Goat's Eyes and Rat's Tails

You might refer to my blog entries from last January and February to refresh yourself on what it's like to be sick on Java. That experience, however, was quite different from the one I most recently had. Last year, many factors distorted the reality of what being sick in Indonesia really means. In fact, the entire institution of being sick in this country is all together different. By the time I fell ill in the pesantren, I had already established myself in the community; people already knew my personality and had already begun to understand the cultural differences between westerners and indonesians. That being said, while I was in the village, I dealt with being sick much as I would have any other time. Of course, at the hospitals, I was at the mercy of local culture and business, but while in Guyangan, I stayed in my house, and I rested. I watched a lot of TV, and I lied on my bed. People didn't really disturb me because they knew I was sick. Until now though, after having observed people in this culture for six or seven more months, and also after having just moved to a new location with new friends who don't really know me yet, I hadn't consciously recognized how abnormal it must have been for the people in Guyangan to have handled my sickness as they did – that is with relative indifference, as I would have expected from any neighbor in the U.S.

I realize that my being a foreigner and a guest at this school tends to amplify whatever reaction people might have to my being in a state of need; however, that's not actually the biggest factor when looking at all the reasons for the differences in how people here are treated when they are ill. Number one is, with out a doubt, the sense of community that people have here. I've made comments like this before, but it's worth mentioning again. It's just so far beyond “southern comfort” that looking out for your friends and family doesn't only function as an aspect of the culture here; it defines social norms and the way people treat each other everyday, in every situation.

I entered St. Yoseph and my community here in a much different light than I did at the pesantren. I immediately started making friends who don't speak English; I instantly began making cultural jokes and quickly learned new ones; I could sing their songs, and I already had strategies for the classroom. By default, I was also less of a novelty. I'm in a big city with more cultured people who, aside from that, have grown up in a culture where everyone seems to be a little less willing to immediately take things at face value. What I mean to say by telling you all this is that I entered this community much more as a community member than as outsider, as compared to last year. And so, I'm being treated as one. I'm already used to how people act around one another (Medan just isn't that different from Java, from the perspective of a westerner, as far as interactions between friends and family); I expected this and instantly accepted it – rather than both parties starting from ground zero and learning everything from one another. Consequently, people look at me, and instead of trying to figure out what a westerner might want in a particular situation, they just assume that I would want to be treated as they treat each other. This is all you could expect from people who've never had intimate contact with an outsider, but because I was already familiar with so many aspects of their culture, I've made it much easier on them, and in some ways harder on me because now I don't even have the relative luxury of people trying to figure me out. You don't expect people in your own culture to have to figure you out, but at least subconsciously you know that people from other cultures are doing their best to try; however, when people here confidently treat me like an Indonesian, it can sometimes be even more frustrating than entering a completely new and unfamiliar place, without any prior connections.

Nevertheless, I've digressed. The second biggest reason why people feel the irrepressible urge to take care of me is due to a fact that I've already mentioned in a previous post; I'm 23, unmarried, and living by myself. At least last year, I was living on the campus of the school. This year I'm in a neighborhood ALONE, away from the people with whom I work, around people who no one knew before I moved there. This is a constant source of distress for my headmistress, who's sister once knew a German guy who died in Indonesia on vacation.

I'm currently half way through my round of antibiotics, and I'm almost well. I've been laying low in my house, trying to get over a throat infection, but to anyone from the outside, it probably looks like I've been having a week-long garage sale, judging by how many people have been coming in and out of my house all day. At this point, I really don't know how to tell people to stop bothering me. Once again, I have to come back to this western sense of privacy that these people just do not have. The two people sitting with me right now informed me that after they called my cell phone, and I didn't answer, they decided to come over (which is surely what they were going to do even if I had picked up). They've now been here for over two hours because it's apparent that they don't have to work (on a Monday), and one of them has fallen asleep watching, guess what, Indonesian day-time television with the volume at full blast. I feel like I've been running a circus all week, and it's no coincidence that it's because I've been feverishly ill.

I guess what has gotten on my nerves the most is having had to listen to the incessant suggestions as to how to get better and everyone's diagnosis, as well as probable cause for the illness. First of all, when I say diagnosis, what I mean to say is hearing people exclaim, “Ooooh, masuk angin!” Masuk angin seems to be the only illness afflicting anyone who's not perceived to be 110% healthy in this country. This is their expression for “catching a cold.” According to my co-workers and friends, my particular case of masuk angin could have potentially been caused by the following:

1)Eating too much spicy food
2)Playing soccer with the middle schoolers a week and a half ago
3)Riding my motorcycle in the rain
4)Riding my motorcycle without a jacket (even when it's sunny)
5)Watching TV with the fan pointed toward me
6)Taking a nap on the floor on my new mattress
7)Breathing chalk dust from the chalk board

These are all perfectly sound arguments for why I had a fever for 3 days in a row, a headache, dizziness, and swollen glands with a soar throat and redness. And interestingly enough, after my counterpart (who is just about the loopiest woman I've ever met) gave me her advice about not eating spicy food, she opened up the bag of arsyik she had brought me for my lunch, certainly the spiciest traditional Batak dish that I know of. I was positive that spicy food had not caused my throat infection, but honestly, stuffed chilies surrounding a goldfish swimming in chili sauce was not what I wanted at the time.

There are an ample amount of remedies for curing masuk angin, which range from a traditional massage to seemingly random concoctions of god knows what, and I've been subject to them all. The massage I was forced into left me with bruises on my shins, but the special drinks, at least, weren't physically painful. My favorite has been just taking huge double-shots of honey! I've also seen people taking shots of olive oil and strange fermented milk drinks. Honey, though, in this country is by far the most common drink that one might make a toast to. It is viewed as the preferable alternative to sugar in almost all cases because it makes you “strong instead of fat.” So like I said, people tend to just throw their head back and down a glass of it in fractions of a second. Another drink, however, that has only recently been brought to my attention was unfortunately forced down my throat twice in two days. When Mr. Jon walked in my house with two glowing blue eggs, I knew I was in for it. He casually walked into my kitchen, needing not to start any sort of conversation, and began draining the whites from the two eggs he had cracked on my counter.

“Are raw eggs healthy?” I asked in Indonesian, to which I got a delayed answer but instantly raised eyebrows followed by an intimidating glare. “This is medicine,” was Mr. Jon's only verbal reply.

He proceeded to mix the egg yokes with honey and some indonesian spices, which I don't think even have English names. After the brew was homogeneous, it was handed to me in a coffee cup. All I could think of was bird flu, and so I asked one more time if it was okay to drink. Mr. Jon assured me that there was no need to worry because these were not chicken eggs, but instead they were telur desa, or “village eggs.”

Oh great, “Village eggs!” I thought to myself. Well, why didn't you say so???

Reluctantly, I gulped down the entire glass, while Mr. Jon put a couple more eggs into my refrigerator. I didn't want another glass of that stuff, but I wasn't going to insist that he take the eggs home. The next day, he barged in while Mr. Sinaga had been making himself comfortable on my couch. Immediately he asked if I had eaten the other eggs. Pretending like I didn't know what he was talking about, I just looked at him with a confused expression, and hesitantly answered no. I guess I was hoping he would just let it go, but instead he simply opened my refrigerator and got them out himself. About that time Mr. Sinaga had awakened and walked into my kitchen to see what the commotion was about. He looked at me, then looked at Mr. Jon, and with a concerned but eagerly consenting tone, he exclaimed, “ahhhhh yes, village eggs!”