My Travel List Includes Mangos for You!

I guess this always seems to happen, right? Here I've gone another three or four weeks without posting anything. This past stretch of time has been different though. I've genuinely been suffering from writer's block. While I've no doubt been busy, I've also already sat down on numerous occasions to write a blog entry, but I hadn't gotten past the first paragraph, until today. And I guess I'm not to the second one yet, so maybe I shouldn't make any assumptions, but today I actually have an idea for where this entry might go. Recently, I've had no idea what I've wanted to write about at the time I sat down with my laptop, and that's been precisely the problem. As I mentioned in the last entry, my life is getting to be very normal – not in the sense that you might deem as normal, but at least my life is semi-standard on an Indonesian scale. Because of that, (from my perspective) fewer profound things have been occurring. This might just be a sign that I'll never be a journalist, columnist, or novelist; or maybe it's a sign that I should think more critically about what's going on around me, but nevertheless, as things have begun to fall into place (even if that means shoving a square block into a circle hole), it's become more difficult for me to express my feelings and recount my experiences in ways that I believe would be interesting for you. Even though I can acknowledge that many recent events here would be totally entertaining and unbelievable for you, to the point of being almost unconvincing, writing about them now has become a chore. I see odd things go down literally every day, and on top of this, I've already been seeing them for a year and a half.

Not just my daily life, but also my thinking has become inarguably more Indonesian, and I can illustrate that fact pretty easily. First, I have developed an inescapable urge to always acquire bags full of seemingly meaningless gifts for people when I travel. And second, I've gotten to the point where no matter what horrible things are happening around me, I tend to either not give it much thought (assuming it's something that's out of my hands) or just not be affected by the thoughts that I'm having. When practiced by Indonesians, both of these cultural aspects never stopped infuriating me last year. The endless requests for gifts from 30 or 40 villagers each time I traveled away from Guyangan drove me up the wall; but now, if I haven't supported various local economies through buying trinkets or fabrics from family owned shops or from vendors, I feel a deeply seated guilt that my trip has been almost wasted. I also hated it last year when I would find myself in situations where I had become irreversibly displeased by an outside event, and no one around me seemed to be at all bothered. The fact of the matter is that misery loves company, and I can't tell you how many times I wanted to complain to someone last year and have them at least relate to my frustration or hey, maybe even receive some moral support. You might remember my post last February about the flood in Juwana. People here handle their problems differently, and empathy is not real big on the list; if you're visibly upset about something, the first thing people wonder is, “what could possibly be that bad?” The only thing that seems to merit on overt display of negative emotion is when relationships with friends, family members, or significant others go wrong. However, that's a-whole-nother discussion.

For the sake of effective transitions, rather than getting into the topic for which this blog entry was named, let's go ahead and continue with our thoughts of uncontrollable events and of the displaying of negative emotions.

If I'm feeling particularly under-stimulated and have absolutely nothing to do at night, one of my favorite activities is to walk about 100 yards to the entrance of my complex and hang out with the security guards, who will inevitably be getting drunk on the local alcoholic beverage, tuak. One night last week, however, was a particularly eventful evening. I was chatting with the merry gang of rent-a-cops, when suddenly a band of motorcyclists stopped in front of my neighborhood and proceeded to beat the hell out of one another. It was happening uncomfortably close to where I was sitting, and immediately all the security guards ran to break up the fight. I slowly sat up, drink in hand, watching the events unfold from about ten yards. My local security force managed to calm them down substantially, but I think the turning point happened only when one of the belligerently drunk members of the motorcycle gang caught my eye. He stood out amongst the crowd for about 10 seconds because he was (other than me) the only stationary participant, standing confused with an ambiguous and possibly irritated or offended expression on his face. My false state of security and exclusion from this brawl was immediately broken with, “HEY! Mister!” At which point, most attention was placed on me. There were a couple smiles, and since the unfortunate fellow toward whom most of the aggression had been directed was already out of the picture (not dead, but he had jumped into a taxi), I wasn't as nervous as I should have been when two of the guys began to approach me with unclear intentions. Until that point, my experiences with strangers in nearly every situation imaginable had been positive, and so I planned on handling this situation just as I had handled every other situation in this country – with a huge and genuine, but totally unwarranted smile.

As I am still capable of writing this e-mail, you might have guessed that everything turned out fine. They weren't as friendly as sober Indonesians, but possibly much more so than a mob of thugs in the US, who had only recently tracked down a rouge member of their crew, forced him to pull over at roadside in the middle of the night, and then drunkenly beat him down until outside forces made them stop. They were a little put off by my dismissal of their invitation to come continue drinking with them, but when they asked if I had been scared during the incident, my response made the whole group laugh, and everyone went home. I just told the guy that if he had come one step closer to me, then I would have smeared the bodies of everyone involved all over the street.

So you see, if a group like that in this country can get passed their violently drunken rage in a matter of seconds, after having instigated a clearly premeditated and savage motorcycle assault, only to joke around with a foreigner, as if nothing had ever happened, it shouldn't be too hard to understand how I might have changed a bit over the last year and a half. With those kinds of constant influences, if I had ever worn my emotions on my sleeve, then they're not even hanging on by a thread anymore.

Emotions on my sleeve really only applies to negative ones though because I've definitely made up for it by adding even more cheer to the heavier side of an already unbalanced scale. I'm sure that most people in the US would find me unnecessarily and obnoxiously, maybe even threateningly, upbeat. Of course I exaggerate, but the pleasant aspects of this culture are the ones that I have always clung to, and I've put real effort into making the negatives become positive. Expected and thankless gift-giving is something that I have actually begun to embrace.

Before I travel away from my home, for any number of days, I always refer to an ever-growing list that I've made with the “Notes” application of the “Office” program on my cell phone. It includes such things as: towel, power adapter, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, swimsuit, and dictionary, among many other items that I wouldn't want to forget based on the length of my trip. The most recent necessity I've added to the list, though, is not actually for me. “Gifts for locals” has become a must-bring. Of course, I had already been in the habit of buying memorabilia and other small presents for people back in Medan, but my style of travel these days has changed dramatically from how I had been traveling in the past. My new confidence and trust in a travel system that most might consider to be relying on random events, or simply a laziness to plan, has been working seamlessly and unprecedentedly successfully for about three months straight. I've been having more fun than ever, and this new addition to my travel list has become downright essential.

Here's the deal, no one has ever known me to be anything but shameless, so I guess I'll just tell you my travel arrangements like they are.

1) Choose an area, landmark, or city of interest in North Sumatra
2) Pack bags and ride there by motorcycle
3) Arrive at destination and ask villagers about local color and particularly interesting destinations
4) Wait to be approached by a group of girls
5) Explain to them why I chose to come here and my tentative plans
6) Take their suggestions, invite them along, or hone in on their plans
7) Spend the day making friends
8) Be invited to spend the night with one of their families
9) Meet the parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and cousins (that's where the gifts come in)
10) Spend time in the kitchen, help to cook dinner, and depending on the age of the parents, fall in love with the oldest or youngest daughter
11) Somehow end up getting a massage from the grandmother, mother, or one of the daughters with traditional oils in the living room, while chatting with the family
12) Be offered a place to sleep in one of the brothers' rooms
13) Talk about European soccer clubs until we fall asleep
14) Wake up, eat breakfast, sometimes go to church, and spend time with the family until I have to leave
15) Head back home to Medan, having made friends for life

I don't mean to downplay or exaggerate any part of that list. It's just the truth.

Probably the most interesting occurrence of this rarely deviating pattern was on the island of Samosir. I had rented a bicycle, and had wanted to pedal along on a famous stretch of the island, which is lined with beautifully arranged rice fields, bordered by a wall of mountains that reach across the land and out of sight. Within 30 minutes, I was coaxed by a group of women, who were working in one of the rice patties, to come and join them. It would have been an unforgivable oversight to have shrugged off the opportunity to spend the day, joking around, knee deep in mud with a group of women aged 10 to 60, and I'm glad that my senses were with me that day. Granted, five hours of bending over, trudging through saturated earth, planting seeds was nothing less than grueling, but spirits were quite high, and I helped them finish the days work earlier than what they would have normally been able to do. After completing the task, we all walked about four miles back to their home, which was right on the water. Next we all went out onto the dock with soap and shampoo to take a bath in the lake. From there, you can just read from step 9, and the only difference was that I don't think I talked any soccer, nor did I go to church the next morning.

Yesterday for Christmas eve (by the way, MERRY CHRISTMAS!), I went through the same process because I wanted to see what a traditional Christmas celebration would be like in one of the more predominantly Christian areas of the country. I went to an elaborate Catholic mass, where everyone was sitting on the floor, cross-legged on mats, and a priest from The Netherlands, who was fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, gave the sermon. Of course, there was a nativity play by Indonesian children and singing performances by many members of the congregation. At that point, steps 1 through 9 had already been accomplished, but step 11 was omitted, and step 10 was moved in between 14 and 15.

Are you still taking me seriously? Maybe this is why I haven't been writing as much.