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.

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…!