2014 in Review

I have written four versions of this. This is number five. The first four were just too dark and filled with unhappy thoughts. I was feeling like I had landed into the Spanish Inquisition and nobody ever suspects the Spanish Inquisition.  Then, out of the blue, I remembered the old Monty Python song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” So, looking on the bright side, writing this letter now five times has taken up a lot of time, of which, I have bunches.

I closed up my house and left it March 15. It was really cold in Beaver, PA that early morning but looking on the bright side, I was heading west to warmer weather. I spent a couple of relaxing days with Jim and Barb Eychner before they took me to  the hotel in San Francisco where I met the other 63 people who were going with me to be Peace Corps Volunteers in Indonesia. The flights to Tokyo, Singapore and Surabaya, the largest city in East Java, Indonesia were just long. But, on the bright side, Surabaya was wonderfully hot. We spent a couple of days getting over jet lag, being injected for a few unique to Indonesia illnesses, were told the rules of our ten weeks of training, met our language teachers and the Peace Corps Indonesia staff and got to know each other a little.  We were then off east to Batu, a suburb of Malang, East Java. Twelve of us were then sent to Puten, a village outside of Batu. Each of us was assigned to a host family with whom we lived for the next ten weeks during Pre Service Training. Yes, ten, six day weeks of eight hours a day of 1) between four and eight hours of language training 2) learning how English as a foreign language is taught in Indonesia 3) cross-cultural adjustment techniques, 4) how to deal with a) health issues b) eating healthily c) safety concerns d) the billions of Peace Corps rules, regulations and requirements that have multiplied since I was a Volunteer last.

Looking on the bright side, the family I lived with was a treat. The father took me to a wedding party within hours of my arrival in their home.  He kept up including me in things he was doing. The wife was an amazing cook who delighted in feeding me a couple times an hour every hour I was awake. She packed me a lunch every day for when I was out of her sight and no doubt hungry. The daughter was a midwife and the only one who really spoke the language I was learning.  She often helped me with my homework.

All of that ended on June 2, 2014 when the American Ambassador to Indonesia swore me into the Peace Corps. He was so impressed with it being my third time that that night he tweeted a picture of us each holding up three fingers.

The next morning 28 of us left East Java for the 16 hour train trip to Bandung, West Java. The others stayed in East Java where most of the PCVs serve. The bright side of that long train trip was that another of the PCVs downloaded onto my external hard drive about 350 books.

Another bright side was that we went to a hotel in Bandung, the second largest city in West Java. June 4 I had my first hot shower since March 17. My next hot shower wouldn’t be until October 12.   We spent three days in the hotel meeting our headmasters and counterparts. Then it was off to our sites.

Garut is about 3 hours (when there is NO traffic and about 6 when there is) south of Bandung. It is a large city. Google says there are 400,000 people in Garut but that’s only the city proper. To give you an idea of how big Garut is, there are 600 Islamic boarding school in and around town. The bright side is that with a little walking and a lot of questions I can find everything I could need or want right here in town.

All PCVs live with host families the whole time they are in country. My Garut host family is really only a man and his wife. Both are retired. Both are younger than I. Their three children as well as two sisters of the mother and their families all live in houses built around the pond that our house sits in. Yes! My house is built ON a pond.  Fish swim under my bedroom. The bright side of this (as if this wasn’t bright enough) is that the fish (and bats) eat the mosquitoes (but not the ants, cockroaches, rats or snakes) saving me from worrying too much about Malaria. The host father is forever building or renovating some part of a house around our pond. The host mother is another very good cook. After six months of feeding me every meal, she realized that retirement means she can visit her sisters in Bandung for as long as she wants as often as she wants so is no longer providing me with meals.  The bright side of this is that I get to roam around town finding new places to eat. It’s just the first two weeks of this new plan but looking on the bright side, I have already found a bunch of really good places to eat wonderful street food. AND I will probably gain back the 30 pounds or so I lost having had amoebic dysentery in August and September. The bright side of having the form of dysentery I did was that I had had the same kind (much worse) in Madagascar so I have some antibodies to the strain.

I have been assigned to be an English Teacher Trainer at MAN1 Garut. Madrasah Aliyah Negeri #1 is the biggest, oldest and best known Islamic high school in Garut. The bright side of this is that as I walk around town getting lost often, all I have to do is ask anyone where MAN1 is.  Everyone knows it.  My house on the pond is only five minutes’ walk from the school.

Garut is famous for being the coldest place in Indonesia. I sleep every night under a top sheet and a big heavy wool blanket doubled. It sure isn’t the hot place I had wished for. The bright side is that along with the fish the temperature keeps down the mosquitoes that seem to plague the rest of the country.

I have not been well received at MAN1 Garut. I think what happened was this: The headmaster heard about Peace Corps and the free foreign teacher. He told an Assistant Headmaster (who happens to be a GREAT fellow and my closest friend at the school) to fill out the paperwork. Peace Corps came to inspect the school and talk with the headmaster and English teachers. The later would say ‘Yes” to anything the headmaster wants however the truth is that they want no  part of 1) a foreigner 2) an old man when they could have had a young woman 3) someone telling them new ideas to make their teaching more effective. The bright side of this is that I can pretty much do anything I want. I can have no effect on English classes but since the school doesn’t hire substitute teachers, all I have to do is walk around, find a teacher-less class and promote English any fun way I can.

A couple of weeks ago the new president lifted the subsidy on gasoline. Within two days, the prices of everything went up about 20%. Peace Corps living allowance did not get a cost of living adjustment last year and will not get one until next year.  I had just enough money to live within my PC means before the cost of living went up and am feeling the pinch now. The bright side is that I am learning again that there are many many things I don’t need. I even seem to want less.  I found a seven story supermarket – department store in Garut last week. I walked around each floor. (OK I didn’t walk around the women’s or kiddy’s clothing but everywhere else.) I walked out of the place empty handed. There was nothing there I felt I needed or wanted.  (That I could afford.)

It has rained some part or parts of every day since November 10. It is going to continue thus until sometime in March or April.  The bright side (and it’s hard to find a bright side when there’s no sunshine) is that the flowers in my little plot of garden are all blooming. The little thicket of bamboo that was planted just before I came in June is now twice as high as it was.

December 21, The Longest Night of the Year, is officially the first day of the school’s semester holiday although we have not had classes since December 5. I’m so close to the equator that there is little difference between lengths of days and nights.  Christmas is on a Thursday this year but it’s just another Thursday here in this very conservative Islamic city. The bright side of these days will be my thoughts of you. I will be wishing you a Happy Longest Night of the Year and a very Merry Christmas, I understand people set off fireworks at midnight for the New Year. If it’s anything like the fireworks at the end of Ramadan, that will be a very bright side of life.

The fish add their Christmas greetings.

JAY

Nothing’s been the same since Bu left.

Bu is Bu (short for Ibu = Mother in Bahasa Indonesia) Nareine, the wife of Pak (short for Bapak = Father) Ahmed, the couple I live with. The couple I live with sorta.

I went to Jakarta for a weekend last month. This weekend was at the end of a week that saw Bu in Bandung visiting her sisters and her daughter. I had eaten instant noodles for lunch every day and had good dinners at the little restaurant down the street owned by the family of an English Education major I have helped with her final project. Pak had gone before me telling them to keep a tab of my meals and he would pay it. (I pay him and Bu to feed me my meals. They buy me the instant noodles I eat for lunch at least 3 times a week when I can’t get home and back to school in the limited time I have between classes at lunch time.) So…I get back to Garut from Jakarta in the middle of the afternoon.  I had told Bu that was about when I planned to be back. I saw Bu outside, greeted her, asked about her family in Bandung and told her about Jakarta. Around my usual dinner time, I went into the main part of the house where I usually find my dinner.  NOTHING! I noticed that the refrigerator was missing as were a lot of the kitchen pots and pans.

There’s a house Pak had been fixing up so that one of their sons, his wife and child could use.  It is behind our pond on another pond. The son’s family had been living in a house on our pond. I found Bu at the son’s new house. The son, an English teacher at my school, and Bu explained that they had spent the day moving the son to the new house and Bu into his old house. Seems the steep stairs to the bedroom were hurting Bu’s knee so she moved to the other house which has only one floor. Pak was going to stay in the main house I live in.  I was told to go to my English Education major’s place for dinner and that regular meals would continue on Monday.

No problem. I went, had a good dinner with fun people and came home.

Monday morning at the usual time I heard the noises associated with my usual breakfast (a fried egg. I make the toast and am capable enough to spread the peanut butter and Nutella. I always make my own instant coffee.) When I went through my bedroom door I found that it was Pac who was doing the cooking. An egg is an egg. I could fry it myself if they trusted me enough not to blow up the house with the gas stove.

When I came home for lunch I found what looked like a miner’s lunch container and a rice cooker sitting on the table where I eat. There were three aluminum containers stacked one on the other held together with a frame that had a handle. I also found my usual plate of cut up papaya. This is the way meals have been since then.  It seems Bu is cooking across the pond and sending mine over to me.

The meals are always good. Wait…There always parts of every meal that I find good.  That’s a better way of saying it. I have eaten all the Greek Sponges I am ever going to be able to eat. They are balls of puffed tofu – almost to the consistency of marshmallow then fried. I call them Greek Sponges because they soak up the frying grease like a sponge. (That loses some of my meaning by writing “grease” and not saying “Greece”.) Last week twice I was served what I think was beef cartilage cooked it a sauce. Things I don’t like and and therefore don't eat end up as fish food.

Since that first day I was back from Jakarta, things have changed. One day a comfy chair is gone. One day the movable kitchen cupboard is gone. I always ate my meals alone but now that Pak is eating across the pond, thing are even more quiet at home.

What inspired me to write was a Shel Silverstein poem I remembered today.

I’m eating my cornflakes with sugar and teardrops since the milkman ran away with you.

He took my every dream and forget to leave the cream so I’m sitting here wondering what to do.

I’ll have my coffee with sugar and teardrops. I’ll have teardrops and lemon in my tea.

I’ll have a teardrop shake and a teardrop malt but everything’s gonna taste of salt

Until the day you both come back to me.

It was a bad day to be a sheep.  Eid el Adra celebrates the time when Abraham was tested by God to sacrifice his son.  We will not talk about which of his sons was involved. At the last moment, God told Abraham he had passed the test and provided a ram to sacrifice in place of the son. People around Garut sacrificed rams (and a bull or two) and gave the meat to poor people. My family had four rams and a rather large bull. For dinner we had the meat from both kinds of animals. I think the poor people must have gotten the better cuts.

I feel like taking.

I have had some interesting things going on here of late and want to share them with you all.

The In Service Training conference was in Bandung this month. I was rather looking forward to learning how to get to this large city so I could escape Garut from time to time.  Bandung in only 2 hours away from Garut but requires a number of Angkots and a bus. One of the English teachers lives in Bandung and commutes by public transportation so I asked him if I could join him on his way home, He very agreed.  He very agreed to the point to driving his car the day I needed to go. Because of traffic and being in a car and not a bus the two hour trip took 4 ½ hours. Instead of taking me to the hotel I booked for the night before the conference, he took me to his house to meet his three very nice daughters and his wife. And a very nice house it was too, with lots of plants on a very quiet street. We had tea and cake and pictures. When he got back into his car to go to the hotel, he said it was about an hour from his house.  Bandung is a really big city. That evening I went to a mall and experienced heavy duty culture shock. I was sure I was in America but knew that I was in Indonesia.  I had dinner at Wendy’s in the mall. There was nothing I needed or even wanted at the all but I spent a couple of hours just walking around watching the Indonesians spend huge amounts of money of American and other foreign goods.  

The first three days of the conference were about Peace Corps things. PC is now so large, international and politically correct that there are sessions that every PCV in the world gets at specific times during their service. We had sessions on nutrition, safety issues, personal security, health concerns and unwanted attention. As you may have understood from earlier entries, I get no attention, unwanted or otherwise here in Garut. A couple of us asked for a session on how to get attention.  We also had lots of sessions about TEFL. These led into having our counterparts show up for the last two days of the conference. My counterpart was not at all happy about having to go to the conference until he realized that not all of the PCVs are 82 year old men. I had to have a couple of talks with him about how to act around 24 year old American women. He was not prepare to listen to me.

I thought I could have the learning experience of how to get back to Garut from Bandung but my counterpart snagged a ride in a car for us so that route will be new to me the second time I go to Bandung.

The day after I got home from the conference was my birthday. I say I’m 82 now. I didn’t mention the occasion to anyone here in Garut but accepted an invitation to dinner at a little restaurant just down the street from my pond where the daughter is an English Education major at the teacher training university here in Garut. The family is very friendly and have students coming and going all the time. I had a great meal. We played UNO after dinner and one of the students taught me an Indonesian game with dominoes[JT1] .  

The week of school I missed was not a miss at all.  It was mid-term exam week.  I can’t believe the school lost a week of teaching time giving silly tests. I had repeatedly offered my help to my counterpart in writing our students’ tests but he didn’t take me up on the offer. My first day back at school I thought I was going to be grading exams but found that my counterpart has accepted two student teachers who he had do the grudge of grading. Twelve percent of the students passed the test. My counterpart should have accepted my help.  Some of the questions has no correct answer. Some had all correct choices. Some had questions about stuff the students had not been taught. The reading comprehension was about “The snow white,” which, if it hadn’t mentioned seven dwarfs I would have thought it was about white snow.

Following the week of testing there was a week of “remediation.” There were retests. I pushed and lost for there to be review before the retests.

While the students were bring retested, I took the few who passed and made simple little books to give to the first primary English students at the school I pass on my way to my school.

The retest was not a big success. A rather unique way of grading brought about 75% up to passing grades.

Since Pre Service Training I have known there are English speech contests at the high school level.  When I first got here in June I asked about these. I have asked every couple of weeks since. At the end of last week, about October 25, I asked again and was told that our school will host this year’ contest November 6, 7 and 8. Two students have been chosen to represent our school. This week they (and I) were told the topic for the speeches.  I have no idea if I will be able to help our students prepare. I do know that I have been chosen to be one of the judges. Twenty schools are sending two students each to give seven minute talks on “The role of the Madressa (Islamic school, like mine) in the character building of Indonesian youth.” Forty speeches at seven minutes each will take three days. Well, two and a half since Friday is a half day. At least the judges get served lunch.

I thought my three English clubs had bit the dust because teachers were forgetting to remind students about the meetings, gave too much homework on club afternoon or insisted the club be held at a time when no student were at the school. I have been waiting for an English teachers’ meeting to resolve the issues. It seems getting the four English teachers to all be in the same room at the same time is not easy.  Today I was told I had to have English Club for class XI. OK, I made a template for masks, went out and bought candy and was prepared to do some Goal Two of PC – exchanging culture - and celebrate Halloween.  I guess I was the only one told about English Club class XI meeting today since no one came.  I’m glad I bought the kind of candy I like.

I know a lot of this sounds depressing and even negative and it is but I continue to hold hope that what I am doing is having an effect on the students. If I didn’t think that…..

And now for something completely different. (Thank you Monty Python.) October 25 was New Year’s Day Hegira. (The Islamic calendar dating from when Mohammed left Mecca in about 724 A.D. (Zero H.).  The day starts at sundown the day before. I wondered if there would be anything going on the night of October 24. I asked my host family if there were any special traditions or customs going on and was told “No. It’s a very quiet holiday celebrated at home.”  October 24 I went for an evening walk and saw hundreds of kids in parades with their parents.  Every child had a flaming torch. It looked a little dangerous but it also looked fun.  I wish I had been prepared with my camera.

That evening as I turned into the walk to my pond, men on the verandah of another house on the pond before mine invited me to join them for the first meal of the year. It was the first time I had been invited to a neighbor’s for a meal.  I had been inside this house before when students invited me to play UNO but this was the first invitation by the adults. I was thrilled to go. The men grilled eel. Did I eat it?  You bet I did.  I was not about to decline part of my neighbor’s first invitation to dinner. I’ve been in Garut since June 9. It was the evening of October 24. Grilled eel is not even in my top 200 things to eat, but I waited a long time and did a lot of work to get to this point. I ate what I was served.  

I’m going to take myself to Jakarta for the weekend. I have no idea what I’m going to do there except a few tourist things I have heard of. I’m just going on a solo adventure. I will write about it later.

I don’t feel like talking any more.

---

 [JT1]

Pictures I took on a walk down my street.

Pictures from my street in Garut

OK boys and girls. It's PICTURE TIME

Last week I took a walk with my camera.  I went on only one street in Garut, West Java, Indonesia.  This is what I saw.