Jazzing it up in Jakarta

Three months after my arrival on this archipelago I found myself back at my first destination point, Jakarta. But living in Jogjakarta for the past 3 months has been like living in the cultural and educational mecca of Indonesia. I can’t help but feel intensely partial to this city. So I got on the train to Jakarta with an air of contempt towards this city of 8 million people. Already, my mind constructed an image that included little more than pollution, an unbearable climate exaggerated by the industrial environment and traffic. However these low expectations paved the way for some pleasant surprises on the trip, and I can genuinely say I would enjoy going back.

The impetus for taking this trip was to see the Java Jazz festival. I’m not a jazz guru, but I simply like to listen to good live music. This was my chance to explore the cultural side of Jakarta. My decision to go was easy. I texted my friend in Jakarta with a simple “Jazz fest?” and  ”YES! I’ll get tickets tomorrow” solidified the trip. All I had left to do was buy the train tickets.

When my train arrived in Jakarta, our first stop was the Pacific Place mall to meet for dinner. Roaming through malls in big US cities you’ll pass by designer stores and ostentatious window displays with overpriced purses, but certainly not every mall boasts such decadence! In Jakarta malls, however, designer stores practically line the floors wall-to-wall and they are seductive places for the hasty or overzealous shopper. A Starbucks waits for coffee-lovers in every mall.

This isn’t the best picture but it illustrates the size and fanciness of the mall. The red display in the background holds designer bags in bird cages. I did not expect to see this on my weekend in Jakarta!

Our next stop was a mosque created in honor of Soekarno, the first president after Indonesia gained independence in 1945. Under the architectural guise of an office building, the mosque appeared plain and unimpressive from the outside. I looked at my friend with a confused face, “Did the taxi driver take us to the right place?”. She pointed to the entrance where a sign read “masuk”, which means enter in Indonesian. We took off our shoes, walked through the metal detector and a man greeted us with robes before taking us to the main prayer room.

This was in the middle of the mosque, the main prayer room.

This was the ceiling in the mosque.

That night we went to Java Jazz, the main event of the weekend. We ate burritos, listened to jazz and I almost forgot I was in Indonesia. 

Valentine’s Day

I came home on Valentine’s day and my neighbor had left flowers outside my room. Such a sweet gesture! In the background you can see my room, and there will be more pics to come.

Pedestrian…what’s that?

Photo of the day:

I woke up today, ready to give my sweat glands some attention at the gym, and headed to my motor bike. My hair still looked like it did when I got out of bed, as if I twirled half of it with a fork and combed the rest straight; I think I heard some birds comment on how well it would suffice as their new home. As I got on my motor bike, turned it on and started out my street, there was a peculiar lightness I felt. My helmet! I wasn’t wearing it and it was no where to be found. As it turns out, I had left it at a friends house.

Here in Jogja there are no sidewalks, and the noise and smog from motorbikes and cars deter me from making the ten minute walk from my house to the gym. But today, without my helmet I had no choice but to walk through the cacophony of traffic. As I headed down the small alley to the main road my neighborhood transformed from a blur of houses to homes with visible street numbers and the signs of wear and tear, suggesting a kind of personality for each family. I never noticed the black and white warehouse attached to my neighbors garage, and wondered if they were craftsmen, perhaps creating teak furniture so characteristic of Indonesia. The house across the street had a dog that rose, walked over and gently sniffed my toes – he usually creeps to the back of the porch and follows me with his eyes when I ride my motorbike.

When I first arrived in Jogja the streets were my biggest fear. I came unarmed against them, without a form of transportation to get me…anywhere. I relied on taxis and the few Indonesians that became my shepherds in the city before I broke down and rented a motor bike myself. But this was something I promised myself I wouldn’t do before arriving (getting a motor-bike); I was scared of moving as fast as a car while being exposed to my surroundings and got a little freaked out. But as it turns out, riding a bicycle, or walking is more dangerous.

The crowded, seemingly uncoordinated (or perhaps just instinctual) rules of the road, cause traffic to move in a flow that you must learn to have faith in. Riding my motor bike through the streets is something I look forward to now, because 1. it’s an instantaneous escape from the stagnant hot air as the wind cools my face and 2. it feels great to be independent in this city, where I am stripped of everything I’ve ever  known.

My motor bike continues to be my best friend on the street, but after realizing the details of my world that I miss by speeding around town, I’m going to take a second thought about my mode of transportation. Do I really need wheels to go to the grocery store that I could walk to in 15 minutes, or are my two legs are the better choice?

It all started with you…monkey

February 5, 2010

For the past 4 days I’ve been in a town 20 miles north of Yogyakarta City. It’s situated at the base of Mount Merapi, the most active volcano in Indonesia, and the last eruption happened in 2006.  Clouds of smoke billow out of the crater at the top ocassionally, but no explosions have happened since. I hope we aren’t due for another in the next 8 months!

The air here is fresh and from the hiking trails, a mountain view beckons me to climb its forested slope. While I eat my breakfast, monkeys peer at me, and then at the shiny silver domes characteristic of hotel buffets, the only barriers between them and labor-free sustanance. However, I find myself in this mountain town not for encounters with chimps, but for a workshop where we’ll talk about the disease that originated from them. The topic is interfaith dialogue about HIV/AIDS in Indonesia, and it makes the breakfast-battle with Monkeys sound like cake.

A month ago, I was approached by a graduate student in the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University. He was planning a conference and just lost the main speaker to knee surgery. He heard I was doing research on public health and asked me to help cover some of the material. So I, a 25-year-old recent graduate replaced a woman who has worked with inter-faith communities and HIV/AIDS issues for as long as I’ve been alive. Underqualified is an understatement in describing how I felt. But if I was the next best choice, then I wanted to do what I could to help.

I was assigned three small and inconsequential topics: Biological/medical perspectives on HIV/AIDS, the history of construction of knowledge of HIV/AIDS from an international perspective, and International movements in HIV/AIDS management. WOWZERS. I was cooked, or at least my brain would be by the time I finished preparing. Then there was the responsibility I felt for educating youth who would return to their religious communities to share what they learned.

Fortunately I made it through alive, even with shaky hands and pre-presentation jitters, and I think I even helped positively change some perspectives. One of my presentations focused on how the public’s perception of HIV/AIDS in America shifted since the first reported case in 1982. AIDS was mistaken as a disease inherently associated with the gay community until we learned about how it was transmitted. The struggles of individual people, such as Ryan White, Ricky Ray and Magic Johnson, are why we don’t kick AIDS patients out of schools anymore, and why we recognize AIDS not as a death sentence, but as a disease one can live a healthy life with through proper treatment. I was touched when a few people told me that those individual stories made them see HIV/AIDS in a new light, a humanizing one.

Tomorrow I head back to Yogyakarta. I’ve made some new friends here that I plan to see back in town. I can’t wait for the potluck that my friend Lolly and I are planning tomorrow night!

Javanese Wedding

I am still tired. The jet lag is over, so it’s not because of that. Maybe it’s because my brain needs more rest than usual to take in new information. I had to stop my language lesson an hour early because I couldn’t process the words. After I asked my instructor for the third time to repeat her question to me in Indonesian she kind of laughed and told me to take a nap, that we would revisit the work the next day. I liked that idea, but I’m frustrated with my exhaustion!

What you just read was written a few days ago, and since then I’ve regained a lot of energy. Thank you! I also moved to my new place. It’s a home stay, which is a living arrangement where a family rents out rooms in their home or building. The home stay a bit too far from campus to walk, so the daughter is teaching me how to ride a motorbike. I planned on avoiding driving a motorbike (It can be a little dangerous) but my options are few in terms of getting around if I don’t. Here goes trying! I’ll upload pictures of my place so that you can better understand the space. 

But what I really want to share now are the pictures from a Javanese Wedding I attended. 

  

Here are the newlyweds and immediate family members. In a traditional Javanese wedding (like this one) the woman wears a generous amount of make-up. From what I understand and some brief discussions with people at the wedding, the bride’s make-up is a cultural ritual – in java, Paes pinanganten (wedding face painting) originated as a practice hundreds of years ago. Whether the bride practices this art depends on her religious and cultural identity. Some families decide to celebrate  in Javanese style, whereas more pious Islamic families might  not incorporate traditional Javanese practices at all. 

 

This kid was crying because she was afraid of the chocolate fountain at the dessert table, haha. The bottle: a cross-cultural remedy for unhappy babies.                         

 

The family that invited me to the wedding: Vina, Farel and their mother.

 

   

These kids stuck out in their jeans. Everyone was dressed formally, and then this girl, with her rainbow halter top and funky socks, walked in with her brother. She was kind of awesome.

 

          

Vina and me. We were tired of standing at this point – the seats were reserved for family members only. It’s customary in some Javanese weddings for guests to stand the entire evening, even during dinner. 

 

Candid shots of guests. Some of the outfits at the wedding were fantastic, like this one girl in the blue dress. It was covered in fringe. The girls on the left were wearing traditional clothing – red indicates a close relationship to the bride and groom (friends or family).

 

Hello world!

Greetings from Indonesia! This is my first post since arriving in Indonesia, and I’m going to post as frequently as I can. This blog is about my project, the Indonesians and foreigners I meet, culture, politics and my reactions to all the above. I imagine this last part, my reactions to my environment, will be quite candid. Culture shock and missing home are inevitable, and important to reflect upon, as are the little triumphs – having my first successful conversation in Indonesian or finding my way from my apartment to the mall (which I just did yesterday!).

I’ve been here since Tuesday – Jakarta for three days and I arrived in Yogyakarta yesterday night. My excitement to write about what happened during my first few days has abated since. It’s because I’m having trouble deciding where to start. I feel like a pedestrian at the intersection of a busy street unable to know when to make the move. My thoughts are like traffic coming at me in every direction.

I’ll just say three things: hospitality, traffic and tobacco.

Salamat Datang (Welcome)

What’s the purpose of hospitality? It’s about making someone feel welcome. All the staff members at Fulbright welcomed me warmly, and have helped me through the registration process every step of the way. It’s a hairy process. As a foreign researcher I’m required to register at the police station, the ministry of home affairs, the immigration office and the governors office. Not going to go into the details because they are boring. I’m grateful that someone is helping me because alone, in addition to looking like a helpless goof, I wouldn’t be able to get it done. Gotta work on learning Indonesian.

One last comment about hospitality here. The professor (Dr. Hari Kusnanto) hosting me at University Gadjah Mada drove me to the mall after I mentioned I needed to buy a pair of pants. He waited for 45 minutes in the mall during the middle of his day! And his days are always packed. This leads me to believe that I’m going to have to be more careful when talking about things I need. Otherwise I’ll be putting people out. From my limited observations thus far, hospitality appears to be strongly rooted in Indonesian cultural values. So strongly that people will often do favors for others even if it means they sacrifice something of their own – be it time, money or whatever. Even though Professor Kusnanto genuinely wanted to help me find my way to the mall (he was concerned I would get lost and feels personally responsible) I know he was making time for me that he didn’t have. 

Look both ways, or just run for it

At my first meeting with the Fulbright director in Jakarta I learned about my two greatest dangers here. I expected the first one: I’m in the ring of fire – Indonesia is prone to natural disaster. Interested to know what the NY Times has covered on Indonesia I typed Indonesia in the Times search engine and almost every article’s headline read something like “boat sinks” or “plane crashed and no luck finding passengers” and “Indonesian’s wait for humanitarian aid after the Tsunami”… Breathe… I tell myself the Times must be biased towards these sorts of stories because Indonesia isn’t heavily covered in the US media. In reality yes, I’m concerned, but what scares me more here is traffic! There are few sidewalks in Yogyakarta (the city I stay in) and I will avoid the streets on foot or by bike (motor bike or bicycle) whenEVER possible. That was the second warning from the director, traffic.

cough cough

The mental images we get when something strikes us as particularly funny, sad, extreme, ironic – let’s call them lucid memories. I’ve had a lot of them since being here; strangely, or unexpectedly I should say, my first week is full of lucid memories of people smoking. I walked off the plane and there was a no smoking sign on a wall in the airport. A group of men sat together, talking, laughing, and ALL of them were smoking cigarrettes. My first thought: smoking regulations aren’t strictly enforced here. Now I’m paying attention to smoking inside. I notice it more since it’s been banned in public spaces in major cities in the US.

Here’s another encounter with tobacco. Rizma, my program director takes me to the ministry of home affairs to register. We enter a room full of cubicles, a man sits at his computer and leans back into his chair to take a puff of a cigarette as I walk by. The entire room has a noxious smell and I cough a few times. People smoke on the streets, in their cars, in lounges, while working, on the telephone, and it isn’t hard to imagine people smoking in the bathroom. Second thought: Indonesians like to smoke, or cigarettes are easily accessible or cheap…all of the above?

It’s not as easy to conjure an image of a woman smoking. Haven’t seen that much. Still haven’t figured out why, if it has to do with Islam or just a social norm/expectation. That’s something I’ll get back to you about. Another thought: smoking is a masculine activity here, perhaps women are discouraged from doing it.

Thanks for reading my first post. Would love to hear your comments, reactions, questions. Want to keep this interactive.