Presidential Sightings & a Humbling Boat Ride (Part XV-XVI)

September 25, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part XV:

Thursday. Good news or bad news first?

Let’s go good. I saw the President of Indonesia this morning! We had heard he was in Benjarmasin to investigate the fire fighting efforts but it’s a large enough city that we didn’t ever think we would actually see him. But this morning, we decided to walk over to the mall, since it’s Eid Al Adha (huge Muslim holiday) and everything is closed, except apparently, the mall. It’s only a fifteen minute or so walk from our hotel and so we venture out – feeling like celebrities as we got stopped every two minutes to take pictures with people. It’s pretty hilarious and I don’t mind at all. If it makes them happy, sure they can have a picture with me 🙂 (I know there’s like 1000 things wrong with this. The impact of colonialism, beauty images, etc – I’ll address it in a later post, I promise. But nevertheless, I give in to the pictures). I usually don’t ask for a picture on my phone as well, I’d have hundreds already… but usually the kids love it if I take their picture so now I have quite a few pictures like this 🙂

Posers 😉 But absolutely adorable ones.

But all of a sudden we realized the street we happened to be on was a lot more empty than it should have been. Of cars. But there were hundreds of people beginning to line the street and tons of police. That could only mean one thing… Jokowi was about to come through here. A policeman waved us over and confirmed that yes, Jokowi was about to drive through, but could we first take a picture with him? Ha!25 pictures later, we took up our place on the street and waited for him to come by. Pretty soon, we saw police cars and the beginning of his motorcade. Then, there was his car! It had an Indonesian flag on the front and the license plate was “Indonesia 1” – I was lucky enough to snap a few pictures just as he drove by! And then the huge motorcade proceeded to pass through – so, so many cars, and police, and ambulances… it was crazy!

And as fast as it came, it was all over. The people started to disperse back down the side streets and after another dozen pictures, we too, were off again.

Of course, in that instant I ran out of data and pulsa on my phone. It’s kinda of a “pay as you go” plan here – you buy pulsa (for SMS and calls) and data (for internet, whatsapp, etc) and as I’m excitedly trying to post the picture to instagram, I realize that I’m out of both pulsa and data. Of course. The $15 I spent five weeks ago had lasted me this long and now I’m out. Just when I have the coolest picture to post. Classic.

We get to the mall and discover that it opens at 11am today because of the holiday. It’s only 10am but we have nowhere else to go so we settle on the steps and wait it out. 60 minutes and another dozen pictures later, the mall finally opens and we venture inside. We head for the Dunkin’ Donuts, for a little slice of home, and for the free wifi 🙂

It was quite a successful trip to the mall – I found contact solution (!!!!), a yoga mat (!!!!!) and got my phone loaded back up with pulsa and data. Phew! 😉

We meandered back home, showered, napped, and chilled. Again. The majority of our days here consist of napping and chilling. But I’m alright with that. As long as I’m in AC.

And that leads to the bad news… We were supposed to go home tomorrow (Friday) but the air pollution is still at record levels 1,990 (5x the top of the hazardous cap) and so we’re here another two days. Until Sunday now. We hope.

We finally got our papers from the Indonesian government, which means we can start the process of converting our 60-day visa to a limited stay KITAS (work visa). But to do this, we have to go to the immigration office in Palangkaraya – in person. We’re not sure if this means we’ll need to go back on Sunday regardless of the smog level so that we can start the process and not get deported (28 days and counting) or if they’ll continue to keep us here. Carlie and I laughed this morning saying that if they plan to keep us here past Sunday, we’d like to know that now so we can mentally prepare for more long, uneventful days. But then again, they’ve been extending our exile in two days chunks, so only looking forward in two day increments has definitely been a coping mechanism 🙂 Along with coke floats, milkeshakes, uno, and some very well disguised beer 😉

Tea? No, this is how they serve beer in Borneo.

Part XVI:

Friday. I’m writing to you from a coffee shop in a fancy mall in BJM (benjarmasin). We ran out of things to do here three days ago… and we’re slowly beginning to lose our minds. We feel like we’re in exile. We can’t go home. We have limited places we can go here. We’re a complete distraction at Joel’s school so we haven’t gone in a few days (no school Wed/Thurs with the holiday and then we didn’t go this morning). It’s really f***ing hot. We have already worn our clothes three time through (so I finally conceded to give a few shirts to the hotel laundry even though its crazy expensive (for Indonesia…)). I finished off the stockpile of vitamins I had brought this morning… I’ve only got four more malaria pills left :/

When we left last Sunday, I didn’t think there was any way we would be gone this long. The smoke was bad, yes, but not bad enough that I thought we would be gone for a week. Plus, I thought for sure school would have started today (Friday) but alas, that is not the case. The smoke has only gotten worse since we left and we truly have no idea when we’ll be going home.

This morning we went to the floating market. It’s one of the main “tourist attractions” here so we were excited that the hotel was able to set it up for us to go. This particular market only happens earlyyyyy in the morning. Like 5 or 6 am until sunrise. This means we got up at 4:30, left the hotel at 5, piled into a river boat in the pitch black and took off down the river. Initially, it was beautiful and awesome. There’s just something about being in the middle of a river, in the dark, before most people are up and cruising through an unknown city. As we turned off the main river, started down a canal-type thing to the harbor, and the darkness started to lift, the reality of where we were really began to set in.

I’ve been lucky enough to have gone to a lot of places in my life. I’ve seen extreme poverty in places as diverse as Costa Rica, rural Madagascar and even St. Louis. But nothing quite compared to what we saw this morning. Under the cover of darkness, and therefore, not standing out quite as much, we saw some of the poorest people in BJM begin their day. Floating down the river in the dark felt like we had an inside look at their lives, and quite literally – through their back door. It was dead quiet when we first set out, but as we continued down the river, kitchen lights turned on and women emerged from dark bedrooms to the back steps of their homes built on stilts over the water. The river is the center of these people’s lives, but it’s also a shit hole. Literally. Every home had an outhouse that dumped right into the water, but next door, someone would be bathing, washing their clothes, drawing cooking water, or brushing their teeth. It was unfathomable.

Going down this river, in the cover of early morning, was an incredibly humbling experience. This is the way of life for thousands of people along this river – and I truly couldn’t think of anything worse than this. After an hour or so, (and after getting stuck under a bridge, I was actually terrified that our boat would break and we would fall into the shit filled water) we finally made it to the floating market. We bought a few souveniers from the sellers in their boats, and when the other tourists in our boat got soto banjar (rice porriage) from one of the boat sellers, we politely declined. I can’t imagine any of it was made with clean water, probably river water, aka shit water, and I’d like to stay as far from that as I can, primarily for my health but also for my mind.

Driving back was even more sobering. Light had come, and with it, the full extent of these people’s lives. The river was full of trash. In some sections, it was unbelievable. And the river smelled. I wore my smog mask just because I couldn’t take the smell without becoming nauseous. We sat in silence the whole ride back and when we got back to the hotel, I forced myself to eat something and then crashed in my bed. I felt like I wanted to wipe the last three hours from my mind. It was too much.

But here we are, eight hours later and I’m complaining about being bored. I’m complaining that I have to spend $2 to get my shirt washed for me. I’m complaining that all I have to do is sit on my laptop and surf the internet and read my books. I’m complaining from inside AC buildings, drinking iced lychee tea, that it’s hot outside. I’m horrified at myself.

Yes, I’m bored. Yes, I’m tired of sitting in my hotel room and wandering the streets to the mall. Yes I want to go back to Palangkaraya and begin teaching and exploring my own city and making more friends that will last me all year. But this morning was a reality check. And my community smothered in smog is a reality check. I’m a privileged bule and I need to shut up.

And so I’ll keep studying Bahasa so that every day I can have slightly more meaningful conversations with the people I interact with. I’ll keep reading books to educate and just to keep my brain going. I’ll investigate the teaching resources we have so that I am a better teacher when we finally get back. And I’ll do my best to stop commiserating about our exile and enjoy the time I get to spend relaxing, in AC, and with Carlie. I promise, life’s great and I still love it here – it’s just been one of those days that gets you down.

Planes, Guns and Friends (Parts I-III)

August 23, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part 1:

I’m currently writing this while somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. I’m four hours and fifty minutes in to this ten hour flight, step one of our three-part adventure to Indonesia. Nestled in to the window seat that I somehow scored when the original occupant didn’t show up and I was relieved of my middle seat, has reminded me, again, how much I love to travel. Yes, this last week has been stressful. I only got my visa and plane ticket six days ago and have been on hold with customer service agents for what feels like the majority of my week. If I had to do this again, I would certainly have come home far sooner to begin to work out the final preparations. Eight days wasn’t nearly enough.

I won’t bore you with the details but here’s a small snippet of my time at home…

After ten days of adventure and travel with my best friend, Martha, I was quite relieved to pull my jeep into my parent’s driveway. The following day was spent unpacking and the next attending a family friend’s wedding. Then, it was off to Spokane to visit my grandparents and extended family for a few days. I returned home on the 13^th and finally, this trip sat squarely in front of me, with eight days until departure. I had constructed an eight page, color-coded to-do list and packing list and I was excited to finally begin checking things off. And I did, slowly but surely. REI, Target, Amazon… Then came the adventure of packing it all inside my suitcases… I may or may not have checked a bag that weighs 69 pounds… 🙂 (but what else are you supposed to do when you need to bring a year’s worth of contact solution?!)

The real stress came from attempting to get the insurance company to override my account so I could get a year’s worth of medication and take it with me… ha! I can tell you that while it wasn’t quite successful, (due to my naive assumption that a pharmacy would have 1200 capsules of that medication the day before I left), I did make three new friends at Regence and was apparently the talk of the department for a week 🙂

While the last few days were a tad stressful, I’m on the plane and my inner travelite is waking up. My last big trip was to Madagascar, and the year before that, to Indonesia – both of those trips, I remember descending into Antanarivo and Jakarta with pure excitement. I feel that now – and I’m still 25 hours from arrival. I’m soooooo ready for this trip. This morning, while I was filling out a last minute form for my new international bank (who conveniently shut down my account in the last week… yeah, add that to the stress…) I had to write the date and it took me a second to realize that today is 8/21! It’s the day I’ve been waiting for and counting down until for MONTHS!

I’m incredibly excited to see where I’ll be living and teaching for the next nine months. I’m nervous but thrilled to be thrown into a new culture, a foreign language (quite literally, my Bahasa studying went out the window in the last month… alas), and a new way of living. I know it will be a challenging year, but gosh, what more could an adventurous girl ask for her first year out of college?

Here’s to the next 25 hours of travel, the next year of discovery, and a lifetime of memories.

Part II:

I’m here. I’m stretched out on a bed, in an eclectic hotel room, listening to the traffic and a rooster outside my window. I’m positively exhausted but when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t… I’m just too excited to be here, and quite frankly past the point of sleep. The trip was exceptionally long. I think I’ve slept maybe 3 hours in the last two days…

We (Clara and I) flew ten hours from Seattle to Tokyo, then had a few hour layover where we met up with five others in our cohort. It was a blast to finally be in a group and share stories and the misery of this unnecessarily long trip (because its a State Dept. program we had to fly American carriers, which does not allow for the quickest or most direct route to Indonesia). We then flew seven hours to Singapore and got in at 11:30pm local time. Our flight to Jakarta wasn’t until 10am the next morning… which was made more painful by the fact that Jakarta is only a 1.5 hour flight away! We were so close!!! Yet we had to spend the whole night in the airport.

But let me tell you… the Singapore airport is incredible. A friendly airport employee suggested we sleep in the free movie theater (!!!!) but that was too loud. So we camped down by a koi fish pond and Clare and I wandered off to find an internet kiosk. On our way back we discovered free massage chairs. Like full body, super comfy massage chairs. And there were two open ones. It was a dream come true. We brought out bags over and settled in to the massage chairs for the night.

An hour later, I felt Clare hitting me and I peeked out from under the eye mask and slowly took my noise-canceling headphones off… And almost shrieked! There were five uniformed men with machine guns in front of us. UMMMMMM. I hadn’t heard them approach thanks to the headphones and Clare was frantically trying to explain why we didn’t have boarding passes…. We showed them our passports/visas and thankfully appeased them. The couple in the massage chairs next to us was not so lucky… their flight didn’t leave for two more days and they were actually trying to camp out in the airport for two days. I guess that’s what these police and their machine guns are looking for!

This was what we deliriously woke up to… except all five of them were standing directly in front of us. I took this photo as they questioned the couple next to us.

Clare and I, our hearts pounding (it was also only 3am by this point) decided to leave the massage chairs and regain the comfort and safety of our group. We moved back to them and stretched out on the floor to try and sleep (to little avail).

Hello Indonesia: country of 17,000 islands!

Finally, too many hours later it was time to board our flight. Off we went the short distance to Jakarta and then we were here!!! It was hot and humid but we were thrilled to see AMINEF staff with their signs. They brought us back to the hotel and let us chill for the day. For many of us, that meant an inexpensive, yet fantastic 60 minute massage and a shower. Praise the lord.

Welcome to Jakarta!

I also was able to meet some friends from the last time I was in Indo. Chesna and Dyah were two of my favorite coworkers at Standard Chartered Bank and I was able to meet them for lunch in Jakarta. They sent a driver out to the hotel to get me and it was so bizzare driving back through the city and it all seeming so familiar! It seems like I was just here – not two years ago! We had a lovely lunch and then it was back to the hotel for me!

A lovely lunch with Chesna and Dyah!

Dinner our first night. Nasi goreng dengan ayam (fried rice with chicken) and fresh strawberry juice. Playing it safe for now…

Part III.

After finally getting a full night’s rest, we had a security briefing this morning, learned a bit more about each of our sites and then wandered down the street to buy Indonesian sim cards. They gave us each Indonesian brick phones when we arrived and then the plan was to also get Indo sim cards for our phones. Apparently all Indonesians have multiple phones… Well, walking out of my hotel room this morning I accidentally dropped the brick phone and cracked the screen. Awesome.

So I’m down to one phone, but was able to switch the sim card in the Indo phone to my iPhone. I think I’m set now? idk… someone text me from America to test it!

In an hour we head back to the airport and Carlie and I will board our flight to Palangkaraya! I’m so excited to see my school, my house, and meet my counterpart and coteachers. I’m thankful I have a working cell phone (at least I think!) with data on it (again, I think) so while I don’t expect to have wifi at my house, I should be able to at least use Whatsapp to communicate with friends, family and AMINEF for the time being.

What a great start to this year so far! Wish me luck this next week as I head to Palangkaraya and have no idea what I’m doing or any Bahasa! I would LOVE to hear from you! Leave me a comment here, text me, or send me an email!

Xoxo Mackenzie

M&M On Tour: the Road Trip

August 12, 2015 by Mackenzie

I can’t believe I leave in just a little over a week! That is, if everything comes through… ten days from today, we’re all supposed to be boarding flights and jetting across the Pacific to arrive in Jakarta on August 23rd, except I still have yet to book my flight… or get my visa!

The other 34 Fulbrighters to Indonesia received their visa documents a few weeks ago – and for reasons unknown to me – the documents I needed to send to the Indonesian Consulate took ages to acquire. We needed a letter from the school we are teaching at saying they are sponsoring our stay, but my school was many weeks delayed in sending me my letter. But… I finally received the documents on Monday and I overnighted them to the San Francisco consulate and hopefully I’ll receive my visa in the next few days and can then book my flight! It might not happen until a few days before but I know it will all work out – whether I arrive a few days after everyone else or end up getting a flight out on the 21st.

In the meantime, I’ve left St. Louis and after an epically long road trip west – I’m back on the west (best) coast. My friend Martha, whom I met and interned with in DC last summer, flew out to St. Louis to drive back with me. We had a fabulous couple of days in St. Louis before loading up my jeep and beginning the drive.

We strolled through the Missouri Botanical Garden and went to the jazz in the garden with Abby and Jack.

We toured Wash U…

We hit up the St. Louis classics – Ted Drewes and the Arch…

We went to a Card’s game with Maisie and Jill

Then we packed up the Jeep! To the brim!

Day 1: St Louis to Omaha, Nebraska (and the world’s largest ball of postage stamps)
Day 2: Omaha to Chamerlain, SD (and our friend Clay, who we interned with on the Hill in DC last summer! Great to see him in “the greatest state in the union!” – according to Clay!)

Day 3: Chamberlain to Gillette, Wyoming (with detours through the Badlands, Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse)

Made some friends along the way…

Day 4: Gillette to Bozeman, Montana (with a detour through the Big Horn mountains to the Native American sacred Medicine Wheel site)

Day 5: Bozeman to Spokane, WA (and my grandparents and another of our DC friends, Grifynn!)

Day 6: Spokane to Seattle and the end of our 2,276 mile trip! Phew!

I couldn’t have asked for a better send off to Indo! 10 days and counting!

WUSTL Graduation and the Start to Summer

June 10, 2015 by Mackenzie

It’s mid-June, 100 degrees in St. Louis, and I’m still adjusting to this post-college life of no stress, no deadlines, and decent sleep! The last few months passed in a whirlwind of excitement as I learned of my Fulbright grant, finished my final college papers, and walked across the stage as a proud graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. It’s hard to put into words how fulfilling and happy the last year has been – I’ve found new passions, established old ones, learned more about myself, made new lifelong friends, deepened relationships with mentors, and am so excited about the future, whatever it may hold.

I haven’t blogged in ages, I know – but blogging didn’t hold the same charm for me as it used to. I started this blog as a means to share my life with family and friends but with all the other social media outlets out there, I’ve felt less of a need to blog in order to stay connected with them. This blog also used to be about cooking and baking and the joy I found in the kitchen – but in the last six months, I think I’ve made cookies once, roasted a lot of brussels sprouts, and made countless batches of hummus…but that’s about it. My meals are quite simple these days but that’s how I prefer it at the moment and hey, I’ve lost a few pounds not baking all the time!

I know I’ll start blogging regularly again when I leave for Indonesia – this blog is how I plan to share that experience. I’m growing increasingly excited about Indonesia, although I still don’t know much about where I will be or what my day to day will look like. We are supposed to hear soon what our placement will be and then I’ll know which of the 17,000 islands I’ll be living on! We are also all flying out to DC in about ten days for the Fulbright Pre-Departure Orientation. I’ll get to meet the other ETAs headed to Indonesia and will hopefully learn a lot about what my year will look like! I’m also thrilled to be headed back to DC and will get to see a lot of my friends and coworkers from last summer.

In the meantime, I’m staying in St. Louis for the remainder of the summer. It was wonderful to have my family in town for graduation – here are a few pictures from the weekend.

My wonderful momma and I

So happy to have my family in town!

A wonderful dinner at Olio

A fabulous night at Taste!

In addition to the craziness of the end of senior year, I also began working at Taste, a cocktail bar/restaurant in the Central West End. When I started, I had no idea what I was getting myself in to or how much I would learn or how much fun I would have… but it has been an absolute blast and I loved it so much I decided to stay on for the summer before heading to Indonesia! I work at the restaurant most evenings and have most of my days open to read, sleep, run, meet friends for lunch… it’s been an incredibly relaxing couple of weeks but as nice as it is, I’m getting a little stir crazy and ready for some intellectual stimulation again 🙂 But for the next seven weeks, I’m going to enjoy these free days while I have them and then I’ll be off to the other side of the world!

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