1 week down

well, i’ve officially been on sumatra for a week now, if i’ve got my days straight. when there’s nothing to break up the monotony, it’s hard to keep track, you know? it’s been great to be staying with people who are a) tech savvy (wireless internet!) b) not morning people (we don’t wake up before 9 and we don’t work before 10) c) great cooks (we ate pesto for dinner last night.) and d) from the same culture as me (that always helps).

if i’m being completely honest though (and it’s my blog, so i will be), this past week hasn’t been without its stresses. ron and kim have a tendency to bicker. kind of all the time. about everything. i’m not used to that (thanks, mom and dad) and it is stressing me out. big time. lately i’ve been using my ipod when we’re all in the car together so that i don’t have to hear it.

another stress has been being kicked out of my room. underneath the church, there are 4 dorm rooms. ron, kim, and all their stuff from java are in one crowded room. i was in a second one. but then the owner told us that 50 people are coming from jakarta to make a movie and they need my room. they are actually planning to put 50 people in the other three rooms down here. there are 2 bunk beds in each room. nuts. so i am now a displaced person living in a hallway. only for 3 days though. i’m kind of interested to meet these movie people!

the third stress i have is coming from feeling like i have no direction. i have some tasks and projects i’m working on with the cattle. it is REALLY hard to work with batak though, i’m finding. for example, one of my projects is to tame the 4 calves. they’re all wild from living in the field their whole lives. so i had some guys build me a smaller pen to contain them. well, they made the fencing so that the calves can walk right through it. so we got that all fixed, then yesterday, one of the bigger calves decided he wasn’t having this, so he tried to walk through the gate and ended up pulling 2 fence posts out of the ground. i went over and looked, and neither fencepost was more than 10 inches in the ground! and these fenceposts are taller than me! anyways, i digress. besides those tasks at the farm, i feel like i don’t do much. kim likes to do the housework around the dorm and so she cleans my room and does all the cooking and laundry for the 3 of us. so i feel like i can’t even help there. ron and kim don’t have a church yet, so i have no connections there. and we live a ways outside of town with no way for me to get down there unless i ride in with someone in one of the trucks. so for the past week, the farm has been my life. but that only takes a few hours of my time a day. i’m sitting here, wanting to do ministry, only here for a few short weeks, twiddling my thumbs.

so today, ron needed to have a meeting with the head of the hospital in town and i asked if i could go with. on the way there, i prayed that just being there would open up some doors for opportunity. i gotta watch what i pray for. they took one look at me and decided they needed a native english speaker to help with practice for the students in the english department of the university (the hospital and university are kinda all rolled into one. i think it’s primarily a nursing school). without even thinking about it, i said i’d be happy to help but that transportation was an issue. they asked me to come in the evenings, during study hours. they said they would come pick me up and drop me off. but since i’m coming in the evenings, they suggested that it might be too late for me to come home, so they’re preparing me my own bed in the girls dorm so i can stay whenever i like. so on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, you can find me at the university there practicing conversational english with college students.

so i’ll be working up at the farm in the mornings with my kids club (as ron calls it), coming home to shower and eat, then heading down into town for evenings. i think this will be a good setup. i mean, it was God’s idea, so it really doesn’t matter so much what i think, right? : )

but for the record, i’m excited.

ptl

morning time and feeling good!
about to go feed the cattle up top.

the end of the day

got this email earlier from my dad:

Hey,I just read your entry on the batak world . . . I'm sorry to tell you this sweetie, but someone has misled you. You are actually in Cleveland and those people you're with are Italians.


it made me chuckle. he grew up in cleveland. with italians. met some of them at my gramma's funeral 2 years back. man... talk about nuts.

after dosages of claritin, sudafed, ibuprofin, chloraseptic spray, and lots of suckers, i'm feeling somewhat better. thank goodness that ron and kim could pretty much run a pharmacy out of their house. the most i did today was make a large batch of salsa for everyone, which i did from the comfort of a camping chair because standing up hurt too badly. i even walked all the way up to the house (ok, so you can just about touch it from the dorm i live in... but still - it's up a flight of stairs!) to deliver it. but i feel pretty pathetic about not even leaving the property today. tomorrow though...

oh, one parting comment - i just moved my mattress to the floor in the hopes of sleeping on something more firm (and therefore more comfortable) tonight. and i noticed that of the SEVEN mattresses stored in this room, the one i'm sleeping on is THE ONLY ONE without its original plastic still on it. ewwwww.

sakit lagi

well, i posted yesterday that i wasn't feeling so well. last night was really rough. i don't know if it was from the cold (it gets down to about 60 at night here, which is VERY cold for me) or what, but my muscles got REALLY achy. i move around a lot when i sleep, but because my body was aching, every time i moved, it woke me up again. AND every time i coughed or sneezed. AND all 3 times i had to use the toilet (because i had drank SO MUCH water and tea yesterday to help my fiery throat). i had gone to sleep in a sweatshirt, partly because of the cold and partly as mosquito repellent (there's not screens), but at about 1, i woke up blazing hot. so off the sweatshirt came. and on came the mosquitos. uggghhhhh. i started checking the time everytime i woke up. i was up every 10 - 20 minutes. all night long. this was the second longest night of my life, the first, of course, being the night in madura in the hotel swarming with mosquitoes, rats, and bloody bedsheets.

i didn't go up to the farm with the guys this morning. i wasn't in any shape to. when i finally dragged myself out of bed at 11, i could acutely feel every muscle in my body, i'm pretty sure. and it hurt. even muscles in my chin hurt! i kinda walk like an old woman... it hurts to lay down, it hurts to sit in a chair, it hurts to stand up. i made myself a peanut butter and jelly so i could take some medicine, and i feel that kicking in some now (45 minutes later), so let's just pray that does the trick for now and that i'm back in action soon!

batak world

so wow. different island, different language, different people, different culture. entirely. it’s even hard for me to understand them when they use indonesian. partly because they mix in lots of batak words and slang, but also because the accent is very different. i mean, i do the same with javanese. many people can tell i’m from java because of they way i speak. yeah, i have an accent. i kinda like that.

i have no doubt i’ll pick up on the language sooner or later. but the culture… the culture will take some getting used to. javanese are very reserved. they rarely raise their voice. they never yell. they keep their emotions hidden, and though they might not always make the most logical choice (in my western-thinking opinion), they are almost always fairly level headed and even keeled about things. and in all my attempts (conscious and otherwise) to not be the typical american in a foreign country, i have adopted the ways of the culture i live in.

but ohmygosh… the batak are opposite in almost every way. they are  the people who flail their arms in the air and wail from the very depths of their soul for an entire funeral service. they are the people who, when they are excited about something, you actually wonder if they might have peed their pants a little bit. they have one volume - shouting. if they have a problem with someone, everyone and their cousin will know about it (partly because EVERYONE on the mountain could hear them talking about it to just one other person). and if they like you… well, i watched 2 people today get in a fight over whose family i was a part of. and i’ve only been here a day! they are quick to love and quicker to hate, they are passionate, they wear their hearts on their sleeves.

i met a lady yesterday, rosemary. she’s a worker on the farm. we talked for maybe 10 minutes at the most. in those ten minutes, she went from being so giddy to meet me that she was jumping up and down and grabbing me by the front of my pants (her hand was actually DOWN my pants) to drag me to introduce to more people to throwing her arms around me and sobbing on my shoulder, almost knocking me over backwards with her force. she laughed uproariously when she teased me. she threw her arm over her face and clenched her eyes shut when she talked about how much she hates living alone. she crossed her arms, wrinkled up her whole face, and stamped her foot when she talked about her wages and how she thinks she should get more.  then she was back to jumping up and down and clapping her hands when we talked about how long i’m staying here. rosemary is nearly 50. and she calls me daughter.

in other news, i’ve quite settled into my room here. if you remember from last time i was here, the actual farm is on the very top of the mountain. but we were given some land to use about halfway up the side of said mountain. it has a church, a house, and a dorm. last time i stayed in the house with my newlywed friends, gt and wiwik. ron and kim are currently in the process of having a house built up at the farm, but there is no indication when it will be finished. contractors… anyways, on the church property, the dorm is not quite finished, but beneath the church, there is a hallway with 4 rooms off it that are sparsely furnished with bunkbeds and a desk. each room also has its own bathroom, complete with a squatty and a bucket of water. ron and kim have managed to fit most of their old life on java into one of these rooms, and so i’m staying in the room next to theirs.

we were watching a tv earlier tonight that ron rigged up in their room when i heard someone come in the door at the end of the hall. since it’s not technically our property, we can’t really do anything about this. i asked about who it could be, and ron kind of shrugged and said that the owner rents rooms out by the night. and by the hour. uuuuhhhhh… so… awesome. i’m living in a brothel. ok, not quite that drastic. but still, i’ve never before been so thankful for indonesian people’s obsession with leaving everything wrapped in its original plastic (namely, my mattress). and for kim being able to find clean sheets that fit among the many boxes of stuff stacked up in her room, in the hallway, and in the house.

one last bit – i would ask for prayer for me. i have had allergies since october. well, it’s either allergies or the cold that won’t die. it’s not really bad enough to take medicine typically, but on worse days, i pop a claritin (thanks, mom), and it usually clears me up in 30 minutes or so. this morning i was sneezing almost nonstop and my nose was running like mad, so i took one of 10 claritin i brought with me. since it was raining and going up to the farm would be pretty useless, i fell back asleep until 10. then, after the rain let up, gt and i went up to the farm and worked until about 4. (btw, i spent a large chunk of that time cutting grass to feed cows. with a SICKLE! filled up the entire back of a pickup truck. AND gt let me drive the truck. first time i’ve driven anything with more than 2 wheels for almost 2 years now! felt weird. probably because i was sitting on the right and shifting with my left.) anyways, my sneezing continued, every 15 minutes or so, and i was just generally miserable. but i was still thinking it was my allergies, made worse from all the plant life around me. after work, we went down into town to get some dinner, and it quickly became clear that it was more than that. my throat is pretty swollen and fiery feeling. i had chills for a bit earlier, and a low grade headache. right now i’m doped up on claritin, sudafed, chloraseptic, and black currant tea. and i still feel pretty miserable. so please pray that i’ll be back on my feet in no time. i’m only here a month, and i really want to make the most of that! even a day of being sick is a day too many…

medan

list 1. or, things you can learn from indonesian taxi drivers.

1. their entire life story. plus their entire family’s life story.

2. everything you could ever want to know about the town you are currently in. for example, medan is the third largest city in indonesia, 2.5 million people live here, many of whom are of chinese ancestry but actually still speak chinese as their first language. also, they will feel free to tell you that you don’t really want to go to the place you are going because some other place would be much better for your assumed needs.

3. what to eat to help you poop more lancar (fluently/smoothly). seriously. i got this lecture from a cab driver today.

4. christians and muslims are the same. we are all going to heaven. it doesn’t matter how you get there. the only bad people are the terrorists.

5. it is the government’s fault that there are poor people in indonesia.

6. i look like a muslim. apparently. because my cab driver asked me if i am one.

7. their phone numbers, which they freely give out. in case you need a ride in the future, of course.

8. indonesia is very kaya (rich). the only problem is that the people don’t know  how to use it, and so that’s why such a rich country has so many poor people.

list 2. or, all the things i bought for less than $30 and why i love indonesia.

1. a pair of nice, heavy duty, rubber workboots for the farm.

2. aloe lotion, facewash, shampoo, conditioner, a toothbrush, a bottle of listerine.

3. a big container of vaseline petroleum jelly which i have been looking for for quite a long time now. i found it imported at a drugstore!

4. five mini heads of cheese.

5. two rolls of toilet paper. (all i am allowing myself for the next month)

6. three packs of indomie (indonesian ramen. but actually good.)

7. a heavy duty 1 liter water bottle.

8. some craft stuff to work on in the evenings.

9. two 30 minute rides in a taxi.

writing this while i don’t have internet. staying in someone’s house in medan. will post later. headed to tarutung via jumper flight in the morning. been up since 4 am.

EDIT – made it here safely, settled into my one room. i have my own bathroom! no bath, but a squatty and a faucet coming out of the wall to fill up buckets for flushing with. need to wash my windows. ate pork for lunch. (first time i’ve had pork in months) and now heading up to the farm to visit with cows. posting now…

pacitan

ok, i’m gonna make this quick (relatively) because i’m in the midst of packing for sumatra. it’s currently 9 pm and i’m leaving at 4:45 tomorrow morning. wah!

anyways, i wanted to catch ya’ll up on my last trip before i head off on the next one. i went to the beach for 3 days with 14 indonesian friends. i had some apprehensions, what with being the only whitey and the only non-native indonesian/javanese speaker. but it went well. or as well as any vacation with a bunch of asians can go. after just 2 days, i came home with 739 photos on my camera alone. and EVERYBODY else had their own camera too! they just liked to use mine because it’s fancy. also, we woke up and started laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean every day - AT SUNRISE. yup, that’s right. a cup of tea, and catch some waves.  indonesians like it early. a weird adjustment. for me, vacation means sleeping in!

ok, so a few quick takes of highlights of the trip.

1. you know how if you stand in the sand at the edge of the ocean, the waves wash over your feet and you sink a little each time? i’m not sure of the science of this, but the waves cause the sand to shift just enough that you slooooowly sink down into it. i like to see how far i can go down before a wave inevitably knocks me over. the second day of our trip, i was buried up to my ankle balls (what is that protruding joint called anyways?) when i noticed something – i could feel a pulsing in my feet. my first thought was that i had awoken some giant turtle sleeping beneath the sand that was about to eat my legs off. but almost instantly, i realized that i was feeling the pulse of the earth. in fact, it took me several more waves to realize that what i was feeling was actually MY pulse due to the sand pressing down so heavily on my feet. but for about 1.5 minutes there, i was completely in awe – i could feel life flowing through the earth. creation was living and breathing and i could feel it! even after i realized it was my own pulse, i wasn’t too disappointed. because after all, i AM creation too. i AM living and breathing and life IS flowing through me. and that is equally as awesome.

2. and speaking of sand, a couple days while i was laying out on the beach catching some rays, i could hear sand crabs tunneling underneath my ear. they  make funny little grunting sounds; the kind of noises i make in response to people when i first wake up in the morning. so i started talking to them! if i grunted twice, they would do it twice back. if i did it three times, so did they. and if i did it one time, they responded in kind. it was cool. i just prayed they wouldn’t bite my ears. and that nobody would see me laying facedown in the sand grunting to myself. oh, and you should have heard them go nuts when my stomach started growling! i think they thought it was the crab god speaking to them from above.

3. we drove 2 cars to the beach. kind of like this one (i got from the internet, but the photo interestingly enough appears to be taken in indonesia):

anyways, there’s the driver and passenger seats in front, and then a row that seats 3 (or 4 if you squeeze) in back. then in the VERY back, there are 2 little rumble seats that fold down from the sides. that’s where i rode the 5 hours there and back, mostly because everybody in my car gets carsick except for me. so i was happy to curl up with the luggage and get some rest since i woke up before 5 AM every day. anyways, one day we were driving to a different beach further down the coast, and one of the people in the middle had their window cracked open a few inches. the rest of the windows were tinted a bluish hue and they were quite dirty, so the contrast between what i could see through the open window and what i could see through my window was vast. through the open crack, the trees were VIVID green. but through my window, they were ugly brown/blue in hue. it made me think about how i see the world. what if there are brighter colors than what i can see even through the open window? what if my eyes are like the tinted, dirty windows? what if i’m somehow missing out? seeing things through tinted eyes? and then i realized that we are ALL like that. and that won’t go away until we get to heaven, when imperfection fades away and all things become perfect. it gave a new meaning to 1 corinthians 13:12. this world is but a dim reflection. it made me think of heaven in a different way than i ever have before…

4. navita: everybody is staring at you.

me: welcome to my life.

navita: wow.

5. even though we live in an imperfect world, some things come pretty darn close! here’s some pictures from our beach weekend!

(the beach at 7 AM… so THAT’S how it looks at this hour…)

(this took a long time to do properly…)

(a second beach we visited)

(so this is the hotjaga i always talk about. and his lovely wife.)

(with all the huge waves crashing, it was quite a chore to keep my camera lenses dry!)

(natural bridge. i hiked up and sat on top of it!)

(the whole group)

(the view atop the land bridge. the peninsula looks like a dinosaur!)

(waves crashing below me)

(sunrise over pacitan)

(yoga on the beach at sunrise)

(looking down into the biggest known cave in southeast asia!)

(another of all of us. again, it took forever to get it right!)

(“take my picture by the ocean!…… NOOOOOOOOOOOO….!!!!!!)

(i love the beach!)

orang desa

my cat is currently getting a histerektomi. i love it when words are the same in both languages. makes me seem smart when i understand those big words.

i am currently watching COPS while getting ready to go to the beach for the weekend! woo.

good morning

so last year they changed sears tower to willis tower.

and now... THIS

i don't know if i can handle all this change.


also, german girl stood me up last night. i guess she decided to just head straight to jogja without passing go. or salatiga. or solo.

hallelujah!

i don't know if anyone has noticed (or cares), but i've been updating my to-do list below. and like half of it got checked off today. i wrote out a list last night of things that NEED to be done before i leave on friday and threw in a few things i would just LIKE to accomplish before then. but i reasoned that i would be satisfied if i finished half of that sublist.

i asked an indonesian friend to go into town with me.
between the two of us, we finished the ENTIRE LIST.
plus some.
today.
before noon.

omg. i am ecstatic. my bike got taken apart, cleaned out, tuned up, and re-oiled. for $3.20! i have pillows on my couch for the first time ever, which will be great when german girl comes tonight, because both of us will be able to have pillows! (before today, the ONLY pillow i owned was the one on my bed. and technically, i don't even own that. the school does.) i got new hangers for my closet so that all my things can go in there. i got the pictures printed off for bu iis. i was afraid that was something that i would procrastinate about so badly, as is my habit. but it's done. i have a REAL rain jacket - finally, i can stay dry on my bike during rainy season! as can a passenger, as i opted for the roomier poncho. heck, i bet we could fit 4 under there. assuming the other 3 are asian.

some letdowns though - i can't get replacement lights for my string of christmas lights that don't work because they only sell colored christmas lights in this town. and those are tacky. we asked at 8 different electric shops.
- i got my eyes checked for free. and the lady told me that my eyes are exactly the same prescription as the glasses i was wearing. they haven't changed. in 8 years. which is a lie. because i had to get new glasses 5 years ago, due to my prescription changing. but i prefer wearing the older frames. they're cooler. sooo... no new glasses for me. for now. maybe after sumatra.

but - my favorite part of the day. i bought an electronic dictionary! even if you don't care, give me a little cheer. this thing is sweet. basically, all my friends in language school have one. and they use it constantly. i, on the other hand, went old school (some might call this "cheap") and bought a dictionary. which i have used. extensively. but i don't want to haul it all around the country with me this summer. or ever again, really. so i bought this. it even adversises having games! it has hangman. in 2 languages. which i guess is ok for a dictionary. but the games icon has a pacman logo next to it, so i was still a little disappointed.



so, a couple things i learned today:
- if you need to accomplish a lot of small tasks in a short amount of time, take a native. they know where EVERYTHING in this crowded little town, crammed with a million and one storefront shops selling everything EXCEPT what you need, is.
- if you are looking for stuffing for pillows, don't go to the sewing shop. because they will send you to toko besi (the steel shop - kind of like carter lumber. but without wood).
- it takes 1 kilo of stuffing (called dakron) to fill 4 pillows.
- when the papers that came with your motorbike say to get a tuneup at "2000 km or 4 months", the monthage is more important than the mileage... err... kilometerage. the guy at the garage almost wouldn't do it for me. i'm at 2000 km, but 7 months. we had to fight for it.
- indonesian optometrists are quacks.
- claritin costs 44 cents per pill here. but when the lady at the apotek told me how much a pack of 10 costs, i was flabbergasted because of how expensive it was. sometimes i have to put things into an american perspective to feel better again.
- the english word for penjahit is tailor. not "sewer person" as i've been referring to them for the last 3 days since i decided i need one. my friend happened to use that word in conversation, after which i interjected "YESSSSS! that's IIITTTTT!", much to his confusion.

all in all, it was a successful day. highly. berhasil.

todaaaaay. last night was a going away part for 2 friends. so i kept the kid (remember, i'm babysitting until tuesday) out late. a whole 30 minutes past his bedtime! he was a little cranky. but the clingy kind of cranky, not the screaming kind. so it was alright. he slept late this morning, so i ended up being awoken by the helper trying to get in at 7. awesome. right as she came, the second helper also came and they got into a discussion about who would work when. it was decided that first helper would work 7 - 3, and second helper (who is a little dumb and we all know shouldn't be left alone with the kid for extended periods of time) would work from 3 - 6. i come at six and the kid goes to bed at 6:30. fancy.

anyways, after the helpers came, i came home and slept more. but i was again awoken. this time by an sms from the kid's dad who is currently on another island. the sms mentioned that he had met a german girl who was backpacking alone across asia and australia and was trying to get to solo next (an hour south of where i live). he asked if she could spend tomorrow night at my house. my mind turned to the possibility of being murdered, maimed, ransacked, or other equally horrific things. then someone whispered, "what you have done for the least of these..." so i said sure. i think the plan is for the dad to bring her here, but by the time they get in, it will be late, and the buses to solo will have stopped running. so she'll stay here for a night, then i'll get her to the bus station the following morning. who doesn't love a foreign stranger sleeping in their bed?

at 11 when i woke up, my helper came in and greeted me with a hearty "SELAMAT PAGI!" (good morning - which ends around 10. then the day switches from pagi to siang.) i chuckled at her, and we chatted for awhile. we were talking about summer plans and what i'll be doing in sumatra. she's a christian lady, so i don't mind sharing with her. (around other people, i have to be a little more cautious about what information i give out.) she told me how grateful she is that foreigners come here to tell others about Jesus because so many indonesians are afraid to in their own country. i contemplated this a second (i know it's true - other christian indonesian friends have told me how scared they are to share the gospel. btw, proselytizing is illegal here. but answering questions or having a discussion isn't.), and then i told my helper that i think that's true for the foreigners here too. most of us probably didn't share the gospel with fellow americans. or at least not to the extent that we do here. but in a foreign country, it's somehow easier. my helper thought about that one for a second and came back with, "really? you have to tell americans about Jesus? they're not all christians already?"

WHAT?? wow... i know america has kind of a reputation for being a christian nation and all. but among most people here, i usually find the assumption that all americans are like what they see in hollywood. NOT that all americans are christians. hmm... misconceptions always amaze me.

to do

starting next week, i'll be gone for most of the rest of the summer. i think i'll be in salatiga for a total of a week between next friday and school starting. a day here, 2 days there, just passing through to do laundry and bathe between trips.

soooooo..... things i need to do this week:

1. fix the other strand of christmas lights left by amanda so i can hang them in the living room. - apparently they only have colored lights in salatiga. oh well. i tried. - OFF THE LIST
2. get a yoga mat. because she also left me a handful of pilates dvds. - CHECK
3. find a good penjahit (uh... sewer?) to get a batik dress altered. - CHECK
4. get new glasses. finally. - gotta wait. got my eyes checked and they told me my prescription hasn't changed. in 8 years. i know that's a lie. probably have to go see an optometrist in semarang. - OFF THE LIST.
5. go to the immigration office to get my visa renewed. - NEXT WEEK
6. see if i can find generic claritin here to help with allergies. - CHECK
7. take my motorbike to the garage for its 2000 km tuneup. get it washed also. - CHECK
8. buy rain gear. mine disappeared while i was in west java somehow. - CHECK
9. get photos printed for my classroom and also for ibu iis. - CHECK
10. mail a letter and the picture to pak supri and bu iis. - CHECK
11. get the pillows stuffed that i've had laying hollow around my house for more than a year now. my couch is forlorn. - CHECK
12. babysit sammy until tuesday. - CHECK
13. make sure internet bill gets paid.
14. buy ticket to sumatra. - CHECK
15. make some more progress in terms of schoolwork and preparing for next year.
16. finish making a scarf for andre. - CHECK
17. teach yuvi how to knit.
18. see if i can track down an electronic dictionary to take to sumatra with me. - CHECK
19. buy a camera to replace the one that got stolen. if i have enough money left after all of the above. - not gonna happen
20. going away party for dana and carolyn. - CHECK
21. bible study on tuesday. - CHECK
22. figure out finances for the summer so that the internet bill, phone bill, and helper all get paid while i'm gone. - CHECK

and then on friday... GO TO THE BEACH!

whew. six days. i can do it!

new room

in a sudden burst of home interior-ishness, i decided to do something new with my room. and thanks to some contributions from my living room, loot from the apartment of my recently departed neighbor (she went home to america. she didn’t die.), and some creativity on my part, my bedroom is now that much more awesome.

it all started with some little white christmas lights. i have been wanting to hang christmas lights over my bed for a very long time. years, in fact. but my childhood bedroom is butt ugly. hanging christmas lights in it would be an insult to the christmas lights. i thought i had my chance in college, but turns out christmas lights are a fire hazard.  then i moved to a muslim country, and where do you get christmas lights in a muslim country? i mean, you can, but maybe i’m just lazy. anyways, amanda, my neighbor, left some behind. so up they went.

but they clashed with the curtains. or rather, the curtains clashed. with everything. under the sun. they were perhaps sewn by an 80 year old colorblind amish missionary woman in 1942. they were a bold mix of various shades of blues, oranges, purples, yellows, and greens. in fact, theo, dr huxtable’s son, might have worn a pair of pants cut from the same fabric. bottom line: the curtains had to go. in my front room, i have much more attractive curtains in muted tones of cream and green (which match my bedspread and why did i never realize this before?!?). i never close them since i have a bamboo blind outside my front window. so into the bedroom they went. a much more subtle and rustic feel.

but this created another problem. a little over a year ago, i was awoken in the middle of the night by demons in my house. at that time, i wrote down the verses in romans 8:38 – 39 on a notecard and taped it at the head of my bed. and over the past year, it has become a security blanket of sorts for me. i see it every night before i go to bed. and every night, it stands as a reassurance to me, a constant reminder that God’s love is here. no matter what. in this house. even while i sleep. and as long as His love is here, there is not room for fear. but the curtains from the front room go almost to the floor. and the head of my bed is right inside the window. hence, the curtain covered the security blanket notecard taped to the wall at the head of my bed. down the notecard came.

those Words, those verses are still important to me. so i woke up this morning with the great idea to paint it on the wall beside my bed. i think my helper thought i was crazy for writing on the walls. but she said she liked the finished product. i’m a fan of the overall effect. and sad that i won’t be around for most of the rest of summer to sleep in my awesome new room.

Friday nights at home…

because this is how we roll.

JABAR (part 10) the end

i met up with the group back at the hotel and we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. i had the best ravioli i have ever had in my life. it is common practice in indonesia for street musicians to come to restaurants and stand in the door and play and sing until someone gives them money. sometimes they’ll go from table to table with their hand extended, hoping for some small coins. as we were finishing our dinner, i heard some guitars start playing outside. we weren’t within eyeshot of the door. but when they began to sing, i had to go see – they sounded like they were only 6 or 7! i was shocked (and not in a good way) when i got to the door to see that these street musicians were 2 boys who looked no older than 10. after they finished their song, one of the guys in our group began talking to them. we learned that they are both 14 (or so they say – neither one even came up to my elbow and they both had little girl voices), and they are from bandung – 8 hours away! they just jump buses, traveling from town to town, hoping to make enough money to survive. that broke my heart…

the next morning, it was pouring down rain again. by now, the rest of sharon’s family had come by van, so we used their vehicle to drive around after waking up at 5:30. it was pretty dismal, and the only thing worth reporting is the 8 reindeer type animals we saw crossing the road over to the beach! strange… sadly, it was too dark and they were moving too fast to get a clear shot.

sharon was really hoping to get some shots of school kids in their uniforms, so at about 7, we headed toward the town elementary school. sadly, it was still raining, so most kids were coming to school in vehicles and under rain gear rather than walking. but sharon had the great idea to park across the road from the school. in her van. and use my zoom lens to take pictures of kids as they entered. i mostly just kept praying that nobody would mistake us for pedophiles until i was able to convince sharon that i really wasn’t getting any good shots and we should head home.

(2 girls heading to the middle school down the road)

i needed to be on a bus by 8, but sharon had a trick up her sleeve. to thank me, she wanted to drive me to a local silver shop and let me pick out any one thing as a gift. i spent about 15 minutes poring over the shelves… i love looking at the intricate earrings and rings and bracelets they sell in these shops, but i’ve never actually bought anything for myself there! i ended up settling on this pair of earrings:

they’re made of indonsian coins from 1940, while it was still under dutch rule. the front is in dutch and on the back, there is both javanese and arabic script. i’ve had a few people try to translate the javanese writing for me (by the way, most javanese today cannot read or write using the javanese alphabet. it’s similar to sanskrit.), and i have had the following translations: a) who feels like 10 cents? b) one per ten. c) one-tenth of a cent.  i think that last one seems the most likely.

after the silver shop, we headed straight to the bus stop where i actually happened to get on the exact same bus that brought us to pangandaran 2 days earlier. when i got back to the train station in banjar, the same becak guys were sitting out front and greeted me heartily! i wanted some food to take on the train with me, so i headed to a warung nearby. a bunch of old guys were hanging out in there, eating their breakfast, and they were happy to help me choose my meal. they got me to buy a bit of strange looking fruit that i’ve never seen before along with some bread. exactly what i was looking for!

the train ride was uneventful. i wasn’t sitting by anyone, so i slept almost the whole way home. for some reason, there was a buttload of dutch people on there, dressed very minimally - a stark contrast to the indonesian ladies with their head coverings and long dresses. also, they kept waking me up from my sleep by getting into food fights and general screaming about stupid things. for possibly the first time, i was GLAD to be the american on the train. (usually americans have a bad rap as the culturally insensitive, obnoxious tourists. but not that day!)

so basically ,the end of my trip was the same as the beginning, only backwards. the only interesting part was when the creepy guy sitting beside me on the bus from solo – salatiga decided i was tired from all my travel and tried to give me a massage. ugh… could not WAIT to get off that bus.

437 photos. 672 km. 6 modes of transportation. 29 people’s stories. 4 languages. 36 hours.

but there’s no place like home.

a word from our sponsors

sorry to interrupt the tales of jabar, but this was too good to wait...

some friends and i went out to eat tonight, and i was really hoping for some tempe. my body was craving protein. i haven't had any meat since lunch yesterday. anyways, the place we ended up at only had noodles and rice. so i walked to a couple other holes in the wall nearby, but everyplace was out. i had some luck at the 4th place. they had 4 pieces left. the lady running the place was super nice and gave me a chair to sit on and chatted with me while a girl wrapped up my tempe for me to take it back to the other place to eat with rice. she said that next time, all my friends and i should eat there. so i asked to see the menu... and i totally found what we should all go out for after fellowship next week.

CRAPACCINOS!

it's awkward to snort-laugh uncontrollably. it's even more awkward when you're one of only two strangers in a room.

JABAR (part 9) layang-layang

 

he is 8 years old.

he taught me layang-layang.

i taught him kite.

JABAR (part 8) the best part

so the reason we went to pangandaran (the town we were in) in the first place is because the missions org i was working for was having a conference there. starting at 3:00 on the second day of my time there. so after returning from the beach, i was on my own. it was raining pretty hard by this point. and after being on the go since 4:45 that morning, it was getting REALLY hard to stay awake. so i took the opportunity to crash for about an hour. when i woke up, it was still pretty gray out, but at least the heavy rain had subsided. so i ziploc-ed my camera and decided to go for a walk.

i made it more than a kilometer down the road, chatting with a few people here and there, taking a shot here and there, but mostly not finding much that caught my eye. it was dusk by now and getting too dark to hope for many more good photos that day. so i decided to head back to the hotel via the beach. i sat in an old lifeguard stand and watched some guys playing soccer for awhile. but the wind started picking up, signaling more rain, so i started walking again. i didn’t make it more than 100 meters when drops started falling. the closest shelter i saw was a small tarp stretched out over 4 pieces of bamboo with a stack of boogie boards underneath it. along with 4 street musicians/beggars and their instruments. not ideal, but it would have to do. so i ducked under and asked if i could wait out the rain with them. they were happy to let me. we chatted a little bit. turns out, they’re all still in middle school! an older guy came over and wanted to practice his english, so we chatted awhile too while the other guys played some songs for me.

(someone running from the rain)

a big tradition in indonesia is that of bringing oleh-oleh any time you go on a trip. oleh-oleh is like a souvenir. and you’re expected to bring back something for basically every person you have ever met any time you leave town. a great thing to bring back is something that has the name of the place you visited on it such as a keychain or magnet. another popular oleh2 item is food. because there are so many people groups in indonesia, each area has its own distinct flavor, literally! so while i was huddled under the tarp with the guys, i asked them what they would recommend i bring back for oleh2. they instantly said “jambal roti”. which is apparently a very famous chunk of dried fish dish. i asked where i could procure said fish, and they pointed to a bunch of shacks and tarp structures a little farther down the beach. so once the rain let up a little bit, i said my goodbyes all around and headed in that direction.

(a food vendor carrying boxes of food along the beach)

outside one of the tarp huts, a lady was sitting. she motioned me over and invited me to sit with her. her name is ibu iis. her husband, pak supri was sitting beside her, repairing a fishing net. i chatted with them a little bit then asked if they knew where i could get jambal roti. they said they didn’t have any but that they knew where they could get some and “bisa antari”. (can deliver) i was confused about this arrangement. where was the fish? where were they going to deliver it to? my hotel? when? who did i need to pay? after about 5 straight minutes of talking in circles, i finally figured out that they meant they could deliver ME to the place where it is sold!! oh, the dangers of not using subjects and objects when speaking…

anyways, pak supri charged me what i know was only about 1/4 the normal price to drive me in his becak to a house in a village a little ways from the coast. a very nice lady there (possibly the second wife of pak supri… that situation was kinda vague) sold me some salted, preserved, dead fish. when i told her i had to take it on the train with me, she made sure to wrap it up in alternating layers. newspaper, plastic bag, newspaper, plastic bag, and another plastic bag for good measure. quite thorough. pak supri asked me if i wanted to go back to my hotel, but i said i wanted to go back to ibu iis instead.

she was surprised to see me back there, but she invited me back in and offered me a drink. we were actually in a small restaurant owned by her. there is one table and one kerosene burner to cook on. she serves things like small fish, rice, noodles, cigarettes, coke, and tea. in fact, that might be the entire menu right there.

i asked her how long she had been working there, and she explained to me that it was pretty new. after the tsunami, people were prohibited from building structures on the beach side of the road until just within the last year or so. since she mentioned the tsunami, i asked her about her story of that day. she told me that she was at home when it happened and that her house and everything she owned was destroyed. but she was able to get out safely.

i asked her where she lives now. and completely matter-of-fact, she replied, “well, here”. she pointed to a spot in the sand near the back tarp, behind the table, where they sleep every night. then she looked me right in the eye and asked me why allah made some people so poor.

 

how do you answer that?

 

i told her that the Allah i know is so big He can’t be understood. and that the Allah who made the poor is the Allah who made the rich and the Allah who made the sad is the Allah who made the joyful. and He doesn’t make anything that is kurang indah (less than beautiful).

we talked more. about life. about Allah. about families. about jobs. about america. they didn’t believe me when i told them there are poor people in america too! like, they actually argued with me and told me i must be wrong.

eventually, i realized that i had about 20 minutes to walk the kilometer back to my hotel, shower, change, and meet the whole group there for dinner. i asked if i could take a picture of the two of them and they were happy to let me. (see above) then pak supri asked for my address. that’s a first. i happily gave it to him and asked his in return. i mean, it seemed the polite thing to do, right? so between the two of them, they came up with about 7 lines of information that should be sufficient for getting something to their location on the beach. and they asked me to send them a copy of the photo i took. everything they ever had was lost in the tsunami. i am so happy to be able to do this one small thing for them…

(a picture from earlier in the day of a tarp house/restaurant that looks basically like ibu iis and pak supri’s. except this one has some heat control (the palm branches) and a bathroom (the white part).)

my time with bapak and ibu in their home on the beach was hands down my favorite part of this trip. i loved getting the chance to connect with someone that i normally wouldn’t ever cross paths with. i’m realizing more and more what a passion i have for just sitting and listening to people’s stories. there’s not a person on this planet who doesn’t have one. but i estimate that at least 90% of them will never be heard. also, this is part 8 of my adventure, and 8 is my all time favorite number (a coincidence, i assure you).

JABAR (part 7) the beach

after visiting the graveyard, sharon and i crossed the street and made our way to the beach. the water there is absolutely beautiful. it’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, this very water crashed through the boundaries set for it and forever changed the lives of every person living in this small coastal town. it ripped away children. it swallowed buildings whole. nobody here was unaffected.

i mentioned in an earlier post that since there is nothing between this coast and antarctica to break up the force of the water, it is quite dangerous to swim along the southern coast of java. due to this, there are riptide and no swimming signs posted all over.

this no swimming sign is sponsored by one of the biggest cigarette companies in the country. that seems a little contradictory…

while walking in the surf, we saw some people using spoons to dig for something in the sand. i wondered about it aloud. and sharon, ever the extrovert, said, “let’s go ask them!” so we went and asked the matriarch of the group what they were looking for. she promptly pulled a kind of clam out of a small plastic bag she had with her and showed us. i asked if i could take her picture, and she gave a big smile (indonesians often don’t smile for photos with their teeth), but then looked away! too funny…

 

she taught us how they know where to dig. when a wave comes in and then goes back out, if you put your face down near the ground, you can see tiiiiiiiiny little depressions in the sand. that’s where the clams are! she explained to us that a lot of poor people do this to improve their nutrition. they can sell the clams or they can eat them to add to their diet of rice and veggies. also, this certain kind of clam has some kind of medicinal use. it was great to know that they recognize the need for improved nutrition here and that they are DOING something about it! excellent!

the older ladies who were digging did so in very specific places where they knew there would be clams hidden. this kid was just going to town though. give him a spoon and he’ll be halfway to the center of the earth by morning… when his dug up area was about 4 times this size, i remarked about how rajin (hardworking/industrious) he is. they all thought that was pretty funny. and i think it’s a good thing to be able to make people laugh. in a foreign language. : )

i really enjoy the multi-functional hat she is sporting… also, she has a pretty great smile. : )

a tiny crab hole in the sand. God made them such artistic and geometric little creatures! i love it!

JABAR (part 6)

we were hoping to get some pictures of schoolkids or other people hanging around town, but due to the rain, everybody had made themselves scarce. so we regrouped at the hotel then headed to lunch. we ended up at a small restaurant owned and run by a very kind lady and her husband.

after she cooked our noodles and vegetables for us, we invited her to come join us at our table. there was nobody else in the restaurant, so she sat and talked freely with us. she told us about her kids. neither of them live with her because they are making better lives for themselves. she talked to us about old times and how 10 years ago she and her husband were part of a night market. for four years, the lived out of tents, packing up and moving to a new city every 3 weeks. she told us how hard it was to be without her kids during that time. she talked about her life in west java (she’s from central java originally!). she also asked us lots of questions about our lives. a super nice lady. when we first asked for a picture, she declined, saying, “ibu jelek!” (i’m ugly!) but after talking, i again asked, and she let me.

i had heard of a nearby graveyard for victims of the 2006 tsunami (not the christmas eve one that hit aceh, thailand, and cambodia. just for the record.) that hit the area, and i really wanted to try and get some photos there. for some reason, i enjoy photographing graveyards. sharon indulged me, and we headed off down the street. after a bit of walking, we found it tucked away in a stand of coconut trees.

turns out, this was an established graveyard well before the tsunami hit. but sadly, the stone wall around it was destroyed, and then those stones, thrown around in the rushing water, ruined most of the graves there. because muslim headstones are set above the ground, many of them were even picked up and carried away. most people who have a loved one buried there no longer know where their plot is.

in muslim culture, a body can only be dead for 24 hours before it becomes unclean and has to be buried. so after the tsunami, friends and family had only 1 day to identify bodies. all those that weren’t identified in time were buried quickly along one edge of this cemetery.

the green pieces of wood all mark graves of unknown victims.

this grave was for an unknown little boy.

this victim was identified and given a proper headstone.

old graves that were ruined by the tsunami waters.

if you look at the unknown grave markers, you’ll see that each has two numbers labeled NK and NL. i was curious about what those designated, so i went to find someone. i found this man:

he didn’t know what the numbers meant, but he did teach me about something else…

… collecting sap from coconut trees to make gula merah (a kind of brown sugar)!!

twice a day, he climbs 40 coconut trees to collect and replace buckets to gather sap. he then takes it all home to his wife who boils it down into the sugar.

he shared with us his story of the day the tsunami hit. he was up in a tree at the time it happened. he heard people screaming and he looked out toward the ocean. he said all he could see was white. white everywhere. coming toward him. he didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he needed to get out of there. so he got out of the tree and ran. and he and his family were safe.

oh, by the way, i asked him if he’s ever fallen out of a tree in all his years of climbing. and he said, “praise be to allah, NO!”

JABAR (part 5) the market

after getting a wet becak ride back to our hotel and waiting for most of the rain to subside - over omelettes and toast - we decided to head to the local pasar, or market. i’ve never taken a camera to the pasar in salatiga because i hate being looked at as a tourist in my own city. but i’ve always wanted to. pasar is always so vibrant and full of colors and smells and sounds and motion and people selling things and people buying things. it kind of reminds me of going to a flea market back home. so i was excited to head there with my camera. of course, the rain started up again almost exactly at the same time that we arrived there. perfect. i did get a chance to snap a few pictures of the hustle and bustle though.

looking down one of the many crowded alleys at pasar. they had tarps up over everything to keep some of the rain out…

ok, i have to say, the salatiga pasar is way more graphic than this. they stack the guts in one pile, the feet in one pile, the bodies in one pile, and the heads in another. maybe we just use more of the parts here… also, here, if you ask for a kilo of white meat, they’ll take a knife and hack off the breasts, then dump the rest of the mangled chicken in another pile, presumably in anticipation of someone coming along asking for dark meat. all the chickens in this market looked like this. clean cut. if you can call a dead chunk of meat clean cut.

fresh veggies. and usually organic too!

tempe! one of my favorite indonesian foods! you cut it into slices, rub it with garlic and salt and fry it. it’s fermented, congealed soybeans. so appetizing! : ) but seriously, if you ever get a chance to try it – DO IT! and then tell me what you think.

a table of sweet snacks. the stuff wrapped up in the banana leaves is squished up rice mixed with coconut milk. sweet and tasty!!

a clothes store in the market! ok, i don’t know if i’ve lived here too long or if i just have some strange fashion tastes, but jilbabs are CLASSY! if i were a muslim woman, i think i’d own at least 30. as it stands, i currently only own 1. classic black. haha.

two women who own what we call a warung in the pasar. a warung is kind of a catch all place. need something? just go to a nearby warung! you can find them quite literally anywhere. they sell everything from packets of shampoo (hanging over their head) to wrapping paper (in the bucket on the right), from fresh eggs to flipflops!! we chatted with these 2 ladies for quite awhile while it rained. they were super sweet and were trying to think of who they could set me up with. but not until after they interrogated me about what i look for in a man.

we also met this guy, a carpenter. he was selling goods at the pasar with his wife and granddaughter. his granddaughter is 16 and has some kind of debilitating illness. the frail grandma was sitting on the dirty ground in a dress holding the granddaughter, who is both physically and mentally handicapped, in her lap. we went and bought them some food and brought it back for them. sharon told them in sundanese that Jesus loves them. that might be the first time in their lives they’ve heard those words. sadly, it might also be the last.