Slowly learning

I speak like a fool
and my words dribble
from my sloppy tongue
and my sloppy brain
but they wait as I struggle
patient with pauses
words, words, words
kata, kata, kata
like a fool or a fishmonger
but better, better, better
we share our lives and thoughts
through a dribble
instead of a gush

An average Indo day

I wake around 6:15, pull the earplugs out of my ears, and hear the rooster screeching outside my window. I run downstairs to the mandi, and wake up by pouring very cold buckets of water over myself, then run back upstairs to dress. Around 7 I collect my bags and go downstairs for breakfast, which I usually eat alone or with my Ibu peering over my shoulder to make sure I eat enough rice. 

I leave for school around 7:15 through the backdoor. I pull a pair of shoes from the shelf by the door and slip them on. In Indonesian culture, it's impolite to wear everyday shoes inside the house, so they store them by the back door. I greet Stan the Sate Man serving sate from his cart. Stan's real name is Mas Ipar. During Ramadan, I only see him at night. Further down the road, I pass the security gate into Kampus UM. It's guarded by security guards, all male, who love to talk to me and have often asked me to stop for food, coffee, a ride, or even (once) a shower. I just smile and wave and walk as quickly as I can.

I arrive at Building D8 around 7:20. It's usually already busy, with teachers milling about, students skyping family, and workers setting up our catering or raking the grass. 

I go to the second floor, sit on the ground, and open my computer to finish homework or chat. Before we know it, it's 8 am: time for class! Our teachers call us in and we groan, shut our computers, and drag our books to the classroom. We spend five hours in that room everyday (with a few bathroom and snack breaks). There, we're only permitted to speak Indonesian. At 12:50 we're released for lunch, which is catered traditional Indonesian food every day. I've learned to appreciate its. During lunch we chat, feed the feral kitten that lives in our building, and peel off to our computers once again to chat with our families or work on homework. 

Morning computer time

In class

Lunch! The feral cat in the photos lives in the building off the food it steals during lunch.

Post-lunch nap

After lunch, we go to either our elective classes or tutor time. I'm taking classes in Gamelan, traditional Indonesian music of mainly metal percussion instruments, and Menari, traditional dance. From class I'll often go to the gym, where only two treadmills work, so we workout in an empty room upstairs to workout videos. 

Nearly every day, I find an excuse to go to Baker's King, the donut shop in the mall. It has wifi and oreo donuts that blow my mind, so I've become a regular there. They laugh about how many donuts I eat, but seriously, good Indonesian desserts are difficult to find. Most taste fake sweet or are swimming in weird jello. Really, you think I'm kidding but I'm not: Even the cake has weird jello on top and in the middle. 

Also nearly every day, after an awkward dinner with my host family (a friend here called it 'prison dinner'), I'll go back to D8 to use the internet and do homework. Often, a group of tutors we call "The Long Haired Band" sits at the front desk, smoking, eating, and singing loudly to videos they play on the computer or their guitars. They always sing loudly and with spirit, and I often wonder whether they shouldn't be doing something else...

Finally, around 8:30 most nights, I go home, passing Stan the Sate Man again. I go in the gate and up to my room, get ready for bed, finish up my homework, put my earplugs in my ears, set my alarm, and go to sleep. The whole process begins again. 

This is what I do on an average weekday in Indonesia.

Buka Puasa (Breaking the fast)

We careened through traffic with the other motorbikes as Indonesian faces blurred past, the faces of street vendors, taxi drivers, shopping strangers. A fair share stared as we passed, an Indonesian Muslim woman driving the bike and a blonde American clinging on behind. Somehow, in this city of millions of people, people who look like me are still an anomaly, a proverbial sore thumb. We pass a stadium, a Zoya proudly displaying hijabs in the window, and McDonalds before the street becomes so packed we're forced to pull to the side and park. We've arrived at a pasar takjil, where hundreds of Muslims buy food to break their fast during Ramadhan. 

Muslims in Malang break the fast around 5:30, when the sun sets, so the market is open between 4 and 6. Because of a rainstorm, we're late, so we hop off our motor, find our friends, and hurry into the jammed street in search of food. Vendors line the streets, peddling fried foods of every kind and other merchandise, from clothes to pets. We stop to take pictures with a snowy owl as we buy juice, fried rice, and whole fried catfish. We walk to a temple to eat, sitting among the formidable black statues, as dusk settles over the city. The vendors light the street with neon, and we break our fast with scalding hot catfish and fried noodles. Nearby, children set off fireworks as the call to prayer peals from the nearby mosque, silencing our conversation. We joke in broken Indonesian and English about our plans for the next day and how Sarahann has broken three pairs of her shoes on Indonesian sidewalks. The streets slowly empty.

These moments can't be captured on camera. No art can express how Danny's eyes shined, how Sarahann laughed, how beautiful my tutor looked, how the palm trees waved and the night enveloped us. I could never reproduce how the catfish melted in our mouths and burnt our fingers as we greedily tore them apart in the dark. I lay at the foot of a giant, my head reclining slightly off its pedestal, and saw clouds, dim the the dark, roll over the temple, over the whole city, and into the night. A million hungry people celebrated with me. We spend most of our days in Malang studying, as we ought, but nights like this help me love this city and these people.

Today I'll try to fast with them.

Mount Kawi

Last week, we took a late night trip to a shrine on Mount Kawi. Though located in mainly Muslim Indonesia, this site attracts Chinese pilgrims hoping to attract wealth. A bizarre cultural mash-up resulted. 

We arrived at about 9 pm and climbed the mountain path, which was lined with houses and shops. It was chaos, and the burning incense didn't help our addled brains. 

We passed hundreds of people waiting to pray at the grave site. We were invited into the altar space and asked to kneel at the grave, ahead of the poor people who waited in a separate room for hours. We knelt by the altar filled with incense and flower petals for a moment, whispering to each other in the confusion. Even though we didn't know who this man was or what he did, we were given special treatment. It felt wrong.

While there, we saw a wayang kulit, a traditional Indonesian shadow puppet show, accompanied by female choir and gamelan. We only stayed for two hours of the show, which usually lasts about seven. Because we didn't understand the story, paying attention was difficult, but at the halfway mark, a comedian came onstage and invited several CLS girls onto the stage. It was awkward.

We arrived home at about 2 am. Here's us the next morning:

Child Labor

On Saturday, we paid a visit to an Indonesian snack factory. Whatever I expected, I was not prepared for this:

These children work nine hours a day twisting these strings of dough into snacks and frying them. I tried my hand at it, but a girl about twelve years old got impatient with my unpracticed fingers.

These children don't go to school. In their own words, they work to help their families. They don't seem unhappy or particularly badly treated, though the open fires in the room burned our lungs and eyes. The youngest among them looked at most eight years old.

After use, the frying oil sat in these uncovered pans on the floor to cool.

These two youngsters helped flatten the dough. They moved the pieces from one table, where they were cut into strips with a butcher's knife, to the table where they were rolled into twists.

In front of the final product:

Conditions in this factory weren't awful, though it lacked ventilation and the room filled quickly with cigarette smoke and heat from burning oil. The children smiled at us pleasantly, and none of the workers acted like we were seeing a big secret. 

Many economists theorize periods of cruel industrialization are necessary steps for a modernizing economy. What do you think? Is child labor ever justified? If so, when, and why?

An ode to rice

Rice

When I researched Indonesian food pre-trip, it looked like Indian food. I love Indian food. Tandoori Oven, in Logan, Utah, is possibly my favorite restaurant of all time.

This is no Indian food. Nor is it Tai food.

Alumni also warned me about the amount of rice I'd eat. I shrugged that off. I love rice. I eat rice all the time. There was no way I could get tired of rice that quickly.

In Indonesia, you eat rice with every meal. EVERY meal. Breakfast is leftover dinner with rice. Every meal is rice, tofu, and some kind of boiled vegetable. Sometimes you get meat, sometimes you get an added sauce, but the rice remains. ALWAYS.

Tonight, fed up with rice, I went to McDonalds with my tutors and another student, but I found no refuge there. As a side to your Big Mac, you can have french fries, or you can have rice.

I chose an ice cream cone instead.

Indonesians eat with spoons in their right hands and forks in their left hands. DO NOT touch the fork to your mouth. Use the fork for pushing food onto the spoon, then eat out of the spoon only. This was the first thing my host family taught me. It's a big deal. I don't know why.

For the first week or so, I loved the food. I handled the various tofu concoctions with finesse. Many Indonesian dishes are delicious. I've developed a special liking for rotiboy, bread buns filled with butter and covered in brown sugar.

Other dishes are not as good. For example, my quest for ice cream yesterday brought me to the mall. The food court, hilariously named "Spicy Kitchen," boasts a few ice cream stands. I purchased an ice cream sandwich, which turned out to be a solid block of grainy ice cream on a vaguely fruit-flavored piece of bread. An actual slice of bread.

Yesterday morning, I had my first "I can't eat this" moment. My Ibu served me white rice in a very spicy peanut sauce called pecel with bright yellow tofu chunks and boiled spinach. For breakfast. It was spicy, squishy, and stringy. I ate as much as I could, desperately covering my gag reflex. When my Ibu left the room, after a moment of soul-searching, I scraped the rest into a napkin and threw it away. I didn't want to make myself sick.

As it is, I'm not expecting many solid bowel movements for a while.

Friday Prayer

Last Friday, some CLS students went to the local mosque for Friday prayer. My friend Osamah is Muslim, and a few of us went with him to observe. I took pictures!

Muslims remove their shoes before entering the mosque, or masjid in Indonesian.

They wash their faces, ears, hands, heads, and feet.

These boys did not want to stay still!

This little fellow tried to talk to us in English. He was too cute!