Thanks

Thanks to Julie's amazing networking abilities and the genius of Darren Lewis, my google account has been reactivated! I'm in snowy Reno, Nevada for a few more days and then will be flying back to Indonesia. Check back for new posts and a whole heap of photos very soon! Happy holidays!

Hello, um, Security?

I wonder just what it means to be “toughing it out.” As a foreign woman, there seems to be a lot of pressure to maintain your Western independence, to be able to be out and about unaccompanied. I am in awe of my friends who bicycle late at night alone, and persist despite harassment issues. I get to ride my motorbike and zoom past heckles and cat calls. I’ve only had someone follow me once and I think I may have accidentally motorbike flirted (or perhaps that’s extending the benefit of the doubt...).
I’ve written before about the distinct divide between NGO neighborhoods and my own, and often envied their more care free communities. Alternatively, those neighborhoods make for profitable pockets of foreigners and much of the crime and harassment I hear about happens there. I was told today there’s a specific street where the majority of foreigner-targeted theft occurs. It’s a block from the military base. The thief can run back to the safety of the compound if he gets caught.
I really have enjoyed having a women’s house this year. In contrast to my predominately male house last year, it’s well decorated, mostly clean, and we employ a gardener. We can have women friends over and with that big wall in the back, even lounge in a tank top. But I still get scared at night when those branches are rustling. I can’t help thinking against all my Western-born independence that I wish there was a man around the house. Maybe then the neighbors would stop taking our mangos.

A Simple Update

I haven’t written for quite sometime, though this is not for want of activity. Things here are as busy as ever. On March 16th, Sarah and I opened a small English library above our office space where we loan out magazines, books, and DVDs with the idea that the library would become a resource center and center for activity. In less than a month a lot has happened. We recently picked five student interns who are all eager and enthusiastic in helping us organize the space and student activities. Because it has been so popular, we are already moving to a larger space. We’ll also be hosting a discussion table where other foreigners lead discussions with students on a topic of their choice. Our first such event will be on Monday, April 27th and will about marriage in the past and present here and in the west. It’s a topic many students are interested and I personally am really looking forward to it. Jesse will also be “digitizing” the library with a computer the Language Center is letting us have. Things are really going well with the space and I’m eager to see all the wonderful ideas of our interns materialize in the coming months.
Since I know I never really reported on my travels, here’s a quick summary of my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur. Since this was the third short stay Carlos and I have had there, things have become much easier. KL is already a very easy city to navigate, so we were really free to just get along with business and have a good time. We stayed in a different part of town (last time we stayed in raucous and touristy Chinatown) called Bukti Bintang which is, yes, still touristy, but with a different less party-like scene. We stayed in the Atapsana guesthouse with was really a wonderful space. The entire guesthouse was filled with Ikea furniture and Malaysian decorations which made it feel like the apartment of an American traveler. It was really quiet but also surrounded by Middle-Eastern, Arabic, and European food which was all fantastic. We spent a good deal of time in embassies, which we are now incredibly adept at finding. Carlos got a new Indonesian visa while I got my China visa (I’m going at the end of June, yay!). Mostly, we spent our time enjoying the luxuries of a big city: shopping malls, movie theaters, international food, and a Malaysian Philharmonic. This last attraction was something I had really been looking forward to. The Malaysian Philharmonic is actually located on the second floor of the famous Petronas Towers and demands all the respect a pair of glittering skyscrapers assume. The dresscode for men was lounge suit or long-sleeved batik and for women seemed to be anything from smart suit to ballgown. Since Carlos owned neither of his options, he had to borrow both shoes and coat from the ushers. While we though this to be funny enough, the long line of both westerners and locals returning borrowed clothing was also qutie a site.
The concert itself was really pretty good (they played two Symphonies by Hadyn and one by another composer), but almost equally interesting was the makeup of the orchestra itself. It was really quite striking to see nearly all white faces in an orchestra in the heart of Malaysia. The conductor is from Amsterdam as well as a good deal of the musicians. There were also several guest Russian musicians for this particular concert. All-in-all a really nice night.
So here I am back in Aceh with two months left till summer. Things here are changing all the time and in two months I expect them to be quite different once again. It seems like a strange deadline though, sixty days for me to learn enough about Aceh (culture and language) to be able to teach next year’s fellows, complete semester activities, be able to play my instrument for seven minutes straight (we’re planning a concert), figure out travel plans, and hopefully get an art show up and running. Phew. That’s a lot to accomplish when what I’m really enjoying in the new season’s heat is sitting here my sugary glass of iced-tea.

Opening Night

I approximate that on some days food consumes up to 80% of my daily thoughts. I not so secretly harbor a dream of one day owning my own bed and breakfast with gardens and a bakery. This weekend, I was able to combine all of my daydreams in an incredible marathon of cooking. For Sarah’s birthday ten of us decided to spend the weekend celebrating at Casa Nemo’s- the guesthouse where Carlos just started helping. Though only two weeks into the job, we thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try out his new menu with an audience trustworthy for dependable feedback. As if putting together a gourmet menu isn’t hard enough, try it in a new country with the idea of local cooking and a staff that speaks little of your language and you speak even less of theirs. Despite all of this, Carlos put together a fantastic menu (which I will list soon) and two days before the unveiling had yet to try than more than one dish. To my gentle suggestions he insisted that he “knows what they taste like in his head.” And, of course, he was absolutely correct. He and I were in the kitchen almost the entire three days of the trip, with one night of sleep the first night and a few more the next two. In that time, we made bread, several cakes, and prepped for his great new menu. I chopped lots of things, helped assemble, and baked a few cakes, but the magic was all Carlos’. I knew he was amazing in a kitchen, but watching him in action, handling three hot pans and plate dishes simultaneously, I couldn’t help but be even more impressed. Since this was just the first run of the menu – which everyone loved- things are bound to get better and better. Carlos plans to keep evolving the menu to make it as local as possible and include innovations from both himself and the other cook Ibu Ida.
Even though it was an incredible amount of work, we had a really good time and even found some moments to celebrate along with our friends. The beach at Casa Nemo’s is truly beautiful and the few minutes we had in the ocean were incredibly refreshing. We even managed to have a small bonfire on Sarah’s birthday night. All in all, congratulations to Carlos for starting something truly wonderful.

Jackpot

I’ve finally found my way to traditional culture in Aceh, and then some. Not only am I learning surunikali from my teacher, but he introduces me into these new places where it seems everyone’s into the arts and I must have been blind not to have seen, heard, or felt it everywhere. I will say it’s been difficult to find contemporary movements (outside of the awful rock music that copies America’s embarrassing Top 10’s), but lately I’ve been attending practices where all presuppositions and ill-conceived cultural biases are dispelled in the wake of focused teenage women. If I had been dancing in front of five college-aged musicians my concentration would be no match for my huge crushes. But, instead, here were young women-most veiled but some not due to the heat- working intensely on an excellent blend of contemporary and traditional dance. But not only that, the five musicians – surrounded by twice as many instruments- were happily creating the powerful and largely percussive accompaniment. These were anything but separate happenings. At moments musicians would stop everything to alter a section and vice versa, but everyone somehow knew if things were right with the music or the dance and how they fit together. Hit the drum like this, hold that move longer – calls could be made from anyone, despite age or position until everything blended together. It was an amazing process of creation. I’ve seen this once before in Java, where we created a melody while dancers simultaneously created a dance. A co-authored performance. I have never seen this in America – though no doubt it exists- so for me, coming from the world of music chosen for a dance, and dances made to pre-composed music, this is exciting and extraordinary, the result strong and beautiful. Despite the hard work and some apparent frustrations, all that was left by the end were happy, tired faces, and toddlers dancing giddily in the hallway.

The New Neighbors...

Today we were invited to a cultural performance exchange put on by the University for a group of visiting Koreans. Most of the visitors were here for a week-long program, culminating in several dance and musical performances. There were also a couple traditional Acehnese dances with musical accompaniment- this was the first time I’d gotten to see these things in person and they were wonderful. There was one particularly amazing performance, though, by a Tae-kwon do champion. He performed what I had only before seen in movies. He broke tiles with his hand, kicked cups full of candy off the heads of his students, and leaped over several students to kick something or other perched high atop another head. All this to cheers of admiration by the audience of foreigners and Indonesians alike. This is our new neighbor (well, relatively close by) who moved here a week ago with his wife, two sons, and daughter. It was a pretty amazing introduction to this new family. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the future – not just in sparring attire.
Incidentally, Sarah, Jesse and I were also introduced during speeches as the three visiting Americans who are also participating in cultural exchange. This speech was given by the assistant Rector of the University who has been a huge help recently in aiding us to find what we’ve been looking for at UnSyiah (which for me has been a recent connection to the arts department). His speech highlighted the importance of such exchanges and how we as a community should work to make these things more widely accessible (he lamented the fact that this particular performance was held in a tiny auditorium and little publicized). Hopefully, more will happen in the future. It was nice to hear a University spokesperson support, essentially, our purpose here as Shansi fellows when often that particular purpose is lost in a realm of unsolicited classes for which we are not always the most qualified.
As for the Acehnese performances, they were pretty amazing. I’ve just started learning how to play the Surunikali which is somewhere between an oboe and a clarinet. I’ve had one class so far (and will have my second today) where we spent nearly three hours working on circular breathing (where you play continuously, breathing in through your nose while breathing out through your mouth into the instrument). Today I got to see my teacher perform with three drum players as accompaniment for a women’s dance performance. And, sure enough, he played continuously the entire performance. The dancers looked like painted versions of the women I see everyday. There is a history behind all of the current Acehnese culture and these performances are the evidence. I hope to find out more about this past very soon.

Resolve.

I’m back, laden from travels, not with memorabilia and knick-knacks, but dirty clothes and many resolutions. I know, I haven’t even talked about my trip yet (by the way, we went to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Siem Reap), but I will, and right now these current thoughts are more important to get to you, if you’re still reading and checking for updates. Along these lines, one of my vows is to write at least biweekly given I am in Aceh, and hopefully even if I’m not. That said, I returned to Banda Aceh last night (Sunday) and am now sitting on my comfortable couch looking out at my partially demolished backyard. It’s full of ridiculously large pieces of wood, a ten-foot tree trunk, and rubbish. All this fenced in by our castle wall. Luckily, both Kristi and I have returned from our trip with new domestic resolve and a great urge to landscape. Hopefully we’ll be using those strewn about pieces to create a beautiful garden. And, by the time any of you visit, that cement wall will be cheerily painted and adorned in passion fruit vines. Also luckily, the bulbs I planted right before leaving have sprouted up a good foot and a half, so at least some things have been growing. We’ve got quite a bit of work to do, but it’s all exciting.

But back to those resolutions. Next to me, I have the Oberlin Shansi annual report in which there are descriptions from all my senior fellows all around Asia telling of their experiences and feelings of connectedness within their respective communities. While I am happy for them and look forward to a similar feeling, I am a bit sad recognizing how I am not yet at that point. Every two months since leaving the USA, my life has changed pretty drastically. I look forward to this next semester –which has little more than an occasional three-day weekend holiday- as a chance to really and truly set down roots. I came here for two years to give myself a chance to understand a new community and to be a part of it. And while in any context the one semester I’ve been here would never be enough to truly feel connected, I am still impatient for that moment to arrive. I hope to find my niche this semester-whether it’s with the ladies at a new aerobics class I tried with Sarah or with a music group I hope to join soon, or maybe I’ll finally find those windsurfers that have disappeared with the onset of the rainy season. Either way, I will be improving my Bahasa Indonesia and working much harder on many aspects of my social and work life. More about my trip and Aceh to come very very soon.

One Moat Please

I wrote about the wonderful mornings I have with my oatmeal, coffee and newspaper, looking out into my jungly backyard, the early sunlight mingling with tropical bird songs. Today, though, the sun is a bit dimmer, and I hear a howling cat. There are still palm fronds but their trunks and fruit are hiding behind the newly built eight foot wall in our yard. The lush Tapioca trees have been trimmed into stick figures. They look like models in front of grey cement backdrops. Though this wall is meant to keep the unwanted men out, there are five in the yard now. We’ve had perhaps one week without workers in our yard the entire time I’ve been here. While today we still close the blinds and wear modest clothing in the house, hopefully, eventually, all this work will mean a bit of privacy. My worry, though, is that by building such an exceptionally tall wall we do more than keep the out the unwanted. There have been many discussions about how a typical Acehnese neighborhood is extremely close and beyond friendly. How can we hope to build a sense of community with a wall only a dragon can climb? Fortunately, the wall is only in the back and part of one side of the house. The rest of the sides and the front have a low iron fence. I believe the idea was to keep out the back neighbors because of some rather unfortunate instances last year. It’s still quite strange though. For me, this wall says we have something to hide more than it offers protection. To ebb the walled in fortress sense, we plan to paint some murals once the cement has dried. Hopefully there will be enough passion fruit vines and painting to make it feel a bit more like a secret garden than locked away Repunzel.