Finally a Lazy Sunday

Two nights ago I found myself perusing some of the writings I have posted over the years.  It is no mystery that the primary reason why I started writing in the first place was because I had embarked upon an adventure, and I wanted to share my experiences with those back home.  Novelty, surprise, exceptionalism, and disbelief remained the underlying themes that kept my writing interesting (at least for me!).  And, in fact, I found that although posting my anecdotes certainly allowed friends and family to vicariously relive some of my more outrageous exploits, the most important reason why I kept blogging was because it helped me to make sense of the wholly unfamiliar world in which I was living.  Taking the time to parse my experiences into manageable, bite-size stories kept me grounded when I knew that—no matter how much I wanted to—I probably would never be able to sufficiently communicate my thoughts to others without the lion’s share being totally lost in translation.

But what happens when that mystical, foreign land becomes just the place where you wake up every morning, where you work with your colleagues and socialize with friends?  Cumulatively, I’ve now lived in Indonesia for almost three years and resided in four different cities, which include two of the most conservative and two of the most cosmopolitan.  Granted, my innate American sensibilities occasionally prompt me to take a second glance at something to reassure myself that I am truly seeing what I’m seeing; however, on a daily basis, very little could occur here now that would surprise me.  No matter where you live on this planet, shocking incidents, humorous situations, and confusing circumstances will arise, but I can confidently say that, in Indonesia, I have reached I pretty high level of acculturation.  For certain obvious reasons, I could never be mistaken as a local, and being different has been a huge motivation for me to explore, learn, and experiment.  And not that my life is dull now, but it has absolutely become far more routine.

Honestly, that’s a pretty discomforting thought.  And it’s not at all because I fear consistency or “settling down” in my life, but because I have not taken nearly as much time recently to thoroughly appreciate the uniqueness of my current situation.  Whether short-term or long-term, I’ve been living in a very goal-driven atmosphere at work.  This start-up university environment is so encompassing that I rarely take my mind away from it.  That’s not to say that I’m constantly working, but it is definitely the most consuming part of my life.  And on top of this, work environments in Indonesia are not like work environments in the US.  You truly live your work here because your colleagues are your family.  If you’re Indonesian, it’s just a cultural phenomenon that you would treat your colleagues like brothers and sisters and your boss like a parent.  There really is no practice in this country—or even conception of—separating business and pleasure. The office environment more often than not resembles that of a party, and after work, everyone still hangs out with each other. For foreigners although the underlying reasons are different, you still become just as close to your ex-pat colleagues because, as foreigners, you simply relate to one another on a different level.  And perhaps more importantly, no matter who you are, it’s easy to get sucked into the general fun-loving, truly collegial Indonesian office environment!  

Writing has been a way for me to step back and attempt to view my experiences through the eyes of another.  I’m not even going to try to begin listing all the benefits of doing this. Ultimately, it’s something that I have not done enough of recently, and I hope I can get back into the habit.  So that being said, if you’re not already tired, feel free—once again—to step out with me into some Indonesian traffic…

A collection of thoughts from one seat among millions on the streets of Jakarta:

Density

I’ve seen estimates about the number of two- and four-wheeled vehicles on the streets of Jakarta at any given moment.  To tell you the truth, I don’t know how accurate they are, and frankly I don’t care.  Suffice it to say that Jakarta is growing rapidly: people are making more money, they are getting more jobs, and subsequently, they are buying more and more cars and motorcycles. Public transportation is terrible, and Indonesians aren’t savers – when you come across some money, it’s time to spend it on something cool, like to new car or bike! 

When you sit in Jakarta traffic, it’s like being a single, solitary ball inside one of those ball-cages at Chuck E. Cheese.  You’re piled literally on top of one another, and you only move when some inexplicable force has allowed all the other balls surrounding you to move all at once – and you’re very rarely moving in the same direction. Furthermore, just like when a kid jumps into the cage, and all the balls in his immediate vicinity scatter, the balls at the other end of the cage don’t budge… just because you see evidence that something is happening on the rode ahead does not guarantee that you’re going anywhere any time soon.

Air Quality

I just hope that my lungs and respiratory system are adapting to and embracing the carbon monoxide.

Traffic Control

During standard rush-hour times, almost every intersection in the city is occupied by a community volunteer who has forgone all other commitments to stand in the middle of the street and attempt to direct traffic.  This is serious business, and people take pride in this responsibility.  I often wonder how a particular individual claims and retains his rightful intersection; every single morning I ride by the same people at the same crossings.  Only occasionally do I see substitutes, and I feel particularly concerned when I do. What happened to blue-hat, bearded guy at Pancoran & Perdatam?? I always feel relieved the next day when he’s back.

However, one of the last intersections on my way to the office is manned by an 80-year old senior citizen in the morning and a child who’s not even as tall as my motorcycle in the afternoon.  This is the WORST intersection in the city.  The old guy doesn’t know what’s happening, and the 5-year old lacks considerable authority.  I never know if they are telling me to go or to stop, and neither does anyone else.  I have a pretty uneventful ride until I arrive at this intersection where suddenly people are always driving on the wrong side of the road, motorcycles are sideways in between cars, and my otherwise 15-minute commute turns into 30.  However, no one ever seems to question the legitimacy of either of these two local difference-makers.

Helmets

The thing about helmets is: they have to be strapped on. 

An accident minor enough to not knock off an unstrapped helmet will likely not result in your hitting your head.  Any accident that results in your hitting your head has almost certainly caused a sufficiently powerful enough jolt to send an unstrapped helmet flying. 

Please strap on your helmets.

2:00 a.m.

For most ordinary human beings, on occasion, midnight is a perfectly acceptable time to lie down for bed before entering the office the next day.  An addicting TV show, chatting with friends, or perhaps scrambling to make up for a day of procrastination – any of which is a perfectly reasonable excuse to push one’s waking hours to the 12:00 a.m. mark.  However, habitually, breaking this p.m./a.m. barrier makes for a dreary day-to-day existence.  With a consistent 6:00 a.m. wakeup call, time must eventually be set aside to compensate for lost sleep.

This is why still being conscious to see “1:00 a.m.” on a clock during a normal workweek is a stark indicator that something has not gone as planned. And furthermore, once the clock has struck 2:00 a.m., few additional signs are needed to suggest that a total breakdown has occurred. There are very few reasons why one should still be pacing around his or her apartment a mere four hours before he must arise and begin preparing for the next day.

It’s 2:00 a.m. here right now.  The ceiling light is on in my living room, all my valuables are hidden, and my new purple foldout couch is quite irregularly positioned in front of the doorway, purposefully serving to prevent any unwanted entry into my humble abode…

...Four hours earlier...

After a Skype call home, I walked back to my room through the underground shopping mall, which serves as a very useful and entertaining foundation to my apartment complex.  I took an elevator up to the 11^th floor, and upon arriving at my unit, groceries and laptop in hand, I attempted to unlock my front door. However, I experienced some difficulty in unlocking the lock. Attributing this inconvenience to having previously had two hands full of food and electronic equipment, I patiently placed my belongings onto the floor. I then made a second attempt to turn the key.

This time, however, I immediately recognized an urgent problem.  Despite having released 20+ pounds from my grip, thereby significantly improving my dexterity and coordination, I still could not open my door.  The key turned stubbornly about 45 degrees to the left and refused to rotate any further.  Any additional tinkering with the door would be futile; the lock was undoubtedly broken.  Entering my apartment would now be transformed from a mindless, routine task into a cross-cultural fiasco of confusion and frustration.

Refusing to give up, I carefully toyed with the lock and key for a good 15 minutes. After only 3 days of living at this place, I truly didn’t want to resort to a 10 p.m. call to my new landlord. The guy doesn’t live anywhere near by.  And even if I had wanted to make calling him my first attempt to resolve the problem, it would not have done any good; of course, I did eventually make the call, but to no real surprise, there was no answer.  In fact, after multiple attempts over the course of another 20 minutes, reaching the owner began to seem like a lost cause. 

This was a problem. See, getting most anything accomplished in this country – when that “anything” falls outside your individual realm of expertise – is a matter of having already formed a close and personal relationship with another individual who does have that expertise.  And the time required to cultivate that sort of relationship with someone seemed like it might be longer than the time between that instant and when I wanted to lie down for bed.   

Serving to further exacerbate the situation was the fact that in order to rent an apartment on a monthly basis in Indonesia, you are technically supposed to have already obtained an official visa, namely, one which doesn’t explicitly state that you are a TOURIST, and that you must exit the country within 30 days.  At the time, unfortunately, this was all I had.  And to boot, guess what, that was also locked in my room.

Begrudgingly, I took the elevator back down to the security desk and looked into the eyes of two Indonesian guards, with whom I’d not yet had the chance to meet, after only 3 days of staying at the apartment.  For all they knew, I had just walked up from the mall downstairs to visit a friend. 

Suffice it to say that the interaction was somewhat painful. 

“Soooo…. You live here?” Okay, which apartment do you own? …oh, you’re renting? I don’t have you on the list… so, you just moved in? hmmmm.  Why don’t you call your landlord.  Oh, he didn’t pick up?  You should try him again.  Still no answer? We’ll, just need to make a copy of your visa then.  Oh, no visa? Well, at least let us make a copy of your passport.  Huh, don’t have that either?”

...head of security enters...

“Okay, so you don’t have any official Indonesian I.D. You don’t have anyone who can vouch for the fact that you live here, and you can’t get a hold of your landlord?  If we open this door for you, I really, really…. REALY hope that you actually do live here.  And I really, really… REALLY hope that your passport is actually inside. Understand?”

So, after a pretty obvious threat from security, I was escorted upstairs by two guards and a very suspect looking “locksmith,” who appeared to be about 14 years old, wielding nothing more than a rusty hammer and a bent icepick.

Another noisy hour of banging at my door went by, and after a sufficiently large pile of sawdust, paint chips, and metal shavings had accumulated at my threshold, the door miraculously opened.  But unfortunately, it had not occurred to the staff to bring any replacement parts. This, of course, presented the obvious problem of not being able to again lock, or even close, my door.  But more immediately, it meant that – unless I wanted to leave my apartment completely unattended with a door flapping in the wind at 12:00 a.m. in an unfamiliar environment – I was going to have to entrust the apartment staff with the most important document I have, so that they could go make a copy, while I guarded all my possessions.   And their sense of urgency of making the copy of my passport was discomforting, so I had to let them do it, seeing as how they would not accept a copy that I had already made.

The copy of the passport literally took another hour, which seemed even longer…

And that takes me back to the beginning of the story.  I had to get some sleep after my passport was finally returned to me. So, I moved my couch in front of the door. That way, if anyone wanted to enter, at least they would wake me up with the commotion of having to push passed the couch. 

Miraculously, by 2:30 in the morning, one of the staff members had actually managed to find a replacement lock at a nearby market.  And to my relief, he seemed to install it with a bit more finesse and expertise than the manner in which he had removed the previous one. 

Yes, it turned out to be a dreary and exhausting next day at work, but at least now, I’ve made friends with the guards, they do know I live here, I have a permanent visa, and although I still can rarely ever get a hold of my landlord, no further problems have arisen with the facilities.

After plenty of experience living here, though, that’s clearly not something that I’m going to fool myself into getting used to. :-)

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!

First Impressions: Kedai Balitaku, Banda Aceh, Mercy Corps 2010

**I'm probably going to be writing another blog on the Mercy Corps website. This will be the first entry once I get the password for it**


I have been at my post in Banda Aceh, Indonesia for not even two days. It’s currently Sunday morning, and I’ve yet to see the Mercy Corps office here. What I knew about my position before I arrived, I gathered from a few informative documents sent to me by e-mail, and of course, from the two-paragraph job description that I read online when applying for this internship. But after arriving on site, and after being here for only a slightly greater number of hours than I can count on my two hands, I can assert – with the confidence of someone who knows this country quite well – that my experience here with MC will be an overwhelmingly positive one.

Development work can try one’s patience, force one to constantly rethink decisions, drive one to question widely-accepted and long-established standards of efficiency and effectiveness, and provide one with no fine line between success and failure. But that, my friends, that is the name of the game. That is precisely why most who enter this field are compelled so strongly to become part of the solution. My first impressions of the local Indonesian staff hired by Mercy Corps to run and implement Kedai Balitaku (the program I’ll be focused on all summer) could not be more positive. The limited interactions I’ve had so far with my new colleagues have already instilled a confidence in me that I will be working with a results-oriented group of experienced professionals. I am not so unrealistic to immediately assume that the road ahead won’t be bumpy and won’t lead to a certain degree of debate and conflict among staff, but at least my initial experience certainly did not have to be as positive as it has been.

Two years of prior experience working as a teacher in Indonesia allowed me to become familiar with common, local organizational challenges, as well as cultural obstacles to progress. One of my favorites is the notorious Indonesia expression, jam karet, or “rubber time.” Whether you interpret this as a healthy, laid-back, stress-free outlook on life, or simply as a lame excuse for poor work ethic, it is nonetheless a reality. Behavioral change and improved quality of life will remain the broad, intrinsic goals of my team’s work here over the life of this project, and I already believe that my Indonesian co-workers are making sizable efforts to combat a number of local challenges,whether directly or indirectly.

I am a second-year graduate degree candidate at Boston University, and my development experience to this point has been largely theoretical, but the passion I’ve built, and the knowledge I’ve acquired, over the last year has ingrained in me a very high – but realistic and empathetic – set of expectations for how onsite project operations should be conducted. Maybe I’m still naïve about the nature of development work, and maybe I shouldn’t make hasty conclusions about my position here with limited evidence. But I buy that argument only to a certain extent. What I’ve seen in such a short time has managed to build my enthusiasm and motivation to the point where I’ll at least be able to coast on pure excitement until I truly get this job and situation figured out!

Knock on Wood

Although many Indonesian cultural dynamics remain endlessly puzzling to me, I have still become accustomed to many important and ubiquitous features of this complex society. I certainly like to think of myself as a member of “the club.” When I step foot on Indonesian soil, I generally know what to expect from people and how to interact with my surroundings.

The time I spent on the island of Nias, where people are notorious for their fiery and combative personalities; multiple trips to Lombok, where residents are among the poorest in the country; a year in Central Java, where I was an instant and permanent local celebrity; and another year in North Sumatra, where the Catholic community tops off every social gathering with a strong glass of homemade palm wine, have all conditioned me for virtually anything that could happen on this archipelago. Additionally, I know where I feel most comfortable, or more aptly, where I will feel most comfortable.

Let’s talk about first impressions.

If I had been air-lifted and dropped off in middle of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, I could only hope that I would have felt as giddy, amazed, and excited as I felt yesterday afternoon.

The Acehnese experience began on my plane ride from Jakarta, where I sat next to a couple of punchy, witty Acehnese men, as well as an eager college student who is also involved with NGO work in Banda Aceh. The plane landed for a temporary stop in Medan and then continued to Banda; and without a single dull moment or lapse in conversation, we passed over the entire vertical stretch of Sumatra. Phone numbers were exchanged about the time I began to gaze out my cabin window, as our plane neared the end of its descent. A barely discernible boarder separating a vast seascape from kilometers of entrenched, glimmering, inland fisheries, and miles more of breezy green rice paddies almost distracted me from enjoying the seemly endless volcanic mountain range stretching along the opposite side of the city.

As our Boeing 737 came to a bumpy – and admittedly unnerving, but nonetheless expected – stop at the end of the runway, my charge and anticipation had begun to manifest themselves physically, and I’m sure I looked no less ridiculous than the two-year-old in front of me, who’d been entertaining himself with a few new toys his parents had gotten him from Jakarta. I even managed to do something that I hadn’t done since the first international flight I’d ever been on – forget my baggage tags in the seat pocket in front of where I had been sitting. But of course, being that it’s Indonesia, the pencil-and-paper-wielding security agents at the baggage claim exit trusted me wholeheartedly that I had retrieved the correct luggage from the revolving conveyor belt.

And as I walked toward the exit and gazed through the dense crowd of anxious friends and family members, who were eagerly awaiting their loved ones at the security gate, something caught my eye. Just as we all hope for upon landing in a new city – and don’t pretend like you don’t – I was greeted with a big sign that read, “KENNETH MOORE, Mercy Corps.” Nothing makes you feel more important than having your own sign at the airport.

And then, in accordance with the same fortuitous pattern that the trip had been following all day... why wouldn’t the person holding the sign have been a strikingly gorgeous Indonesian native? Piva, who’d conducted my phone interview, then led me to where our car was parked. And in all honesty, our drive back to my new apartment will likely remain in my memory as one of the most entertaining car rides of my life. Both Piva and the driver were rattling off eccentric facts about Banda Aceh in a passionate and comical manner that put to shame any scripted lines that even the most talented tour guide could have come up with. I was squirming in the back seat, almost in tears from laughing so hard.

Upon arriving at my new place, Piva also happened to drop some new information on me. Not only would Mercy Corps be covering my living expenses, but I would also be receiving a modest salary. This was not expected – not in the least. In fact, the title for this job when I applied online was, “Aceh Unpaid Internship,” and I was told explicitly through e-mail how much money I could expect to pay for an apartment. I’m absolutely going to be giving half the bag of the bite-size Snickers bars that I brought as gifts to the person in the Mercy Corps office here who made that happen!

Later I intend to give more details about how awesome my place is, and what a great location it happens to be in. And I may describe later how a huge fair and expo is currently going on in the city, and also how I’ve already got a young, cool group of friends to show me around, but I think the euphoria has gotten annoying even to me at this point. All in all, it seems like nothing short of a natural disaster or a civil war could possibly…

…oh wait.

Well, be happy for me, but pray for me too, would you?