Making up for lost time

Sorry - I'm trying to keep this current and consistent, so my Jakarta experience will have to be heavily paraphrased:

My friend and his parents were wonderful hosts. His house was beautiful and much better than mine or yours for sure. One time his maid folded my clothes while I was out. I came back and realized what had happened. It was weird - I felt grateful but violated at the same time. If I make a mess, I intend to keep it that way, ya!I went to two nearby malls with my friend and was amazed at their sheer scale and the ridiculously expensive stores they housed (e.g. Gucci, Coach, Hugo Boss, Versace, etc.). A lot of Chinese Indonesians were there. They basically monopolize the private sector in Indonesia and are generally richer than everyone else, so it makes sense.

So after a couple days in Jakarta I went by train to Yogyakarta (pronounced "Johg-jakarta"). I was driven to the airport in my friend's father's black Mercedes Benz truck. Yeah, they're quite rich.

When I reached Jogja a couple of days ago, I experienced a series of shocks:

1) I was met at the Yogyakarta train station by the son of the lady I'm living with. As we walked into the parking lot, I was looking for the car. Too bad we were getting on a motorbike! If you've ever seen third-world motorbiking in action, you'd understand my intense trepidation at that moment. I held on for dear life as we weaved through the streets en route to the house.

2) After criss-crossing streets overloaded with vehicles, we turned into an alleyway and navigated several narrow corridors, passing random people and tightly packed living spaces. Finally we pulled up to the house, which was next to a small messy open courtyard filled with random bits of wood & trash, chickens running about through it all. I reserved comment.

3) I walked inside and met Ibu Kelik ("Mrs. Kelik"). She was nice enough, and there was some beautiful batik artwork hanging in the main room. She instructed me to follow her... ahh my eyes are burning from all the freaking smoke in this country, sorry ya... She instructed me to follow her upstairs. We walked up some concrete stairs which led to a deck with drying clothes strewn about along with miscellaneous stacks of pots and a few potted plants. There was an awning above where the steps were, so they were really open-air, right onto the outdoor "deck". Then up a few stairs to the top floor where my room was. The whole time Ibu Kelik was saying stuff to me in Indonesian & I could only catch about half of it. So she opened the door and showed me a very small, somewhat dingy-looking room with a bed laying on the floor. Hope sweet home. I looked around a bit from the deck, scanning the rooftops around me while a cacophony of distorted Muslim calls to prayer rang out loudly from the nearby mosques. It is something I can only describe as what the end of the world might sound like.

Everything seemed a little (read: extremely) rustic at first, but now I'm pretty much used to it and I can see that I'm actually in a very opportune situation here.

I live in a kampung, which is the basic community unit in Indonesia. It's basically a cluster of homes traversed by smallish streets and alleyways of varying widths. And by homes I mean dwelling places - not like big houses. Most everything is concrete, small, and very close together. It has an insular effect because no one really comes through who doesn't live there or is visiting someone who does. So everyone knows everyone and it's very quiet and homely. Little kids play outside and chickens run around. Most of the buildings are small and very colorful, with shades of pink, yellow, green and blue mostly. There's a few lots with random brush growing and remnants of previous brick houses laying around.

Ibu Kelik is the headmaster of her kampung, so people come to her if they have problems or need a small loan or something. She also handles other notary-type things involving paperwork, but I don't know exactly how all that works. So she knows everyone in the kampung and they all know her. Two days ago, early in the morning (everything starts at around 5am here - so it's barely 8pm now, but it feels like 11pm already) she took me walking around the kampung and introduced me to the people we came across. Everyone is very welcoming and nice. The old ladies we saw at their homes gave me some of the food they were cooking. Walking around was a bit of a sensory overload because the environment was so utterly foreign to me, but it's becoming familiar after a couple of days and I've got my bearings. Today I played some badminton outside the house with some of the kampung kids. It was fun, even though my Indonesian vocabulary set for playing competitive sports is about zilch. Stuff like that makes me feel more connected to the kampung - not just as a visitor but as a participant. If I was in a hotel I wouldn't get to experience anything like this.

One thing I found pretty cool about our kampung is that there is a fund set up for people who need extra money for various reasons. Those with more money will donate to this fund monthly, in amounts between 10 and 50 dollars (she showed me the donor list). It's all set up through someone at the mosque. The recipient list for this month includes about a half-dozen elderly people, a few people with family members in the hospital, a girl adept at reciting Al-Quran who will get to travel to Jakarta because of it, and a couple other folks. The donors get to see the list when donating, so they know exactly who is getting what money. Apparently such a scheme isn't found in other kampungs.

Many elements of kampung life are rather communal, which can be refreshingly different from the general individual focus of life in the US. For example, every morning the day's newspaper is taped up on a large glass screen for everyone to read at their leisure.

- Ya other than that, I've seamlessly adjusted to the Indonesian habit of taking 2 or 3 showers per day - you have to here or else you'll feel like a sticky mess.

- The street food is so cheap man. $0.60 for a meal is on the higher end. I'm eating from street stalls multiple times a day. My stomach was a little upset today, but I think that's from eating too much spicy food the last 24 hrs. [Update: stomach is fine]

- Mosquitoes love my foreign blood. There's this big vent-like thing in my room that they can fly in through. I really need to get a screen for that unless I want to continue to be a mosquito buffet every night.

- I feel very safe in the area I'm staying in, and in Yogyakarta in general. There's a calm vibe about this city - it's more chill and less sketchy than Jakarta.

- Ibu Kelik has been awesome. She seems to have made it her personal mission to facilitate my research project as much as possible. But besides that she's a great host and has a wonderful booming laugh. Her batiks are amazing, too.

- The other day Ibu Kelik's oldest son had a goat slaughtered in the little side courtyard to celebrate the naming of his newborn son. A neighbor came and read a prayer before slicing the goat's throat. Goats have a lot of blood, and it's very thick and very red. Actually two goats were killed that morning. Then they were strung up, skinned, gutted, cleaned, chopped, and cooked into an orange-ish colored stew. The child's name is Diego.

- The hunt is on for a research assistant. I met with one guy from the kampung yesterday and we had a practice interview with his father. He got a degree in English lit at a university here in Jogja. I felt like he was describing things in less detail than was actually given, and a couple times I had to help him find the word he was thinking of. He's a great guy, but I may need someone more fluent in English. After the interview we went out to do a bit of shopping and catch a bite. I learned some very interesting facts from his father which related to my research, though. I may re-interview him in the coming weeks.

- Indonesian pop music makes baby Jesus cry.

- I am now riding on the back of motorbikes with zero fear. The next frontier is driving one. Bu Kelik & co. have suggested it a few times, but I told them that if I drive a motorbike here, I will die. It seems like they're biding their time until a future date when they're going to gang up and force me to do it. I am not looking forward to that day.

Pics coming soon - slow connection, ya.