Food for Thought

In my first days in Amurang, I would get fed up by how often teachers, neighbors and strangers wanted me to talk about food. Are you hungry? Did you have bread or rice for breakfast? Do you like Indonesian food? What kind of fish do you like--kelelawar, cakalang, mujair, nike? What kind of bananas do you like--king, shoe, milk, horn?

The truth was, food was just a blur then. All fish tasted the same, all bananas tasted the same (who even knew there were different types of bananas?) and every meal tasted like a slight variation on the white-rice-with-indeterminate-meat theme. There were only two flavors: spicy and fried. I ate everything, and I liked it fine, but it wasn't something I wanted to chat about.

One of the first things that struck me was how ugly an Indonesian plate of food looked. I drank glasses of coconut juice with what appeared to be flakes of skin floating on the surface; lumpy meat dishes made me want to invent words, Roald Dahl-style, like glopswosh or mulg; Obama's much-hyped bakso was several slick gray meatballs bobbing about in transclucent broth. Even a dish I liked right away, gado-gado, was a mound of pale vegetables slathered with a chunky brown sludge that reminded me of...well, I'm sure you can imagine. I'd been expecting to leave behind the luxury of American supermarkets and restaurants, but it didn't occur to me that an attractively presented meal was a luxury too.

Chicken--fried.

Fish--spicy.

Fruit salad--tasteless.

Then I tried pisang goreng--fried banana--and everything changed. A banana dipped in flour and sugar, fried in frighteningly bubbly oil, and served hot with grated cheese, chocolate sauce, chillies or alone may not sound like a treat, but baby, you have no idea what you're missing. Its outside is light and crunchy, and just greasy enough to make your lips taste soft and smooth. Its inside is sweet and fresh and perfect. I haven't met an ETA yet who hasn't fallen in love with pisang goreng. They're sold everywhere, from  roadside shacks to the classiest Balinese restuarants. Indonesians eat them frequently and at unexpected times, like for breakfast or as a pre-dinner snack.

For me, pisang goreng was the gateway to understanding Indonesian food. Not only did I learn to distinguish between the varieties of banana (king and milk are best; shoe is mealy, horn is bland), but I finally had a sincere and enthusiastic answer to the question, Do you like Indonesian food? Yes! Pisang goreng--despite its misshapen, warty looks--is my absolute favorite.

Humble but delicious pisang goreng.

One of my 12th graders drops a batter-soaked banana into oil.

After the fried banana breakthrough, I started noticing how interesting, and even beautiful, Indonesian food can be--it's all just so much more unpredictable than food in the States. There are the baskets of colorful vegetables at the downtown market, and the roadside fruit stands, with their bright melons and oranges that dangle like Christmas tree bulbs.

On a road in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

In Amurang's traditional outdoor market.

And there was the meal a lovely Indonesian family treated me to where they carefully included Western food, along with giant, grimacing fish, to make me feel comfortable.

Fresh-water fish from Lake Tondano and good ol' french fries.

One of the most remarkable things about local Minahasan culture is people's inclination to eat anything that moves. Snake, bat, rat and dog are the favorites. These foods are special, so you don't see them in your average mom-and-pop warung, but they've been offered to me at plenty of parties and weddings. So far I've only had the courage to try bat; I get physically and morally queasy when I think about eating dog with cute little Louisa May barking outside my door. But some friends and I did have the courage to visit the traditional animal market in Tomohon, about an hour from my town. We spent most of the time yelping, squealing, shrieking, and trying not to get spattered by pig blood. But what we saw was certainly food worth talking about. (Note: if you have a weak stomach, are a vegetarian and/or love dogs, some of these photos may be disturbing.)

Left to right: ETAs Melina and Nicole, bat, rat, two butchers, snake, me.

Holding a rat and trying not to puke or scream.

 

The market's most unsettling sight: dog meat on top of a cage of sedated dogs.

There is one Indonesian term for dog the animal--anjing--and another for dog the food--rintek wuuk or fine hair (but everyone just says RW).

While I still have to swallow my impatience every time a teacher asks if I've eaten breakfast, I've realized that maybe food fascinates Indonesians for good reason. They keep some dogs as pets and serve others at celebrations. They spend half an hour at lunch methodically picking out the bones of a fresh-water fish. And the fish they're eating was probably caught early that morning by their cousin or neighbor or cousin's neighbor. Indonesians are close to--and intimately, enthusiastically wrapped up in--food, in a way that I've never known. Ester, my closest Indonesian friend, explained it to me like this: "Other people eat to live. We live to eat."

Eat (pray love) Your Heart Out, Ms. Gilbert: My six-week jaunt across Sulawesi, Java, Lombok and, yes, Bali

Thanks to my school's exam schedule and generous Christmas vacation, I had most of December and half of January off. I spent the time traveling around Indonesia with ETA friends--from my home island, Sulawesi, to the mountains of East Java, to the temples and nightclubs of Bali, to the beaches of Lombok, and home again. I hope these photos will tell the story more interestingly than I can. 

First stop: Pantai Bira, a small beach town in South Sulawesi.

Brandon and Thomas with a shark some very proud fishermen showed off to us.

An enormous ship being built on the beach (and now that Sulawesi's rainy season has started with full force, I understand the ark-building impulse.)

Next stop: Mount Bromo in East Java. It has been erupting off-and-on since November, so we were warned against traveling there, but the guys "called an audible," and we did it anyway. And we were lucky: We hiked it on Saturday...on Sunday it erupted.

This expression is meant to say: "Really? You made me wake up at 3 am, climb two hours up a mountain in the darkness, and now you can't even get one good photo of me? Really??"

 

Probolinggo, a town not far from Bromo, where I got excited by the number of people riding bicycles (your work is done, Dad) and the disconcertingly litter-free streets.

Next stop: the Ijen Plateau, East Java, home of coffee plantations and what has to be one of the most stunning volcanic craters in the world.

Mini-hike (my family would call it a "hik") to a waterfall near our hotel.

Waking up for another crack-of-dawn volcano-climb was hard--so JT and Brandon got us going with an impromptu dance party.

After an hour of hiking up Mt. Ijen, this sight emerged from the mist.  But it's not just beautiful--it's an industry. Every day, about 300 men mine bright yellow sulphur with their hands and carry 70 kg baskets of it out of the crater and down the mountain.

All Thomas (an econ major) could say every time a short, scrawny man carrying a load of sulphur passed us was "The labor! The labor!"

There was a sign that said "Tourists are forbidden from walking down into the crater." So of course, we ignored it.

Next stop: Malang, a pleasant little city in East Java.

Even in mostly-Muslim Indo, tacky Christmas decorations can be found.

And this is how we spent Christmas Day: eight long hours in a series of buses traveling from Malang to the easternmost tip of Java. I will not complain...but I will say that the Wise Men probably had an easier time getting to baby Jesus.

Next stop: Baluran National Park, East Java.
 

In Baluran we went on a jeep tour and saw deer, birds and tons and tons of monkeys.

We read an online review of Baluran National Park that said "If I'd known about Baluran, I'd never have gone to Africa!"

Next stop: Ubud, Bali, a town that has become wildly popular since Elizabeth Gilbert lived here for four months in the Pray section of "Eat Pray Love."

The first thing I noticed in Ubud was all the bules. The second thing was the Starbucks. If you're a shameless bule like me, you can sit on the Starbucks' deck, sipping a latte and enjoying the view onto this lovely Hindu temple.

Our first dinner in a nice Western restaurant since leaving the US. We were like Tarzan emerging from the jungle.

Ubud is the artistic center of Bali--this is pop art for sale by the side of the main road.

Next stop: Kuta, Bali, a trashy, rowdy town full of drunk surfer dudes--imagine the Jersey Shore, but with Australians.

Letting loose, Australian-style, on New Year's Eve.

We spent a day getting swept away by the tide, and yelled at by a lifeguard, at Seminyak Beach.

Ulu Watu, a sacred cliff-top Hindu temple outside Kuta--pretty awe-inspiring (as long as you ignore the monkeys trying to steal your water bottle).

To enter the sacred grounds of the temple, everyone must wear sarongs.

Hindu worshippers entering the temple with offerings.

Next stop: back to Ubud for a final Bali-hurrah.

Roast suckling pig is a traditional Balinese dish. Thanks to Thomas and Nicole's boldness, we observed the behind-the-scenes action at one of Ubud's best restaurants.

Balinese boy playing with wayang kulit, traditional shadow puppets, in the pig restuarant.

We watched a legong, Balinese dance, performance, and this is the part I liked best: Three Stooges-esque comic relief.

Of the many Hindu temples we explored in Bali, this one--draped with trees and empty of both tourists and monkeys--was my favorite.

Next stop: Kuta, Lombok (the complete opposite of Kuta, Bali). Mostly free of tourists, with remote, smack-you-in-the-face-gorgeous beaches.

Mawi Beach--worth the hour-long motorcycle ride that ended with our bikes getting stuck in the mud.

A second beach discovery we made on motorcycles.

Another view of Mawi Beach.

At a restaurant overlooking Kuta Bay. (Those grins say: "My God, I can't believe how lucky we are to be here.")

The Proof is in the Photo Album

You might be a bule in Indonesia if...you've ever been sitting at a funeral and noticed a photo album circulating among the guests and opened it to find 24 photos of yourself that you never knew were taken.

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.”

Week Five: Top Five

Over the past month I’ve been to one wedding, two funerals, four birthday parties, two traditional markets, six malls, one scout camp, one beach barbecue and more dinners at friends’ houses—and by friends, I mostly mean strangers who want to become friends with the bule—than I can count. I’ve tried bat (never again) and I’ve raced on the back of an off-duty policeman’s motorcycle at midnight. I’ve listened to hundreds of students say their names, ages and hobbies and I’ve taught at least half of them that “fifteen” isn’t pronounced like “five-teen.” It’s been a busy month. Since this is my fifth week in Amurang and I’m still playing catch-up in this blog, I’ve decided to bring you up to date with a few Top Five lists.    

Top Five I’m-So-Not-In-Kansas-Anymore Experiences

5. I’ve eaten at Kentucky Fried Chicken twice, which is twice as many times in five weeks as the number of times I went there in my four years in Kentucky. Indonesians take me there to give me a taste of home, and I don’t object. But KFC in Indonesia isn’t much like home: before they eat, everyone washes their hands in a long, metal trough by the back door; every entrée comes with a moist mound of rice wrapped in tissue paper; the soft drinks come in one size, which is about as big as a Dixie cup; ads with cute teenage girls in jilbabs eating fried chicken play continually on TV screens.

4. If I’m not walking to school, I’m taking an ojek (taxi-motorcycle) or bendi (taxi-buggy). Both take you anywhere in town for the equivalent of 20 American cents. The teachers prefer I take a bendi because it’s slow, safe and traditional; I prefer the ojek because it makes me feel badass to zoom to school sidesaddle in my ladylike teacher’s skirts.

One of Amurang's many bendis.

3. The whole school took a field trip to the North Sulawesi State Fair. While I was half-walking, half-being pushed through the crowd, a man on stage started yelling into his mic, “Amerika, Amerika!” He was the MC of an English speech competition for students that had just begun; within two minutes, the headmaster of my school had decided I should serve as a judge and had pulled me onto a balcony above the stage. For an hour, I listened to adorable kids give nearly incomprehensible speeches with titles like “Go Green, Sulawesi!” and “Just Say No to Drugs and Free Sex!” When I announced the winner at the end of the competition, the crowd stared at me blankly. It turned out no one knew the word “winner” in English.

2. Ely, my teaching counterpart, told me September 24 was National Sports Day. He said, “We will all go jogging together in the morning to celebrate.”
I said, “Cool. So it’ll be like the students and the PE teachers?”
He said, “No, no; all the teachers and all the students from every school in Amurang will jog with all the town’s government officials and policemen.”
I said, “Um. Cool.”
And he was half-right: thousands of students and hundreds of adults met at 5:30 am outside the regency headquarters and a stretch of road was shut down for us, but no one jogged. We walked.

Students, teachers and bureaucrats marching along a coastal road.

1. I have a newfound hatred for the inventor of the camera phone: my photo is taken constantly, by everyone around me. The teachers take my photo while I check my email; the students take my photo while I eat lunch. Those two funerals I attended? People took my photo while the preacher spoke. People who have never met me thrust their squirming children into my arms and take my photo. To keep my sense of humor (and sanity) about the whole thing, I’ve made some rules: you have to introduce yourself before you can take my photo, no photos in class, if I want to stick out my tongue or cross my eyes in the photo, you have to let me.

This is what it's like to stand in a crowd of camera-happy Indonesians.

Top Five Reasons I Like Teaching at an Indonesian High School

5. If I forget my laminated map of the US, I have to draw a map on the whiteboard to show Boston and Kentucky—and the students usually don’t know how bad it is.

I tried and failed to learn my ETA friend Thomas' impressive map-drawing skills.

4. I get black marks on my face from the whiteboard eraser on a daily basis. It happened on my first day, in my first class. But Indonesian students don’t sit tactfully silent and let you go around looking like an idiot; if you have something on your face, they say so. Marker on my face is now a running joke in my classes.

3. There’s no AC in school and fans in only three classrooms, so everyone sweats a lot. This makes everyone chain-drink bottles of water. So the combination of North Sulawesian heat and North Sulawesian generosity means that bottles of water appear in my hand almost magically. Sometimes students or teachers just show up at my desk or in the classroom to give me a bottle.

2. In the middle of school one day, I played a spontaneous, five-minute game of basketball with four students while 800 others cheered me on. I made three baskets, the crowd went wild every time and I think I can confidently say that it was the peak of my athletic career.

1. I ask all of my oldest students, “What do you want to do after you graduate?” Their answers are inspiring—“I want to be a pilot and travel around the world” and “I want to be a career woman and make my parents proud” and “I want to be a public prosecutor.” Sometimes when they answer me, I say, “You know what’s important for becoming a pilot/career woman/president/international lawyer?” The whole class shouts, “LEARNING ENGLISH!” and then giggles like crazy. 

Top Five Things I Miss Most About America

5. Coffee.
4. Fall weather.
3. Food that isn’t eaten with rice.
2. Coffee.
1. Coffee.

Top Five Surprises

5. I got electrocuted by my stove. My left hand was numb for an hour.

4. A group of friends (most of whom I had met at least once before) showed up at my door at midnight on my birthday with cake, confetti and party hats. It was so thoughtful, it nearly made me cry.

My wonderful Indonesian friends and a newly 22-year old me.

3. I was given a puppy, who I named Louisa May. She was brought to my house as an early birthday present. Way, way too early in fact—the puppy was less than four weeks old and could barely open her eyes. After one night of her peeing in my bed and sleeping on my neck, I demanded that she be returned to her mother until she was eight weeks old. It was my first near-fight with an Indonesian: the teacher who had found the dog told me it was cultural—four-week old puppies are commonly adopted in Indonesia!—and I told her, carefully, that it was biological—four-week old puppies can die without the nutrition from their mother’s milk. Luckily, Ely, who raises dogs, weighed in and agreed that four weeks was too young. The puppy was returned.

2. I was given a second puppy, who I also named Louisa May. She was plopped into my arms when I arrived at school on my birthday (four days after I’d returned the first Louisa). She is, thank God, a healthy eight-weeks old and pees exclusively on newspaper or outside. Raising a puppy is proving to be more difficult than I had imagined; as one teacher put it when I complained about being tired, “Being a mommy is hard.” But it’s also fun: Today we went for a walk around the neighborhood with a gang of kids who scooped Louisa up whenever a motorcycle or unfriendly dog appeared. I would call “C’mon, babygirl” to the puppy when she lagged behind; the kids would laugh and laugh and shout “C’mon, babygirl!” The whole town is getting a kick out of watching the white girl walk down the street with her little white dog trailing after.

Louisa May celebrating my birthday/her adoption day in style.

After Louisa's first bath.

1. I really, really like it here (almost all the time).