A Weekend in the Village

Good Morning!

As I was walking home today (just now, in fact), a man with a distracted look on his face pulled over on his motorbike. His eyes were on the sky, and I was confused, until he produced a pigeon (a live pigeon) from his pocket, and clutched it in his hand, eyes still searching above. It seemed that what he was looking for wasn't to be found, so he continued on his way, the pigeon perched on the left handlebar, held in place by the hand of the driver. My only guess is that there was some sort of pigeon racing going on (that's a sport here), and they were seeking out the mate. Further along, I spotted a man busily picking up pieces of garbage from the road (Cleaning! How nice! I thought), and then chucking them over the side of the bridge, into the stream below. I suppose it was one of those "out of sight, out of mind" scenarios.

For us YALTers here in Indonesia (and I'm guessing in pretty much every part of the world), these last few weeks are jam packed with plans and activities that those in our host communities have planned for us, with the realization that there's not a lot of time left. For me, one of those plans included a two night trip to Blora, a regency in northeast Central Java, which is comprised of one main town and many villages. My principal from the TK (Bu Yanti) is from one of those villages, and she was eager to show me where she lived. I have been wanting to see a village since I arrived here, and since a visit to Riki in her placement (a village) never happened, I was glad to still get a chance to go.

Bu Yanti and her family picked me up on Friday evening (after my second PPA party, where I was presented with even more gifts and grilled fish, and where I had the chance to try to express my gratitude to them for all they have done for me this year through some gifts and a photo collage that I made of this past year), and we set off on the three and a half hour drive to Blora. We stopped off for dinner along the way, and I discovered a type of washroom that I haven't yet stumbled upon. It's the kind where there is no toilet of any sort, just a slightly sloped floor and a drain. (I opted to seek out a squatty potty.) The roads to Blora were bumpy, to say the least (my head grazed the top of the van on more than one occasion), and judging by the speed we were going, Bu Yanti's husband was eager to get to Blora (the speedometer read 80 km/hr, which led me to wonder whether the speedometer was broken or whether I've grown so used to never exceeding 50 km/hr that 80 seemed downright wreckless), but we finally made it to the home that Bu Yanti grew up in, where her mother still lives.

Wow, was that house ever different than my place here in Semarang. Bu Yanti's mom's place is big and open concept, with basic ceramic flooring, and a straight view up to the roof. The walls that divide the rooms come up about as high as normal walls, but since there is no ceiling, the rooms are all open to each other from about 8 feet and higher (and the ledge that is created provides a perfect runway for lots of rats). The exception to the high ceilings is the bathroom, which is maybe 5 feet high at the highest point. There is a big well in the backyard to haul up water needed to do dishes and other daily tasks. There is electricity, but it cannot support too much going on at once- the TV, fridge, and laptop was more than enough! Chickens scurry around the backyard, and there are lots of different types of fruit trees growing wild along the border of the property. There is a makeshift badminton court set up next to the house, which gets put to good (late night) use. I learned that people plant bamboo around the border of a village to protect it from the winds that sweep across the fields of corn or other crops, so you can tell where there are villages by observing the lines of bamboo planted in fields.

Inside the village house. Bu Yanti's mom hosts lots of get-togethers, hence the three separate sitting areas

I was treated like royalty while I was there: given the biggest bed (outfitted with a matching batik sheet set), taken on an incredible bike ride through the village (where I got a chance to cut rice from the fields and put it into the machine that shakes all the rice grains from the stalks), and ate way too much satay for my own good. I also got to see the inside of a few different village homes, ranging from quite well off right down to the most basic. Often, you can see rice or krupuk drying on large tarps in front of houses during the day. It goes inside at night, and I discovered that in one home, the massive pile of rice in the living room has taken the place of furniture. Forget the couch! Just prop up a pillow against the rice mountain! Another home was a simple two room dwelling, and when i poked my head into the second room, I discovered 10 goats settling in for the night.There were a few visits to other family members while I was there, and I learned that almost all of the extended family is Muslim. This seems to be the case with many of the Christians that I meet here. I just took for granted that the families of most people would be Christian because that's how it is at home. Here, I've met so many Indonesians my age whose parents are Christian, but whose grandparents and extended family are Muslim. I've yet to inquire about the struggles, challenges, and opportunities that arise within families of such diverse religious backgrounds. I'm curious as to how that affects family dynamics and relationships. The weekend provided a lot of opportunity to just rest and relax, and it was really nice to hang out in a completely new place.

Just cutting some rice!

And de-rice-ing the stalks (I'm quite sure that's the official term :p)

We as YALTers often talk about the differences between ways of living here in Java compared to at home. I have a tendency to try to spin as many scenarios as possible and look at it through my Canadian lens, in order to try to better understand it in Indonesian context. For example, while I think that skin whitening powder looks utterly ridiculous on people here, I cannot help but think of the lengths that white North Americans go to to make our skin look darker (and I, being blessed with an extra pasty and untannable complexion, am not excluding myself from this). This is an example of an easily flipped scenario that enables me to understand some parts of Indonesian/Javanese culture a little bit better. I guess it only makes sense that we use our only frame of reference as a foundation for understanding others, but the problem in employing the "This is like in Canada, except..." mentality is that there are countless scenarios that just cannot be mirrored in a Canadian context (ie: goats and rice piles in living rooms), and then I'm stuck with not knowing how to process and understand that new scenario. The result is that I find myself less open minded than I think I would if I were to just accept the culture as it is, without always trying to fit it into my box of understanding. One of the things that I've really struggled with (I feel as though I've used that line more than once this year) is the understanding and appreciation of traditional culture and identity, which includes, but is not limited to, foods, clothing, and interactions with people of varying age and status, and can be applied, in different contexts, to the country as a whole (ie: batik fabrics in their various patterns), to specific islands (ie: the special rice cone that is served at any major celebration or festival), to specific groups of people (ie: ethnic Chinese and ethnic Javanese) and to specific regions (Semarang vs. Salatiga vs. Blora, etc. etc.). For example, this past weekend, my principal was showing me the special "pohon jati", a type of tree grown in her hometown and used for building houses, among other things. She talked so much about that tree that I came to realize that it was of substantial significance to her and others in her community. However, I just could not find it in me to get excited about that tree. I wanted to, I really did, and I felt guilty by the end, that I not only didn't take interest in the tree, but I was actually starting to become a bit frustrated with the tree references. It's a tree! It's just a tree!! But it's not, not to her, and not to those in her community. I have the same reaction (or lack of) when I hear about special foods from different regions. There's the special soto (a type of soup) from Solo, from Semarang, from Jakarta... They all taste the same to me, I absolutely cannot tell them apart. Or a special fruit, grown in this specific regency, similar to another kind of fruit, but not quite the same, like the kelinkin (sp?), similar to a lychee, but different, and different yet again from the longan fruit. They taste the same! Before I left for Blora, my host mom told me all about the satay that Blora is well known for. It's special because they serve it with a kind of soup ("similar to soto, but not soto"...) and the peanut sauce uses more peanuts than sweet soya sauce, as is common in many other places, and unlike other places, you can order a specific quantity in Blora, rather than only in batches of 5, 10, or 20. The satay in Blora was delicious, but I don't know how to appreciate the variation in ingredients and cooking methods like native Indonesians do. People ask me what the traditional foods and clothings and music from Canada are. When I respond with, "There aren't any", people look at me with puzzled expressions. No special foods? No special music? No traditional clothing? How could that be? I then go on to explain that because Canada is so multicultural, traditions are specific to families and small groups of people, rather than to regions or provinces or the country as a whole. Of course there are things like Mennonite traditional foods (which actually don't exist among the Mennonite communities here), or seafood being popular along the East Coast, but it just doesn't compare in the same ways. I did a bit of wikipedia-ing to see what could be said for Canada's cultural and traditional backgrounds, and found a quote about Canadian identity that I thought was kind of interesting:

"The Canadian Identity, as it has come to be known, is as elusive as the Sasquatch and the Ogopogo. It has animated—and frustrated—generations of statesmen, historians, writers, artists, philosophers, and the National Film Board...Canada resists easy definition.

—Andrew Cohen, The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are

I guess it makes sense why a country so steeped in tradition and culturally specific ways of living, is hard for me as a Canadian to identify with. That said, I think I've also been blind to any tradition and culture in my home country, as so often tends to happen when it's just the norm for us. Stepping outside of Canada for a year (and stepping into this traditions-based country) has made me curious about what I don't know about Canadian culture and tradition. I want to look into that a bit when I get home again.

Along that same vein, I've also realized this year, just how easy it is at home, to idealize the whole idea of acceptance and appreciation of other cultures. The idea seems so awesome when I'm flipping through an MCC Global Family calendar or sitting in a PACS class at Grebel or attending a two week World Conference, but living it for over 10 months has made me realize that I've come to a more realistic- more human, I've been told- view of things. I think it's because when I thought about learning about new cultures, I envisioned sitting on someone's front porch, sipping a cup of tea, conversing about our differences and stumbling upon many similarities that would draw us closer together. It seemed so perfect. I failed to consider all of the time that goes on between those front porch discussions. Or the fact that I'd be here alone, and struggling to navigate more than just a few little cultural hurdles (like trying to maintain my own mental health, a task that was much more difficult than I expected this year). Or the fact that I cannot fully communicate or understand everything being communicated. Or the fact that our different backgrounds and mentalities make it a bit more difficult to understand the other perspectives and lifestyles than I originally anticipated. It's made me sad to lose my idealistic views, but I'm betting that that was all part of the big lessons God is trying to teach me this year, and if that's true, then I believe that what I feel is a negative shift in mentality, is actually a lesson that I've been needing to learn, and will in some way be used for good.

I got back from the village on Sunday night, after a long and bumpy ride home (which included a drive past the salt harvesting fields, something I've never seen before), and I took a much needed shower before heading straight to bed! I went to Salatiga on Monday and discovered that Sushant and Priti (MCCers from India who have been serving in Solo) had made the move to Salatiga. Sushant and Priti are an AWESOME young couple with a 1 and a half year old son, and their term was supposed to end in April, but they agreed to stay on for an extra 6 months. With Karen and Major's baby due any day now, and Dan and Jeanne on home leave, it's really helpful to have Sushant and Priti around to help with our "disorientation" activities as well as with the next group of YALTers coming in August. We had lunch together, and checked out their new place, which is right across from Karen and Major's. It was another great Monday in Salatiga. I used Tuesday to pack, and then in the evening, I joined a group of people from the church on a search for a romantic location for the church's annual couple's dinner that will take place on July 26th. It was a really fun group of people, and we had a great time driving around and checking out a few places!

Yesterday was probably the longest on-the-go day of the year so far. It was the day trip with the teachers from TK, and we had planned to go to Jogjakarta for the day. The drive there is 3 hours if the traffic is moderate, which it wasn't, so it ended up taking around 4 hours to get there. We left just after 6AM and arrived at Prambanan (the Hindu temples) around 10:30. It's interesting to observe the dramatic differences between a day trip with my family at home in Canada, and a day trip with people here. Almost invariably, day trips here involve more driving than sightseeing, many stops at many places, and tons and tons and tons of photos. In fact, I think that the photos are the most important part of the endeavour. I'm all for documenting a place, but I find that one or two or five are enough for me. In one day, we ended up squeezing in the trip to Prambanan, a tour of the Kraton, a palace in Jogjakarta (a guided tour, with a guide who was delighted to have a foreginer in his group, and purposefully called me over to speak directly to me throughout the whole tour, which was a real treat for people like me who like to see things at their own pace and not listen to someone else rambling on about the things they're most passionate about, which in this case, was the topic of circumcision), a trip to Parangtritis Beach (where we rode in horse carts along the beach, and ate rujak, a fruit salad with a sweet spicy sauce), and time to shop on Malioboro, the big shopping strip in Jogja. We made it home just shortly after midnight, and I pretty much fell right into bed. My teachers paid for absolutely everything, which was SO generous of them, and while it was a long day, it was a lot of fun to spend time with the teaching staff one last time. They're a really great group!

The Indo equivalent of a gas station and corner store! (They have the Western versions too, but this one is so much more interesting)

At the beach! Notice the lack of swim suits and beach towels. With the exception of popular tourist spots, trips to the beaches here are quite different than trips to the beaches at home.

Before I close this mega post, I'll just give you a quick update on the prayer requests I posted last week:
- My foot is feeling waaaay better! Thanks for the prayers! I'm very grateful :)
-My host mom is also feeling much much better. I don't think we know what the problem is exactly, but she's been taking a medication that seems to be helping a lot
-The young guy from my community has not been heard from again since last week. I was talking to Sushant and Priti about it, and they were really nonchalant about it. They figure that since he's 18, he'll do just fine on his own. That still seems so young to me, but I guess it's another culturally and contextually specific scenario.  Prayer for his safety and success, as well as healing from the hurt of that decision and the way it was executed, is still greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading!
Have a great day!

Love,
Ellery