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)

Cock a Doodle Croak

The rooster crows every morning at 3:30. The wailing prayers begin shortly thereafter. Sometimes I can fall asleep again but usually not. Mostly I lie in bed listing the things that would be fun to throw at the damn cock if the banana tree wasn't in the way. Last Sunday however I slept until 10:00 am. Monday and Tuesday I almost missed work because I didn't wake up at all. I thought I must be getting used to it.

But, at 3:30 this morning I heard definitive rooster noises, though it was more of a croak than a crow. I guess he just had laryngitis and he's still not over it. I tried to imagine bludgeoning him to death, but honestly he sounded so pitiful, like even he didn't want to crowing and was cursing himself for tormenting his throat with his damn instinct, that I just felt sorry for him.

My own throat's been killing me for the last couple of days and at dinner tonight I had Ms. Yeni in stitches with my sick rooster imitation.

"Didn't that thing drive you crazy?" I ask. She lived in my room when she first arrived in Batam but was moved out when she was hospitalized indefinitely.

"No," she says still laughing, "no rooster when I was there."

"What?!?!?"

"No rooster then. This rooster is special for you. He love you. He sing song just for you."

"Great. My sayang, a noisy bird."

It seems likely though. If I'm going to have a lovestruck bird outside my window I'm not the sort who'd get a nice cooing type bird. No, I'm definitely the sort who gets a rooster in need of a tonsilectomy.

Bahasa Indonesian Word of the Day: sayang = sweetheart

Anniversaries

Yesterday marked a double anniversary for me, the fifth of one and the first of another.

The first is my Death date. I spent the last half of my twenties being ill and by the spring of my twenty ninth year I decided I'd had all I could take. The doctors didn't know or care to find out what was causing my suffering and I had calculated another fifty years of suffering if whatever it was didn't kill me. Worse than the aching body, the constant congestion, the persistent soar throat and crushing exhaustion was the measurable decline of my mind as it drifted farther into a swimming fog.

The words went first. While writing a paper on women in politics I spent twenty minutes trying desperately to remember how to spell the very common word "which". This is how the rapid descent began and in only a few short weeks I was fumbling around not just for spelling but for the words themselves. I started to have difficulty following conversations, first what other people were saying but soon I couldn't remember how I'd started a sentence by the time I got to the end of it which is actually a much more important skill than you might imagine.

I already had enough credits for a Bachelors degree so I checked out of University though all my courses had been Honours level. Completing the final term seemed hopelessly impossible. I developed strategies to cope with the encroaching fog but, being overwhelmingly exhausted most of the time my favourite strategy was just to avoid people and not have to communicate at all. If people couldn't be avoided I learned to just watch their faces. If they seemed happy I would try to force a smile back. If they seemed upset I would try to feign sympathy. And it was a feigned, this empathy, because most days the only thing I could think about was how exhausted I was.

Eventually, I stopped fighting and the fog enveloped me entirely and one day I realized I couldn't tell how the person in front of me felt. I couldn't remember what feelings were. Intellectually I was terrified, but within a few days the only thing I knew was that I was tired and in pain and the world bothered me and this was no way to live.


So I decided to die. Actually, I cursed up at the ceiling and dared there to be a g*d and I dared that g*d to make a miracle happen because eighteen doctors later I was all out of good options. Of course picking a good date to kill yourself isn't easy, at least if you want to be somewhat sensitive to people who might miss you.


Easter was only a few weeks away, along with my brother's birthday and I really didn't want my suicide dampening that day for him, so I thought about May. Nothing says, "Thanks for giving birth to me Mom," quite like killing yourself so I moved on to June. June, it turns out, is Father's day and my father's birthday, and July is my Mother's. Why not, I decided, have one last summer with the family, really push yourself, make the effort to enjoy it as much as is possible and end it, appropriately, in autumn. I settled on August 31st for a tidy finish.



Three days later I was so sick I went to the clinic. I knew it wouldn't help but I was in too much pain to do nothing. But, the doctor was away on vacation. So I walked home and called a friend to cancel our plans for the evening. "Again?" she said, disappointed. I always canceled plans. I was never up for going out. As we talked about my ailments for the hundredth time she suggested something that triggered a google search, which lead to a skeptical internet purchase, that saved my life.

By Easter, again appropriately, I was only a week into my self treatment but already the brain fog had lifted. I was beyond jubilant, beyond excited, I was ecstatic. By the time August 31st rolled around I was healthy. I was happy. I couldn't stop grinning. The world is a beautiful place. Life is a beautiful thing. To be given a chance to truly appreciate that like I have been is a blessing beyond words and I haven't been able to stop being grateful since. So I mark my death date anniversary every August 31 in my own way, often with others who have no clue what they're helping me celebrate, but it's important to me that I mark it.


But this year, the day also marks a year since I've been kissed. Which is sad, in a what kind of loser am I way, yes, absolutely but what worries me more is the thought that the last kiss I had might be the last kiss I ever have. It was not a good enough kiss to be the last one ever. It wasn't even good enough to be the second last. Even worse than this though, is the paralyzing fear I have, that I will be kissed again and it will be even worse than the last kiss, so maybe it's best to leave well enough alone...

Dr. Seuss Does Sympathy

The teacher who was supposed to mentor me got called back home for a family emergency last Monday so I've taken her place and just been winging it in her absence. Today I had to tell the class that their teacher's father passed away yesterday and, in their spare moments, they should consider making condolence cards. This one really stuck out:

Welcome back
Have a snack
It's too bad
About your Dad.

I sent it back for a rewrite but, in keeping with my positive teaching philosophy, I did give kudos for the rhyme scheme.

Bahasa Indonesia Word of the Day:  jodho= soul mate

Mall Rat

I've had a week now to shake off the jet lag and settle in. So far having a roommate hasn't been bad at all despite the fact that I don't think either of us likes the other all that much. I'm not much bothered by that. When I suggested she must miss her old roommates she replied without hesitating, "No. Not at all."

I have the top floor of the house to myself at the moment. My room is small but thankfully air conditioned and I have my own bathroom for now. This is a blessing as my hair is falling out like I'm a chemo patient, which I've been told happens to everyone when they first arrive here, but still, it's embarrassing.

Another source of shame, at least to my liberal sensibilities, is the maid. I am appalled at the notion of paying someone else to wash my underwear and clean my bathroom but it's expected here. It's only $15/month and frankly I haven't had pressed pants since I left home so I try not to think about how ridiculous it makes me feel. Besides, it's a trickle down economy and I've already set tongues wagging in the neighbourhood and school with all of the walking I do. "I saw you walking," I hear at least once a day. "Why you don't take cab?" This is said accusingly and I am in constant fear my feet will be severed if I get caught doing it again.

There are things I love though, like the kids I teach, the sudden, intense and almost daily thunder storms, and the momentary relief from the heat that follows them. The mournful lamenting sound of what I assume are the calls to prayer emanating from what I also assume is the neighbourhood mosque. I have loved the far too few cool days like today when I can sit out on my balcony and watch the bats swooping exuberantly to feed on the urban jungle mosquitoes against the backdrop of a rapid sunset. There are the bananas growing on the tree outside my window and for breakfast mangoes that haven't traveled halfway around the world.

On Saturday Mr. Principal took me along with his wife and son when they went to the mall. This is what passes for entertainment here. Mallrats. The antithesis of me. We go to the largest mall in Nagoya. They insist on feeding me despite my protests. I eat alone in a practically deserted food court because everyone is fasting for Ramadan. Food doesn't taste good at all when you are eating it in front of starving company.

I slept badly Friday night and spend most of the meal maniacally massaging the excruciating pain in my neck. This does not escape the notice of Mrs. Principal and, after lunch, she drags me across the street to an alley full of massage parlours. Here she treats me to a traditional Bali massage 15,000 IDR or $15USD for 1.5 hours. Good god! I think, that's slave wages. A masseuse back home make six or seven times that. And then I remember that that's my maid's entire months wages and I feel simultaneously relieved and ashamed.

"Here in Indonesia," Mrs. Principal says, "We no rich but we have good life."

Once we have walked up the narrow staircase to the room full of curtained mattresses Mrs. Principal, who has been fairly quiet and subdued in her husband's company, transforms into a chatty, almost adolescent girl. Having removed her hijab, her face is brightens, she relaxes, and when she laughs she is breathtakingly beautiful. She tells me how she and her American husband, Mr. Principal, met and we whisper and giggle like teenagers while we wait in our terry cloth towels and spa provided gunny sack shorts.

After the massages start we settled in quietly and I think I briefly doze, until I feel my shorts being hiked up into what is practically a wedgie. Only a few hours earlier, while shaving my legs in the shower I debated shaving my thighs and netherworld which caused me to snicker. Whoever would you being doing that for in this Muslim society? So I went with the usual sloppy to the knee shave. You'd think I'd know by now that I never know where a day is going to take me and would take appropriate measures. Instead all efforts to induce my muscles to relax are instantly rendered void while I clench in terror, imagining all manner of awful she might be seeing while she tucks the billowing spa issued pantaloons under my modest bikini underwear which now seem grossly lacking in coverage and into crevices even I've never seen.

Eventually I accept that it's too late now and she's probably seen many far more horrific things than my bottom and I try to relax, and actually succeed, until she begins to pound and slap me like she might a sassy bowl of bread dough. I am about to relent and beg her forgiveness if only she'll please, please stop when she does something indescribably fantastic with her fingers. I acquiesce. This is sheer hubris on my part as mere moments later I am gleefully pummeled. I am beginning to feel betrayed by all this soothing and lulling that only ends in abuse. I am beginning to have flash backs to bad relationships past.

In the end she sits me up and, placing her feet on my back, pulls my arms straight behind me until my shoulders pop. I make a mental note to make "Are you a licensed chiropractor?" the next phrase I learn in Bahasa Indonesia.

When our time was up I leave feeling slippery and smelling like I showered in black tea. Somehow I thought jasmine oil would smell prettier. I commence rubbing my neck maniacally.

We walk back to the mall and Mrs. Principal takes me grocery shopping at the HyperMart. I have already been grocery shopping at the HyperMart in the Mega Mall by our school but now I can finally ask what is inside packages of oil that read simply "Mengiken" and what kind of eggs are blue? I buy a dragon fruit and some Pantene Pro-V that seems to be specially formulated for Indonesia promising, as it does, to "reduce hair fall".

After shopping it is time to break fast which seems an utterly impossible venture with every person in the mall making a mad dash towards every eatery. We end up eating at the "Happiness Restaurant" where I order the chicken in strawberry sauce. The Indonesians heart their chicken and inconceivably good things to it like serve it with strawberry sauce. Happiness indeed.

On Sunday Ms. Yeni calls. "I go to mall, you come too?"

So at noon, we set off to the final mall on Batam Island that I haven't seen, the BCS mall. Ms. Yeni teaches me how to use the bus which involves standing on the side of the road -anywhere on any road will do- and waiting for a van to pull over. When they do, you ask if they are going to BCS or wherever you might wish to go. Because it's an island they almost inevitably are, or will eventually, so you climb on board and try to find a patch of seat that still has some padding on it because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

I had been warned by Ms. Heni when I first arrived not to take a taxi. "They will try to hypnotize you and steal your money." When I inquired about good places to swim I was told to go to Nagoya. "But don't take a bus. They are too dangerous. You take a bike cab instead." Bike cabs are men for hire on motorbikes. When I express skepticism that these are any safer than buses I'm told, "Oh, no, this is normal and perfectly safe. Just wear the helmet." Actually it's the sweaty lice ridden helmet I'm worried about but I keep my opinions to myself.

At the mall we go to the grocery store and Ms. Yeni does her best to educate me about more vegetables I have never seen. I buy a mango and a $4.00 bottle of olive oil (half the price of the Hypermart, though only 3/4 the size) which I accidentally try to pay for using Korean coins. Ms. Yheni seems captivated by them so I give them to her. She gave me two Javanese bracelets earlier in the day and I was happy to reciprocate. Afterwards we wander around a bookstore in search of a Bahasa Indonesia - Inggris dictionary ($1.50 brand new, still wrapped in cellophane) before returning home.

We stop at a local restaurant for mango juice when we get back to our neighbourhood and she tries to convince me to get a cell phone. I am adamant that I must wait until pay day at the end of September.

"No," she says almost near tears. "I have phone I give you. No cost. You just buy pulsa."

I remember all the lovers and boyfriends who tried to buy me a cell phone. I balk now just as I always have. I don't want to always be available, accessible. I don't want to feel tied down.

"Yes, but pulsa cost money," I say by way of excuse. "Just call my home phone."

"No, this cost too much. No phone. Text. Just text. So I can reach you."

So today I have a new friend and a new, used cell phone and not a clue what to do with either.

Bahasa Indonesia phrase of the Day: Tidak, terima kasih  = No, thank you.

Dear Ndugu

My parents have taken to sponsoring children through aid organizations now that my brother and I have long left home leaving them with disposable income. One of the first was Feng-Feng Wang, a little girl from China. "I really wanted a boy," my father told me, "but did you know that in China parents will sell girls to perverts. That's just not right." He was genuinely shocked by this revelation. I was genuinely shocked that this, or any of the innumerable ways women, including Western women, continue to be abused, oppressed and exploited, would be news to anyone.

In this TED talk one of my favourite fictions writers, Chilean author Isabelle Allende talks about passion, nice people with common sense and why feminism still matters. Please share it.

Arrival

We spend the night in a tiny room in a noisy hotel in Singapore as the last ferry for Batam left an hour before my plane landed. I take an instant liking to Ms. Heni, who reminds me Miranda Bailey on my guilty TV pleasure "Grey's Anatomy." (Wow, I can't believe I just casually outed myself like that.) I keep her talking all morning about her hometown but the minute we find seats on the ferry she falls fast asleep.

The ferry is circa 1965 but there are two brand new flat screen TV's on the wall. I become completely engrossed in the featured Kung-Fu movie in the way only the fantastically jet lagged can. The Principal is waiting at the ferry terminal when we land. He buys me an iced tea but I have to stand behind a screen to drink it because it's Ramadan and almost everyone is fasting.

When I finish my luggage and I are whisked away in the school bus. "You are basically here to increase enrollment," Mr. Principal tells me. Gee, no pressure.

Straight to school, where I am paraded through the classrooms like a prized Christmas present. in every room I am greeted with cheering children and applause. I feel like a rock star. Mr. Principal buys me lunch - chicken and rice and a spinach like vegetable - then we hide out in his office until it's time for the fire demonstration.

The school's fire extinguishers have expired and need to be replaced so it's been decided the old one's should be used to demonstrate how to use them. outside there an oil drum has been cut in half like a trough and filled with gas. The kids are gathered round in a circle while the maintenance men light the gas on fire. The kids push back from the punishing heat which is not actually that much hotter than the air, while I stand with Mr. J -the only other bule* in the school aside from Mr. Principal, and crack jokes about insurance and law suits. When the pin is pulled on the first extinguisher and the foam is released the wind blows it straight towards us and we all begin to choke.

This is my new workplace, my new school, my career. I am eventually driven to my new home, across the street from the campus and my new life begins.

*bule = white foreigner

Bahasa Indonesia Word of the Day: buku = book