Family Bonding

As many of you know, I came to Indonesia without much of an idea on what would happen, so I thought I was prepared for the “unexpected”. "Known unknowns," if you will. My trip still manages to defy what few expectations I might have had at the beginning. This weekend added another layer of unpredictability, but also understanding, to my time here. It was random and absurd, but also unforgettably entertaining, and a major step in the right direction for my attitude towards the next three months.

To start, a summary of last week: I was sick from Sunday-Thursday with fevers and the fun that comes with such illness. Being at half-power did not affect me too much, however, because we only had one lesson besides dance for the whole week. It was Bahasa Indonesian, which I loved, despite only learning numbers. Hopefully we can really pick up the language classes with time so I have something to show the embassy when I return to DC, sometime in the future.

Besides the Bahasa class, we went to see the largest four-faced Buddha statue in Indonesia, which was pretty cool, but in the back of what seems like a haphazardly constructed and then semi-abandoned amusement park. It gave me the impression of the abandoned amusement park near Chernobyl, Ukraine. It was a weird place. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera because I thought we were going to a class, which was an unfortunate miscommunication, so I don’t have any pictures of it. If you follow this link, though, you’ll see how I felt about it.

Since the program did not get better, morale sank pretty low as the week progressed.Word spread quickly to the participants in the other cities, as well as The Committee who, as it turns out, also reads this (hi, guys!). As a result, things started to turn around on Friday.

Pak Azis from Ministry of Foreign Affairs flew out here with Grandy, also on The Committee, to talk to us about our concerns, and then worked out a potential deal with Tydif. I talked one-on-one with Mr. Azis about the outcome and, if everybody sticks to their word, things will get much better very quickly. However, I’m very cautiously optimistic, because we’ve received plenty of talk about help without receiving it.

Following our long negotiation, Pak Azis took us to a delicious street dinner (my first full meal all week!) and we hung out in a very pleasant park with a lovely mix of characters, from families to college students. It was a beautiful night and we finally found a place to have fun, meet people and laugh. After my original impression of Surabaya, it turns out there are some nice places to find around here; we just really have to look for them.

Being a very amateur photographer, I couldn't get the right lighting

Befriended some musicians and started a singing circle ( I didn't join)

The park 

The plans for this weekend were to go Malang, a city that’s supposed to be a three hour drive south of Surabaya. Of course, this is in the impossible scenario of “no traffic”. Instead, it took us seven hours to drive down to the house that the arts center had rented for the night. It turned out that we weren’t quite in Malang, but up in a mountain overlooking the city. And we weren’t really going to go to the city. But the alternative for Saturday night was beautiful.

We went to an amusement park.

It was just like my childhood summers in Ocean City, New Jersey. All thirty of us, as a slightly dysfunctional family (12 participants, and Tydif crew), convoyed to the fair and the younger ones (in our 20s though) sprinted for the questionably safe rides while elder members hung back and guarded our bags. There was even a version of the Scrambler, one of the favorites from the OCNJ boardwalk. I hadn’t been on rides like these in years; a wave of nostalgia came with the adrenaline as “The Orbiter” (the Scrambler) whipped us back and forth.

Rode the swings

As seen from the swings ride

After the park closed, we relocated to a bamboo restaurant, built off the side of the mountain along the main road. There I tried warm milk with ginger mixed in. It’s strange, but is very relaxing and soothing, perfect for a midnight drink. Then I tried warm chocolate milk with ginger. This was tasty, but did not pair well with the mie goreng (fried noodles) that I bought.

When everybody had begun to fall asleep, we went to the house, which was painted a solid, intense green, inside and out. Also, we used this house in Indonesian style, where the entire thirty person group shared the four bedrooms. The nine guys all slept in a row on the living room floor while the females sorted themselves upstairs. Again I thought back to my summers in Ocean City when all of the cousins packed into the living room while the adults shared the few beds in the rest of the house.

Early in the morning we woke up and, after some disjointed exercises to get us moving, piled into the convoy and visited a beautiful waterfall. This was the only thing I expected from the weekend, and it did not disappoint.

The Back Yard

Waking up

Waiting

From the waterfall, we spent the afternoon in another theme park, the design of which was baffling. You, the readers, are probably imagining, where one can move freely among different clusters of rides. Instead of that, this park was set up in a linear fashion. One could only find different sets of rides by following a predetermined path. Of course, in each section you could move freely among the rides, but god forbid you tried to go back to the previous set. It doesn’t happen. I cannot find the logic in this. Regardless, my favorite part was eating three orders of sate (sah-tay: grilled, skewered meat, covered in peanut sauce and, of course, spice) outside the park before leaving. Sate is definite proof that a benevolent higher power exists.

 

Heavenly

In the end, all of this made me look back fondly on all of my family adventures, and I’m incredibly thankful to have such a close family at home. Everybody has done so much for me to be able to do ridiculous stuff, like live in Indonesia for three months. In turn, it’s making me better appreciate the family that we’re working on forming out here in Surabaya with our participants and the Tydif studio. Because, when you spend all day every day together, you become a family, with the ups and downs that come with it. Despite a huge language barrier, after this weekend I feel much closer to our Indonesian hosts and can see the effort most of them are putting into parts of cultivating this relationship with us. Embracing this family mentality is the best way to adapt to the difficulties that come along with being in this setting. More importantly, it will help me get a true sense and appreciation of Indonesian culture, fulfilling at least one reason for being on this scholarship.

While everything thus far is in another realm from what I expected, and still very frustrating in certain aspects, the weekend helped me collect myself and reset my thoughts to see things differently. While there’s still a very strong desire to study the traditional arts that I came here for, I had originally overlooked the perfect opportunity right in front of me with the people that host us. Getting close with them will infinitely improve the experience. Even if the arts aspect doesn’t work out, I will receive a profound education through the Tydif crew. With this new outlook, the rest of the program seems much more promising. 

Unity in Traffic

One of the more mundane things in American life has become a major adventure for me here in Indonesia: traffic. There is good reason Americans are advised not to rent cars here, and why my Silat instructor told me hell no I should not ride a bike around. His other comment was that, if I must cross the street, I “better haul ass”.

Vehicles move forward as a constantly shifting mass rather than the relatively organized lines we expect in North America. And they don’t stop for anything but traffic jams. In both Jakarta and Surabaya, there is minimal pedestrian infrastructure, and close to no public transportation. As a result, the only way to get around is by motor vehicle. Most notably: motor bikes. They’re everywhere, swarming like ants through the tightly packed cars, popping out of side streets without warning and piling up in intersections at red lights.

Riding a motor bike does not mean limited cargo space, either. I’ve seen families of five crowded onto one, a portable bakery with questionable balance and a man carrying a bundle of 20 foot bamboo stalks, and still weaving through traffic.

For first-timers, it’s a white-knuckle experience watching drivers and bikes look like they won’t stop themselves from t-boning you or each other.  Lane lines, traffic lights and “one way” signs are mere suggestions around here. While following these behaviors in DC, or really just being in a car, causes accidents, I’ve watched hundred cars enter a traffic circle at once, without braking and work their way through without hitting anybody or anything and dozens of bikes speeding into oncoming traffic without consequence. Good job, Indonesia.

 

Also, these things exist. On busy streets

A more terrifying experience, though, is being a pedestrian. Walking is necessary from time to time, despite the major lack of sidewalks. One just has to walk along the side of the road and pray that the cars provide the proper millimeter of space between you and their mirrors as they buzz by.

Crossing the street makes you religious, if only temporarily. The technique that I’ve noticed to get cars to slow down enough (not stop) for you is to put your hand out in the “stop” gesture and step into the street. Somehow, it does seem to create a bubble that pushes cars around you as you work your way across each lane. While a dependable tactic, it still scares the shit out of me to do it.

In Jakarta, another common form of transportation is the bajai, also known as a rickshaw in India or tuk-tuk in Thailand. They are small, open-air motorized tricycles with scrap-metal shells. Bajais exist at the bottom of the traffic food chain, in all its mayhem. So naturally, a small contingent of us used some to explore the city at the end of our second day.  This ride provided us a very up-close sense of how traffic really flows (or doesn’t) in this mammoth city. I made sure to document the event: (notice around the 20 second mark where we're driving into oncoming traffic, because forget waiting for red lights)

It makes the Rickshaw Run look even more tempting now.

  

Unity in Culture Shock

After our beautiful week in Jakarta and Bogor, the Surabaya group has not fared so well with the beginning of the main portion of our scholarship. We have been plagued by miscommunication, disorganization and general frustration with the city and the arts center hosting us.

A lot of this stems from an Indonesian cultural value that is taking a lot for us to handle. The concept translates more or less to “saving face” and the basic sense of it is that one should not express negativity in public, so that you don’t embarrass yourself by saying something you’d regret later. However, this has led to Indonesians frequently telling us whatever we want to hear, not the truth.

For example, during their presentation last week, the center mentioned we’d have plenty of opportunities to explore the arts that interest us (we don’t; it’s a very non-flexible schedule) and upon arriving said we can talk about any problems we have (unless, it turns out, they’re actual problems that need to be addressed). Slowly, we are learning to adapt and follow suit, smiling and agreeing but then doing our own thing, but it has been a pretty brutal shattering of expectations.

What was particularly disheartening at first, and has reinforced itself over the week, is the fact that, while we came here to learn a variety of arts, including music, batik, dance and Indonesian language, our program consists of four hours of dance every day and all other subjects share a two hour morning slot. Consequently, we only have about one language class per week, and even less for music and batik. However, the arts center insists that there is no room to change this around, which has dampened everybody’s spirits.

 Our first day here was a heritage tour of the city. This started with a visit to the top attraction: the House of Sampoerna, a renowned Indonesian cigarette company famous for putting cloves in its smokes. We toured the museum, learning about how awesome these cigarettes are, and then took a colorful trolley around the city. The stops included a post office (of no cultural value, but with delicious sate outside) and another building that, while beautiful, also is not particularly relevant to the scholarship or to Surabaya. The entire day felt disorganized and thrown together at the last minute, despite the fact that this is the center’s eleventh year working with the program.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we kept our hopes up for the next day (Thursday), where we would have our first music and dance classes. Everybody was ready by 9am and then waited until 10:30 for the drivers to pick us up. One of them had forgotten. At that point, we went to the middle school at which we will have music lessons and received a very warm and excited welcome from a group of students, many of whom had never seen bule (boo-lay: white people) before. Immediately following their presentation, because we were late and had no time for our lesson, we were rushed out of the school to the dance studio for lunch and our first lesson, which didn’t go terribly.

On Friday, we waited for an hour after we were supposed to be ready and then went to a batik house. Seeing such beautiful art raised our spirits and optimism slightly. This was quickly and thoroughly negated after dance practice when we waited for the drivers for two hours, sitting alone in the studio. One of them had forgotten again.

Saturday became the breaking point for many, if not all, of us. Upon arrival the arts center told us there was no way to have Saturday off because they had already planned a tour for us that was impossible to change. It turned out this unalterable program was a visit to one of the infinite supermalls that exist in big Indonesian cities. And then on Saturday morning we waited three hours for the drivers (nobody told them about this). Many of us missed the opportunity to get an extra batik lesson or explore the city because of this staunch inflexibility and disorganization. The fact that this was over bringing us to the mall amplified the anger.

Sunday, finally, was free time. Excited to finally see Surabaya on our own, we set out to the historical district. Nobody else was there. Plenty of cars drove through, but never to stop, except outside another supermall. We did stumble upon a beautiful Buddhist temple in Chinatown. Apart from this temple and these malls, the impression of our first week in Surabaya was that it’s just a large, dirty city without much to offer culturally. Even Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet pages lack many suggestions for things to do.

Needless to say, we don’t have a positive outlook of the city or our arts center. We’re trying to stay optimistic, but that has reached its breaking point.

“Saving face” has been a major part in these letdowns because every day the leaders have been able to mislead us, telling the next day will be different regarding lateness or lessons. Then things just get worse. Also, as we voice our concerns about the program and its organization, they offer compromises, and then retract them at the last minute, saying that things had to change suddenly. It has become obvious that these were never actually concessions, but absent-minded agreements meant to end unpleasant conversations without actually solving problems.

The Indonesian participant in our group has explained how engrained into their culture this is, and how frustrating it is to deal with since it prevents everybody from accomplishing things properly. There appears to be no solution to this either, beyond the brute force of reiterating the issues every day until the other side breaks down and acknowledges them. It is definitely going to take a long time to get used to, and will make the next three months very challenging.

On the bright side, this has greatly increased cohesion throughout the group. We have become a very strong unit in the face of this frustration. Also, we have laughed far more than average due to the absurdity of our first week. It is very cathartic, and it seems at this point that all we can do is laugh. So here’s to the next three months and a challenge like none faced before.

Unity in Diversity

My first week in Indonesia was tiring in the best way. While fighting through jet lag, I spent a week living in a Jakarta hotel with 60-odd other participants from 43 countries. "The Committee" (the body from Ministry of Foreign Affairs who has put this together) had us going nonstop from the beginning. To start, we were thrown together into a six hour Indonesian language orientation on our first day. I had arrived early that morning, so I was really on my game for speaking a foreign language. On the second day, the different arts centers presented the programs they offer for the scholarship in order for us to choose our location for the next three months (spoiler: I have ended up in Surabaya, East Java). Also, my apologies for the lack of pictures. Most of the time it wasn't possible to use my camera. Official pictures are pending, by our wonderful press corps.

Yes, we have a press corps

 The scholarship’s official opening ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs happened on the third day (Friday, 7 June). The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as Director General for Public Diplomacy presided, and we all wore our national costumes. Most other countries’ outfits were beautiful and colorful. The United States, however, doesn’t have anything traditional. Instead, our national dress is a business suit. I almost felt foolish among so many other people who were so proud of their national traditions and, as my brother pointed out when he saw the below picture, I looked like I’d shown up to sell insurance. People from other countries taunted me (lightheartedly) that of course the United States shows up in a business suit. It really is our national dress. It seems that our image abroad is one of political fanaticism and obsessive moneymaking. Thinking about it from outside the country, it really does seem that way. Despite a rich, well preserved history, we don’t seem to have a lot of folk heritage for Americans to participate in and take pride in.

One of these is unlike the rest

Also, the participating nations’ ambassadors had been invited to view the ceremony, which is a major point of pride within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. United States and United Kingdom didn’t show up. Regardless, the ceremony was beautiful, as the Vice Minister delivered remarks about building peaceful interactions among nations through citizens (us), using the national motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” – “Unity in Diversity”. After the ceremony, we took an official photo in front of the Ministry, where it was about 35 degrees (Celsius). Black suits are not comfortable in such weather.

 

Waiting to receive the professional one (those are important people in the front)

We made Indonesian news!

Now that we had been oriented and officially opened as a program, the next day the group took a tour of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia Mini Park), an immense park showcasing the different regions of Indonesia. The focus of this is in the traditional architecture around the country and how it reflects the hundreds of cultures that exist inside this country. Because it is an archipelago, the various ethnicities on the thousands of islands are able maintain their unique identities and traditions. This is why the government adopted “Unity in Diversity” as their motto, because the country can only stay together if they celebrate the variety of traditions that the many tribes provide. A homogeneous society would lead to Indonesia’s downfall. 

For Sunday and Monday, we moved to a hotel in Bogor, a small town about 60km to the south of Jakarta. Despite being so close, it took two and a half hours to drive up there (and four hours to go back). Traffic has merited its own post, for later. The purpose of the Bogor trip was teambuilding, because that is where we found out what groups we would have and what arts centers we would stay in for the next three months. As it turned out, these exercises were very necessary for Surabaya, because most people in the group hadn’t interacted much with each other before, and this is turning out to be a strenuous program (also another post).

Bogor was a beautiful retreat from the noise and perils of Jakarta. The actual town is small, located on a long stretch of busy highway. Apart from beer runs, I didn’t leave the hotel grounds, which are expansive and tranquil; a great place to collect oneself after the whirlwind few days in the capital, and to prepare a group for a sizeable challenge looming for the next three months.

 After lunch on our first day at the hotel we discovered who our groups would be and where we’d go. Our first team exercise was for every group to develop a performance for the rest of the participants the following night.  We kept it short and sweet, and the other guy in the group, from Fiji, helped me with some basic dance steps to avoid completely embarrassing myself, in that specific context at least. The rest of the day was free for practicing routines, swimming or wandering.

Beautiful architecture everywhere

That is the size of my hand. It was terrifying

The second day in Bogor was dedicated almost entirely to teambuilding. It started with cheesy, yet entertaining warm up games, and then we spent a few hours on group challenges. These games really did help the Surabaya group bond and get more accustomed to the idea of spending almost all of our time with each other for the next three months.

In the evening, we had a bonfire in the parking lot, around which we presented our groups’ performances. Some were very impressive, and all were entertaining. There was some Scandinavian folk screaming, Turkish fire twirling Fijian fire eating, and a lot of dancing. We ended our stay in Bogor feeling great about the next phase of the program: our intensive arts studies in our different cities.

This past Tuesday (the day after the bonfire), we were tragically broken apart as a group, where the groups of 10-12 flew off to their respective host cities: Yogyakarta, Bandung, Solo, Bali, Makassar and, for me, Surabaya.

Splitting the 70ish participants was actually a fairly painful process. In this week we had become very tight-knit despite being so large and so diverse. “Unity in Diversity” is actually a very relevant motto to this scholarship group. We make up a ten year range in age, come from dozens of countries and pursue dozens of career fields. These differences helped us bond, because we are actually learning from each other and growing as people by exploring and celebrating what makes us unique as cultures and as people. Reflecting Indonesia’s own need to embrace its diversity to stay together, the group’s differences make it rich and cohesive instead of fragmented, making the scholarship’s goal to increase relations among the participating nations a wild success. 

The Blog is Back

Following an eight month hiatus, I am back to Carpen-Diem.  This is because, in case you haven’t heard, I am now jetting off to Indonesia for the next three months… for free.  The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosts a yearly scholarship to bring representatives from around the world (this year they expanded it to over 50) to study the country’s traditional arts. The scholarship is a kind of diplomatic project, hoping to improve relations with citizens between Indonesia and the participating countries as well as among all of those countries.

They choose one person from every country, and I somehow became the United States representative.

I found this through my Pencak Silat (Indonesian martial arts) class. After the instructors passed along the application and told us to apply, I did so without expecting to get it. Then three weeks ago I received a phone call from the embassy that I’d be flying out to Jakarta. I am now starting thirty six hours of traveling to make my way to Indonesia.

Unlike my preparations for Chile, I had very little time to organize and see everyone. My mom helped me move out of my apartment in DC only four days ago, and now I am back on a train to the District. Tomorrow morning (Monday), I’ll take a 13 hour flight to Dubai, and then 8 more hours to Jakarta, finally arriving late Tuesday night. A lot of flying, but it will be worth it.

Since beginning Silat at AU, I have dreamed of visiting Indonesia. I had planned on flying out to do a month of classes at some undetermined future point, but now I have secured the perfect opportunity to do more for even longer. Of course there is some level of nervousness, especially considering I don’t even know where I will be after the first week, and it would have been nice to have more time with friends and family before disappearing. However, these are the opportunities that one must seize, and do so zealously. The unknown and unexpected are the essence of life. This plays directly into these sentiments.

I am in for a true adventure, wandering into something entirely different from what I’ve experienced before. Also, despite the fact that I am on my way to the program, I still don’t have a clear idea about what I’ll be doing. That’s what’s most exciting about it. My favorite band, Ozomatli, approaches this concept perfectly: Embrace the Chaos. When you do, it will open more doors for you than you knew existed.