Family Bungalow

Part of Fulbright’s requirements for English Teaching Assistants is that we be involved in our schools’ extracurriculars, so all 44 ETAs in Indonesia run some type of club, covering anything from debate to theater to sports. In the English Club I run on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, the students and I talk about some aspect of American culture for 10 minutes and then play games until we’re too sweaty to stand it. My favorite club meeting centered on weddings: I showed them pictures from my older brother’s wedding, explained the something-old-something-new tradition and then taught the reception dance floor favorite, the Cha Cha Slide. (This proved to be an inexplicable hit with the 11th grade boys, with their acne and wispy mustache-sprinkled faces, who have downloaded the song to their cell phones and sing along “Now cha cha, y’all!”)

Last week, the club’s topic was Thanksgiving. We went over Pilgrims, turkey and football, and then I asked the students what they were thankful for. Most of them said their family and their health; one brave boy thanked God for his girlfriend, which naturally made his friends whoop. Then Yafed, a shy 16-year old boy, said “I am thankful for Miss Polly, because she is my only American teacher, so I want to have relations with her. Good relations.” I spluttered for a few seconds, confusing everyone, and then suggested what he really meant was “a good relationship.”

In that brief, spluttering moment, all I wanted was someone in the room to make eye contact with and giggle. I wanted to share the joke without having to explain its punch line or look up words in my dictionary. Like a tree falling in the forest, a joke isn’t really a joke unless someone else is there to hear it.

All of this goes to say that for the Thanksgiving weekend I had the unrivaled joy of hanging out with eight of my best ETA friends, and more or less laughing for four days straight. They came from their placements around Indonesia—Sumatra, Java, South Sulawesi and Maluku—to Bunaken, a small island two hours from my town, famous for its coral reefs. We were the only guests at a lovely dive resort run by a gray-haired Australian man who said things like “We’ll have a quick bickie for brekie before headin’ out in the boat.” (And when he said that kind of impossibly Aussie thing, I always had a friend nearby whose grin matched mine.) Our rooms, joined by a porch, were called the Family Bungalow, and that’s what it was: a family Thanksgiving.

Loving life on the ferry ride to Bunaken.

Seabreeze Resort, our home for four days.

We cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, including sweet potatoes, green beans, apple crisp and absolutely no rice. We went on a dolphin tour, jumped off a pier for hours with a gang of local kids, and snorkeled through schools of fish that looked like bright confetti flickering in the water. We jumped off our boat when we were laughing so hard we risked peeing on deck (or maybe that was just me). We took naps together, had sing-a-longs with the Indonesian dive guides and chatted through our rooms’ paper-thin walls. We even posed for a family portrait.

Left to right, back row: JT, Brandon, Talya, me, Nicole, Kelsey, Eric. Front: Thomas, Paige.

When I got back to school this morning, a dozen elementary school students stood outside my classroom for ten minutes, staring at me and calling “What’s your name, Mister?” I asked Ely why they weren’t at their school and he explained that it was Teacher’s Day, a national holiday where the government conducts ceremonies honoring teachers. But, he said matter-of-factly, the local government hadn’t told the schools the holiday’s exact date or when the ceremonies would be, so half the town’s teachers had decided not to show up today and even more would not show up tomorrow.

“So the local government is appreciating teachers?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he agreed.
“But it failed to tell the teachers when or how they would be appreciated?”
“Right,” he nodded.

I spluttered out a half-laugh and wished with all my heart that an ETA was there to enjoy the moment with me.





*Thanks to my beautiful friend Kelsey for the photos, as I was both too lazy and having too much fun to take my own.

Without Clucking Like a Hen

I have a lot of names in Indonesia. In school, I’m Miss Polly. When I’m walking down the street and I hear “Miss Polly!” from a passing mini-bus, there’s guaranteed to be a student in white button-down and blue tie waving from a window. Ely and Ester call me Pol, as in “Hello? Anyone home? Pol?” when they show up at my front door unannounced. Adults I pass in the street shout out either “Mister!” or “Miss!” depending on how much high school English they remember. Children are the boldest, of course: they follow me laughing and yelling “Bule!” White person! 

Yesterday I put on my little brother’s hand-me-down Red Sox cap and walked to the local supermarket in the afternoon drizzle. Sometimes I imagine a hat and sunglasses will keep passing drivers from noticing I’m a bule. Except Indonesians don’t wear hats or sunglasses.

As I walked into the crowded store, an employee in a bright orange uniform announced into the PA system “Look! A white person just came in.” I smiled, gave a little wave and walked past him as he called “Mister, mister!” While I was comparing water bowls for Louisa—can puppies get lead poisoning from metal dishes?—the employee approached me again, without microphone this time. We had a typical and brief conversation; where are you from, how long have you been here, where do you live and so on. As soon as we’d finished talking, he pulled the mic out of his pocket and started talking into it like a game show host: “Here is Mister Polly Furth from America!” I half-smiled, half-shrugged and walked away.

And the man followed. He followed me down the fruit aisle and up the drink aisle and past the cereal, peppering me with questions and hamming it up into the microphone. I picked up instant noodles; he chattered at my shoulder. While I was debating various brands of instant coffee, he thrust the mic in front of my nose. And I snapped: “I do not want to talk. I am trying to shop.” He laughed; I marched to the checkout, pointlessly indignant.

On the walk home, I couldn’t get the song Mr. Cellophane out of my head:

Cellophane
Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name
Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there.

Giving Thanks

I’ve got Thanksgiving on the brain. A few days ago, I requested November 25 and 26 off from school so I could celebrate the Thanksgiving weekend with some ETA friends. Part of my request meant explaining to the teachers and headmaster what the holiday is about. I explained that it involved the first bules in America and eating turkey, but that mainly Thanksgiving is a chance to be with the people you love and to tell God what you’re grateful for. So, in honor of the days off which my school graciously gave me, here is what I’m most grateful for this Thanksgiving season: Ester.

Ester has not come up in this blog yet because she’s just too important for anything but an entry devoted exclusively to her. You know how Squanto taught the Pilgrims to hunt and which berries were poisonous and how to survive a New England winter? Ester is my Squanto.

Her full name is Ester Diane, because her mother wanted to name her after a Biblical heroine and a modern one (her brother’s name is Reagan David). She’s 26 years old and like me, she’s an English teacher at SMA 1, although she’d rather work in government administration. From my first day, Ester was there, translating, explaining, warning me against spicy foods, serving as a gentle barrier against people who asked baffling questions like “Miss Polly, when can I come sleep at your house?”

Ester likes to say “All the ways go to Rome,” by which she means, there is always a solution and we will find it, so please, Polly, calm down. Like when I was electrocuted for the second time by my third stove and started to cry, Ester patted me on the arm and said “I guess it’s time to try a gas stove,” and then told me firmly that I was not staying home to wallow in self-pity over a dismal peanut butter sandwich; she took me out for dinner. Or when a certain host beamed at me as I tried to gulp down his homemade juice, which looked and tasted like sewage, Ester whisked it away, saying “Can I have some? Here, Polly, try my drink.” Or when we were at the fanciest mall around, trying for the infuriating fourth time to make my internet modem work, and the power failed and the whole mall went black, Ester kept right on negotiating with the IT guy. All I could do was sit down and laugh.

That might be my favorite thing about Ester: her ability to make me laugh when I want to scream. Her response when I whined about my two-puppy predicament—one Louisa May in my house and another arriving in four weeks—was “We’ll name the first one Louisa April!” After trying for an hour to buy a plane ticket online, I finally asked Ester for help. She said “No problem, I have a friend who’s a travel agent!” and proceeded to buy me a ticket over text message.
   
Ester’s patience and strength are even more remarkable in light of the terrible fact that her boyfriend died of liver failure six weeks ago. She loves to talk about him—I’ve heard about the first time he asked her out and what songs they sang karaoke together—but she doesn’t ask for pity.  She often says "I believe God has a good plan for my life," and then quickly adds that she doesn't want to think about it because it only makes her sadder. I am thankful for Ester because she puts faulty stoves and foul juice in perspective.

I’ve gone with Ester to three of her boyfriend’s funerals. (In North Sulawesi, multiple funerals are held after a person's death: after several days, a week, two weeks, 40 days and a year). The funerals were a strange combination of devout Christian church service and raucous party; when I commented on all the joking and games—which came right after the praying and tears—Ester said “It’s to distract the family. To make them laugh.”