8:00 a.m. I meet Ibu Elsje in front of Amanda Jaya and we head off to the Liluwo market, which is held every Saturday morning from 6-11. Ibu Elsje tells me that this market is where everyone in town gets their food because they have the cheapest prices. Even the slightly more expensive food that is sold daily at Pasar Sentral (Central Market) originally comes from here.
8:15 a.m. This is my first trip to the traditional market and I am instantly enamored by the sights, sounds and smells. As far as the eye can see there are tables piled high with fresh vegetables, beautiful baskets full of eye-catching fruit, and large sacks of rice and grains. In the back there are long tables covered with fish of all shapes and sizes and in one corner there is a meat stand with large slabs of meat hanging from hooks. The stands are so tightly packed together that there is barely enough space to walk around. Vendors beckon me to examine their food while shouting out prices. Young boys constantly tug on my sleeve to ask if I want to buy a bag or if they can help carry my bags back to the bentor.Women touch my arms and excitedly call to their friends, “bule, bule!” I pause to smell some fresh herbs and am distracted by the sight of a woman carrying a large dead chicken by its feet.
9:30 a.m. With my backpack filled with eggplants, bananas, langsats, rambutans, sadri, limes and a couple of kilos of rice, Ibu Elsje and I head back to my place for a cooking lesson. She is going to show me how to make poki-poki, a local eggplant dish in a coconut/chili paste sauce. And I have to admit that I love the name of this dish just as much as I love the taste.
9:45 a.m. When we arrive at my place, Ibu Elsje surprises me by asking my cleaning lady to make the poki-poki instead. She thinks I am overpaying her for the work that she does and instructs Uni to cut the eggplants, grind the chili peppers and clean the rice cooker that I inherited from Jonna but have never used. And then it turns out that I don’t even own the required mortar and pestle to make the chili paste, so Uni quietly disappears to her own house down the street to make the paste and purchase some coconut milk at Pak Thalib’s store and then comes back.
10:15 a.m. While Uni is cooking, Ibu Elsje gives me a vocabulary lesson on food:
Rempah-rempah campur – mixed spices used in poki-poki; Kemiri – candle nut; Kemangi – basil; Kangkung – water spinach; Bayam – spinach; Sadri – leafy green for soups; Tinutuan – a porridge from Manado with pumpkin, sweet potato, corn, rice and various leafy greens
And some useful phrases: Ayo kita makan! – Let’s go eat; Nasi sudah masak – The rice is done; Karna enak sekali, saya makan banyak – Because it’s delicious, I eat a lot; Saya sudah kenyang – I’m full!
11:00 a.m. We eat a delicious early lunch. I have to admit that maybe I overgeneralized when I declared that all Indonesian food is horrible. Clearly, there are exceptions such as terong belanda, ikan bakar with fresh dabu-dabuiris sauce and now poki-poki. I genuinely LOVE these things and hopefully I will continue to discover foods here that I can truly enjoy.
1:00 p.m. Ibu Elsje and Uni have both left so I decide to nap. A lazy Saturday afternoon nap is a wonderful thing indeed.
6:10 p.m. I hop on a bentor and head to the De La Rosa salon where I’m meeting Sarah and Alexa for a girls’ night of pampering. Alexa gets a pedicure, Sarah gets her long hair cut and saves it to give to Ismail who requested it for fishing line (only in Indonesia!) and I get a cream bath. A cream bath is a delightful Indonesian spa specialty where you get your hair washed and deep conditioned with a creamy conditioner (hence the name) AND a head, neck, shoulder, back, arm and finger massage at the same time. It lasts for about an hour and is one of the most relaxing experiences you can find in Indonesia. And it only costs about $5.
8:00 p.m. The salon officially closes at 8, but we’re still not done with our treatments. I imagine that in other places in the world, the staff might try to hurry things along to get you out the door, but not here. They take their time blow drying our hair and also serve us dinner! Sarah and I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness but also wonderfulness of being surprised with free nasi kuning (yellow rice with meat) while sitting on salon chairs getting our hair styled. After we finish our dinners and our hair is done, the three of us pose for pictures with the entire ensemble of staff and their friends and family members who have somehow magically appeared during the two hours we are there. Then they follow us out the door and stand waving to us as we ride away in our bentors. We will definitely be back.
8:30 p.m. The night is young and we’re feeling pretty so we round off the evening with a drink at the rooftop café above the Mega Zanur mall. Nothing alcoholic mind you - Alexa has an apple juice, Sarah has some sort of mixed fruit cholesterol reducing juice and I have a very good papaya juice, which I have been making more of an effort to drink since Wayan, the Balinese healer, told me I needed to.
10:30 p.m. I crawl into bed and start to read my new book, Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the couple who founded the Lonely Planet series of travel guides. I only get through about two pages before I feel the gentle exhaustion of a day well spent settle over me.
Epilogue: The next morning I found out that my cousin's second baby, Ella Ruth, was born on the other side of the world on February 5th, 2010 in Maryland, USA at 11:09 p.m. EST. So, with the time difference that would have been just after I had had my delicious eggplant lunch on February 6th in Indonesia. Welcome to the world, Ella! And welcome to the family. I hope you have a long and happy life full of marvelous adventures before you.
This is a question I have been asking myself daily for the past couple of weeks because there doesn’t seem to be a fixed date on the calendar. At first I was told February 8th and until recently this was the date I was working with. On Monday, with only a week to go before classes start, I asked the head of my department for a list of classes I would be teaching and this is how the conversation went:
Me: Do you know yet which classes I’ll be teaching?
DH: Ahh, it is too early to say. We are waiting for some students to finish their final exams.
Me: Ok, but classes start on the 8th, right?
DH: The 8th? No, I don’t think so.
Me: Oh, that’s what I heard. So, when do you think they will start?
DH: Maybe on the 8th?
Me (very confused): Oh, but I thought you just said they won’t start on the 8th.
DH: Maybe or maybe not. It is difficult to say.
Me: Oh. Well, just let me know, ok?
After that confusing conversation, I spent a few hours in my office reading other people’s blogs (I am following some new ones and have a lot to catch up on) and then I went home. I can’t really work on my syllabi when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be teaching. When I came in on Tuesday I finally got a course schedule but I thought we had agreed that I would only teach 4 classes this semester and I was down on the schedule for 6. Hmm. I would have to discuss this with my counterpart.
Meanwhile, I got a message that one of the other lecturers was looking for me to give me some batik. I turns out that on February 9th there is going to be a big ceremony for two faculty members who are earning the title of “Professor”. Everybody is supposed to wear matching batik outfits. So, Ibu Elsje and I went off to the tailor’s with a couple meters of batik fabric to get my new clothes made.
Knowing that there would be a big ceremony on Tuesday that would take up half the day, I figured that classes couldn’t possibly be held.I mentioned this to my counterpart and Ibu Elsje this morning:
Me: So, there won’t be any classes on Tuesday because of the ceremony, right?
CP: Oh, good point. Yeah, probably not.
Me: But isn’t the semester supposed to start on the 8th?
CP: Maybe it will start later.
Ibu: The students have a graduation on the 18th. So I think classes will maybe start after that.
Me: Oh, the 18th?
CP: Yeah, or later. Don’t worry - you have plenty of time to plan.
So, within the space of two days the start of the semester has been pushed back from the 8th to the 18th or later but of course this is all still just speculation and no one seems to actually know anything. I asked Ibu Elsje if she found this at all frustrating. She said, “Yes!” quite emphatically but also said that that’s just the way things are done.
Personally, it’s driving me a little crazy. How hard is it to make a schedule, share it with your colleagues and stick to it? Apparently, very, very challenging. I don’t understand how my colleagues here can work like this. Is everyone prepared to start their classes at a moment’s notice? Don’t they want to know when they have time off so they can plan trips or other activities?
This is the part that really gets me. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much to my colleagues if the semester starts on the 8th or the 18th because they’ll be in Gorontalo anyway. But for me, with some cash to spare and limited time to travel in Indonesia, I don’t want to be twiddling my thumbs for ten days waiting for something to happen. If I have 10 more days off I’d like to go somewhere. I could go see the orangutans in Borneo or the famous Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Java. I could go to Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi to see the elaborate funeral rituals or venture down to Komodo Island to see the dragons. If I have time off, I’d like to take advantage of it and I think that’s why I find this vagueness about the start of the semester so incredibly frustrating.
Ramang brought two of his friends, Ike and Ismail, to the beach with us the other day. Somehow we got on the topic of gyms and fitness centers and before I knew it, I was agreeing to go check out a local gym in Gorontalo with Ike on Monday.
Jonna had warned me that there really were no “gyms” in Gorontalo as I know them, so I didn’t try very hard to find any. But on Monday night there I was at the Atlantik Fitnes Centre because Ike comes for an aerobics class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and besides, it turned out to only be a short bentor ride from my house. Now, I generally try to avoid activities that have me imitating an instructor through a series of ridiculous and strenuous motions that I can never keep up with, so I checked out the cardio machines and the weights while Ike hopped and stretched to obscenely loud pulsating techno music punctuated with the occasional whoop from the instructor.
The entire gym, from the “elliptical” with no computer and a broken handle bar to the old school weight machines, couldn’t have been more different from the clean and modern (and air-conditioned!) New York Sports Clubs back home. This gym felt several decades behind the times and I half expected Richard Simmons to pop out at any moment to take over the aerobics class. In fact, it sort of reminded me of the make-shift “gym” on the container ship I traveled on a couple of years ago on my way back home from Europe. There, in a hot windowless room, was a sole exercise bike with a broken computer, a somewhat broken but still useable rowing machine, a ping-pong table and two barbells. This gym was maybe just one or two steps above that. At least it had free water.
After 15 minutes on the one useable treadmill, I ventured behind a big blue curtain to the weights room. Right away, an eager young man who spoke English well enough came bounding over to show me how the machines work. We spent about half an hour doing various reps and sets on the different machines. It was nice to have all this individual attention and to have him count my reps and set the weights for me. It was just like having a personal trainer. At one point we were chatting a little bit and I mentioned that I was teaching English at the university. Then he really surprised me by asking, “Do you know Miss Maura Phelan?” It turns out that he is one of my friend Maura’s former students from the Police Language School in Jakarta. He’s a Gorontalo cop by day and a trainer at the gym by night. What a small world!
My supervisor at the U.S. Embassy is very fond of the buzz word “synergy” and encourages us ELFs to create synergy with our ETAs. What he means is that we should collaborate in putting together workshops and outreach programs, but my ETAs and I have a different definition of synergy.
Our idea of synergy centers around joint outings to cool places in Gorontalo. Last week Sarah and Alexa had another ETA, Jimmie from Makassar, visiting them for a few days. Since he is also a diver, I organized a couple days of diving for us with Rantje, including one day where Sarah and Alexa joined us on the dive boat for a bit of snorkeling.
Demonstrating ELF/ETA Synergy
This picture was taken right after I logged my 20th dive at Jinn Caves – a submerged cavern at 18 meters. This was an amazing site that was just crawling with diverse life forms. Favorites included large bat fish, the rare Burgess butterflyfish and a giant pink deep sea fan. The coolest part about this dive is that there was a point when we had to leave the wall behind and descend to the caves without any reference markers. It felt like free falling into blue oblivion and was quite a rush. We descended to 30 meters, which was deep enough to have to use flashlights to see what was around us. It was kind of like night diving during the day.
Rantje Allen - American divemaster who runs Miguel's Diving in Gorontalo
I thought it was kind of interesting that while I had just finished my milestone 20th dive, Jimmie had already logged about 200 dives and Rantje is closing in on his 2,000th dive! I was also pleased to hear Jimmie say that he thought the diving in Gorontalo was fantastic. It was much better than he had expected and he even talked of bringing his parents, who are also big divers, up here when they come to visit him in June or July. Unfortunately, I had to point out to him that the dive season here ends in May. But not to worry, our synergy was so good that Jimmie talked about definitely coming up to Gorontalo to go diving again before the season is over and we tossed around ideas for future dive trips in other parts of Indonesia.
I’m especially glad Sarah and Alexa got a chance to see Gorontalo from the water. Sarah commented that she hadn’t even realized how close we were to the ocean. And it’s a pretty ride out to the dive sites. We pass miles of limestone cliffs, mountains and coastline dotted with scenic fishing villages. The water is crystal clear and looking over the edge of the boat is just like looking into an aquarium. Near Olele village we spotted a lone Risso’s dolphin off in the distance.
After two days of diving and snorkeling off the boat, we spent a day lounging in a straw hut on Molotabu Beach and snorkeling right off the shore. On the drive back to town we stopped at a little seaside café for some fresh dabu dabu fish. The place is owned by Ramang’s cousin and not only did we have the place all to ourselves, but they served up big family-style portions of rice, fish and vegetables. We all had multiple servings and oohhed and ahhhed about how good it all was. Fresh homemade dabu dabuiris sauce on fresh local fish is seriously good stuff and you’ll only find it in Gorontalo.
Back at Sarah and Alexa’s house in Limboto we continued our synergy over dinner, card games and several rounds of Bintang. A good time was had by all.
