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?

Closure to an Indescribable Adventure. Transition to a New Life.

I never got to spend enough time writing about my last days and months in Indonesia. Living life was my number one priority during those final moments, and in many ways, it all seems like a dream now. I awoke after a 2-year fantasy and a 50 hour journey from Medan to Mayfield in my home town in Western, KY. Some things had changed, but not a disorienting amount. Arriving back so suddenly wasn't a startling realization of reality -- but more of a thought-provoking, mystical feeling that's left me to unravel and piece together all that I experienced during a chimeric exodus to South East Asia.

I've been back for about a month and a half now, and I've already met with a number of old friends. My memories of them from up to two summers ago are still as clear as day, and I greeted them as if we had all just graduated together only weeks before. But people here, who's lives had been continuing at a similarly unrelenting pace, saw me instantly back in their lives after 22 months of absence. It's nice to say that friendships don't die easily, and very little, if anything, had been lost between all of us. Nevertheless, seeing everyone still seemed overwhelmingly surreal.

It just so happens, however, that everything that occurred during my life on Java and Sumatra was not a dream at all, and I can remember entire days, even run through the course of a random week, a month, etc. I can look at my experience from a number of different perspectives and angles, and I can understand many different past and future consequences of my time there. It's not a fight to recall the climax, and I didn't wake up before it was over. I left with an astonishing amount of closure, life long friends, the ability to speak a new language, and a clear direction for my career and future. I closed one door, a door to the past, one that is shut any time you experience anything. But I've opened a hundred more, and I can always take a moment to step back and look through the windows that still show a vast panorama of a time that I'm never going to forget.

* * *

There's still much to be shared about what happened in Indonesia, and while some of it will inevitably stay in Indonesia (by my judgment to extend it to you or not), I'll continue to draw on my experiences. However, it's going to be in a different form. I'll probably not have entire posts dedicated to humorous batak anecdotes anymore, but they'll be embedded in new narratives and accounts of my life, which is about to take a drastic turn in a direction that only my time in Boston will give a destination.

That's why I'm happy to unveil a new blog: "Bostoken: Life in Boston"

And you can find it at bostoken.blogspot.com

Please continue to enjoy!

A Hike from Hell that Lead to Heaven: Part 2 ... kinda

This is an article that I wrote for Madina Magazine out of Jakarta. It's written for an Indonesian audience, and specifically for more educated Muslims. Hopefully you'll find it interesting.


The First Sun of a New Year
Eight Indonesians and one American climb to new levels of understanding.

Blinding clouds converged on us from all directions. My tired lungs ached as my chest painfully squeezed in on them. I had not experienced such a challenge in over a year. Wet and muddy, I forced my legs to stand, and I strained my eyes to see, but with each breath, my open mouth comfortably formed a natural smile. It was a smile that was immediately answered by eight others, and as two warm arms wrapped around my shoulder, our group shared in a mutual sense of genuine accomplishment. Mixed emotions of frustration, euphoria, and achievement defined the mood and helped to solidify an unbreakable bond between nine very new and very unlikely friends.

Since that moment on top of Gunung Sinabung, two and a half kilometers above the earth, I've laughed to myself about what it might look like to see a group of people on Jalan Setia Budi in Medan, huddled together, each in near agony, some with visible wounds, but nonetheless each person still laughing and joking uncontrollably. You would probably suspect that we were all utterly crazy. Maybe you would even avoid walking passed us until you had a sizable friend to protect you. But nothing like this could ever happen on the streets of Indonesia's third largest city. Our unique case of insanity was actually a healthy condition – a condition which could have only been brought on by the emotional, physical, and mental challenges that only an American English teacher and eight Indonesian college students could experience after hiking together, up to one of North Sumatra's highest peaks.

Our journey began on December 30th, 2008 at the campus of North Sumatra University (USU). I was introduced to most of the group for the first time, and friendships began to form on the spot. Pipi, who was already a good friend of mine, had invited me to join everyone on this expedition. A few nights before I had played indoor soccer with Djarot and Reza. However, Gulit, Noni, Yogi, Hussein, and David, I had only met that day. They were all college students at USU. Some had a great deal of experience hiking, and some had never climbed a mountain in their lives. It was a dynamic group, and each of us were equally enthusiastic.

I was the only non-native Indonesian and the only one who had not been raised in a Muslim household, but that was never a concern of mine. Only six months earlier, I had been living and teaching on the campus of a pondok pesantren in Central Java, where I taught for a year without any problems. So even though I had not yet traveled exclusively with a group of Muslims my age, I had already gained a strong appreciation for Islam and a considerable knowledge of Indonesian culture. The contrasts between us were as clear as day, but our countless similarities were already bringing us together. No differences were interpreted as anything negative. Working together, we organized all of our bags, rolled up the tent and mattresses, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then set off on foot to Jamin Ginting Street, where many buses head straight to Berastagi and to the base of Gunung Sinabung. A new adventure and a new year awaited us all.

Even the first leg of the trip was exciting for me. Bussing cross-country in the United States is an entirely different experience from bussing cross-country in Indonesia. The common occurrences that define public transportation in North Sumatra, which all my new friends habitually ignored, were captivating for me. The iron bars on the outside of travel busses in Medan had always drawn my attention. I had assumed that they were supposed to serve as roll bars. If a bus accidentally tipped on it's side while driving down a curvy mountain road, it seemed to me that these bars would help to prevent broken glass from injuring the passengers. That very well could have been their original intention. However, only as a passenger did I witness a new application of these bars. But startlingly, their new use seemed to present a great amount of danger, rather than protection. They were being used by the conductor who, to my surprise, utilized them to hang, swing, and climb on the outside of the bus to collect money from each passenger. I could have just as easily been watching Spiderman 3, as our Batak superhero risked his life to save everyone on board from forgetting to pay their bus fair!

It is difficult for me to leave the mindset I've always had in the United States. We Americans are a large group of health, safety, and comfort freaks. Our affluent society has molded us so that we have come to expect certain luxuries and some admittedly hard-to-reach standards. For example, I'm accustomed to vehicles traveling smoothly at 100-130 km/hr, while simultaneously obeying very strict traffic laws. A man who climbed on the outside of a bus in my home-state of Kentucky would be out of his mind. Not only would he be braving hurricane-like winds, but he would also be risking unavoidable fines if a policeman happen to see his dangerous behavior. So, when my Indonesian friends saw the genuinely shocked expression on my face, while I was transfixed on our courageous conductor, I was providing just as much entertainment for them as he was providing for me.


In only a day's time, I was going to experience first-hand that the human body is capable of much more on a daily basis than what many of my American friends and I give it credit for. I have always gone out of my way to plan hiking and adventure trips to minimize the possibility of danger. I've tried to bring every single tool that could fit into my bag: tissues, hand sanitizer, band-aids, flashlights, etc. But, when I traveled with this group of eager new friends, who all cared deeply about one another and who were always concerned about each other's well-being in ways other than providing handy gadgets, I could see that my portable necessities were going to become quite secondary. I knew that climbing this mountain was going to be an unprecedented physical challenge for me, but at least the company put my mind at ease.

After arriving at our campsite later that evening, we began to arrange all of our bags in the dark and set up the tent. The night's events would include cooking rice, veggies, and kerupuk on Reza's gas stove, and then playing cards until we could no longer stay awake. That night and the next day were essential for relationship building in our group. With nine people to get up this mountain in the middle of the night, group consensus was going to be important. We did not plan to start hiking until after midnight on January 1st because we wanted to experience the view at the top of Sinabung with the unique lighting of a rising sun. Consequently, we had about 24 hours to relax at the base of the mountain and to strengthen our friendships before we left. The next 24 hours brought us all incredibly close together, and it could have never been planned this way, but I would have been ready to face any challenge with them after creating so much trust in such a short time.

In all honesty though, December 31st was not all fun and games. It was a day of ups and downs. There were invigorating times of warm sun and disheartening stretches of cold rain. The weather prompted a few of us, including myself, to have second thoughts about whether or not we could even get up the mountain. However, we had already come this far, and the elements, no matter how adverse, were not going to influence our decision to climb. The real switch in mood came later that afternoon, and it had nothing to do with the temperature or the rain. Only three days earlier, Israel had begun its most recent bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, and many of our most deeply-seated and emotional ideologies were placed at the head the table.

Throughout my year and a half in Indonesia, I've been involved in countless controversial conversations about politics, current events, Christianity, Islam, “free sex” in America, and corruption in the Indonesian government. But, until I found myself comfortably lying down in a tent, in one of the most beautiful locations in North Sumatra, I had never felt so challenged and unsure about my own beliefs.

This group of college students was informed, curious, and skeptical of American involvement on a world scale. For the last eight years, the United States' government has given Israel what many believe to be unconditional support, and it's no secret that most Americans do not identify with Hamas, who is currently governing the Gaza Strip. However, even our group of young students realized that if we reinforced our own personal prejudices by blaming a single side of this multi-faceted conflict, we would not be able to accomplish anything. Although many pointed and intentionally powerful questions were raised during our talk, we only used this heated issue as a medium of conversation to learn more about ourselves.

The place where we were born and the way we were raised have everything to do with how we feel about these heavily debated issues. Simply watching one of CNN, The BBC, Al Jazeera, or Trans TV will shape our opinions about people we have never met and who we frankly know nothing about. Noni, Pipi, Djarot, and David were the most interested in talking to me about my opinions concerning The Middle East, and our group of five young people did more to clear up the misunderstandings between us than 500 news programs could ever do. What we truly took away from this conversation actually had nothing to do with Palestine or Israel. We learned together that it is important to first understand a person's background and only then to try to begin analyzing the words that he or she says. It takes much more effort to comprehend why a person believes what he believes, but the importance lies in “Why?” and not in “What?”

No feelings were ever hurt during the conversation, but emotions were high. There was a point when tears actually began to form in my eyes, and everyone realized that we were going too far. Some awkward jokes started to circle around the tent in order to lighten the mood, and I got a pat on the back from Djarot. In some ways I felt embarrassed, but mostly I felt motivated to learn more about my new friends, and I know that they were just as happy to learn more about me.

At about 12:30 a.m. Reza, Hussein, and David became our unofficial group leaders. They lead us up the mountain in the rain, only minutes after the fireworks had ended at our campsite. We had hired no guides, brought only a few flashlights, a few bottles of water, and many of us were carrying packs. The six-hour ascent to the top was not going to be relaxing. On top of this, my sandals, which had served me so well while climbing the much less challenging Gunung Sibayak, were no match for the muddy paths that lead to the peak of Gunung Sinabung. Already slipping around within the first hour, I knew that I was going to have to be extremely careful for the rest of the hike.

We spent an hour and a half just searching for the trail to the top before we even stated to climb. We roamed the mountainside, walking through farmland and accumulating new group members who were also lost in the fields. My American danger alarms were loud inside my head. Only a year before, I had climbed a mountain with a friend who was not expecting such an extreme challenge, and she hurt her leg half way through the hike. I was worried about those in our group who had never climbed a mountain before because, even at this early point in our journey, the group leaders and I were already beginning to get tired. I could feel myself getting frustrated. Already our water bottles were starting to get low, and I began to doubt whether or not we could reach our destination at the top, much less make it there before sunrise.

It is important to have a goal in mind, but the road one takes to achieve his goals is no less important. My time in Indonesia has shown me that when we find ourselves in an unlucky situation, we should not worry about what we can no longer do, but instead consider what we can do at that moment to make our situation better. As I shook my head in disappointment, I looked at the people around me and noticed that I was the only person who was overtly displaying negative feelings. In this situation, which would be terribly stressful for the average group of Americans (or at least the ones I know), I was surprised to find myself still surrounded by smiles, people making jokes, and no one complaining about anything. I left my negative thoughts for a moment and imagined the millions of ways in which this situation could have been much worse. It wasn't so bad. I was with friends, and if there was nothing we could do, we would just make our way back, get some sleep, and always remember the fun we had trying to get to the top of Gunung Sinabung.


As it turned out, we were not far from the trail, and our group leaders, whose egos were the only things in jeopardy, managed to find the path. Soon after that, we found a clean mountain spring and were able to refill our empty water bottles. Our climb to the top remained very difficult and strenuous, but we had a direction, and no one was willing to stop. We reached the peak hours later in a thick patch of fog, and we missed the sunrise. However, the volcanic mountain provided us with warmth as we waited at high elevation for the clouds to clear. Huddled together at daybreak, we cured our chills with the steam pouring off the top of the mountain, and some of us fell asleep, calmly passing the time before the clouds cleared and an astounding view was revealed.

The first sun in 2009 broke through the overcast at about 7:30 a.m. and shed light over hundreds of kilometers in one of Indonesia's most spectacular regions. We could see all the way from the mountains of Aceh to the waters of Danau Toba. I'd never imagined my home in North Sumatra could be so breathtaking, and the light in which I saw my new friends could not have been brighter. Our journey back down the mountain was imminent, but we had already raised our spirits and our awareness to a point where nothing could knock them down.