Merry Christmas. Running water has temporarily run out, so we’re all washing dishes with, and wiping our asses with, and drinking, boiled rainwater, or, you know, we would be, except it hasn’t rained for a week. Because of this, Nick has reinfected himself with the same stomach virus two or three times, whereas I remain inexplicably immune. I would really like to take a break from the squalidity for awhile, though. Is squalidity a word? I am heavily feeling my American privilege right now. The fact that I can even consider taking a break. Even though it will stay that – just considering – it somehow sets me apart.
Christmas here is a little like Halloween in that everyone cooks a feast and then waits for everyone in the neighborhood to come visiting and partake of the feast. Wade says that the reason behind that is that any of the visitors could be the Messiah. And who could live with themselves if they accidentally refused food to the Messiah? Unfortunately, bules can’t be the Messiah, I guess, because even though our household, too, cooked a feast, we just get LOOKED AT all weird when we show up at other people’s houses. This, plus the fact that all the stores are closed for Christmas, plus the fact that there’s no water, means that we’ll pretty much starve all day, except for the gratuitous amounts of chocolate my parents sent in their Christmas packages. Isn’t Papua great? Isn’t Christmas great?
I’m depressed here lately. I don’t know if you can tell, because I focus endlessly on minutae instead of whining about it (thankfully). But I am. I wish my culture shock would follow the approved trajectory outlined in my helpful ‘Dealing With Culture Shock’ pamphlet, but my culture shock apparently doesn’t read pamphlets, because it’s marching to the beat of its own depressed little drummer. According to the pamphlet, I should have had a honeymoon period for the first month or so, then about three months of frustrating assimilation paired with sleepless nights and homesick thoughts; then, at five months, begin to feel at home in the new culture. In truth, I had a honeymoon period during the second month only, during which I happily drew all the nature around me, took photos of it, chattered away in broken Indonesian to any curious local who approached me, obviously creepy or no, and spent lots of free time coming up with fun, complicated games for my classes. The first month was spent getting pissed off about showering with cold water from a bucket and the like, and the third and fourth month were spent in a foggy state of apathy. Now, in the fifth month, I’m just sick of everything. The next person who tries to get my attention with a ‘Sssst!’ through their lips, like I’m an animal, is getting punched in the face. The next person who tries to touch my arm while we’re both riding motorcycles really fast by riding up dangerously close to me and yelling ‘BULEBULEBULEBULE’ is going to get ridden off the road, and then punched in the face.
Louise used to tell me stories about how she bloodied people’s noses, and I would be amazed at how anyone could take that much offense at what was obviously harmless, but now I understand perfectly. I am so on edge that I get filled with rage now when I think of how uncreative Indonesians are with their cooking, even, or when I see someone throwing their soda cans and peanut bags into the ocean, like everyone does all the time, or when I rent a movie and notice that half the scenes have been censored. If I try and comfort myself by eating, my choices are some form of rice or some form of noodles with bitter, tough spinach and some overcooked fish, all generously soaked in MSG no matter how many times I tell the person to tidak pakai vetsin. I mean, please. MSG COSTS YOU MONEY TO BUY, AND FOOD WITHOUT MSG DOESN’T COST LESS TO SELL. IF SOMEONE SPECIFICALLY DOESN’T WANT IT, YOU SAVE MONEY BY NOT PUTTING IT IN. I’m so lucky my Indonesian is still terrible. If I could say everything that I wanted to say, someone would have shot me by now.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Awards to Things I Brought In My Suitcase
Most Useful:
Laptop Computer, but that’s cheating, I think, so A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Most Ridiculous:
Warm fuzzy slippers
Most Weather-Appropriate; Unfortunately, Also Most Culturally Inappropriate:
A red bikini
Most Initially Useful, But Eventually Gave Me a Painful Esophageal Infection:
8 bottles of Doxycycline malaria-preventive pills
Most Unethical:
A DVD set of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! that I forgot to return to my friend Molly before I left the States
Most Curious to the Locals:
Contact lenses
Most Regrettable:
A relatively expensive, heavy speaker system that cost me $50 in overweight baggage costs and then promptly fried the second I plugged it into the wall here, despite the presence of the appropriate voltage converter
Most Reminiscent of Home:
Blueberry body lotion, or a necklace of dried roses
Thing I Most Wish I Had Brought, However Unexpected This May Sound:
100 packets of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Mix
December 21, 2006
All my interactions with people here are accompanied, always uncomfortably, by The Smile. You know the one. It’s the fog of nonthreateningness that you wear when you know that very very few actual words are getting through. The Smile persists through every kind of encounter; with fruit vendor dudes, with chicken saté dudes, with post office dudes, with random dudes on the street who want to have conversations about where I live, etc.
The Smile is distinct from the tight-lipped half-smirk that Americans give to each other when two strangers or remote acquaintances pass each other in a place where it would be considered rude not to look up. Here we call this the bulesmile because nobody uses it except white people. I’ve seen a few white people here, and they all do it. Look up from the ground, twist the lips, look back at the ground. Like ‘I see you, and I don’t want to get into anything with you, goodbye.’
This is not at all like The Smile. The Smile is broad and toothy and involves the entire face. It puts a laugh in the voice of the person using it. The doggedness of it made itself clear to me today when I wore it all through the following encounter with the guy who works in the package room in the post office. I was picking up a package sent to me by my dad. The postal service had failed to actually deliver it, like always. Instead they hoard it in the far reaches of the post office (I’m writing it in English for obvious reasons, but it was all in Indonesian):
Post Office Guy (smiling): Okay, that’ll be Rp.10,000.
Me (smiling, pointing at the postage mark, which reads $34.15): Paid already.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Yes, but you must pay 10,000 to pick it up.
Me (smiling): No.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Yes.
Me (smiling): The people at EF told me I shouldn’t have to pay.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Oh yes, yes, of course, that’s okay. Goodbye, Merry Christmas.
Me (smiling): Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too.
Like, that’s the conversational equivalent of smiling brightly, laughing a tinkling laugh, and saying ‘Hey, you’re trying to extort money from me because I’m a bule and ostensibly don’t know better, and I totally see right through you! Tee hee! And now that you know I speak Indonesian and have actual knowledge, you’re trying to pretend that you never tried to extort it in the first place! Ha ha ha! You’re an asshole!’
But even if I could say all of that in Indonesian, which I can’t (the closest I can come would come out something like ‘You person not good’) I wouldn’t, because I don’t want to make him angry. If I make him angry, he can pretend my packages never arrived in the first place, or steal them, or do any number of things I don’t want him to do.
Another conversation inappropriately permeated with The Smile:
Guy Who’s Bothering Me While I’m Trying To Write A Song On The Beach (smiling): Do you like Indonesian men?
Me (smiling): All individual men are different.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling): Can I come to your house?
Me (smiling): No. Definitely not.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling): Am I disturbing you by sitting next to you?
Me (smiling): Yes.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling, continuing to sit next to me): Oh, okay.
What’s especially perverse about it is that it’s the exact same Smile I use when I’m having pleasant conversations with nice people (contrary to what my blog may have you believe, these people do exist):
Woman in the Back of a Taxi (smiling): Hey, hey! You dropped your motorcycle helmet out the window!
Me (smiling, relieved because I would have lost my helmet): Thank you SO much!
or
Fruit Vendor Dude (smiling): You buy rambutan so often, today you get half free.
Me (smiling): That’s nice of you!
FVD (smiling): You must watch out for that man – he is trying to touch your butt.
Me (smiling): Thank you, I will.
So it’s an indiscriminate Smile, which makes it even stranger. By looking at me, you would never be able to tell what kind of conversation I’m having, or how I feel about the person I’m having it with.
The Smile is also often accompanied by the Awkward Southeast Asian Half-Bow of Acquiescence, but we won’t get into that. Let’s just leave it at the fact that it’s mostly used for everything except acquiescing.
Most Useful:
Laptop Computer, but that’s cheating, I think, so A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Most Ridiculous:
Warm fuzzy slippers
Most Weather-Appropriate; Unfortunately, Also Most Culturally Inappropriate:
A red bikini
Most Initially Useful, But Eventually Gave Me a Painful Esophageal Infection:
8 bottles of Doxycycline malaria-preventive pills
Most Unethical:
A DVD set of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! that I forgot to return to my friend Molly before I left the States
Most Curious to the Locals:
Contact lenses
Most Regrettable:
A relatively expensive, heavy speaker system that cost me $50 in overweight baggage costs and then promptly fried the second I plugged it into the wall here, despite the presence of the appropriate voltage converter
Most Reminiscent of Home:
Blueberry body lotion, or a necklace of dried roses
Thing I Most Wish I Had Brought, However Unexpected This May Sound:
100 packets of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Mix
December 21, 2006
All my interactions with people here are accompanied, always uncomfortably, by The Smile. You know the one. It’s the fog of nonthreateningness that you wear when you know that very very few actual words are getting through. The Smile persists through every kind of encounter; with fruit vendor dudes, with chicken saté dudes, with post office dudes, with random dudes on the street who want to have conversations about where I live, etc.
The Smile is distinct from the tight-lipped half-smirk that Americans give to each other when two strangers or remote acquaintances pass each other in a place where it would be considered rude not to look up. Here we call this the bulesmile because nobody uses it except white people. I’ve seen a few white people here, and they all do it. Look up from the ground, twist the lips, look back at the ground. Like ‘I see you, and I don’t want to get into anything with you, goodbye.’
This is not at all like The Smile. The Smile is broad and toothy and involves the entire face. It puts a laugh in the voice of the person using it. The doggedness of it made itself clear to me today when I wore it all through the following encounter with the guy who works in the package room in the post office. I was picking up a package sent to me by my dad. The postal service had failed to actually deliver it, like always. Instead they hoard it in the far reaches of the post office (I’m writing it in English for obvious reasons, but it was all in Indonesian):
Post Office Guy (smiling): Okay, that’ll be Rp.10,000.
Me (smiling, pointing at the postage mark, which reads $34.15): Paid already.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Yes, but you must pay 10,000 to pick it up.
Me (smiling): No.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Yes.
Me (smiling): The people at EF told me I shouldn’t have to pay.
Post Office Guy (smiling): Oh yes, yes, of course, that’s okay. Goodbye, Merry Christmas.
Me (smiling): Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too.
Like, that’s the conversational equivalent of smiling brightly, laughing a tinkling laugh, and saying ‘Hey, you’re trying to extort money from me because I’m a bule and ostensibly don’t know better, and I totally see right through you! Tee hee! And now that you know I speak Indonesian and have actual knowledge, you’re trying to pretend that you never tried to extort it in the first place! Ha ha ha! You’re an asshole!’
But even if I could say all of that in Indonesian, which I can’t (the closest I can come would come out something like ‘You person not good’) I wouldn’t, because I don’t want to make him angry. If I make him angry, he can pretend my packages never arrived in the first place, or steal them, or do any number of things I don’t want him to do.
Another conversation inappropriately permeated with The Smile:
Guy Who’s Bothering Me While I’m Trying To Write A Song On The Beach (smiling): Do you like Indonesian men?
Me (smiling): All individual men are different.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling): Can I come to your house?
Me (smiling): No. Definitely not.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling): Am I disturbing you by sitting next to you?
Me (smiling): Yes.
GWBMWITTWASOTB (smiling, continuing to sit next to me): Oh, okay.
What’s especially perverse about it is that it’s the exact same Smile I use when I’m having pleasant conversations with nice people (contrary to what my blog may have you believe, these people do exist):
Woman in the Back of a Taxi (smiling): Hey, hey! You dropped your motorcycle helmet out the window!
Me (smiling, relieved because I would have lost my helmet): Thank you SO much!
or
Fruit Vendor Dude (smiling): You buy rambutan so often, today you get half free.
Me (smiling): That’s nice of you!
FVD (smiling): You must watch out for that man – he is trying to touch your butt.
Me (smiling): Thank you, I will.
So it’s an indiscriminate Smile, which makes it even stranger. By looking at me, you would never be able to tell what kind of conversation I’m having, or how I feel about the person I’m having it with.
The Smile is also often accompanied by the Awkward Southeast Asian Half-Bow of Acquiescence, but we won’t get into that. Let’s just leave it at the fact that it’s mostly used for everything except acquiescing.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Apologies and such for the long absence; they were doing porn-based repair at the internet café for a few weeks, or at least that’s what I gathered from the repeated denials of the front desk guy that they were open even though there were 6 guys inside downloading porn.
(Oh, and incidentally, who keeps posting comments and then deleting them? That drives me insane. Like, I’m ‘blessed’ with an overactive imagination that keeps conjuring up images of lovelorn secret admirers when the truth is probably closer to people getting drunk and typing rambling comments which they delete the next morning. Either way, I need to know.)
The entries I had had written follow:
Thursday, December 14
Things are looking up. Whenever I use that idiom after four months of teaching English I picture all the animate and inanimate components of the improved situation literally looking up. Scanning the sky. Getting a suntan. Desks, students, cheesy posters, the EF building in general. Although most of it, actually, is still looking down, the small part of it that I mean is that I was looking at the teachers’ schedule the other day and realized how insanely better my schedule is than everyone else’s. Better for me, anyway… meaning that when everyone else is teaching loud obnoxious misbehaving children, I tend to be teaching Pre-Advanced Level 10 adults. Loud obnoxious children still figure significantly into my schedule – there’s really no avoiding it – but definitely not to the degree that they figure into everyone else’s. I salute you, fate. I salute you, Director of Studies.
Friday, December 8
I’m struck sometimes by how inaccurate of a portrayal of everyday everydays this blog, or any blog, is. I wonder if it’s possible to depict an atmosphere, a general feeling, in words. I’m struck by inconsequential things too, though - I’m struck by the location of my commas, and not in a complimentary way – so don’t attach too much gravity to it or anything.
How many times must I impress upon cyberspace the lingering odor of durian in the open market before I feel vindicated? Is there an upper limit to the number of entries in which I can mention the many ways in which being a bule sucks? How about the hundreds of beautiful beaches? Does it ever end? It’s repetitive because my life here is repetitive. Remember that and you will have something of a grasp on what my entries are failing to communicate.
To attempt not to whine in the midst of something crushing is fruitless. The last sentence I said aloud was ‘Stay the hell out of the Mody chocolate paste – I mean it.’ Before you ask, it’s basically icing in a glass mug, but it’s the cheapest form of chocolate there is.
The enormity sometimes hits me right around the times when I’m giving a Papuan Catholic bishop (the same one who was present when I had to explain was a cock was) his final speaking test, and the question is on fears and phobias, and I’m expecting spiders, I’m expecting cockroaches or maybe crocodiles, but I get the Indonesian Army; I get that he and other local religious leaders – Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims – are traveling to Yogyakarta to meet with the Indonesian President about the problem of violent clashes between the military and the people. I ask a sixteen-year-old girl about a stressful day in her life expecting too much homework or a breakup with a boyfriend, and instead I get that her mother sold her pet dog to people who made it into dog stew for a feast, and they killed it in her living room where she could hear its screams.
There are these times, where I’m captivated and saddened, and I think it will last forever. I think it will last forever until I step out into the evening heat of the marketplace and insert the hum of complaints about being treated like a celebrity here. Actually, don’t. There’s nothing I can say after the image of the girl’s pet dog being killed for stew that won’t sound, that won’t BE, trite.
Wednesday, December 6
There’s one pitted lychee on each finger. One finger on each letterkey. Typing still feels alien to me. When I look at my hands, I remember why. If I squint right they look like a frog’s, the finger pads splayed and glistening.
I’m writing this for you, so pay attention.
This morning there was a thin beaded mask of sweat on every surface that I touched. A band around my upper lip and the back of my neck like a slipped bandanna. I was dreaming about stretching out on my classroom floor. Seven-year-olds shuffled flash-cards by my feet, chorusing mixed vocabulary and screams. Sun-browned teenagers with ankle-sock tans furrowed their brows and questioned me telepathically about relative clauses. They whispered to each other and their faces faded when I tried approaching. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it unequivocally here or what, but I kind of hate my job.
Coasting on perfectly placed dialogues with strangers, or between strangers, sends sparks to a halt when everything is in Indonesian. I’m clinging to the tail of intonation now. The sun on the tile when I unstick one eyelid. My school dream this morning was centered entirely within a cubist painting. Waking up, my feet and their shadows rippled living rectangles onto the mattress. Eight o’clock. His grandpa’s pocket watch has sand in the winding mechanism. Waking up, capsizing to ‘Fuck!’s.
At this rate, will anyone be able to understand me when I return?
This exchange slid softly into my head:
Someone says something perfect.
“Be careful of saying that… you’re going to make me fall in love with you.”
Someone says something perfect.
She laughs, and behind her laugh is something starting, finally, to distill.
Someone. Says. Something. Perfect. Deliberately.
Has this ever happened to anyone? I hope so.
Thursday, November 30
Here is the true face of everyday Jayapura: me about to stuff my face with rambutan. I’m having second thoughts about moving back to the states, knowing that they don’t have rambutan – I mean, what other fruit looks like a pod alien and tastes like a cross between a grape and a coconut?! You tell me.
Strange things keep happening. If this wants to become the wacky cultural anecdotes blog, so be it. It’s itching to do so, and I don’t have the energy to try and derail it, at least not right now.
We bought a box of green tea awhile ago, and when we got home and opened it, there was an rp. 5000 bill folded up inside – exactly the cost of the tea. Apparently when Indonesian advertisements claim that if you buy their product you might get a rebate, they mean that there is actually hard cash inside some of their products. No clipping coupons or sending in a self-addressed stamped envelope – just money, already put inside the product. I find this amazing. Since then, I have found empty decorated Idul Fitri envelopes inside my buckets of Sari Kelapa, stickers buried in my palm sugar, a plastic tiger in my oatmeal, and a 500 coin wrapped in Christmas paper in my motorcycle helmet.
There’s also this thing here among 10-13 year old boys where, if there’s a fat boy in the class, every other boy will try to be his partner or otherwise sit near him. Can you guess why? It’s so they can climb all over him and intermittently spank him. I have a class with three fat boys (nearly unheard of in Jayapura) and it’s… really awkward to teach a class when all the boys are spanking each other. I think they actually just see fat boys as jungle gyms, because when they’re partners for group work, they don’t sit next to each other – the fat boy lounges on his stomach and the skinny boy lounges too - on top of the fat boy. Double decker. This makes the fat boys very, very popular and sought after.
Nick’s parents’ Christmas package arrived today, nearly a month early. It smells of spiced tea. There isn’t a ‘Do Not Open Until Christmas’ sign anywhere on it, but there may as well be for all the fuss Nick is making about not opening it until Christmas. From the looks of it (and by ‘from the looks of it’ I mean the ever-increasing greedy-looking trails of ants) there are pfeffernous cookies somewhere hidden inside. Over Christmas we might be on Biak. It will be hot. This will be strange. It’s already strange. Jayapura has badly dubbed versions of Christmas songs playing all over town, with, like… MIDI keyboard instrumentation and techno backbeats, and they’re either in Indonesian, in which case the words don’t fit to the song because Indonesian hardly uses any words to convey the same meaning that English would need at least a paragraph for (Indonesians could have written that sentence better), or else they’re in English, with an accent that renders the lyrics indecipherable.
Speaking of. One of my punishments for late students (it’s sort of universal EF punishment, actually) is having them sing a song in front of everybody. It’s the only way to kind of keep people from being late, because this is a culture of extreme lateness – two hours or more. Anyway, someone in Level 2 was late recently. Level 2, even though their English is necessarily pretty bad, is one of my favorite classes because they’re essentially self-governing. Virtually all of them really want to learn, so they tolerate no disobedience from their peers. If someone starts speaking Indonesian, I don’t even have the chance to open my mouth (and anyway, usually in a level this low I let them speak Indonesian) before there’s a chorus of ‘Eyyyyyy, speak Inglees!’ and indignant looks and, often, reprimanding slaps. And if anyone is late, the entire class takes up a chant: ‘Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Come on, sing!’ If the person hesitates, the class dissolves into: ‘Eyy, ma’am say!’ and ‘Hurry upppp!’ and ‘Time is finissed, do it!’ The last time this happened, the late girl, a talkative 14-year-old Muslim in a veil, immediately broke out into “My humps, my humps, my humps! My lovely lady lumps!” – and the entire first verse - to a round of genuine applause and ‘Her English so goooood’s echoing around the room.
(Oh, and incidentally, who keeps posting comments and then deleting them? That drives me insane. Like, I’m ‘blessed’ with an overactive imagination that keeps conjuring up images of lovelorn secret admirers when the truth is probably closer to people getting drunk and typing rambling comments which they delete the next morning. Either way, I need to know.)
The entries I had had written follow:
Thursday, December 14
Things are looking up. Whenever I use that idiom after four months of teaching English I picture all the animate and inanimate components of the improved situation literally looking up. Scanning the sky. Getting a suntan. Desks, students, cheesy posters, the EF building in general. Although most of it, actually, is still looking down, the small part of it that I mean is that I was looking at the teachers’ schedule the other day and realized how insanely better my schedule is than everyone else’s. Better for me, anyway… meaning that when everyone else is teaching loud obnoxious misbehaving children, I tend to be teaching Pre-Advanced Level 10 adults. Loud obnoxious children still figure significantly into my schedule – there’s really no avoiding it – but definitely not to the degree that they figure into everyone else’s. I salute you, fate. I salute you, Director of Studies.
Friday, December 8
I’m struck sometimes by how inaccurate of a portrayal of everyday everydays this blog, or any blog, is. I wonder if it’s possible to depict an atmosphere, a general feeling, in words. I’m struck by inconsequential things too, though - I’m struck by the location of my commas, and not in a complimentary way – so don’t attach too much gravity to it or anything.
How many times must I impress upon cyberspace the lingering odor of durian in the open market before I feel vindicated? Is there an upper limit to the number of entries in which I can mention the many ways in which being a bule sucks? How about the hundreds of beautiful beaches? Does it ever end? It’s repetitive because my life here is repetitive. Remember that and you will have something of a grasp on what my entries are failing to communicate.
To attempt not to whine in the midst of something crushing is fruitless. The last sentence I said aloud was ‘Stay the hell out of the Mody chocolate paste – I mean it.’ Before you ask, it’s basically icing in a glass mug, but it’s the cheapest form of chocolate there is.
The enormity sometimes hits me right around the times when I’m giving a Papuan Catholic bishop (the same one who was present when I had to explain was a cock was) his final speaking test, and the question is on fears and phobias, and I’m expecting spiders, I’m expecting cockroaches or maybe crocodiles, but I get the Indonesian Army; I get that he and other local religious leaders – Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims – are traveling to Yogyakarta to meet with the Indonesian President about the problem of violent clashes between the military and the people. I ask a sixteen-year-old girl about a stressful day in her life expecting too much homework or a breakup with a boyfriend, and instead I get that her mother sold her pet dog to people who made it into dog stew for a feast, and they killed it in her living room where she could hear its screams.
There are these times, where I’m captivated and saddened, and I think it will last forever. I think it will last forever until I step out into the evening heat of the marketplace and insert the hum of complaints about being treated like a celebrity here. Actually, don’t. There’s nothing I can say after the image of the girl’s pet dog being killed for stew that won’t sound, that won’t BE, trite.
Wednesday, December 6
There’s one pitted lychee on each finger. One finger on each letterkey. Typing still feels alien to me. When I look at my hands, I remember why. If I squint right they look like a frog’s, the finger pads splayed and glistening.
I’m writing this for you, so pay attention.
This morning there was a thin beaded mask of sweat on every surface that I touched. A band around my upper lip and the back of my neck like a slipped bandanna. I was dreaming about stretching out on my classroom floor. Seven-year-olds shuffled flash-cards by my feet, chorusing mixed vocabulary and screams. Sun-browned teenagers with ankle-sock tans furrowed their brows and questioned me telepathically about relative clauses. They whispered to each other and their faces faded when I tried approaching. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it unequivocally here or what, but I kind of hate my job.
Coasting on perfectly placed dialogues with strangers, or between strangers, sends sparks to a halt when everything is in Indonesian. I’m clinging to the tail of intonation now. The sun on the tile when I unstick one eyelid. My school dream this morning was centered entirely within a cubist painting. Waking up, my feet and their shadows rippled living rectangles onto the mattress. Eight o’clock. His grandpa’s pocket watch has sand in the winding mechanism. Waking up, capsizing to ‘Fuck!’s.
At this rate, will anyone be able to understand me when I return?
This exchange slid softly into my head:
Someone says something perfect.
“Be careful of saying that… you’re going to make me fall in love with you.”
Someone says something perfect.
She laughs, and behind her laugh is something starting, finally, to distill.
Someone. Says. Something. Perfect. Deliberately.
Has this ever happened to anyone? I hope so.
Thursday, November 30
Here is the true face of everyday Jayapura: me about to stuff my face with rambutan. I’m having second thoughts about moving back to the states, knowing that they don’t have rambutan – I mean, what other fruit looks like a pod alien and tastes like a cross between a grape and a coconut?! You tell me.
Strange things keep happening. If this wants to become the wacky cultural anecdotes blog, so be it. It’s itching to do so, and I don’t have the energy to try and derail it, at least not right now.
We bought a box of green tea awhile ago, and when we got home and opened it, there was an rp. 5000 bill folded up inside – exactly the cost of the tea. Apparently when Indonesian advertisements claim that if you buy their product you might get a rebate, they mean that there is actually hard cash inside some of their products. No clipping coupons or sending in a self-addressed stamped envelope – just money, already put inside the product. I find this amazing. Since then, I have found empty decorated Idul Fitri envelopes inside my buckets of Sari Kelapa, stickers buried in my palm sugar, a plastic tiger in my oatmeal, and a 500 coin wrapped in Christmas paper in my motorcycle helmet.
There’s also this thing here among 10-13 year old boys where, if there’s a fat boy in the class, every other boy will try to be his partner or otherwise sit near him. Can you guess why? It’s so they can climb all over him and intermittently spank him. I have a class with three fat boys (nearly unheard of in Jayapura) and it’s… really awkward to teach a class when all the boys are spanking each other. I think they actually just see fat boys as jungle gyms, because when they’re partners for group work, they don’t sit next to each other – the fat boy lounges on his stomach and the skinny boy lounges too - on top of the fat boy. Double decker. This makes the fat boys very, very popular and sought after.
Nick’s parents’ Christmas package arrived today, nearly a month early. It smells of spiced tea. There isn’t a ‘Do Not Open Until Christmas’ sign anywhere on it, but there may as well be for all the fuss Nick is making about not opening it until Christmas. From the looks of it (and by ‘from the looks of it’ I mean the ever-increasing greedy-looking trails of ants) there are pfeffernous cookies somewhere hidden inside. Over Christmas we might be on Biak. It will be hot. This will be strange. It’s already strange. Jayapura has badly dubbed versions of Christmas songs playing all over town, with, like… MIDI keyboard instrumentation and techno backbeats, and they’re either in Indonesian, in which case the words don’t fit to the song because Indonesian hardly uses any words to convey the same meaning that English would need at least a paragraph for (Indonesians could have written that sentence better), or else they’re in English, with an accent that renders the lyrics indecipherable.
Speaking of. One of my punishments for late students (it’s sort of universal EF punishment, actually) is having them sing a song in front of everybody. It’s the only way to kind of keep people from being late, because this is a culture of extreme lateness – two hours or more. Anyway, someone in Level 2 was late recently. Level 2, even though their English is necessarily pretty bad, is one of my favorite classes because they’re essentially self-governing. Virtually all of them really want to learn, so they tolerate no disobedience from their peers. If someone starts speaking Indonesian, I don’t even have the chance to open my mouth (and anyway, usually in a level this low I let them speak Indonesian) before there’s a chorus of ‘Eyyyyyy, speak Inglees!’ and indignant looks and, often, reprimanding slaps. And if anyone is late, the entire class takes up a chant: ‘Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Come on, sing!’ If the person hesitates, the class dissolves into: ‘Eyy, ma’am say!’ and ‘Hurry upppp!’ and ‘Time is finissed, do it!’ The last time this happened, the late girl, a talkative 14-year-old Muslim in a veil, immediately broke out into “My humps, my humps, my humps! My lovely lady lumps!” – and the entire first verse - to a round of genuine applause and ‘Her English so goooood’s echoing around the room.
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