This series is about my 15.5 year adventure in Indonesia - from teaching and public speaking to marriage and parenting to neighbors and partners to culture and religion to cuisine and art, and more! I'll give an honest, sometimes touching and even shocking look at what it was like to live there for all of you. I hope you'll enjoy it and support my effort to put it all into writing! If you don't mind, resteem it, please!
Mara had found me a reasonably priced (by both American and Jakartan standards, but very expensive for most of Indonesia) 2 bedroom apartment in the Kuningan area, on H.R. Rasuna Said Street, in the Rasuna Gardens Apartments (Apartemen Taman Rasuna), which were actually condos. The owner rented it to me for $300/month. It was furnished with beds, wardrobes (Indonesian homes rarely have closets), sofa, chairs, tables, TV and stand, dishes, cupboards, a fridge/freezer, and a 2-stage laundry machine. There was a full bathroom, a spacious laundry room where lines were set up to hang my wet clothes, and a kitchen/dining area that merged with the living room, plus a balcony overlooking the city from my 17th storey home. It was nice and I was pleased with it.
I knew exactly 3 people in Indonesia: Mara, Vicky (whom I had known first and felt I knew best) and Budi. I never heard from Budi again after moving to Indonesia. I also knew virtually no Indonesian, and couldn't say what I DID know correctly. I learned it on the fly there.
You need to understand that Mara was turning 30 and, in Indonesia, being a single woman at that age tended to be looked down on, and she was under a great deal of pressure to marry - and I was her intended groom. Before I arrived in Indonesia, I had promised that we would not have sexual intercourse, and that was a promise I kept (but it was tough!). Yet, despite the fact that in most parts of Indonesia, living together unmarried is not just unacceptable - it can even be illegal, Mara slept at my home instead of hers almost every night.
One of the strangest things for me in Indonesia was using the squat toilet. I'd never seen one, let alone used one, and no one gave me any tips beforehand. You'll find sitting toilets in better establishments, especially in large cities, but they are far from universal.
You put your feet on those rugged areas to each side, drop your pants down to your knees (or, better yet, just take them off so your wallet or phone don't drop into the water!), and squat with your butthole right over the deepest part. In terms of how your body works, this is the best way to poop because it lines everything up but, in terms of knees and comfort, it is definitely not high on my list of things to do! In Indonesia, probably because of the Muslim tradition of using their left hand to wash their privates, toilet paper is often absent from bathrooms, although some families have it at home, especially non-Muslims, and higher class establishments tend to. Instead, it is very common to see sprayers, which are a wonderful way to clean your butt! Still, you have to use your hand and carry soap with you to wash your privates (and then your hands).
One of the best things about Indonesia is that bathrooms are waterproof! You can make as big a mess as you like with your water, and it'll be fine, so the use of a sprayer to clean your privates is totally cool! In fact, if you don't have a sprayer - install one!
I know, I know...YUCK! But, here's the truth - toilet paper destroys the forests that produce both oxygen and rainfall (yes, forests produce moisture), and provide places to live for numerous critters and plants. Toilet paper can't be thrown into the toilets in most countries (including Indonesia) because their systems aren't designed to handle it. In addition, toilet paper is far inferior to soap and water. Having been in a position with women (no details!), I know this - not to mention my own butt! Cleaning with a sprayer and soap is THE BEST way to make sure your butt is clean and not stinky.
That said, I have soap sensitivities, so it's hard to find one that doesn't bother my butt. :( Still, I wish my home in the US had a waterproof bathroom and a sprayer! I'd give up TP in a flash!
The arrangement seemed great but Mara had a temper and she was high-strung. She'd get upset and that'd make me upset and then we'd argue. It was, from early in November 2001 (keeping in mind that I arrived Nov. 2, 2001), a source of stress. In addition, although Vicky had told me that Mara had a car, I never saw it (aside from the day she picked me up at Soekarno-Hatta Airport), so I was routinely paying for taxis. She liked to shop at nice places and eat at nice restaurants, and we did some enjoyable things, but it all added up far quicker than I expected (and I'm still baffled!). I had arrived in Indonesia with, I believe, $6,000 and, by around February, it was gone - even with my salary (see below).
When I arrived, I was suffering from some pretty bad jet lag that lasted at least two weeks. Around the end of that, Mara told me that Vicky had sold her IT business, so I didn't have a job. Whoops - that was bad news! I considered the fact that there were already a lot of IT experts in Indonesia (mobile phones were far more prevalent than in the US at that time, and computers and other electronics were sold everywhere in Jakarta and other major cities, with Internet cafes being very common) so, instead of trying to compete with locals earning local salaries, because a company that wanted me would have to pay a much larger salary, plus the foreigner tax of $100/mo x 12, plus all the documentation and a trip to Singapore to get the work-related visa, and so on, for a total cost of over $2000, I opted to go into teaching English.
Mara quickly helped me find options, and I was accepted at a language course called English First, which is an international franchise (some branches have very bad reputations) located in Kali Malang (literally: Times Poor, figuratively: Poor River) to work freelance. They wanted to do a probation before they hired me because, although I had been well received by the trial classes I taught, I didn't (and still don't) have a degree in education or English. I just had the fact that I am Caucasian and a native English speaker (plus some classes in university for English and writing). I started there in mid-November and was working a full load of classes (without any work documentation, which I didn't really understand about at that time), earning about $800/mo. The students loved me and I was happy to be there.
By December, I had met many members of Mara's family and gotten permission to marry her. I'd also converted to Islam, a decidedly happy event for her family, which was a measure I took out of necessity and self-protection far more than any real desire to be a Muslim. The truth is, the extremist actions of the US government and military had made many people look unfavorably at Americans. I often self-identified as Canadian to avoid this problem. Ironically, I once had a Christian taxi driver who got mad at me because he thought Bush was great (because of his religion).
Once a lunar year, Muslims celebrate the fasting month, Ramadhan/Romadhon, by refraining from eating pretty much from dawn until dusk. They get up before dawn for what is called "Sahur", which is their pre-dawn breakfast that will get them through the day, and they break the fast around sunset, usually by drinking sweetened tea, first, to get their blood sugar back up, and then follow that with certain foods that are good at sustaining your blood sugar so you don't crash, and then other foods. The purpose of the fast is threefold, but I'll just explain the first: so that people with money can know what it feels like to be hungry every day, just like the poor. In addition, during Ramadhan, you are supposed to refrain from emotional outbursts. I believe this is because poor people are often in a position where emotional outbursts can spell financial disaster, plus Indonesians are very concerned about politeness.
At the end of Ramadhan is Idul Fitri/Eid-al-fitri, also called "Lebaran" in Indonesia. This is the celebratory day and is an important day of family reunions for most of the Indonesian population.
If you don't like Jakarta because of pollution, traffic jams and crowding (I hate it!) - this is THE BEST time to be in Jakarta, because MILLIONS of people "pulang kampung" (go back to their hometown) and it's virtually deserted. The only people that don't go are the poor, especially now that train rides are way too expensive for them (and other forms are usually over-priced and over-booked around the 2-day vacation). People from other islands are also often limited in their ability to return home because of the cost. Road trips that would normally take a couple of hours become half-day affairs, and ones that should take 8 hours take 24, as people run back to their homes all over the archipelago.
Lebaran 2001 occurred in December, so I went with Mara to her family home in Bandung, where I stayed for a few days. We had a big meal on Lebaran, with various family members in attendance. I found it very hard to sleep at night because the next-door neighbor had a bunch of chickens and, contrary to what Hollywood teaches you, they crow ALL NIGHT LONG. But, overall, it was a good time, despite meeting a relative of theirs who is Dutch and prissy.
You may be wondering why I don't post a lot of pictures from my time there. Well, in my early years there, I had a hard drive crash that caused the loss of some of my photos, although I had many backed up to DVDs. Then, in 2015, my backup HDD was stolen, which contained the majority of my photos and, finally, I had to hastily leave Indonesia, resulting in the loss of all my printed photos as well as the old DVD backups from the early years. Thus, aside from what can be found online, I lost a huge number of photos. :(
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