Sak Ramu

I woke up yesterday with a throat so swollen I could neither swallow nor talk. Mr. and Mrs. Principal take me to the hospital with them when they take their son for a follow up appointment. There the doctor asks if I have a cough or sneeze. I shake my head no. After taking my temperature, blood pressure and using his stethoscope to listen to both my breasts and my stomach he concludes that I have an infection and writes me a prescription six prescriptions. At the pharmacy, I insist on buying just the "antibiotik" thus solidifying any lingering doubt that I am a crazy boolay.

I stay home in the afternoon and sleep.

In the evening I drag myself to the Lebaran celebration at school, which is basically the Muslim version of Christmas/ Neufeld gathering with a pageant and great big potluck after to celebrate the end of the fasting month.

I talk to Mr. Jay and his seemingly high maintenance wife (Ms. Winnipeg-seriously, no matter how far you roam you will meet a Winnipegger) for a while, excusing myself from talking too much because my throat is still sore though I can swallow again.

"So you've been to the Farmasi then?"

"Yup, and the hospital, the whole treatment."

"Oh, you don't need to see a doctor to get prescriptions here. I bet he wrote you six prescriptions, right?"

I nod wide-eyed. How do they know?

"Yeah, doctors here don't make any money from your visit only from how many prescriptions they write so they always write six or seven. The rest are all just pain killers and vitamins. Next time just go straight to the dealer with the active antibiotic that you want and they'll sell it to you for fifty cents."

The school pays for my medical expenses, so the $30 I spent isn't lost but still this is good to know, if I happen to be traveling and don't have my forms or time to waste. Jay also tells me where  I can find wine on this island before Mr. Principal drags me around to meet the school board members and owners who insist on foisting all manner (not necessarily gluten free) food on me. By the time I leave almost regret that Indonesian antibiotics were so effective in getting me swallowing in a few hours.

I am still feeling a little tired today but Ms. Yeni and I went to the traditional market by the astonishing albeit pungently odorous fishing village.

Kampong

Wandering through the market we stumble across a Buddhist shrine in a small temple. We are invited in and Ms. Yeni answers the keeper's of the shrine's curious questions about me. We are encouraged to check out everything, including the mausoleum, and are told where we can find the main Buddhist temple.

It turns out the main temple is bursting with my favourite laughing Buddha's (!), a buffet vegetarian restaurant for only 7,000 IDR (70 cents) a plate, and a curious fellow who Ms. Yeni says was trying to convert us to be followers in his temple. Strange. This made her uncomfortable so we left.

In the evening Ms. Kahlo invites Ms. Yeni and I out with her husband and daughter. We go to an "ankung" which is basically an outdoor restaurant, with mats on the ground and tables. The Baba there is a tall, kindly bespectacled man with an easy laugh. He restores antique bikes and his family runs the ankung. We drink ginger tea, and everyone laughs while I try to choke down a hard boiled baby bird's egg. When you have food allergies and have to decline so many things because they will make you sick it's hard to decline something because the thought of it makes you sick so I suck it up and chew. It's eggy. Hardboiled eggy. Ms. Yeni and Vanna (Ms. Kahlo's daughter) teach me an Indonesian board game, that involves moving seeds (or in our case pebbles) around a board shaped like a dragon. Over the course of the evening I learn other things too, like my favourite TV show, "Glee" is a huge hit here in Indonesia and if I say "sak ramu" to Baba he will laugh uproariously.

A simple evening spent in good company is by far the most amazing blessing a person can have in this life.

Bahasa Indonesia Word of the Day: Sak Ramu = whatever (considered rude)

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Saturday I found myself on a practically deserted beach with my ma, a couple from Fort Frances and a pair of families of four on the opposite side. The couple is touring Ontario while he recovers from heart surgery. "I'm worried," he says, " I might scare people with my scar." She loves to swim but only in the clearest water because she can't stand leeches and needs to be able to see everything in the water. After explaining this she runs into the surf and dives in exuberantly. As though watching his twenty year old bride he says "She loves the water. She's amazing." Then, pulled back to the current decade he adds, less whimsically but with more admiration "Her whole family is. Her Uncle just swam the English channel. This takes some determination as it's so polluted, you know, you have to vaseline your body to keep it from sticking. Her mother's in her nineties and could swim half this lake without a problem." Before we learned all of this, before we'd even exchanged a sentence, he had stopped to ask if we needed anything from the store. "I'm going to town to get her a snack. Do you ladies want anything?" Just the offer makes me happy and I am reminded that there's no such thing as a stranger.

But not even an hour later, watching one of the fathers from the other side of the beach playing with the four children, the happiness is eclipsed by jealousy. He is teaching them how to swim under the dock and find the air pockets. "Just remember," he says, "if anything happens when you're under there, and you get stuck, don't panic, go down to find the sand then straight up." I am suddenly twelve years old again and crippled with envy of friends whose fathers read to them or tell them stories before bed. Fathers who show them how to swim or fix their bikes. This father takes the kids rock climbing on our side of the beach and as they walk by us he is saying, "Maybe we should bring something to fight the sharks."
"Sharks?" the oldest girl says doubtfully.
"Oh, absolutely, you don't know what's going to be there. It's unexplored territory after all."

Sigh. Imaginative too. Why couldn't I have had a Dad like that? Instead my father can be socially awkward, withdrawn and indifferent and because of our different religious beliefs and values, our relationship has be difficult.

"Dad," the youngest boy says.
"Yeh?" 
"Your eyes are really red."
"Yeah, well, I was up really late last night."

Okay so he's a pothead. Still, it takes me ten minutes to convince myself that I have not been cheated by the fates. That, in fact, I didn't need a Dad to teach me to stay calm or read to me because I've been able to figure these things out for myself. Even after I do finally quell this irrational dissatisfaction with reason and a reality check I still find myself dwelling in all the imperfect moments of my life as a daughter rather than my father's sense of humour, and gentle and generous nature.

Today, while cooking dinner Ma called for my father and I to come and see the double rainbow. I grabbed my camera and was taking pictures when my father said, "What about at the dock? Could you get better shots from there?" And then, suddenly excited by the prospect, he ran towards the house calling, "Where are the car keys?" Within seconds we're in the car, gravel spinning and spitting beneath the tires and driving down to the water. The rainbow is already fading when we get there but I get a few good shots including a couple with my notoriously camera shy father.

Today I went rainbow chasing with my father. Take that Mr. Pothead dad.

Whistling Dixie

When I woke up today I didn't think, today I am going to see a glass bottle house. I didn't think, today I will meet a man in a T-shirt that says "God Says "Go Hunting" Jer 1:6", who will proudly show us his beautiful restaurant, still so new you might choke on the pungent wood smell, even though the restaurant is closed because the cook, his wife, has taken their granddaughter to tea at tea house. When I woke up today I didn't think I would, in a few short hours, find myself in a converted Railway Station buying ice cream in a dixie cup and eating it with a miniature wooden spoon, just like at church picnics when I was a child. I most definitely didn't imagine I'd see a tiny village called Wade sprung up in a forest and only accessible by a rustic dirt road.

But, because every day's an adventure, I did.

I am not the sort who's eager to split the populace in two. "There are two kinds of people in the world: Winners and Losers" or "There two kinds of people in the world: Those who see the glass as half empty and those who see the glass as half full."

Dichotomies are cliche, inaccurate and lacking sophistication. Still, I've come to realize that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who value things and those who value experiences. One is no more correct than the other. Neither is loftier or nobler. One will not get you any more chicks than the other. No, there is nothing wrong with either but I am the sort who values experiences over stuff.

I wish I had figured this out earlier in my life. I think I would have made better choices, in friends, careers, dates, lovers and underwear.

Rain Makes the Flowers Grow

There are some people who prefer, when a cloud crosses the sky, to just go home. I am not this sort. This worked to my advantage when the people my mother planned to spend Saturday with bailed and headed back for the city. I got to spend the day with my partner in crime, who continued down the highway with me to sit on a beach while I went hiking. Turns out the hiking trails, when we got there, were washed out so I went berry picking instead.

The rain started just as I finished filling my container (although truly, I've developed a berry picking compulsion and have trouble walking away no matter how full my basket. "Oooo, but look at those, they're so ripe and big" and before you know it you've scampered over to clean out the next patch) so I hiked back to the beach and went for a swim.

On the way back to the car I spotted the swings. How often do I get to swing in the rain? So, being that I was already wet, I sat down and pumped so high I could see over the trees to the lake while I stuck my tongue out to catch the rain. Afterward Ma and I went into the nearby tourist town in search of hot chocolate. The town is really a village of souvenir shops, Trapper John's Pub, a wigwam and a giant inukshuk.

Oh, and this guy who may be a resident or just another tourist passing through but took my breath away in either case:

On our way out of town Mom wanted to stop at another souvenir shop. I was pretty eager to drive the back roads and sip my hot chocolate-harumph- but I was glad she insisted. Ma found a bracelet she liked and I decided I had to buy it for her as belated Mother's Day/ Birthday present. Nothing is more fun than buying a present for someone when you know they're going to love it particularly when you're trying to do it under their noses without them knowing. I have to give a huge nod to the YMCA men who were running the place. As stoned as I suspect they all were, they not only caught on quickly to my scheming ruse but seemed delighted to be involved in trying to pull it off. This required much interpreting of my darting eyes, twitching face muscles and spastic head bobbling. Plus they were kind enough to laugh at my self deprecating humour, although, like I said, they were pretty giggly all around after coming out of the back room en mass.

We spent the rest of the day driving down washboard gravel roads to various lakes and resorts, finally stumbling upon my Utopia. There is a road that leads to nowhere. There is nothing down it. Why this road even exists is debatable. To give bored cottagers in compact cars thrills perhaps, or maybe it was just a make work project.  I like to think it was built as a Zen koan and so I have access to the place I will one day build my very own hermitage  cottage:

I picked a handful of raspberries for Ma to tide her over until we got back to camp and listened to a waterfall somewhere behind those trees. It was hard to resist a closer look but it was well past dinner time, and judging from the gigantic fresh turd in the middle of the road when we're leaving, we're vacating just in time.

(Nervous) Gales of laughter over of dying of fright at the sight of Windigo "Winnebago" pooh ensue.

"They'll say, 'Her last words were "Holy sh*t!" and there's more hysteria as we crest a hill to see a car below.

"Oh no!" Ma exclaims in mock terror, "Traffic!" We haven't seen anyone on the road since we turned onto it.

The man driving the mid sized sedan seems to be waving at us to stop but when we pull alongside him it turns out he was just chair dancing to his favourite tunes. He's an older man, fully grayed hair and a mildly weathered face, but he's friendly and happy to talk.

"I'm the maintenance guy for the camp. I had to get out of there, it was driving me crazy. I've had two or three hours now I'm going back." He tells us he's Dutch, by way of explaining his music, and that the road today is in good condition and should only take about twenty minutes to make it the 11 km to the camp.

We had taken a fork in the road and never made it to the camp. Another adventure for another day.

I almost forget to give my mother her bracelet but, when I do she tells me she genuinely thought I was buying the $7 polished stone I openly handed the cashier while slipping him the bracelet. Part of me hopes this is true  and the boys and I really pulled it off. The other part of me is still worrying about what it says about me, my character, my budgeting skills, that anyone would think it plausible that I would pay $7 for a rock.

Ambition

I was whining to my mother on our walk today that I didn't feel I was getting enough work done. I just spent three hours writing and I think the piece that's been evading me is finally complete.