Playing a game the Australians call 'Fruit Salad' in class. What do we call it? I've never heard a name. Someone's in the middle, and they say something, and everyone who agrees has to swap chairs. "I am wearing a headscarf," says one of the two girls wearing one, and the other groans in good natured embarrassment, but gets up to take her place in the middle, and a second later trips over her feet and goes down. In the scuffle between each statement, the Muslims are easy to pick out; they're the ones that appear to have to physically pick themselves up from their chairs, the ones that won't fight for the last chair, the ones that close their eyes in the gap from action where the person in the middle struggles to find their English. They are all so hungry that they're physically unable to coordinate.

It's the holy month of Ramadan, and, for Muslims, that means fasting all day: from dusk 'til dawn, no food, not even any water. One of the teachers is Muslim: this means teaching four hours of classes with nothing to fuel her, and yet she bears it without complaint; indeed, I had no idea until I see her running back from the market as night falls with some lumpia and a green coconut cake, staring into the black plastic market bag as if it held a million dollars in gold. She tears into it, and before she can fully get down her first mouthful, Wade interrupts. "Ani, what tastes better, the food or the water?"
"Oh, the water," she mumbles indistinctly, her mouth full.

Everywhere, outside and in, people are sinking down in chairs or on curbs or on the ground and closing their eyes, this time not out of exhaustion, but out of ecstasy. Their mouths and their minds are full of the special food that is on sale only for Buka Puasa; the chicken and vegetable egg rolls, the mochi with coconut and molasses, the burnt sugar green coconut rolls, the samosa-like pastries with potatoes and chilies. If they were me and the food were mashed potatoes, the streets would be awash with tears. It is close, though. It gets quieter. People are too overwhelmed to make conversation. As the moon becomes visible over the farthest mountain, Angkasa, the shouts of the market die down and the whistles of the parking attendants seem outrageous, out of place. Motorcycles spit and rumble in the distance. The women and men who spread their blankets in the street to sell their chilies, tomatoes, bananas, papayas, tofu, eggs, chickens, coconuts, lychees, sambal kacang paste, grilled fish, leeks, oranges ,and salaks, their knit Papuan independence purses and mats and bags, their woven flip flops, all start gesturing silently to their wares instead of shouting about them, feeling awkward all of a sudden about disturbing the immediate quiet. Expectant lines curl up behind the Buka Puasa food stands - silent not because of sensations, but because of the anticipation. Soon, they too will be part of the overwhelmed silent periphery.

Periphery because most Papuans are not Muslim. 80% or more of them are not. But that 20% is enough to create a subtle bend at dusk on weekdays. I don't know that most people notice it. Parking attendants continue to shriek on their whistles, pull motorcycle's backsides out into the slight lulls in traffic, and collect their Rp. 500 unspoken, unofficial fee. Students continue to lie on the floor, slapping the ground to practice for this card game that they play. The phones still ring and the electricity still flickers on and off and children still chorus 'Hi, Mister-Mister!' at me on the street. But I' m staring around me at those with their eyes closed and their jaws working and I'm trying to feel their amazement. I feel like I would be stealing if I were successful, but I am never successful. How could I be? To not eat or drink every day for a month? What must it feel like to break something like that?

During the time I'm not trying madly to think of a lesson plan for 8 5-year-olds who like only to singsong laki-laki-perempuan (boy-girl) songs at each other from across the room while halfheartedly doing their color-by-number worksheets and kicking each other in the butt, I am reading the Onion's Volume 15 archives (October 2003 - November 2004, roughly). How this got the teachers' house in Indonesia along with mostly Charles Dickens and Arthur C. Clarke, I have no idea. But as a result, when I'm not dreaming about teaching, I dream in Onion headlines:

Inside:
Girl Brags About Perfect Health, Gets Food Poisoning
see page 4B

Boy Yells at Girl For Holding On Too Tightly To Motorcycle, Crashes Into Pickup
see page 6C

News In Brief:
EFL Student Asks Teacher If Pregnant
Jayapura - Unaware of the connotations that go along with such a question, local EFL student K.P., 15, asked his teacher Wednesday if she was pregnant. When given the gracious opportunity to save face by his teacher asking 'Why? Do I look pregnant?' he didn't seize the opportunity and say 'No! Of course not! I was just kidding.' but instead responded 'Yes.' The teacher was unavailable for comment as she is believed to be frantically in the process of becoming anorexic.

And so forth.
Lately, I am happier, with a few lapses allowed for when I realize I won't taste anything other than what I have been tasting for the next 11 months, food-wise and human-wise. But mostly it's okay. Biking is nice for that. It's beautiful here, really beautiful, and you can't tell from inside a low-ceilinged taxi with 90's music blasting bass and stuffed with sweating men and girls with their hijabs hitting you in the face, and you definitely can't tell from the heart of downtown, which just smells like motorcycle exhaust and looks like the cutouts from the cliffs are about to crumble down onto the Hotel Yasmin. But from a bike, you can see everything. You can see it panoramically. A beautiful day in a car feels like a beautiful day wasted, but on a bike, you're out in it, and you can go out of the city, up into the hills and out past the airport, to Sentani, to waterfalls and cooler jungle and thatched houses. You can bring a picnic and while you're eating it, you won't be surrounded by people with camera phones demanding that you sit on their pay-bench.
The other thing that contributes to my being happier is we found a raw-fish market about ten minutes from our house (previously, we could only buy cooked fish, and then only tuna, and then only cooked boringly), where there is a long strip of tables filled with freshly caught fish of every type, and you point to your fish and the man who caught it takes it back to a chopping block, guts it, and chops it into steaks, then gives you all of it in a bag (along with the head, in case you want to make soup). People around Dok9 have not grown used to us, as the people in Dok5, where we live, have, so while we buy fish, people point and stare and whoop at the 'bule' (foreigners, roughly, but a little more derogatory). But it's worth it. Tonight, we will have fish, corn, and mashed potatoes (!!!!) for dinner. Maybe this time I won't even cry when the mashed potatoes hit me.