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.