English Library

The single most rewarding experience of my time in Palembang (note: Palembang specifically) was the English Library.

When I first got to Palembang, I knew no one. My school didn’t really invite anywhere on the weekends at first, so I usually spent Friday – Sunday trying to entertain myself. There are only so many times you can pay someone to drive you to the market/mall/museum for the day by yourself before you cry out for companionship.

Through my first counterpart Yana, I met Didi. He told me how he spent Friday nights at a place called the “English Library,” and he said there were other Americans there. I was skeptical, but eager for anyone—American or not—who I might be able to have a conversation with. I ended up spending every Friday night I was in Palembang at EL for “Chit Chat Time.”

And that’s how I met Mike and Debbie, two of the kindest people I’ve ever known. They’ve been traveling to Indonesia their whole lives and signed up for three years here with the library when they retired. I don’t know what I would have done without them. They’re from South Carolina, and they said I reminded them of their daughter. I will never forget how immensely grateful I was to them for driving me home every night. It added an extra hour and a half onto their evening, and when I thanked them, they just said, “Well, of course! You don’t need to thank us for this; we love you!” And sometimes the simplest thing can make such a huge difference. I think the library saved my sanity at the beginning.

Mike and Debbie were perfect to vent to. They love Indonesia, but they said being in Palembang was worse than anywhere else. When you’re struggling, it’s nice to hear other people are struggling, too. Debbie says she regularly checks travel web sites and bookmarks tickets home, just because it makes her feel better.

The students who come there really want to learn English. A lot of college students came to work on their thesis in English, and we work with a lot of new students, too. Unlike many of my students at IGM, the EL kids were really interested in what we taught them. And we didn’t have to worry about teaching to the government test, either, so we were free to play games, tell stories, and watch movies.

Then afterwards, I’d go to dinner with Mike and Debbie. By the end of my grant, I was considered staff at the library, and I’ll miss it so much. Plus, it was shocking to me how small the community of English speakers really is in Palembang. People who are good at English know all the other people who are good at English, whether it’s through classes or friends.

Smart FM Radio

Every Saturday we’re in Palembang, Raj and I do an hour-long radio show called “Smart Up your Life.” The US Embassy in Jakarta sponsors the program, and they pick a weekly topic and send us a five-minute long sketch we play on the air.

Except for the English Library (which you’ll hear about soon), this has been my favorite Palembang activity. People actually listen, and it gives them a chance to listen to native speakers talking. Instead of focusing on grammar or structure, we talk about cultural differences between Indonesia and the US.

Testing, testing... 1, 2, 3...

We have topics like:
Shopping
Dating
Small Talk
Religion
Travel

Usually, the Indonesian host asks us a few questions, and then Raj and I discuss different aspects of the main topic. Listeners can call in or text their questions during the show. And they’re very specific—How many people do most Americans kiss before they get married? Why don’t Americans like to make small talk with people on the street like Indonesians do? How important is religion in the daily life of an American?

Hendra and Erna

Luckily, Raj and I almost always agree. Sure, our audience is people who already speak at least basic English (and thus tend to be a little more open-minded), but it feels really great to actually explain the differences in our cultures. So often, we have to gloss over things and we don’t really get to talk about it.

Are Indonesians being rude when they walk up to strangers and ask where they live? Definitely not. But neither are Americans who don’t feel comfortable answering a question like that.

I’m also surprised at how many cultural norms I obey in America without even thinking of it. “What do you call your mom’s sister?” In my case, Aunt Pam. “But isn’t it rude to address your elder by his or her first name?” Well, yes, but it’s ok if you put “aunt” or “uncle” in front of it.

Here, Hendra is sporting one of the

sweet Smart FM t-shirts we just got.

“How well do you have to know someone before it’s ok to ask his/her salary?” Hmm… never? Raj and I agreed that we wouldn’t even ask our own parents’ salaries.

“If people are fat, why can’t we just call them fat? Why do Americans call people tall or short or thin… but not fat?” That’s very rude in America, even though it’s really normal in Indonesia.

We’re always careful to explain that we don’t think one way is better than the other, just that as we meet new people and try to learn more about the world, we have a responsibility to be sensitive to other cultures.

The show is the one time a week when Raj and I see each other—the one fluent English conversation we have with anyone in person most weeks. We get Pizza Hut and JCo doughnuts. This week we treated ourselves to a whole box of jPops as a grand finale. Yum.

We almost finished the box.

They have awesome names for their doughnuts,

like Alcapone and D. Berrymore.

Heavenberry is my favorite.

Marhabah celebration

Just five days left in Palembang, and I’m still having new experiences every day. Well, not every day, but close.

This weekend I went to a Marhabah celebration at Rudi’s family’s house. As a reminder, Rudi is another English teacher at my school.

The marhabah is a sort of Muslim baptismal ceremony. The word literally means “welcome” in Arabic, so Rudi says it’s a sort of official “welcome to the family” event. Yenni, another teacher at my school who recently had a baby, told me about it, but I didn’t know I was going to get to see one!

Seven days after a baby is born, its parents are supposed to cut off all of its hair. Then they weigh the hair and give an appropriate amount of money to an orphanage. According to Yenni, one gram of hair = one million rupiah, or a little more than $100. So if your baby has a full head of hair, you might end up paying upwards of $400.

Technically, that’s when you’re supposed to have the ceremony, too—when the baby is a week old. But most people cut the baby’s hair off at a week and wait to have the ceremony until later. Yenni says they “get too busy.”

The ceremony at Rudi’s house was a sort of double marhabah, because they were blessing two two-month old baby girls in the family. The baby’s uncle holds him or her and parades the baby around the house for the family to see. The whole time, men in the family are banging wildly on drums and someone else passes around a canister filled with small bills for people to grab and keep.

Those bills are worth about $.10 each.

Kids were grabbing them by the handful!

The family must also sacrifice a lamb or goat: one if the baby is a girl, and two if the baby is a boy. (Grumble grumble.) Because there were two baby girls at Rudi’s house, his family had sacrificed one goat and one lamb.

Even though the baby’s hair was cut and weighed almost nine weeks before the ceremony, the important men in the family each took a turn and snipped off some as part of the ritual. The day is also significant because it’s when the babies officially receive their names, even though they’ve been called by them since they were born.

Rudi and his niece Rina are one the right.

Rina's older sister is the cutie in the dress.

Snip snip.

Rudi was so proud of his niece; it was a really special day, and I’m glad they shared it with me.

I have my rice and eat it, too.

If Indonesian food and I were in a relationship, I would say that it’s not a particularly passionate one, and it didn’t even start out that way. In fact, one of us (me) is always looking for a way out, and I sample all other kinds of food when I’m in the big city. But for now, I’m stuck with this one, so I’m doing what a good significant other should—I’m focusing on the good qualities.

Indonesians say they have many regional specialties, which is true. But the more I travel, the more I’ve discovered that this inventive dish here is simply called by that name when you eat it there. Know what I mean? There are exceptions, but most Indonesian food boils down to this: rice with a particular meat covered in a particular sauce.

Before I left, Mom bought me a book called Eat Smart in Indonesia, which promised me—on the cover, no less—that I was about to “embark on a tasting adventure.”

“Nothing edible in the whole outdoors escapes the cooking pot,” the book begins. At first, this sounds so of-the-earth, so economical. Then you realize they mean it.

My Lonely Planet was more reserved, warning me “Palembang fare takes some getting used to.”

Still, in the interest of full gastronomical disclosure, I have a confession. But if you want a measure of my emotional growth (or regression) in the past year, then you should know…

I ate a dog.

I know, I know. Just months ago I mourned a bunny being served for dinner. (Although, to be fair, a dog has never been the patron animal of any super fun holiday.) But I ate one. I’m disappointed to admit it doesn’t taste very different from any other meat. It was dark, and I ordered it served in a mixture of chili sauce and its own blood. Perhaps I no longer have a soul.

Woof.

The worst part of the whole experience is psyching yourself up for the first bite and realizing you have a whole order left to go. “If you don’t eat the rest of it, the dog died in vain,” John said. Crap. I finished maybe a third of it.

Anyway, that will not be appearing on the following list. Neither will those nasty pempek fish-balls. Nearly finished with my grant and with 9 months of Indo-culinary research under my belt (heh heh), I’m ready to unveil Katie’s Indonesian Food Hall of Fame:

Cinnamon [kayu manis, or “sweet wood” in Bahasa]: It literally grows in trees here, and you can buy it in three-feet-long pieces. I think if I made a list of things in the world that are purely delightful, cinnamon would be near the top. Along with people who can juggle.

Sweet cinnamon

Pindang Tulang: large pieces of beef still on the bone served “simmering in broth flavored with shallots, garlic, ginger, laos, turmeric, and lemon grass.” It tastes like a spicy vegetable soup, and it’s a Palembang specialty.

Pindang Tulang.

(I stole this picture.)

Nasi Uduk: “rice cooked in coconut milk… traditionally served with fried foods such as chicken, lamb, offal, and tofu. Individual portions of rice are served in banana leaves, topped with crispy, fried shallots”

Also called "fat rice."

(I also stole this one.)

Gado-Gado: “a salad of blanched or steamed vegetables topped with a sauce made with spices and ground peanuts”

Ok, yeah. It looks kind of gross.

Tempe Goreng: (I know we have tempeh in the US, but I’d never had it until I came here.) fermented soybeans “fried with palm sugar and chili peppers”

(And I stole this one.)

Sate Ayam: “chicken grilled on skewers and served with peanut sauce” (Ok, the quoting does seem like overkill, but I want to get it right.)

Mmm... sate.

Es Puter: “hand-turned coconut milk sorbet” mixed with red beans and sticky black rice. It may sound gross, but I assure you, this is divinity in dairy form.

Brrr. And yum.

Manggis: From the moment my lips first touched a manggis (mangosteen in English), I knew I was in love. My whole life, I’ve wanted to eat a passionfruit. And then I did, and it was disappointing. It looks like fish eggs on the inside. But then I tastes manggis, and I realized that’s what I’d been looking for all along.

Raj likes them, too.

Rambutan: How can you not love a fruit named for how hairy it is? Even Obama wrote in Dreams of my Father how much he loved it his first night in Jakarta: “The three of us ate quietly under a dim yellow bulb—chicken stew and rice, and then a dessert of red, hairy-skinned fruit so sweet at the center that only a stomachache could make me stop.” I hear ya, Barry.

They're like little creatures!

CRASH! (in Palem)BANG!

Only three more weeks to go? Is that even possible? I have no idea how to describe the way I’m feeling, but I’m sure I’ll be trying. I’ve resolved to blog a lot over the next 21 days, because I have some more things I want to tell you about, and I don’t want to turn into one of those people who writes a blog after I get home just to write a blog.

It’s a pretty bittersweet feeling to be so close to returning home. On one hand, I feel like this massive adventure—which I’ve anticipated and feared and loved—is days away from just… ending. On the other hand, some of the frustrations I’ve had over the last 8 ½ months seem to have been magnified lately.

My friend Vidhi said it well in her blog:

maybe the smell of fresh cut grass and summer lemonade is clouding my senses. maybe the thought of running into my parents arms at the airport is making these last few weeks particularly hard.

there are no schedules here. my classes are constantly cancelled. teachers get paid for extra-curricular activities they never lead. men get to smoke and judge women who do. cheating in school and on spouses is expected. money that could be going into education is used to buy snacks for meetings. my school has power outages every day, but the glitzy mall Sun Plaza is always air conditioned and glamorous.

im tired of all the stares i receive. i don't really understand why people here stare at me anyways. most indonesians think i am indonesian. im brown. i have black hair. and i dress appropriately for the culture. so why are you STILL glaring at me? if i was white, or pink, or green i would understand. im also tired of not fitting in, even when i look like i fit in...

Ok, I don’t have any glitzy malls or brown skin, but I can relate to the rest of that. And she goes on to explain how some other Americans she met at the airport were rude. The other two Americans in Palembang are really, really nice, but other than that, most expats here are notoriously unfriendly.

I think the biggest reason for my recent frustration was that Rajiv got into a motorcycle wreck.

I still say that if I could start this 9 months over, the first thing I would change would be to get an international driver’s license and rent a motorbike. My biggest complaint this year is how completely stranded I feel at times. I’m 45 minutes outside of the city, and I can’t even walk anywhere to buy dinner. Still, maybe it’s for the best that I don’t have a motorbike. A) Because I have absolutely no idea how to drive one, and B) Because my doctor friends tell me that motorcycle crashes and stabbings (many while on motorbikes) make up an overwhelming number of ER patients here.

Every Saturday we’re both in Palembang, Raj and I meet up and do a radio show at a local station through the US Embassy. [Another blog on that soon.] Then, we go to the mall, eat a delicious JCO doughnut (I swear they’re even better than Krispy Kremes), and eat dinner.

Raj rented a motorbike in February after getting his license when he went home for Christmas. So he drives himself home, and I call my buddy Ari, my ojek, to come pick me up. It’s such an important part of the week for both of us. It’s venting with someone who understands completely. The Raj dinner part, I mean. Not Ari, though he's nice.

But the last time we met, Raj got in an accident. And—get this—on the same road where my purse was stolen! (Indonesians would say there’s an evil spirit there, and they might be right.) He was turning right (with his signal on), and instead of slowing down or swerving around him, another motorbike with two men on it ran right into the back of his bike. Hard.

Raj was thrown over the front of his bike and onto the street while his bike skidded across the road. The other bike crashed, too, and it hit another bike with a couple on it. They lost control and crashed, too.

Raj is lucky he was wearing his helmet. He says after the impact, he only remembers laying in the middle of the road and seeing at least 200 cars and motorcycles drive by without stopping at all. Pieces of his bike had broken off, and he watched while someone even stole one and ran off. The two guys who caused the wreck immediately jumped on their bike and left, though Raj says pieces of their bike were laying in the road, too. His bike wouldn’t work.

He tried calling me, but of course the network was screwed up, and none of his five phone calls went through. I’m not sure what I would have done, anyway, and I think that’s another of my central frustrations: helplessness in times of need. Luckily, he was able to call a teacher at his school to come pick him up.

When my purse was stolen, I yelped and jumped around, and no one stopped to help me. There were at least 40 people just sitting on the side of the road eating from street vendors, and all of them just watched. But at least I wasn’t laying in the middle of the road. Not a single person helped him up or even stopped to see if he was ok.

The good news is he is ok, and a repair shop was able to fix his bike for only about $100.

I’m sorry this isn’t a happier post, but happier ones will follow, I assure you. I’ve been trying to think about what specifically I find so exasperating. I think it’s that my whole life right now is such an exercise in extremes.

On one hand, I have more independence than I’ve ever had in my life: I live alone, and I decide what I do, what I eat, and where I go. And yet, on the other hand, I feel so completely dependent on other people. I have to call for rides to get food, to go shopping, to get to school, etc. I have to walk and wait and pay each week just to have drinking water.

Same as with what I packed to bring: I managed to fit nearly everything I’ve needed for nine months into two suitcases and a bookbag. I have a little microcosm of my home, and yet… I have so little with me that it all fits into two suitcases and a bookbag! (Note: this does not include souvenirs. Oh my, no. It does not.)

And, most importantly, there’s the idea of being surrounded by people all the time. People are constantly stopping by my house unannounced, asking me for help with papers, and taking pictures of me when I walk by them. And yet, I wouldn't really fit in here permanently. I’ve talked to the other Fulbrights, and I think most of them feel the same way. There are so many people everywhere, and yet, aside from the other ETAs, you’re the only one who’s really like you.

But I promise—barring any more robberies or crashes—this is my last negative blog. There are so many exciting things happening right now, and I’m taking picures of all them.

Oh, and Raj has his bike back now. But this weekend while we were eating dinner, someone stole his helmet.

All Greek to me

My fellow teacher Rudi and I were having some communication issues last week. He picks me up for school on his way in in the morning, and he drives me home. I have 3.5 hour breaks between classes and English Clubs sometimes, so some days I ask Rudi to take me home.

I always say, “Rudi, would you mind taking me home now?”

And he was constantly getting this odd look on his face. He would pause a moment, and then say, “That would be fine.”

“You don’t have to!” I’d exclaim. But he would insist and say it was no trouble.

Finally, I found out what the problem was. “Katie, what do you expect me to say to that question?! It is one of the hardest things in English!”

Huh? Ooh. “Do you mind…”

He said, “Do you want me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no?’ I don’t know what is the right answer!”

So I explained that technically “no” is the right answer to a “do you mind” question, but he could always clarify what he meant. “No, I’d be happy to.” Or “No, it’s no problem!”

Rudi continues to test my knowledge on a daily basis with the English questions he’s thought of since the last time I saw him. Whew—on Mondays, he usually has a full two pages. They’re typically things like this:

Why is a lunch box not always a box and a trash can not always a can?

What is the difference between got and gotten and when should I use each?
(Most Indonesians use these interchangeably, but not my Rudi.)

Can you practice choir? Usually you just have choir practice.
But you can practice football? Yup.

What is the difference between “kind of” and “sort of?”

Why is the “i” in organize and organization pronounced differently?

You know the coolest thing about Indonesian? The verbs. They have verbs for everything. They have a verb that exclusively means “to have a moustache.” They have a verb that means “to take someone’s virginity.” They have a verb that means “to cook rice by boiling it.” All just one word. I mean, three separate words. That’d be weird if all those were all the same verb. Eww.

I really have always felt that one weakness of the English language is that we don’t have a way of asking “what kind of sick are you?” Someone says, “I’m sick.” And we say… where? Is it the flu? What’s wrong? (Those last two would work, I guess.) But Indonesians just say a direct translation of “What sick?” I like that.

I had no idea how much a language can affect the way people think. Do you know how many tenses we have in English? SIXTEEN! We have sixteen whole tenses! No wonder it’s hard for people. And we’re not talking Shakespeare’s English here: there are 16 common, everyday tenses for English speakers.

Indonesian has one tense. If you need to know that something happened in the past, you use context to figure it out. Obviously “I eat dinner yesterday” happened in the past, so it would be like “I ate dinner yesterday.”

But Rudi was explaining how English is so hard for Indonesians (and other foreign speakers, I would assume) because they literally have to change the way they think. For example, “If I’d known you were coming yesterday, I would have gone to the store.”

(Here’s where I want to start singing that song: If I’d knowwwwnn you were comin’ I’da baked a caaaake. Baked a caaaake.”)

Indonesians don’t have a way to say that in their language. They would break it down into two present tense sentences. “I do not know you come yesterday. I should go to store” would be a near-literal translation. Rudi said the ability to think one thought that means all of that at once is something he had to work hard to train himself to do. Isn’t that fascinating?

I really used to think that your brain was one thing unto itself, and language was just what comes out of your mouth, how to explain what you think. I guess that’s still true, but Rudi insists, and I’m starting to agree, that language can enable you to think more complex thoughts, faster. Hey, maybe there’s some uber-language out there that would force us all to go beyond English-language thinking…

Anyway.

Also, there are just so many more words to learn in English. I guess it’s nearly impossible to count the number of words in a language (Does dog count separately as a verb and a noun? Is hog-tied one new word or two old words joined together? Dig, dug, digging—one word in different tenses or three different words altogether? Etc.) Still, experts who know more about this sort of thing than I do estimate that the English language has somewhere around 750,000 words. An Indonesian dictionary from the ‘80s (yeah, it’s outdated, but go with it) contained 25,500 Indonesian words. So… there are a lot more words in English.

Ooh, and also according to the esteemed Dr. Wikipedia, here are some English words that come from Indonesian:

amok (as in “to run amok”)
gecko
gong
gingham
orangutan

Yeah, ok, so those are about the only ones, but still. The others I don’t count because you would directly associate them with Indonesia or Asia, like batik or rambutan.

PS- When I was looking up how many words were in the English language, I also learned that you’re pretty hot stuff if you know even 20% of that ¾ million. How enthralling. And riveting. And intriguing and exceptional and captivating. Eh, I probably wouldn’t even scratch the surface.

Oops, my apologies.

Like most really, really smart people around the world, one of my teachers sort of lacks a certain amount of people skills. He’s fine around the other teachers and me, but he really struggles in the classroom. All right, fine, it’s Rudi. The students make fun of him constantly, calling him a “ladyboy” (and to be honest, he is pretty effeminate). Rudi doesn’t handle this very well and responds by grabbing whatever blunt object is nearest him and hitting the student on the back of the head as hard as possible. (Which, as we covered before, isn’t all that hard for him.) It doesn’t matter what it is—whiteboard erasers, water bottles, books. Once he found a bottle of baby powder in the back of a classroom and poured it over a student’s head in a fit of anger. Sadly, just like bullies in the US, this sort of behavior only fuels them to tease more until Rudi’s tiny 4’10” body is shaking with fury. Finally, I have to ask him to sit down at the back of the classroom.

Rudi’s behavior isn’t uncommon at all, though. All of my teachers smack students when they talk out of turn or play with their Rubik’s Cubes instead of listening. After a particularly frustrating class, I came back to the teachers’ lounge and said I was having some serious trouble getting kids to pay attention. “You have to pinch them,” Sry says.

“Oh,” I responded. “I don’t really feel comfortable doing that. In America teachers never touch the students.”

“I am not talking about touching them,” Sry said. “Just a little twist on their arm until it hurts them.”

The thing is, it doesn’t work. The students don’t pay attention any better after someone “twists” them. Part if it, I’m sure, is just bad behavior. For some reason, my school is known for spoiled students who can’t behave; one of the teachers is even writing her thesis on it. They think it’s probably because the students are so wealthy.

After eight months here, I’m surprised at how many cultural differences still shock me. I wonder how long I’d have to live somewhere to totally adapt. It probably takes longer certain places than others, too, I’d imagine.

For me, one of the most frustrating differences is the idea of “jam karet,” or “rubber time,” meaning that time can be stretched around to your needs. A 12 o’clock lunch can start at 2 o’clock here, and that’s completely acceptable to everyone. Likewise, someone might say they’ll stop by at 10 o’clock in the morning, and they show up at 9 o’clock because they were in the neighborhood early.

One day, when I was returning from a trip, a friend of mine said he would pick me up from the airport. I texted him (they say SMSed here) when I landed, and he said he’d be there soon. I waited. A half hour later, I called. He said he was actually just leaving his office then, and he’d be there in another half hour. It was fine; I had a book. (If you want to talk about how I’ve changed, just look at that: I was willing to wait an extra hour to save the equivalent of $2 for a ride home.) Still, 45 minutes went by, and still no friend. I called him again. He said actually he was just then leaving the office, and he’d be there in a half hour.

So I said thanks, but he could just meet me at my house and we’d go to dinner like we’d planned. I caught an ojek home and took a $2 loss. My friend (the boyfriend of a teacher at my school) finally showed up an hour and a half later. I got in his car and we immediately drove to the mosque, because he hadn’t prayed yet. So I sat for another half hour, this time in the car and without my book. I asked why he didn’t just come 3 hours late and pray before picking me up, and he said he wanted to show me how important his religion is to him. Hmm, ok… point taken. Then we listened to the Koran in Arabic all the way to and from dinner.

While I was waiting in the car, I passed the time by talking to Christine on the phone. It was now completely dark outside and there were a lot of people filing around. And I’ve been jumpy since the purse incident.

Suddenly, someone touched my shoulder. I screamed like a large rodent had just been dropped into my lap. Apparently, my friend had silently creeped over to the car window—which was rolled down about two inches—and stuck his nose in through the opening to greet me with “Hellooooo, how are youuuuuuuu.” He said it in that slightly terrifying monotone of people who have memorized words but don’t really know what they mean. So I screamed. (I was, in hindsight, perhaps already not the best version of myself that night.)

The friend was immediately apologetic. This is another trademark of Indonesian people who mean well: unending apologies for some things they did but most things that are completely beyond their control. (Although, in this case, it was his fault.)

This is common: “Miss, I am so sorry for the condition of the roads!”

“It’s fine,” I say.

“Miss, please forgive me for this road. I am so sorry.”

Apologies, in fact, are an integral part of Indonesian life. When saying a formal goodbye, for example, a person here should begin by issuing a grand blanket apology for anything they might have done to offend anyone. Similarly, they expect apologies to fix anything, too.

Teachers are paid to run English Club at my school. I nearly always do it alone though, because it’s just easier that way. But at least they’re sports and they stick around.

Once, though, during EC, I ran back to my desk in the teachers’ lounge to get something I’d forgotten and found Rudi and Sry rooting through my desk. Without shame, mind you. That week, I’d had the students write personal letters, and they were opening the sealed envelopes sitting on my desk and reading the private notes. They were also using my coveted antibacterial wipes I thought I was keeping hidden in the depths of my desk.

I was pretty upset. Not only were they going through my desk while getting paid for the job I was doing, they were using my things and reading letters my students trusted me to keep between us. Both Rudi and Sry dropped my things when they saw me and returned to their own desks.

I asked, “Why were you going through my things?”

Sry’s face immediately crumbled, and she nearly started to cry. “Please do not be angry with us!” she said.

Rudi continued, “Yes, we did not find anything bad, anyway.”

This sort of feeling extends to many sectors of Indonesia. Once, a computer tech woman started crying because she thought I’d be mad at her for not being able to fix my internet. (This was back at the beginning of my grant, when my dreams for worldwide connectivity were young and full of hope.) I’m not sure if people here really have a crippling fear of someone being angry with them or if it’s considered polite to assume an apologetic response.

Still, I really am getting the hang of it more. I know know my part. If you go into any situation in Palembang and begin by apologizing, you’re getting somewhere.

Selamat Hari Kartini!

Quick Bahasa Indonesia lesson: “Hari” means “day.” So obviously, “Hari Kartini” means “Kartini Day.”

“Hari ini” literally means “this day” and means “today.” This all reminds me of the sign that was hanging up in the police station where I sat for three hours after my purse was stolen in March. In an uncommon display of ornamentation, someone had painted the words, “Hari ini lebih baik dari kemarin” on the wall, which means “Today is better than yesterday.” Having just had all of my possessions ripped from my grasp, I was unable to embrace the spirit behind the sentiment. And I have to wonder how many people who walk through the doors of that police station really think that day is in fact an improvement over the day before, when they were not entering the lair of Indonesia’s Finest.

Anyway, Kartini Day celebrates an Indonesian woman who spent her short life pushing for education for women. Born in 1879, she was allowed to go to school until she was 12. After that, she was kept in her home to prepare for marriage, but she continued to teach herself. She had many Dutch pen pals and eventually begged to be allowed to teach in Jakarta. She argued against traditional religious practices (many still in place today). For example, she didn’t believe people should have to memorize the Koran without having to understand its meaning. After a few years, she was finally allowed to go to Jakarta, but she then turned the offer down because she had decided to get married and continuing living in her hometown. She hoped she and her husband would together be able to organize schools for young women, but she died at 25.

I know women’s rights in Indonesia is something completely different than women’s rights in America, but there’s a sort of strange sort of oxymoronic feminism that exists in many women I’ve met here. As one of my teachers said last week, “I will complete my master’s degree and become a professor before having my arranged marriage and raising as many children as possible. I hope I have many sons.”

For some reason, one of my unattached Indonesian friends had a near life crisis and spent a week surveying women and asking, “Would you rather be divorced or an old maid?” I saw one woman shudder and say, “Both of those would be terrible.” My friend nodded solemnly.

Then there’s the jilbab. During orientation, an Indonesian Fulbright scholar spoke to our group and identified herself as a Muslim feminist. Ok, I can understand that. She supports equal rights for men and women. But I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that a person can believe men and women are equal, and still believe that women should cover their heads and men should not.

I know that sentiment puts me gravely in danger of sounding ignorant. I understand that wearing a jilbab is completely a choice. I understand that you can be smart and capable and independent and want to wear one. I understand that you can believe in the fair treatment of men and women and wear one. But when a person believes that women should cover their heads and men should not, that is not equal.

I know some people say the point isn’t really to be equal or the same, and I say, good, because it’s not.

Out of the 50 or so female teachers at my school, there is only one who doesn’t cover her head. She’s Muslim, married, and, interestingly enough, teaches World Culture. I asked her why she doesn’t wear a jilbab, and she said because she doesn’t want to and her mother never did.

I have another friend who refuses to wear the jilbab. She says God doesn’t care whether she covers her head or not. She says most women wear jilbabs less because of their personal relationship with God and moreso because of the way they’re treated in their community. I think that’s probably very true. Jilbabbed (verb?) women are at least initially almost always treated with more respect.

One male friend told me he would respect me more if I wore a head covering. I asked if that was true even though he knew I’m not Muslim and it would be an empty gesture, and he said yes.

Were I a better (or maybe just a more bitter) woman, I might have raised my eyebrows a bit at my school’s celebration. To honor women’s rights, IGM sponsored a fashion show, a cooking contest, and a singing competition. “Things women love!” they said.

Usually, my school has an unbelievable amount of food set out for holidays. I always end up eating the equivalent of about four full meals before 10:00am. So I tried to beat them at their own game and skipped breakfast. Hari Kartini is the one day when the men have to do all the cooking. But when I got to school, there were no sweet little cake rolls. No layered coconut snacks. No strangely-jiggly florescent gelatins.

“But I thought the men were cooking today!” I exclaimed as my belly rumbled. They laughed.

“Ahh, Ketty! That is a joke we tell! Men are supposed to cook, but they do not know how! So we do not have snacks on this day!”

In case you’re keeping track, the score is now Miss Ketty 3; Indonesia 1,289.

Everyone dresses up in traditional formal clothes for Kartini Day. For men, that’s dress pants and a batik-patterned shirt. For women, it’s usually a batik skirt with a kabaya for a top. Kabayas are bright and beautiful, usually incorporating a lot of lace and sequins. They can be really expensive (up to around $250 each), but the women can wear them many times. One of the teachers loaned me her mother’s kabaya. The teachers looove it when we all dress up, and it really was a lot of fun. We took somewhere around two million pictures.

The fashion show was delightfully fun. Each class chose two students to represent them, and they strutted their stuff on a makeshift catwalk. The singing contest was great, too. The middle school even let student bands accompany the contestants. And the cooking contest—oh my.

The students had the contest, but all of the male teachers were supposed to prepare fried rice for all the female teachers. In an effort to throw them off, however, the female teachers purchased all the ingredients, along with about six or seven items they were not supposed to put in. The women laughed and laughed as the men stood struggling over the baskets trying to decide what to use. I laughed heartily, though I was secretly glad no one put me to the test—how should I know what to use?!

Since we cancelled classes (shocking, no?), the day just centered around having fun and enjoying the contests. About women’s rights, little Sry writes, “we are kartini in new generation,,,,keep struggling womans' emancipation...”

Also, Sry asked me yesterday if it was appropriate to say “untfloeeeeezveezeeteeng” when your period starts. (I swear my teachers are obsessed with menstruation.) So I said that phrase I’ve said so many times since arriving in Palembang, “I’m not sure I understand. Can you write that down?” Apparently her book taught her that most American women have a secret idiom code used for proclaiming the start of one’s period. “Aunt Flo is visiting.” I discouraged her from using the phrase.

I guess I feel the day was less a celebration of women’s rights and more a day to appreciate women and say, “Gosh, what would we all do in a world without ladies?” But there’s quite a bit of value in that, too.