to another, and the bad souls go to the third. That’s according to the sign. I met an old man selling tea and had a wonderful discussion about religion in Indonesian. I didn’t get much more insight on the lakes, but he did tell me that some scientists were able to take samples from the lakes every few months. It sounds like they change every 20-50 years due to dissolved mineral content from rainwater runoff and erosion. 50 years ago they were red, yellow, and blue. We finally left, stopping to eat the moldy bread and cheese the nunnery had packed us, then drove to a village which was preparing for a ceremonial feast later in the day. Of course we couldn’t stay, but the woman in the chief position took us into the ceremonial house and told us all sorts of things. It turned out that I was a better translator than our guide, and she said the lakes represent the spiritual progress of the people – they changed color when the villages became Christian and started wearing more ‘decent’ clothing. We bought several naturally-dyed ikat cloths from her – one a modern design which had the lakes in it, one a traditional tube sarong that has multiple uses, and a third with a traditional design that looks like flowers dyed mostly with mango bark and beetle nut. She gave us a pomelo for the road, we stopped at a beautiful beach for lunch (they were out of fish), then stopped at one more village which was preparing for a procession for St. Mary. It happened to be the same day as Idul Fitri, and the whole village was full of what looked like flower girls. We took a picture with some of the nuns, waved off the pushy cloth sellers, and went on to our last hotel, a dingy place by the north coast near the airport. The next morning we walked through the market and a fishing village, then flew back to Bali where we argued hard and long for a partial refund with a car for the next day thrown into the deal. We ended the stressful evening with a fantastic Indian dinner. With our car, we visited Tanah Lot and Uluwatu temples. The later had vicious monkeys that stole my glasses to be recovered by a sneaky man charging 20,000 for ‘sunglasses recovery.’ The sunset was beautiful and there were dolphins.

The great thing was that the whole time, people kept asking where we were from. With Greg and Clea in our group, we had lots of opportunities to explain about the diversity in America.