this week, my good friend, hotjaga, has been posted at the gate outside my house in the evenings. today, he smsed me to inform me that he feels like i've been paying too much attention to my boyfriend and ignoring him. the poor thing. truth is, i've ended up with a headache every day for the last week, so i haven't been going anywhere in the evenings, therefore not passing through the gate where he's posted, therefore not giving us a chance to chat regularly like we used to.
so today, i didn't feel like eating the fried rice my helper cooked for dinner (since i already ate it for lunch and - based on the quantity i found in my fridge - will apparently be eating for lunch for the next several days as well), so i made quesadillas with the cheddar cheese my mom mailed me (SUCCESS! - you CAN mail cheese overseas in a box). i smsed pak hot to ask if he wanted to try some mexican-ish food, and he said yes. so i took him some quesadilla and salsa, skeptical as to whether he would like it or not. there are so few dairy based products around here that indonesians think kraft singles are the bottom line as far as cheese is concerned. they don't believe me when i try to tell them IT'S NOT REAL CHEESE. KRAFT SINGLES ARE IMPOSTERS MASQUERADING AS CHEESE. and they're like, "maskaWHATing?" siiiiiigh....
back to the story. pak hot is an introvert, but put us two introverts together, and we could talk all night long. he's a good one to talk to for me, because he works hard to speak in a language that he knows i'll understand (he understands some english but doesn't speak it). sometimes he has to dumb it down. and he knows what words are beyond my vocabulary, and when he can't avoid using one of those words, he'll ask me, "understand?" and more often than not, i don't. so he'll explain it.
i'm getting away from the story again though. so yeah, i took him a quesadilla and we chatted for awhile. we talked about cheese and how much he likes it and how kraft singles are imposters masquerading as cheese. and he totally agreed. finally! someone javanese agrees with me about what is and is not real cheese! he spent awhile reliving his glory days as one of the most famous soccer goalies in central java before his accident. and like always, i pretended to be fascinated. we swapped childhood stories, scar stories, almost drowning stories, and the like. then somehow we started talking about terrorists. two were just arrested this week about an hour from here.
i've had this confusion for a long time. see, as i understand it, most terrorists/muslim radicals tend to be anti-western culture (that's kind of a sweeping generalization, but bear with me). in indonesia, if there's an attack, it's where there are lots of white people. jakarta. bali. hotels. nightclubs. but these terrorists, many of them, are recruited, trained, and live with two hours of me. the headquarters of the indonesian branch of al-quada are in the next city, or so i've heard. so i asked pak hot, a muslim, why do they go so far away to blow things up and wreak havoc?
and i finally got my answer. in indonesia, it isn't about islam vs the west. they can live in peace with white people. i mean, indonesia is all about living in peace and unity. this brand of terrorism is political. they want to hurt indonesia. they don't agree with the way this country is run, and they're making a statement about it. they're not after the white people. they're out to cripple tourism in one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world. they're out to make a statement to president SBY in jakarta. it has nothing to do with skin color. it has everything to do with making their voice heard.
obviously, there are better, less destructive ways to make a point. but i live in what is reportedly the area most densely populated with white people in all of indonesia. and finally having this answer, knowing that their sights aren't set on the western community as a whole, well... it's reassuring in some small way.
and as always, it was good talking to my old friend, the hotjaga.
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