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 🙂

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 😉

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.