Thursday, October 26, 2006


This entry is actually two entries. (And this, hopefully, is a picture of Jayapura Bay from the top of a lighthouse at the beach). I have (finally) found a way to connect my computer at the internet cafés, so I can type my entries at home, where there is no SHITTY DISTRACTING MUSIC, and then post them in a lump later. And incidentally, everyone should use AIM more.

10/25
Idul Fitri. I find myself on a long, skinny speedboat with skids on the side, weaving in and out of of heavily jungled islands, with a family that is only tangentially mine – the family of a fellow teacher’s fiancé. Everyone is shy and they pretend we aren’t there. Where did they get the boat? I don’t know. Whose house is this that I’m standing in? Could be anyone’s. Why is there a Canada plate mounted on the wall? Why are we taking the baby parrot on a boat ride? Now we’re in another house. Whose house? Beats me. There’s an entire village built on sticks sticking out of the shallow bay. The roads are wood slats laid across stronger wood slats laid across stronger wood slats laid across… what? Does anybody know why our motorcycle isn’t falling through into the bay filled with Pocari Sweat cans and black plastic bags and sickly looking fish? Whose porch are we parking on? Why is that guy taking all our shoes and throwing them in a plastic bag? Why do biscuits exist that are flavored with salt, butter, and artificial grape syrup?

We maroon ourselves on a tiny beach at dusk that only gets tinier as the tide rolls in. I’ve been there before; it’s the one that takes the two hour long terrifying hike to get to. I prefer the boat, even with all the uncertainty and the fact that no one seems to notice that we’re going to have to eventually navigate our way back home on the open ocean around random rocks and coral reefs and treacherous cliffs’ edges in the pitch black night. I ask Nick if this is such a great idea, to which he replies, “No big deal, dinghies have pretty powerful lights.” Except ours doesn’t, because it’s made out of logs. But, you know, it’s all the same to him.

The anticipation of the night to come makes me slightly insane, and as I’m struggling in my soft, bare feet after the group as they clamber up the slippery, steep rocks of a mountain stream to see what is promised to be an amazing waterfall, I’m silently muttering in my head: “Myeh myeh myeh, I’m Indonesian! The soles of my feet are like leather! I can walk on volcanic rock that has sharp points sticking out of it everywhere! I like running across narrow logs balanced precariously on mysterious chunks of dirt that are suspended over hundreds of feet of nothingness! I can relax anywhere because I grew up without chairs so I can squat on absolutely any surface for hours without looking awkward and falling over! I can selflessly help the stupid American move maddeningly slowly for hours and hours without showing the least bit of impatience! Myeh myeh myeh!”

But, to tell you the truth, I loved them the entire time I was muttering, and after, when we all showered together under the waterfall, and before, when they fed everyone fish barbecued over a fire on the beach. “Hey, our people have custom,” Daniel, Ike’s fiancé, says. “Custom is, we must eat all we have brought, or else we not allowed to leave. It’s your responsibility.”

What it is is an excuse to get us to eat our eighth slice of fish without feeling guilty, and it works. “This is my favorite kind of responsibility,” I reply, pouring peanut and chili sambal over the fish and the rice. I have a pile of pink and purple and green and cream shells around my feet. Nick is trying to surf on a piece of driftwood. Hiron has the parrot riding around on his head like some kind of pirate. Daniel is telling me how bad he feels for us that we don’t have any family in Papua, and how, if we want, he can be our family. It’s a pretty perfect day as perfect days go, even with the bleeding feet and a cashew chocolate bar melting all over my backpack. Even with that.

10/20
We raced our engine up and down cliffs and our motorcycle is a quiet one so we had to scream the engine noises instead.
“BURRRRRRRRR!” Nick yelled as we downshifted for a steep climb and passed a pickup full of Papuans*.
“BA-BAP! BA-BAP!” I shrieked with the gearshift as Nick kicked it down, down, down, down, one for each gear, to stop at a stoplight.
‘REOOOOOH! REOOOOOOOOHRHRHRHHHRH! REEeeeeoooooHHEHEHRHRH!” we shouted together at bikers without mufflers as their exhaust pipes shot out blipblipblips of smoke and we went flying past them.
“Hey, QUIT holding onto my shirt!” Nick spat back at me, so I threatened to pull it up and flash passersby his tits. “Do it!” he said, so I did, as we flew around a corner and through a little cluster of warungs and markets screaming girls-gone-wild style all the way.
People don’t stare, or at least they don’t stare anymore than they do already just because we’re bules (Westerners, but slightly more offensive), which is always and hard, so I guess they do stare, but we’re past caring. I pull his shirt back down just as we pass a traffic cop, blowing his whistle in vain at every single driver on the road, because every single driver on the road is doing something illegal.
Road rules here are more like suggestions, anyway. "One Way Street" means "don't go the wrong way on this street, unless of course you're in a big hurry to get somewhere, or you are learning to ride your bike and don't want to make a bunch of right turns unnecessarily, or are going to speed down it so fast the police won't care about catching you." The other day Nick weaved around some blocking cones that were meant to control rush hour traffic and shot down a one way shortcut street the wrong way, and right at the corner was a police campout. One of the policemen yelled 'Hey!' and then went on chewing his betelnut. The others hadn't noticed because they were watching an attractive woman coming out of the marketplace.

*Is it clear what I mean when I say Papuans, as opposed to Indonesians? In Indonesia, there is, and was, a resettlement effort, to try and shuffle the population so it would get more evenly distributed. Papua has only recently become part of Indonesia, so the native Papuans look entirely different and have an entirely different culture than the Indonesians who have recently moved here. When I say 'Papuans', I mean the natives, even though they are also Indonesian, technically. They, however, are much much more polite, helpful, and friendly than Indonesians from other parts of the archipelago, and I know that this is a generalization, but everything I've observed so far holds it to be true. Every time I have spoken in this blog of someone helping me through the jungle or up and down cliffs or someone cooking me food for no reason, it's been Papuans who have done it.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Sometimes living in Indonesia is not too different, day-to-day, from living in the U.S., except that the following things can (and do) happen:

I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, and upon opening the door to the bathroom, I find that there is a baby parrot with no neck feathers and a dog leash around its ankle perched on a music stand with a green towel thrown over it.
"What the hell is that?" I ask Nick, waking him up.
"Oh, it's the bird," he says, groggily. "You haven't met the bird?"
"No. Whose is it? Is it anybody's?"
"Oh, someone found him outside getting chased by a cat, so they brought him to Louise as a present. Louise doesn't like pets, so she gave him to Shayna, and I guess Shayna's keeping him in the bathroom."
The parrot bites, but doesn't talk, and loves attention. He eats mashed-up bananas, but only out of a clenched fist. He gets stuck in my hair a lot. Soon, he will be going home to Wamena with Hiron, who is the subject of the next story in the list of Stories That Wouldn't Happen in the States:

Hiron is Louise's boyfriend. He is also a member of a tribe of inland-dwelling Papuans who, not fifty years ago, hadn't ever heard of the rest of the world. He's not sure how old he is, because they don't keep track or care. Hiron can make a meal out of anything - you know the common refrigerator affliction of having lots of food, but nothing to possibly make with it, such as mayonnaise, chili powder, half a muffin, and ketchup? He could make a meal out of that, and it would be delicious. He made a meal out of a bag of cassava, three eggs, and salt, and it was enough to feed four people. If he doesn't eat for three days, nobody can tell. He is making us an English-Indonesian-Dani dictionary (Dani is the language of his tribe) and it's just bizarre to see him sitting in the living room watching Indonesian soap operas, which he does often. How can you make the change from raising wild pigs and growing vegetables and occasionally warring with other tribes to sitting in a tiled living room with a bag of KFC and watching Indonesian soap operas in a matter of months?

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The inevitable has happened, and it has happened after a deceptive string of innocent requests. "What's a Rolls-Royce? What's ESP? What's 'going bananas'?" Leading, leading, leading.
I tell him, but "Where do you hear these words?"
"Oprah."
"Ah."
"What's a call girl?" Okay, not entirely innocent. I tell him, though.
"Where'd you hear that one?"
"The internet."
"Ah."
"What's a detention? What does it mean to have a crush?"
And...
"What's a cock?"
A cock?
"Do you want me to spell it?" He thinks I don't know. It doesn't occur to me until later that it is an option to pretend I don't know.
"No, I know what it is, I just..."
"Is it a bad word?"
"Yes... no. No."
"Then what?"
Silence for a couple of seconds. It's a fifteen-year-old asking, and the class has another teenager, a 45-year-old Catholic priest, and a 39-year-old extremely devout Muslim in it. Can I say 'penis' in front of a Catholic priest and a fasting Muslim woman looking tiredly, but expectantly, at me, shrouded in her headscarf? I'm not entirely sure.
"I'm asking because... I was on the internet and someone said 'Suck my cock.'"
OH.
"I know what suck means! But I don't know what cock means!"
Now it's not just saying 'penis' in front of the aforementioned people, but talking about sucking cock. AWESOME. I shouldn't have given him the opportunity to use it in context.
I tell him, though: "Cock means penis."
"OHHhhhh?" he half-shrieks, then, as class is over, I have four students studiously avoiding my eye as they file out.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

I am digging deep into the red dirt with all twenty of my fingers and toes. My sandals are somewhere about a hundred feet above me, hooked in Nick's belt loop. Two Papuan women are bracing their palms on my butt. Pushing me up as gravity is pulling me down. This is either a path from the beach or a cliff; I can't decide which. "Make your feet like a duck!" Nick yells down at me as the women strain against my butt. They are mostly immune to gravity because they are about five feet tall and sturdy, grounded, with strong toes that curl into any surface like roots. Both of them behind me going up. One on each side going down, linking arms with me, alternating between springing across the rocks and weeds and hesitating, motioning to me with hands that are half-encouraging and half-cautious. "Hati-hati!" they admonish. Three hundred feet of plunging crumbling grey rock two inches away from my slipping left heel.

It is the first day I have been able to carry on a conversation in Indonesian, and it has probably saved my life. Being able to say 'beach', 'I don't understand', 'we will be here for a year', 'bird of paradise', 'I am tall' and other completely random phrases has made us an instant crowd of friends who, upon seeing our growing procession, drop their cassava-farming-implements and join us, forming a parade down the terrifying cliff to the beach. This is my favorite beach - (mostly) lacking sea urchins but with high waves and with a high waterfall that pours down onto the back end of the beach with enough force to wash me completely of the coarse, sticky sand that one finds here and also to wash my hair better than any shampoo ever has or ever will. Standing under the waterfall at high tide, the ocean comes pounding up to my ankles. At high tide, there is no part of the beach that is dry. Have you ever stood beneath a waterfall cascading out of the jungle with the ocean ebbing around your feet?

The villagers have a little orange blow-up basketball. They want to play volleyball with it in the water as they point at things, shout their names in Indonesian, and inquire eagerly 'bahasa Inggris?' How do you say it in English? After 'beach', 'swim', and 'waves', they lose interest, and focus on correcting my water-volleyball technique, which I can't really figure out because there are no boundaries, no teams, no points, and occasionally a big set of waves will come and wash someone out to sea or deposit them roughly on the shore. They are mostly unconcerned about drowning, or about anything, really. I am gearing up to serve in what has been mild water when suddenly this 15-foot wave comes charging up and I don't have time to think about what to do. It comes crashing down right into my left ear, lifts me, wildly flailing and sort of surfing, but mostly just tumbling, and, as the beach rises before me, shoves my jaw and most of my head into the sand, and recedes. Children are rising, unruffled, around me, but my head is pounding so loudly that I feel like the entire ocean has been washed through my ear into my brain. My jaw is out of alignment and clicking. I sway and go down again. Nick washes up on the shore with the next wave and puts his arms around me, which causes everyone to shriek with giggles and to clamber over some rocks, singing a song in harmony and screaming every time the sea sprays over their rock. They are correct, of course, and in five minutes we are up and sharing our peanut butter and jelly, teaching greetings and colors in English because that's all they want, to learn English, and a great bargain it is, in exchange for saving me from plunging to my death about four or five times! Every time Naomi, the first to join our initial beach parade, speaks a word in English that hasn't been specifically modeled for her, she claps her hand over her mouth and collapses in giggles, out for the count for at least a minute. On the way back, I can hear one of the children chanting, "Red, green, purple, yellow, pink, brown, black. Red, green, purple, yellow, pink, brown, black!"

I begin wishing that I could quit my job teaching structured, boring English to rich people and kids with rich parents in exchange for a paltry salary and just teach fun, relaxed English to a village full of Papuans in exchange for food and shelter, and in between, we could play beach volleyball with no rules, get pounded by freak waves, pull the pineapples that grow, with no provocation, everywhere, and generally just wander around in the jungle looking at stuff. I'm not usually that kind of person, but I must admit that that would be THE life.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Face up, butt down, on a green cot in the military hospital. Muslim nurses; to my eyes, blurry, and my swimming mind, they look like Catholic nuns. But gentle. They murmur soft commands in Indonesian. Louise hovers in the background, translating on occasion. Someone asks her if she is my mother. I laugh, jerk, cough, cough, cough. Louise is 28. “Those fuckers,” she breathes, but she, too, is laughing. I wonder, in between fits of coughing, how I came to be struggling to breathe on a curtained-off cot with an ancient armpit thermometer tucked in my T-shirt and a young Australian near-stranger acting the part of my mother, right down to the part where she cooks me spiced salad, green beans, and cheesy mashed potatoes, and, on another night, pumpkin spaetzle, and refuses to let me move a muscle to help. How, also, did I come to be playing Hitler Has Bad Gas with six teenagers from all over the Indonesian archipelago, and how did that particular game come to depict Angelina Jolie as a purple marker stick figure with 3 arms? How did I come to live trapped in a tiny hot saggy-mattressed room with someone who seems to hate me, and, more importantly, how did I come to stop really caring?

Diyah, my team-teacher, tells me that she drank a noxious glassful of mixed plants and herbs that her sister concocted every morning during her senior year of high school to cure her nearsightedness. She thinks it is puzzling and quite hilarious that I, and every other Western teacher in the room, is immediately upon her: "How do you make it? How do you make it?"

Some of the plants, most of them, only grow in Java. She doesn't remember. Her eyesight is perfect now. She watches, fascinated, as I put in my contact lenses. I watch, fascinated, as she entirely fails to grasp the sheer awesomeness and power of what she has said.

Anyway, "You must stop Doxycycline," the blue-wrapped nurse tells me as she scribbles out a prescription for enough antibiotics to fell a hippo. "If you take, you feel like this every day." So no more malaria preventatives. But I can swallow. And I can breathe. And I am (mostly, at least) alive.

Friday, October 06, 2006

I woke up in the middle of the night two nights ago feeling like a giant had his pinky pressed against the inside of my throat. With the irrationality that comes from jerking out of an unsettling dream with something odd and inexplicable going on inside your body, I burst out of the mosquito net, tripped over the wooden slats of our bedframe to the wall, and flicked on the light, whisper-shouting 'Nick! Nick! Wake up! I think I have bird flu!'

The sheer terror of it caused my whole body to start spasming (another symptom of bird flu, I now know, though the sensation of a giant with his pinky in your throat is not, in fact, a symptom in the first place) which made me even more positive that I was going to die within the next half hour, maybe hour if it would be particularly painful and drawn out. My chest burned a little. I made Nick run around the house with a blue bucket and some hot water, not quite sure the path my death would take. We don't have a telephone, and the only one in the house with a cell phone was asleep, and I wasn't certain enough that I was going to die to make a big embarrassing scene by waking him up and calling the hospital, not that, once called, I could communicate with the doctors anyway.

Eventually I calmed myself down by convincing myself that I had swallowed my malaria pill the wrong way and it had dissolved in my throat instead of in my stomach, when, even in the stomach, it often causes vomiting and nausea as a side effect (in other people, not in me). So in the throat it must produce severe burning... right? RIGHT?

Two days later, it still burns badly to swallow or breathe deeply, but the pain has moved to my chest. Feels like chronic severe heartburn, the kind that never goes away for even one minute. Any ideas? It's (probably) not bird flu - bird flu hasn't been found in Jayapura or anywhere near Jayapura, and chest pain isn't a symptom. Heart attacks don't begin in your throat. Acid reflux doesn't just start in the middle of the night. Sorry for the roiling mundanity, but I need some input.