Secret Secret Beach

I've now been to four or five beaches since my arrival in Aceh. One of them is referred to by many as "Secret Beach." My journey to Secret Beach was the second trip that I made with my new friends here. It involved riding through torrential rain and high winds on a motorbike to the base of a small mountain, where we had to hike up and around -- in the same weather conditions as the ride over -- to get to the sea. Upon our arrival, we immediately had to seek shelter in the foliage because the winds coming from the ocean were so strong, that salt water was being relentlessly pelted onto our bodies and into our eyes. Nevertheless, despite these conditions, we still saw a few more adventurers huddled around one another, trying to stay as warm and dry as possible. Secret Beach was no doubt a worth while trip, and its virtual seclusion made it utterly enjoyable in spite of the elements.

But this past weekend, I made the journey to another beautiful coastal area that proved to be one of the most breath-taking places I'd ever been, and my group ran into absolutely no one else the entire day. "Secret Secret Beach," as it has been appropriately named, requires a much longer motorbike trip, and a far more grueling trek through a mountainous jungle before being able to set eyes on land's end. Unfortunately, most groups of Acehnese thrill-seekers are explicitly denied access to the nearly hidden path that leads to the coast. Cultural rules that don't apply to foreigners inhibit locals from enjoying their own natural environments. Any Indonesian group containing both males and females is held to a higher Islamic moral standard, per se, and in the eyes of society, there is too high a risk of "funny business" between guys and girls at a secluded beach. Most Indonesian women who've seen this beach have been part of a larger group comprising mainly Westerners. That's essentially the only way that they'd get past the ever-lurking moral police, who literally just hide out in bushes waiting to deny young people an opportunity to make out in the jungle. Even my most outdoorsy Indonesian female friends -- who've got this place and this culture figured out to a tee -- have until now always been stopped and informed that they could not proceed to Secret Secret Beach.

This trip, however, I made with my new group of ex-pat friends, five Americans and one Australian. Self, the Australian (whom I'd actually met before and hiked with about 2 and a half years ago on Java... but that's another story) brought with him a huge fish that he'd bought earlier that morning at a local market, as well as some other snacks. We made a fire, grilled on the beach, and enjoyed the sun.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story!

Sorry for the first couple, by the way, my camera was having shutter problems, but I still wanted to include them.

Another one for the Mercy Corps Blog

Two weeks can tell one a great deal about a new environment, a new job, a new staff. On average that’s 112 working hours – admittedly a long time to spend with the same four people in tiny, crowded room. First impressions have been made, and the mood has been set. Since I’ve been in Banda Aceh, my team has been absorbed in making adjustments to accommodate for donor deadlines, budget modifications, as well as moving to a new office, which have all posed substantial hurdles; all the while our program, Kedai Balitaku, has had to continue as normal. Stress has been high, indecision has been unavoidable, and new challenges seem to be constantly arising from nowhere. Yet, above all these annoyances, lies a secure blanket of pure enthusiasm for a rock-solid development concept, which has already demonstrated success. When the right people are working on the right project, even a new office building that poses actual physical stumbling blocks in between the car park and the desk, and between the desk and the bathroom – an environment likely dangerous for children and barely suitable for the elderly – can do nothing to break our collective spirit and our drive to continue serving the residents of Banda Aceh. These past two weeks have been inspirational if anything, and I feel fortunate to have been placed with such a committed group of individuals for my first experience with actual fieldwork.

Realistically however, the reasons why I have been so impressed by these past two weeks have nothing to do with any scarcity of problems or issues associated with Kedai Balitaku. If any particular aspect of this project is examined thoroughly, one will find that improvements can and should be made – certainly no program is perfect, and neither will be any of its individual components. But it is precisely these problems that indicate what an exceptional program I’ve become a part of.

Let me explain:

As an outside evaluator, a contracted consultant of sorts, I fully expected my first two weeks to resemble something of an investigation, rather than a two-way open discussion. How could I have assumed that a tightly knit local staff – who’d spent hundreds of hours building this program from the ground up – would want to immediately begin deconstructing and analyzing their work, so that an outsider could give it a rating? But until now, no degree of office politics has distracted anyone from their goals, and it has been interesting to find that, not only are a great deal of problems with this program completely external to staff coordination, but even the majority of the internal problems have already been acknowledged. Working to find solutions to these problems, rather than debating contested shortcomings, will encompass the bulk of our collective efforts here for the remainder of my short contract.

I look forward to the next seven weeks with my new staff, and I’m already falling in love with Aceh. Engaging work and creative projects seem to be the norm, rather than the exception, and I imagine that we’ll all continue to learn a great deal from one another.

Murah Senyum

Let’s say you go out with a group of new people for the first time, but despite being a little nervous, and maybe a bit more self-conscious than you would generally be with close friends or family, the entire afternoon goes extremely well. Everyone is joking around, getting along, sharing stories, and truly getting to know one another. You find yourself laughing at just about every sentence that comes out of your new friends’ mouths, and they’re laughing too, even at your worst jokes. But then, suddenly, someone says to you in a semi-serious tone, “Ya know, your smile’s really cheap.”

This past Saturday was not the first time I’ve been told by a group of Indonesian friends that I have a “cheap smile,” or murah senyum. And admittedly, the first time I was accused of such a thing, I was quite shocked. I was thinking to myself, hey now, I really do think you guys are funny! I’m sorry if my smile looks “cheap,” but I’m actually having a really good time! Why would you say that?

But see, there’s a big difference between how money and merchandise are viewed in America and in Indonesia, and in turn, the vocabulary that describes them. The connotation of saying that something is “cheap” in English immediately leads one to make judgments about its quality. Saying something like, “If you hadn’t bought such a cheap phone, maybe it wouldn’t have broken so quickly,” or “What a cheap toy,” both indicate dissatisfaction. In Indonesia, it’s very different. The word, murah, simply refers to getting something for a, nonetheless, relatively small amount of money. And the same goes for the word 'expensive,' or mahal. If someone told you in the U.S. that he or she had just bought an expensive car or an expensive TV, in all likelihood, you would begin making judgments about its quality; maybe you’d picture a Jaguar or 1080p flat screen. But in Basaha Indonesia, the word mahal, has nothing to do with quality – only with the amount of money (or effort) put into something, in order to get a return. In fact, mahal never has a positive connotation in Indonesian. It sometimes can be translated to “difficult,” or at best, “not cost effective.” If something is mahal, Indonesian people don’t get images in their heads of luxurious amenities. They simply acknowledge that a better deal could have, and should have, taken place.

Accordingly, expressions in Bahasa Indonesia follow suit. Telling me that I have a “cheap smile” in Bahasa Indonesia is, in fact, quite a complement. It simply means that people don’t have to work very hard to get me to smile and enjoy myself. Likewise, the word mahal is also used differently than its English counterpart in common language. If you wanted to say something like, “These days it’s hard to find someone who smiles as much as you do,” when translating to Indonesian, you could absolutely us mahal in place of the word ‘hard’: “These days it’s mahal to find someone who smiles as much as you do.”

I’ll let you make your own judgments concerning what that says about our consumer culture.

But that discussion is actually beside the point. The real question is, why is it that I find myself being so constantly entertained in this country? Granted, I’m not a sourpuss in The States, but with all the hardship in this country, I still feel so jovial all the time, and seemingly, so does just about everyone I’ve ever met. Right now, I’m actually just recovering from my first bout of distinctly-Indonesian, low-hygienic-food-standard stomach flu, which I came to know so well during my two previous years here. Last night I was alternating between being freezing cold and blazing hot, throwing up, and having a pounding headache – but this morning, although I’m still not fully recovered, I nevertheless feel compelled to write about what a good time I’m having

So again, why is this? Why do I have a murah senyum? I think it’s because of the way people tend to make jokes with one another in this country. Jokes here are often about physical attributes, peculiar mannerisms, and other noticeable character traits– essentially, the things that define you, the inherent things that make us different from one another. These are the things that are targeted. So to put this into perspective, a night out with a group of Indonesian friends is like a constant mutual roast. Age, weight, good/bad looks, sexual orientation, race, religion, and death are all fair game! And if current events were a bigger topic of discussion, politics would also be included on this list. Everything that most Americans find to be offensive, politically incorrect, and tend to steer away from, are the main topics of discussion and ridicule.

Now, I’m not saying that all Americans are uptight about these things. I can’t even imagine the countless offensive, politically incorrect, wildly entertaining conversations I’ve had back home. But suffice it to say that these aren’t the types of things that I’d make blatantly pointed jokes about on, say, the first date. That’s where the difference between our two cultures becomes painfully obvious, and it just kills me. I love it. After only one week of knowing the friends I've made here (and it would have been less time if only I’d gotten sick earlier), they feel totally comfortable coming into my room at my darkest hour, just after I’d been in the bathroom for 30 minutes, and then making fun of me for how shitty I look. Sometimes I wonder, “do you guys have any remorse?!” But, then I have to consider that these are the same people who, without being asked, also brought with them chicken soup, a light porridge, and drinks – never expecting to be compensated – just so I didn’t have to go outside to find food.

Why do I enjoy myself so much here? Because people are so incredibly kind-hearted, but at the same time, even if murah senyum were in fact a blatant insult, they still wouldn’t hesitate to keep saying it!