Yea! I’m cured! No more Hepatitis; no more Typhoid Fever! And only three more days of not being able to ride my motorbike or travel far, and then I am a free woman. Oh, and I'm also not allowed to eat anything spicy, fatty, or sour for the next month. My one friend said, have fun eating white rice for the next month. Yes, it's true, those orders do come in conflict with most Indonesian foods. However, I reiterate...Yea!
I went to the doctor today; I wanted to ask if I was all better, and also, why do I have this ongoing stomach pain? You know that feeling you get when your stomach tightens because you’re stressed out about something? It’s like that, only constant. So apparently, that’s a completely unrelated problem I picked up, a nice lifetime condition called maag. I looked up maag in the Indonesian-English language dictionary. According to John Echols and Hassan Shadily, maag means “stomach (as a source of sickness)” or to “suffer a stomach disorder…gastric problem.” So, after talking to the doctors, I think it's really a pesky little peptic ulcer, also bacteria related. It's hard to tell when you're dealing with Indonesian names for things. Anyway, if this is the case, then it's not really a now and forever thing. Although according to this doctor, it is, but the safeguards are: eat regularly, don’t get stressed out, and think happy thoughts. But the point is, I'm no longer disease-ridden! I left the house for the first time today! Yea!
P.S. Now it is time for an official apology. Sorry for bombarding you with all these blogs at once. I hope you read them, but I also hope not in one sitting! I wrote them from over the course of being ill and am just now getting to post them.
P.P.S. Don’t let my stories of getting sick scare you away from coming to Indonesia. It’s an awesome place. Instead, let it instill upon you the importance of getting your immunizations!
P.P.P.S. Happy way-belated Birthday sister Sheri, brother Keith, and cousin Freddy!
P.P.P.P.S. There, Dietrich, another unnecessary use of the P.S.; I wrote them all for you.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Escape Part 2: Or, “How I Became a Sundanese Woman”
The second day I violated my Ibu Laksmi-imposed-house arrest was the day of the kecapi performance with Pak Yeng. I woke up at 5:30am, showering and breakfasting before the rest of the household was awake. It was now 6am. I was about to call a cab and sneak out of the house when Ibu Laksmi sleepily emerged from her bedroom. When she realized what I was up to, she quickly woke up her husband and asked him to drive me. “Kasihan Dorcinda; dia masih sakit!” After Pak Muharam had showered and breakfasted, we left the house. It was a little past 7am, and the adrenaline rush I’d gotten from trying to escape the house without anybody’s notice had long faded, replaced with many-a-drowsy yawn, combined with the internal stress of realizing how late I would be.
When I arrived at Pak Yeng’s place, I remembered that I had forgotten to wear my headscarf. Even worse, I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt! I was immediately embarrassed, and shy to exit the car. It was the first time that I had ever not been fully covered in their presence. I reminded myself that I would have had to take the headscarf off to get in the traditional garb anyway. Pak Muharam laughed and told me to believe in myself (percaya diri). I took a deep breath, deciding to play my role as a good, little Christian American girl, waved goodbye to Pak Muharam, and sauntered on into the house. There were quite a few looks from the passerbys on the street who knew me and from the people in the house, but no one said anything. I inwardly thanked Pak Muharam for taking so long to drop me off, because by the time I arrived, everyone was waiting to leave, and they seemed less concerned with my non-Muslim looks than they were with shoving me into the hot pink kebaya (traditional dress) that they had chosen for me!
After crowding into a rented angkot (public transportation with hard benches), we arrived at the performance venue. We took a detour to put on our make-up and finish the costuming process on the second floor of a mosque. Since it was a house of worship, there were no mirrors. That meant that I couldn’t see what was going on when Pak Yeng’s wife and daughter-in-law descended on me with bags of make-up, hairpieces, combs and hairspray. Oh the amount of hairspray! I had to rely on the whisperings of the dancers and musicians as they witnessed the process. “Cantik!” “Seperti Barbie!” I had a certain idea of what was going on, as I had once participated as an attendant at a Javanese circumcision ceremony back in 2003, Yogya. But Pak Yeng’s wife’s excited whispers of “Now you are becoming a real Sundanese woman” filled me with curiosity. Finally the process was finished. I picked up a mirror, glanced at myself, and immediately laid it back down again. The person staring back was no longer me! I took the mirror and looked again. This time I could see a little of myself. I definitely fit the image of a Sundanse kecapi player. Everyone crowded around me. That’s when the pictures started. I had just wanted to get a picture of my new looks to mail back to my folks, but then all the boys wanted to take pictures with me and pretend they were my husband. With all our get-up, we certainly looked like we were about to get married!
The performance went really well, despite the embarrassment of having to endure the M.C. constantly reiterating that the kecapi player had come all the way from America. This made a lot of people interested in getting to know me afterwards and inviting me to their houses! Don’t worry, they were the Ibu-Ibu type (housemoms). One of the comments I often hear is: “Oh you should come to my house and meet my son. He wants to study in America and needs the work on his English!” Uh huh. Yeah, right. We played for a couple of hours, mixing kecapi kawih songs with the occasional jaipongan (sexy traditional dance) number. And then it was over. I’d been to a lot of Indonesian weddings, but I never thought that I would be able to participate in one as a musician! When I returned home, Ibu Laksmi and the gang were all taken aback with the get-up, and immediately dragged me to a photo studio to get the memory officially imprinted for all time. Which is another embarrassing event if you ever have to endure it. “Move around, try to look like a model!” What the heck am I suppose to do? Anyway, at least I have the photo for my mom.
When I arrived at Pak Yeng’s place, I remembered that I had forgotten to wear my headscarf. Even worse, I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt! I was immediately embarrassed, and shy to exit the car. It was the first time that I had ever not been fully covered in their presence. I reminded myself that I would have had to take the headscarf off to get in the traditional garb anyway. Pak Muharam laughed and told me to believe in myself (percaya diri). I took a deep breath, deciding to play my role as a good, little Christian American girl, waved goodbye to Pak Muharam, and sauntered on into the house. There were quite a few looks from the passerbys on the street who knew me and from the people in the house, but no one said anything. I inwardly thanked Pak Muharam for taking so long to drop me off, because by the time I arrived, everyone was waiting to leave, and they seemed less concerned with my non-Muslim looks than they were with shoving me into the hot pink kebaya (traditional dress) that they had chosen for me!
After crowding into a rented angkot (public transportation with hard benches), we arrived at the performance venue. We took a detour to put on our make-up and finish the costuming process on the second floor of a mosque. Since it was a house of worship, there were no mirrors. That meant that I couldn’t see what was going on when Pak Yeng’s wife and daughter-in-law descended on me with bags of make-up, hairpieces, combs and hairspray. Oh the amount of hairspray! I had to rely on the whisperings of the dancers and musicians as they witnessed the process. “Cantik!” “Seperti Barbie!” I had a certain idea of what was going on, as I had once participated as an attendant at a Javanese circumcision ceremony back in 2003, Yogya. But Pak Yeng’s wife’s excited whispers of “Now you are becoming a real Sundanese woman” filled me with curiosity. Finally the process was finished. I picked up a mirror, glanced at myself, and immediately laid it back down again. The person staring back was no longer me! I took the mirror and looked again. This time I could see a little of myself. I definitely fit the image of a Sundanse kecapi player. Everyone crowded around me. That’s when the pictures started. I had just wanted to get a picture of my new looks to mail back to my folks, but then all the boys wanted to take pictures with me and pretend they were my husband. With all our get-up, we certainly looked like we were about to get married!
The performance went really well, despite the embarrassment of having to endure the M.C. constantly reiterating that the kecapi player had come all the way from America. This made a lot of people interested in getting to know me afterwards and inviting me to their houses! Don’t worry, they were the Ibu-Ibu type (housemoms). One of the comments I often hear is: “Oh you should come to my house and meet my son. He wants to study in America and needs the work on his English!” Uh huh. Yeah, right. We played for a couple of hours, mixing kecapi kawih songs with the occasional jaipongan (sexy traditional dance) number. And then it was over. I’d been to a lot of Indonesian weddings, but I never thought that I would be able to participate in one as a musician! When I returned home, Ibu Laksmi and the gang were all taken aback with the get-up, and immediately dragged me to a photo studio to get the memory officially imprinted for all time. Which is another embarrassing event if you ever have to endure it. “Move around, try to look like a model!” What the heck am I suppose to do? Anyway, at least I have the photo for my mom.
Escape Part 1: The Kecapi
I have violated my bedrest and exited my residence in Southern Mars exactly two times. Both of them were to play kecapi (a 20-string Sundanese zither). The first was to practice at the house of my teacher, Pak Yeng. That was the day after the doctor’s orders. At the time, I figured that I’d already rested 24 hours and taken my medication. What harm could sitting in his house with a kecapi at my lap do? Besides, Pak Yeng had promised that he would invite a bunch of his friends over so that way I could practice with a full group of musicians, including gong, drum, suling (flute), and sindhen (female singers). We were preparing for a performance the following week, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t get confused with more commotion than just the sound of a second kecapi, the way we usually practiced together. Pak Yeng is a sweet man in his mid-70s that is excited to share his musical traditions with anyone, let alone a foreigner. How could I let him down?
Almost as soon as I entered the taxi, I immediately regretted my decision to come. The road conditions, with potholes every two feet in all directions, not to mention the countless speedbumps on the smaller roads, are simply not conducive to someone with holes in their intestines and continuing abdominal pain. Trust me; you feel everything, and it all hurts. I hid my eyes under my headscarf to trick myself into imagining I was still in bed.
When I entered the house, though, the regret faded as quickly as it had come. There was a gong in one of the entryways, and the normally quiet rooms were crawling with Sundanese musicians. A wave of excitement filled me. The gong player looked ancient, as if he’d been sitting beneath the gong for centuries—a relic waiting to be photographed and commoditized by Indonesia’s booming tourist industry. We played kecapi kawih (genre of music) for two hours until finally one of the singers had to pick up her daughter, and the group dissembled into chatting, mostly in Sundanese, discussing which song sounded better in which mode. I stayed as long as I could, trying to put off the return journey as long as I could… an hour-long taxi-ride by the way, that I thought was outrageously expensive. 55,000 Rupiah…almost $6! (Translating the figure into American dollars always makes me feel better when I feel like I’m wasting my money.) I left Pak Yeng’s house, agreeing that we would meet the morning of the performance, between 6 and 7am. In my heart of hearts, I hoped I would be feeling better and could attend.
Almost as soon as I entered the taxi, I immediately regretted my decision to come. The road conditions, with potholes every two feet in all directions, not to mention the countless speedbumps on the smaller roads, are simply not conducive to someone with holes in their intestines and continuing abdominal pain. Trust me; you feel everything, and it all hurts. I hid my eyes under my headscarf to trick myself into imagining I was still in bed.
When I entered the house, though, the regret faded as quickly as it had come. There was a gong in one of the entryways, and the normally quiet rooms were crawling with Sundanese musicians. A wave of excitement filled me. The gong player looked ancient, as if he’d been sitting beneath the gong for centuries—a relic waiting to be photographed and commoditized by Indonesia’s booming tourist industry. We played kecapi kawih (genre of music) for two hours until finally one of the singers had to pick up her daughter, and the group dissembled into chatting, mostly in Sundanese, discussing which song sounded better in which mode. I stayed as long as I could, trying to put off the return journey as long as I could… an hour-long taxi-ride by the way, that I thought was outrageously expensive. 55,000 Rupiah…almost $6! (Translating the figure into American dollars always makes me feel better when I feel like I’m wasting my money.) I left Pak Yeng’s house, agreeing that we would meet the morning of the performance, between 6 and 7am. In my heart of hearts, I hoped I would be feeling better and could attend.
Oatmeal Bliss
Still sick. Today, I have progressed in my diet. In addition to bubur, I can now eat oatmeal! There was never a happier person to eat oatmeal for three meals a day. Believe me, that is some real kind of happy. Also, I’ve discovered that I enjoy cheesy Indonesian teeny-bopper films. They’re so deliciously corny and predictable! And where else would I have learned the oh-so-translatable Indonesian version of the endearing phrase, “talk to the hand” ? “Omong sama tangan!”
Solo, Part 2: The Discovery of the Cream Bath
When Ethan arrived in Indonesia, I decided to meet him in Solo and help him out with the settling in process, so that way he didn’t have to handle all that bureaucratic nonsense alone. Unfortunately for both of us, the drive was all-night long, and miserable. Cigarette smoke in an enclosed space for 8 hours is never fun. A little after dawn, I arrived at the hotel; I was “langsung sakit” (immediately sick!) and headed straight to the little girl’s room to get rid of all the badness.
Ethan was staying in this ultra-posh hotel that was just a little too pricy for us, so after I slept a couple of hours, we ate our breakfast and prepared ourselves for the walk of shame. That is, we physically dragged all of our luggage—no small feat considering he had three big suitcases alone—down the street to the neighboring hotel that was just a wee bit cheaper! Arriving at this hotel was a bit of a walk down memory lane, because it was the exact same hotel we had stayed at over three years ago with USINDO. At that time, there were 25 of us, and we practiced our dangdut (a kind of Indian influenced Indonesian rock music) karaoke over dinner, and stayed up all night singing Indonesian pop songs in the hotel lobby. This time, was slightly different. Our days were filled with going to immigration offices, police offices, and universities, and our evenings were spent with me shivering under four blankets, and Ethan expending his precious drugs brought from America to make me better. One interesting development came out of this though. Figuring that we needed to treat ourselves after all our hard work, Ethan helped me to discover the cream bath.
A cream bath is when someone puts mashed up avocado in your hair and massages it all around for about half an hour. And then they put it under one of those hot steamer things, before they wash it out. Sounds gross, right? Believe me, it feels awesome. I was skeptical at first, but Ethan made it sound so great. And heck, I’ll try anything once. While I was at it, I also decided to try my first manicure, because they said they could do them at the same time. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and what a relaxing time that was! You see, they didn’t just stop with the cream bath and manicure. Both were combined with a neck, back, and arm massage that was just heavenly. I almost forgot I wasn’t feeling well, it was so lovely. For two people, it only cost seven dollars. So, it’s not even too expensive. I’m not so sure about repeating the manicure, but the cream bath I plan on doing as often as possible from now on!
Ethan was staying in this ultra-posh hotel that was just a little too pricy for us, so after I slept a couple of hours, we ate our breakfast and prepared ourselves for the walk of shame. That is, we physically dragged all of our luggage—no small feat considering he had three big suitcases alone—down the street to the neighboring hotel that was just a wee bit cheaper! Arriving at this hotel was a bit of a walk down memory lane, because it was the exact same hotel we had stayed at over three years ago with USINDO. At that time, there were 25 of us, and we practiced our dangdut (a kind of Indian influenced Indonesian rock music) karaoke over dinner, and stayed up all night singing Indonesian pop songs in the hotel lobby. This time, was slightly different. Our days were filled with going to immigration offices, police offices, and universities, and our evenings were spent with me shivering under four blankets, and Ethan expending his precious drugs brought from America to make me better. One interesting development came out of this though. Figuring that we needed to treat ourselves after all our hard work, Ethan helped me to discover the cream bath.
A cream bath is when someone puts mashed up avocado in your hair and massages it all around for about half an hour. And then they put it under one of those hot steamer things, before they wash it out. Sounds gross, right? Believe me, it feels awesome. I was skeptical at first, but Ethan made it sound so great. And heck, I’ll try anything once. While I was at it, I also decided to try my first manicure, because they said they could do them at the same time. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and what a relaxing time that was! You see, they didn’t just stop with the cream bath and manicure. Both were combined with a neck, back, and arm massage that was just heavenly. I almost forgot I wasn’t feeling well, it was so lovely. For two people, it only cost seven dollars. So, it’s not even too expensive. I’m not so sure about repeating the manicure, but the cream bath I plan on doing as often as possible from now on!
Solo, Part 1: Introducing Ethan
The word doppelganger comes from German, and literally means “double-goer.” According to the handy-dandy Oxford American Dictionary built into my Mac dashboard, it means “an apparition, or double of a living person.” My now Alaskan, former Baltimorean friend Kyle once told me that if you ever meet your doppelganger, legends say that you could die instantly. I think that I have met as close to what comes as my doppelganger without having to forever depart this world, if only because he comes in the form of a six-foot, red-headed man from Alabama, named Ethan.
Ethan and I met in Tokyo, Japan on our way to Indonesia back in 2003, through the program USINDO, and I swear we have shared the same life ever since. We both entered graduate school, only becoming interested in Indonesian ethnomusicology after randomly joining the gamelan ensembles at our prospective universities. We both ended up studying Indonesian language and culture in Yogyakarta, where we became friends. Also, we’re both pretty bad at keeping in touch with old friends. That’s why I’m always half-surprised and yet half-expecting to see him whenever I do anything Indonesian-y related. For example, I’ll go to an ethnomusicology conference, and there is Ethan. Not so strange, right? I go to Yogyakarta in 2005, randomly meet a dude at the foot of the volcano, Mt. Merapi, only to be told that he had recently met another American ethnomusicologist in Sulawesi. This particular American had gotten a grant to study in Indonesia for the exact same amount of time that my grant lasted to be in the country. I call the number he gives me, and lo and behold am talking to Ethan. I decide to study advanced Indonesian language at the University of Wisconsin for the summer, and I walk through the door on the first day of icebreakers, and who do I meet, but Ethan! And after a bit of chatting, it turns out that we both received Fulbright grants for ten months to be in Indonesia during the same year. We both planned on leaving in September, but the visa process ended up holding us back a few months.
So, here we are, in Indonesia again, albeit he in Solo and I in Bandung. Luckily, for two people whose lives happen to run in parallel tracks, we get along great. A little too well, actually. As adults and colleagues, we recognize that it can’t last forever. To that end, we have already staged our professional rivalry that begins with a race to steal each other’s students, and results in him ending up as a crippled, embittered old man, and me an old woman, sentenced to life emprisonment, after having unsuccessfully tried to run him over with my car while he’s riding his bike home from work.
Ethan and I met in Tokyo, Japan on our way to Indonesia back in 2003, through the program USINDO, and I swear we have shared the same life ever since. We both entered graduate school, only becoming interested in Indonesian ethnomusicology after randomly joining the gamelan ensembles at our prospective universities. We both ended up studying Indonesian language and culture in Yogyakarta, where we became friends. Also, we’re both pretty bad at keeping in touch with old friends. That’s why I’m always half-surprised and yet half-expecting to see him whenever I do anything Indonesian-y related. For example, I’ll go to an ethnomusicology conference, and there is Ethan. Not so strange, right? I go to Yogyakarta in 2005, randomly meet a dude at the foot of the volcano, Mt. Merapi, only to be told that he had recently met another American ethnomusicologist in Sulawesi. This particular American had gotten a grant to study in Indonesia for the exact same amount of time that my grant lasted to be in the country. I call the number he gives me, and lo and behold am talking to Ethan. I decide to study advanced Indonesian language at the University of Wisconsin for the summer, and I walk through the door on the first day of icebreakers, and who do I meet, but Ethan! And after a bit of chatting, it turns out that we both received Fulbright grants for ten months to be in Indonesia during the same year. We both planned on leaving in September, but the visa process ended up holding us back a few months.
So, here we are, in Indonesia again, albeit he in Solo and I in Bandung. Luckily, for two people whose lives happen to run in parallel tracks, we get along great. A little too well, actually. As adults and colleagues, we recognize that it can’t last forever. To that end, we have already staged our professional rivalry that begins with a race to steal each other’s students, and results in him ending up as a crippled, embittered old man, and me an old woman, sentenced to life emprisonment, after having unsuccessfully tried to run him over with my car while he’s riding his bike home from work.
Why I am an Idiot
So, sorry for not writing any entries in a long while. Remember that handy dandy “get-better” list I wrote in the last blog? Well, let me tell you, it did absolutely nothing for my health. I visited my friend in Solo and got sick again. I went to a ritual adat and got sick again. Finally, I checked myself into a hospital to get the scoop. Two and a half weeks of recurring stomach problems and fever is never good, right? So, it turns out that I have Hepatitis, and Paratyphoid Fever. The first is caused by a virus, and the second one means that there’s a bunch of salmonella rumbling around in my belly. I can hear it. And the doctor confined me to bed rest until after Valentine’s Day. That’s when God loves me again. Once they explained to me that we were talking about my liver and my intestines, I was like, “Yes, doctor, anything you say, doctor.” I have lots of different kinds of medication and a bunch of snacks and water bottles stashed near my bed. Hurray for antibiotics! And I have to eat bubur ayam for every meal, which is the sick person’s food here. All it is, is rice that’s over-satiated with water and mashed up so that it’s soft, and then mixed with chicken soup flavoring. Yummy. Oh, and they told me that I’m not supposed to think of anything, watch movies, read the newspaper, walk around, that sort of thing. It’s so boring! (Sometimes I watch movies anyway.) Thank you, Ibu Laksmi for taking care of me! Anyway, now I can use the time to catch up on my blog.
The dumb thing, is that before I come to Indonesia, I usually get vaccinations for both of those things. But for some reason, I forgot this time around. I guess I was all kind of crazy, traveling around for weddings and conferences and trying to pack, at the same time finish my dissertation prospectus. Plus, Fulbright made me get full medical tests, for absolutely everything including every STD known to man on this green earth. So I was tired of doctors and needles. But now I know, and will remember. No matter what is going on in your life, get your shots first, before even thinking of getting on that plane!
The dumb thing, is that before I come to Indonesia, I usually get vaccinations for both of those things. But for some reason, I forgot this time around. I guess I was all kind of crazy, traveling around for weddings and conferences and trying to pack, at the same time finish my dissertation prospectus. Plus, Fulbright made me get full medical tests, for absolutely everything including every STD known to man on this green earth. So I was tired of doctors and needles. But now I know, and will remember. No matter what is going on in your life, get your shots first, before even thinking of getting on that plane!
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