Spring Break in Toraja and Ambon

We just got back from 9 days of traveling around Indonesia with Greg’s friend Billy from High School. He’s leaving Surabaya today, and Greg is in the final stretch of the school year – the last day is May 30^th and the big swim meet is coming up in two weeks. Time is flying!

As soon as school ended for Spring Break, Greg and I flew to Makassar in South Sulawesi. We met Billy fresh from China in the Makassar airport, and stayed with an older Baha’i lady who’s daughter (and granddaughter) lives in Surabaya. Several members of the very large Baha’I community of Makassar came to visit us. I was able to share the recent happenings in Surabaya (such as the Ruhi party), but didn’t learn much about activities in Makassar. Greg, Billy, and I explored the city a bit and discovered that there’s live music every weekend at the shore, and the city is walkable and nice. Surabaya is undoubtedly our least favorite Indonesian city to date!

From Makassar we took an 8-hour bus trip to the famous Tanah Toraja, stopping along the way to buy rambutans, dukuh, and salak, fruits that are as ordinary to us now as apples and oranges. We met a young Irish woman traveling alone, and ended up staying at the same hotel (a $6 a night place) and touring with her. We hired a tour guide and car to take us to the sights, and it was totally worth it. Tanah Toraja is a really beautiful area in the mountains that reminds me of a tropical Colorado – jagged cliffs, blue skies, rice fields…? The houses all have an inverted-boat-shaped roof which peaks on either end. They’re carved and painted with beautiful designs in the four direction colors (the same everywhere!) which symbolize things thing betel leaf for hospitality, roosters for justice (cock fighting used be the decision-making tool), and a sun motif to symbolize the Great Creator. They’re also decorated with horns from sacrificed buffalo. The Torajan people have a very interesting view of the afterlife – when a person dies, the family keeps the body around and calls the person “sick” for months or years, during which time they prepare for the funeral. Depending on the status of the person, the funeral could mean the sacrifice of hundreds or thousands of water buffalo and pigs, a huge gathering, and a procession that places the body in a cliff with a wooden effigy put outside. That’s pretty simplified, but our guide was very informative. Basically, everything seemed to be about death and burial. We visited a tree that had babies buried into the trunk, too. We also took a terrific hike through rice fields and up a hillside, and got to sample some Torajan food – red rice and chicken cooked inside bamboo with coconut and spices. We returned to Makassar on the night bus (not so enjoyable) and flew to Ambon.

Ambon is, I believe, the capital city of the Molucca islands – the real ‘spice islands’ that all those famous people were after. It has a history of being conquered, and has the Banda islands (the clove islands) to the south-east, and the Molucca’s (the nutmeg islands) to the north-west. As in, there used to be cloves and nutmeg only on those islands. It’s far enough east that the people seem really different from people in Java – they’re tall, dark, have Jewish-looking noses, bushy eyebrows, kinky hair, and are very soft-spoken. As opposed to Javanese who are small, petite, Asian-looking, and generally noisy – a little like Italian is spoken. The Ambonese also apparently think it’s rude to stare at strangers, which was a great change from Surabaya, where it’s totally acceptable for a person of any age to openly gawk and shout insults. That said, Ambon is still recovering from a recent religious conflict. There didn’t seem to be an excess of poverty, but the fishing is done using some pretty unethical methods and all waste is dumped into the bay, which is filthy. I read an account that said that when Wallace was classifying species in Ambon bay it was incredible and hundreds of things he saw were apparently indigenous and are now just gone. Billy was able to dive in the bay, and said there were still some really incredible things in the water, but that it was so dirty he didn’t want to get in – and saw a dead whale. Greg and I dove the first day, and though we did see some cool stuff, it was nothing compared to Bunaken in diversity and color. Plus, our dive guide was pretty useless. Later, Greg and I drove to the other side of the island to meet a Baha’i family. We had a great time with them, walking to a nearby hot spring and eating lots of mangosteens. At lunch time, a Baha’i man came with his son from the neighboring island of Seram, too. There was a lot that we couldn’t understand, but it was a great visit.

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.

Ruhi Party

Bahá’ís and those interested in becoming familiar with Baha’i teachings all over the world are studying a series of books called Ruhi books. Independent investigation of the truth, i.e., reading and thinking for oneself, is a key teaching in the Baha’i Faith, but the Ruhi books allow an introduction to some basic themes because there is a huge amount of literature and it’s often hard for people to know where to start. The first book deals with topics like truthfulness and spiritual qualities, why people pray, and what happens to the soul after death. The method of studying the books is just as important as the content, and it is designed to be an instigator of unity and community building. Thus a group studying together has a facilitator but not a leader, and the people make a point of having fun together as well as working together to do community service. The material in the book is often introduced using music, drama, and games, and it’s generally an overall very enjoyable experience.

In Indonesia, however, people are not used to meeting regularly for anything, so most Ruhi books are studied with just one tutor and one participant, which makes it hard to create a feeling of community. Many people study Ruhi as they would for a class in school, simply reading through the books together and not taking time to do related activities. Obviously, that makes the books, well, not fun. Greg and I and two close friends decided we wanted to help the community to have fun, so we planned a Ruhi party.

About 15 people came – some who had already studied all the Ruhi books, some who had never heard of them - and we started with some ice-breakers and dinner. Then we divided everyone into groups of 3 or 4 and explained that each person would have to take turns tutoring, or explaining the activity to their group. Then we gave out directions for the tutor to use so that they could present activities from the first book including a drama, visual arts, a puzzle, rhythm, and a simple science experiment. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, though many were hesitant at first, and felt uncomfortable to be the one introducing the new idea. Hopefully some of the participants will use the same activities on their own, and start to have a little more fun!

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!