SMOKE (And Evacuation Round 3) Part XXIII

October 17, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part XXIII:

This last week in Palangka Raya felt so right. I was living in my own house, teaching my own students, eating lunch at warungs in my own city, and struggling with internet, as usual in the middle of Kalimantan.

I jumped right in to teaching classes on Monday. Grade 11 was learning “Hopes and wishes” and grade 10 was on “Congratulations.” Although I hadn’t lesson planned with Bu Juniar or Bu Tisia, we were able to talk briefly before the class and divided it up so I could do the pronunciation and speaking activities. My students are just so, so sweet. They are very shy and nervous to be talking to me – but I tried hard to encourage everyone to speak loudly and clearly and when they were working in pairs I made a point to go check in with every pair to ask what their topic was and how they were doing on the task. Most were terrified to talk to me at first but after a lot of high-fives and “that’s perfect!” they seemed to feel more comfortable with me in the classroom. We’ve got work to do but it was a good start 🙂

Much of my week was spent at imigrasi. Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Thursday afternoon… But, on Thursday I picked up my passport and am now legal for another month! Woohoo! We also finally received the remaining document for the visa conversion so when I picked up my passport, we resubmitted everything right then and there to convert my visa from a 60 (now 90) day visa to a limited stay work visa. Hopefully, in a few weeks I’ll be good to go!

Wednesday was a holiday for the start of the Islamic New Year so some of my crew took me on an excursion! Bukit batu (Stone hill) is about 90 minutes north and is this national park-esque area with these massive rocks that you can climb and explore. It’s supposedly a very mystical place – with certain rocks giving you good luck, certain rocks driving away spirits, the water making you younger… at least, this is according to wikipedia. My crew doesn’t speak English and my Bahasa isn’t nearly advanced enough to be learning the history of mystical places. Despite the language barrier, we had a blast! Carlie and her counterpart, Bu Halimah (who does speak English so that helped quite a bit) came with us and we had a wonderful day exploring some of what Kalimantan has to offer 😉 Unfortunately, the smoke came back with a vengeance that day so the views weren’t quite as cool as they should have been. Bukit batu itself wasn’t too smokey, but the drive was pretty frightening…

I hate you smoke

photos at the mosque

Bu anny <3

its getting worse

Bukit batu!

Reminds me of the City Museum – a playground for adults 😀

“Miss! Can we take a picture with you?”

Bu Anny, me, Carlie, Bu Lusni, and Bu Halimah

Bu Lusni and I climbed the biggest one 😀

Doing some ritual with magic water to make myself more beautiful?

Just flames on the side of the road

Bukit karmel – a Christian meditation spot (I think?)

Would have been a cool view…

My gang <3

I’m getting so tired of wearing my glasses. I hate wearing my glasses. But the smoke is so bad that it’s impossible to wear my contacts without them clouding up and burning my eyes. But…this was a super fun adventure. I was so happy to be able to spend the day with my gang and to have Carlie and Bu Halimah come along with us. I can’t wait for more days like this.

Unfortunately, on Thursday the smoke continued to get worse. I taught two classes with Tisia and then we went off to imigrasi again. That evening, after dinner with my students, I realized I was really starting to feel the effects of the smoke. All day my throat had been feeling worse and worse, I felt like I had a really bad sore throat – except, I didn’t. It hurt from inhaling all the smoke 🙁 I was coughing some and although I allowed myself to just chill in my AC bedroom all night, I was coughing, my voice was hoarse and I definitely couldn’t breathe normally.

We’d been keeping aminef updated throughout the week and they knew we had finally received our visa extension. Rizqi had told us they’d been discussing our situation and would make a decision on what to do with us the next day. But although I had initially told Rizqi that part of me really wanted to stay to be able to continue teaching and settle in to my school, I realized that was pretty stupid as I was beginning to really feel the affects of the smoke. So… I texted Astrid, the head of our program and in a much longer message, essentially said, I can’t last here. 🙁 She called me soon after and we discussed our options. She decided that regardless of our long-term plan, which may need approval from Pak Allen (the exec. dir), we needed to leave first thing the next morning. An hour later (this was around 9pm…), the plan was in place – they’d check the air quality in Banjarmasin early the next morning and if it was okay, we’d go there in the morning. If it wasn’t… well, we’d discuss that in the morning.

I woke up Friday morning to a text from Carlie saying “OMG IT’S SO BAD TODAY!” I peeked out my window and literally gasped. This is what I saw:

Yeah. TERRIFYING. I began packing, despising every moment that I had to walk out of my AC bedroom and choke on all the smoke. A little while later Astrid said we’d be leaving at 11am for Banjarmasin and to let all my people know. I texted the headmaster, bu lusni, and Tisia and then quickly tried to finish packing, expecting one of them to be knocking on my door shortly… And in typical, wonderful Bu Lusni fashion, she and Bu Anny pulled up on their motobike a little bit later around 9. Neither of them speak English so laughing and smiling, we stumbled through some talk of the weather and my departure and then they told me we were going to eat. I snagged my N95 mask and jumped on the back of the neighbor’s bike and we rode the short distance to school.

Can you see the 400 students standing outside?!?!?!?!

For comparison purposes, this photo was taken my first week in Palangkaraya in August… same spot as the photo above. WHAT?!

So yeah, it’s just a little hazardous. At school, all 400 students were standing outside. OUTSIDE?! WHAT?! I learn later that the headmaster was announcing that school is closed until Monday (today is Friday, and yeah, we have school on Saturdays) because of the smoke. Seems a tad ironic that they are making this announcement OUTSIDE.

I climb in Bu Lusni’s car and we drive to her favorite (and mine!) nasi kuning warung (yellow rice with chicken and idk what else. It’s a very typical Indonesian breakfast). As it’s a warung, we eat outside and I try and only take small breaths in between bites. I have only two thoughts in my head: my bu’s are so sweet and I love them and aminef would be less than thrilled if they knew I was outside eating a meal in this…

View from the warung where we are sitting

I finish eating and put my mask back on. Bu Lusni walks me across the street to the Indomart and stocks me and Carlie up with snacks for the drive. Um, LOVE. Ps – most of the last hour has been silence and gestures. My Indonesian only gets me so far so I just continually say “makasih bu!” and give her side hugs.

We drive back to school and find the driver already there and ready to take me away (it’s 10am, he’s supposed to come at 11). I’m ready but I don’t know where Carlie is. She had gotten sick last night, either from bad food or the smoke, and when aminef learned that this morning, they asked her to go immediately to a doctor before we left. While I’m texting her and trying to figure out where she is, the whole administration crew rolls outside to see me off. The headmaster, Wanlo the security guy, Fajar, Bu Lusni’s assistant, and of course bu lusni and bu anny. After getting a hold of Carlie, I say goodbye to all of them, we load up my stuff and off we go…

We find Carlie at her house, say goodbye to her crew and head out of the city again. I’ve never seen anything like this. (Oh, and none of these photos are edited or have any filters. This is straight up what it looks like)

Again for comparison purposes, this was driving out of town a month ago, when we left on our first evacuation. And we thought that was bad…

The drive between Pky and Banjar was even worse. We literally sat in shock staring out the windows… The drive takes us through some of the worst of the fires – you can literally see flames for much of the drive.

Again for comparison purposes. The second photo was from our drive back to pky on September 28th. It's the exact same stretch of road as the previous picture. The government is trying to build canals to get more water here, hence the excavator. I have no idea if the excavator was still there - you couldn't see that far

Again for comparison purposes. This photo was from our drive back to pky on September 28th. It’s the exact same stretch of road as the previous picture. The government is trying to build canals to get more water here, hence the excavator. I have no idea if the excavator was still there – you couldn’t see that far

So yeah, terrifying. And tragic. And just plain unbelievable.

When we get to Banjarmasin, we are happy to be out of Palangkaraya but can tell immediately that the air isn’t as clear as it was the last two times we were evacuated to here. Usually, about two hours out of Pky, the air begins to clear substantially and then by Banjar, it’s totally clear. But this time, it was still very smokey until an hour outside banjar, and then even just outside the city you didn’t have full visibility… GRRRRRR.

Once here, we’d promised aminef and Carlie’s mom that we would both go see a doctor. Carlie still looked pretty terrible and although I could breathe a little easier, my throat and lungs still didn’t feel very good. We had no idea what a hospital visit would entail. Would anyone speak English? How could we convey our symptoms? How much would it cost? We almost didn’t go but Carlie still looked terrible so I said, alright get up, we’re going!

We found the hospital, checked in and were led to two beds. I explained in Indonesian that we live in pky and the air is obviously very bad. We just arrived here today and feel bad. That’s about all I could say in Indonesian so then I just pointed to my throat and my chest, mimicked coughing and pointed at Carlie’s head. Everyone was laughing… 😀

My nurse started to ask me questions and I could not follow her… Realizing this wasn’t one of those moments where I could just nod along and smile I grabbed my phone out of my bag and opened the translator. She laughed and started typing in words, “kesusahan” (trouble), “pernafasan” (breathing), “batuk” (cough) – yes, I nod vigorously! We laughed and she had me lie on the bed and checked my pulse and my blood pressure and that normal stuff. A few minutes later, the doctor comes in and in half English, half Indonesian I explain my symptoms. He listens to my breathing through his stethoscope and then orders the nurse to put me on oxygen. LOL. I don’t know why I found this so funny but picture this: I’m lying here on a hospital bed, with doctors and nurses who don’t speak my language, with a screaming baby in the bed next to me, and now tubes up my nose. Like… good god what have I gotten myself in to?! Meanwhile, I can hear Carlie’s voice on the other side of the room talking to the nurses and doctor but I have no idea what they are doing to her…

Since I had my phone next to me I snap a few selfies 😉 Please ignore the horribly bushy eyebrows. I don’t have time to pluck my eyebrows here.

Tisia is frantically texting me at this point and lucky for us, she had also decided to flee to Banjarmasin and had left a few hours after us. She arrived to Banjar right as we were in the hospital and I was amusingly texting her that I’m lying here hooked up to oxygen with no idea what in the world is going on. She says, “Mack. Hang on. I’m on my way.” Oh good, glorious, wonderful Tisia! She’s coming to our rescue <3

I can actually notice a difference in my breathing and my throat and lungs feel clearer. The doctor comes back after ten minutes or so and asks how I feel now… “lebih baik!” (better!) After another ten minutes the nurse takes the oxygen off, checks my pulse and whatever again and then they ask me to go sit at the table outside. Carlie is already sitting there and we wait while the doctor talks on the phone to a doctor in Jakarta or something (Carlie has ISOS so some doctor in Jakarta is now checking up on us…) Tisia arrives at this point and I’m so relieved to see her. She and the doctor talk for awhile and then he starts prescribing us medication. I’m not exactly sure what all he told her but something along the lines of, take it easy, don’t go out in the smoke, and if you still feel bad in three days come back.

Oh Tisia, thank you so much!

He prescribes Carlie something for her headache and an anti-inflammatory for my throat and lungs. We check out and pay the whopping fee of Rp 45,000, maybe $3.50 and then Tisia walks us over to the pharmacy where we get the medication. We part ways with Tisia and her husband and decide to reward ourselves with Pizza Hut for dinner. The doctor had said to eat “normal food” for the next week and we laughed, having no idea what that meant. He clearly meant more Western-type food but for us, Indonesian food is normal at this point!

After we left the hospital, I felt so much better. But slowly I begin to feel it coming back 🙁 Not nearly as bad, but I don’t feel quite as good as I had before. We head to bed soon after hoping sleep will do us both good!

This morning, we both felt better but not 100%. Astrid told us this morning to “please stay inside as much as possible” and we happily obliged. We have thus spent the majority of our day sitting in our beautiful air conditioned hotel room, curled up in our beds under big comforters, with unlimited wifi (you have no idea how amazing good free wifi is until you live someplace like this where you pay for a modem and simcard with 2GB of data – trust me, goes fast) . We ventured outside twice, to find lunch and dinner. In the afternoon, the air felt clear and good but this evening when we stepped outside, OMG. It’s like the smoke is back to haunt us. It was bad. Real bad. We cover our noses and decide to just run across the street to the Texas Chicken. We eat a salad and fried chicken (checks and balances right?) and then run home. UGH. DAMN SMOKE. GO AWAY.

Now it’s Saturday evening and I’ve had the most relaxing day ever. Tomorrow will likely be much of the same and then Monday we’ll check in with aminef again to see what is in store next. We’ll likely be attending an English conversation club at the local university Monday afternoon and potentially working with the ACCESS program here in Banjar if the situation is still bad in pky (with no rain in the forecast I cannot imagine it will get better anytime soon).

It’s been a wild ride so far! Who would have thought my first two months of Fulbright would look like this? But as ridiculous, and occasionally frustrating, as it’s been, I’m still having the time of my life. These evacuations have let me travel and see new places, spend literally almost every moment for a month with Carlie, and provided me with stories most Fulbrighters will never have. And… I’m becoming passionate about an issue I had never cared about much before. I’d always felt like environmental issues were a battle someone else should fight, I knew it was important but it wasn’t something I was all that interested in learning about. But now… holy shit, how can I not when I’m living in a situation like this and being evacuated but having to leave my friends and students behind to breathe in the hazardous air. Who knows the impact this adventure will have on my future?

It’s an exciting time my friends…

ACCESS Week in Jakarta (Part XXI)

October 16, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part XXI:

So… guess who is back in an airport?

After the BEST week in Jakarta, we are headed back to Palangka Raya… When we left eleven days ago, we had no idea where we were going or for how long. We’d thought we could be gone for two weeks or so because the damn smoke just wasn’t clearing… However, thanks to a little bit of rain and some more visa complications, we are Pky-bound.

But let’s go back to this week…

After a fabulous weekend, which I wrote about here, we headed to aminef’s office on Monday morning. Because all of our meetings so far with Aminef have been in hotel conference rooms, none of us had been to their offices before! It was so fun to see Astrid, Ceacealia, Rizqi, Thasia, and Mark again – and be able to see where all the magic gets done. They work so hard coordinating and taking care of all 34 ETAs, the 14 researchers, and the 15 or so seniors scholars… All of us have Visa problems, housing issues, school situations, and of course, smog issues – and this group is essentially on call 24/7. It was so great to see them and to see where they work and catch up after all this drama 🙂

The American team HQ

At this point, aminef had coordinated with RELO, the Regional English Language Office – an office of the US Embassy – to have us help with the English ACCESS programs in Jakarta. The details, however, were not nailed down yet so after chatting with everyone for a bit, Ceacealia, Carlie and I grabbed a taxi and headed to the ACCESS office in Menteng.

We met Astrid there and had a great meeting with two of the coordinators of the ACCESS programs. ACCESS, funded by the US State Department, is a two year English program for underprivileged high school students. Classes range from 10-20 and students meet twice a week for two hours. Students selected for the program typically have extremely low English skills and because of their socioeconomic status, are unlikely to have an opportunity to improve their English.

There are around 10 ACCESS programs in different cities throughout Indonesia – in Jakarta, there are two sites – one at Menteng, in Central Jakarta and one in Rawamangun, in East Jakarta. We decided that we would each work at one of the sites – Carlie at Menteng and me at Rawamangun. The classes meet after school, one class from 4-6 and another from 6:45-8:45 – meaning super long days for the students! Students go twice a week so, at Rawamangun, there are five classes that each meet twice a week for a total of ten classes Mon-Sat. The program lasts for two years, and the students at Carlie’s school are at the beginning of the cycle, while the students at my school are at the end – they only have a few weeks left! By the end of two years, these student’s English skills improve tremendously!!

After learning more about the program at that meeting and how we can help, we all headed back to the office where we had lunch in the building cafeteria with the whole aminef crew, met with Ceacealia and Astrid to nail down a few more of the logistics, and then eventually headed back to Menteng to go to the class!

It was SO MUCH FUN. I mean, I can certainly attribute a lot of that to the fact that we have been out of the classroom for six weeks and it was just so good to be around students again. But there’s also something different about these students – their English is WAY better than my students in Palangkaraya, they are extremely motivated (the ACCESS program is a big commitment!), and they are grateful and excited for this opportunity to attend this English class. In short, they are AWESOME.

The first day in Menteng the students were learning about “unusual foods.” So after introducing ourselves and fielding questions, Miss Arey asked if we wanted to begin the lesson! We knew the topic but had no idea what we were supposed to be doing… so in typical Mackenzie fashion, I happily took the marker and began to wing it!

By “unusual foods” the textbook meant bugs and such, but I also knew that most American food is considered quite unusual to Indonesian students! So I asked them what they knew about food in America, what do we eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner… What do we put in a sandwich? What do we put on pizza? It got them speaking and laughing and listening to Carlie and I pronounce the words. Then, I asked them to work with their partner to come up with three differences between Indonesian and American food – and they had such great ones! Not eating rice for every meal; breakfast, lunch, and dinner all three distinct “types” of food (in Indo, you eat the same thing for breakfast as you do for lunch as you for dinner and that’s totally normal); ketchup in Indo is essentially soy sauce but our idea of ketchup is called tomato sauce (makes a lot more sense!), etc. After that, we passed it back to Miss Arey and helped during the rest of the class. It was such a great start to the week!

Chatting and showing pictures of my life in America

After teaching two classes, we finally headed back to the hotel at 9pm. Starving and exhausted (our last meal had been at noon and we’d left the hotel at 8:30 that morning), we found food and happily discussed the exciting prospect of getting to work with these students, and actually be doing something while we are evacuated from our site!

On Tuesday, we settled in to Starbucks for the morning before heading to our separate sites for that afternoon. Carlie went to Menteng and I went out to Rawamangun, about 45-1 hour from the center of the city (very grateful to aminef for covering these taxi rides!) I found the building, walked in, and was immediately greeted by three very enthusiastic, sweet as can be teachers, Puspa, Gita and Aan. I had arrived pretty early, unsure how long it would take to get there with the crazy Jakarta traffic, so we had about an hour and a half to chat. And omg, these girls are the best. They are all young – between 26-28 and absolutely full of life (quite literally – two are getting married within the next month and one is pregnant!) We talked and talked, about me and my program, the ACCESS program, their backgrounds, their lives, the students… Gosh, it was great to talk to girls around my age, who speak fantastic English, and are just so much fun!

Gita and Puspa <3

A little later, we headed upstairs to class and I helped out in both of that evening’s classes. I introduced myself, answered questions, and then helped with pronunciation and giving background to the textbook (the topic was “learning” and types of learning, styles, and college – aka, something I can speak to quite well!) It was so much fun!

Exhausted and happy, I headed home that night so thrilled to be helpful and inspired by these incredible students. Two years into this program, my students are SO ADVANCED. I was shocked at their level of conversation and how they answered my questions. I could have been teaching this lesson about learning styles in America, to high school students (and native English speakers!), and get the same answers! I kept having to remind myself that two years ago, these students could hardly speak English! Yet here they were, describing different ways of learning in the classroom, discussing the positives and negatives of different forms… it was fantastic!

Wednesday morning we headed back to Aminef. Each of us only had one class that evening so rather than sit around all day, Mark put us to work 🙂 He asked us each to write lesson plans based on upcoming events, that our fellow ETAs could use in their classes. Knowing my academic background and as today (October 11^th) is International Day of the Girl, Mark asked if I could write a lesson plan based around that, which I was obviously thrilled to do! That afternoon, I showed Gita and Puspa what I had written and they were super excited about it and wanted me to teach it to the classes on Friday and Saturday. I was thrilled!

We worked on the lesson plans all morning, had lunch with Rizqi, Thasia, and Mark, and that afternoon, I headed back to Rawamangun. It was another great class – this time, Puspa had promised her students they would work on pronunciation and conveniently, I was there to assist! We ended up spending most of the two hours flipping through dictionaries, pulling out specific words and practicing how to differentiate between that word and similar words. For example, bag, beg, bed, bad, back, bake… like, when you stop to think about it, how confusing is that! They sound so similar if you don’t pronounce the final consonant clearly! Or, sins, since, cents, scent, sent, sense, scene, seen… Um, so hard. We laughed and laughed and had a wonderful time!

Thursday, we did some more listening practice from the textbook – they were learning, “should have,” “could have,” and “would have” and the textbook also had them learning the more informal version, “should’ve,” “could’ve,” and “would’ve” – we had a hilarious time trying to say these phrases fast! The students loved it and it was so perfect that I was there to explain it, give examples and help them say it right and practice! We also talked a lot about college (per the lesson) and my life in America – I drew a (terrible) map of the US on the board to show where I grew up, where I went to school, where my brother goes to school, where Harvard, Yale etc are… Then drew a line of the route Martha and I drove driving home this summer – it was really fun to share and answer all of their questions.

Friday, I met Chesna, Dyah, and Yoyok from Standard Chartered for lunch! I was so happy to get to see them 😀 These friends from two years ago feel like family to me here now! I went back to Aminef to print out materials for my class that afternoon and was able to meet one of the Fulbright student researchers who had just arrived in Indonesia and was getting her initial briefing from aminef. Susie is staying in the same hotel as us and when Astrid brought me in to the conference room, she goes “Oh, you’re Mackenzie!” Um.. yeah? We all started laughing and she said that the hotel receptionist told her all about me last night (we’d chatted with them for awhile that afternoon when we had to extend our hotel reservation) – all bules know each other right? Ha! Well, it was pretty funny but great to get to meet her! I offered that she could hang out with Carlie and I the next day and explore Jakarta with us, which she did and it was a blast!

After collecting my materials from Mark, handing over all my taxi receipts, and thanking aminef profusely for everything over the last few weeks – I headed back to Rawamangun… my happy place in Jakarta 😀

I was able to teach three classes about the International Day of the Girl 😀 I started by introducing the concept of role models and asking who their role model is and why… After each student shared, I told them that my role model was Malala. None of them knew who she was so I explained her story and then showed a video profiling her. We discussed her life and the importance of education for girls. Then, I handed out short narratives of four young female heroes – Malala, Yuna (Malaysian pop star), Kartini (Indonesian education activist), and Evi (Indonesian entrepreneur). In small groups, they read and discussed the narratives and then switched groups so that each new group had one expert on each girl. They all shared about these girls’ lives and then as a large group, we discussed the issues that these girls care about and why it’s important to talk about them on International Day of the Girl! Finally, each student wrote a short essay on an issue that girls face that they care about, and then everyone got to share their topic with the class.

Let me just tell you… WOW. First, these students are NOT native speakers, and two short years ago they could hardly speak English, yet we had full and substantial and inspiring conversations! I kept forgetting that I was using the activity as a way to practice English and not talking with native speakers about the the importance of investing in girls. Damn, these kids impressed me. Teaching a lesson like this was something I never thought I’d be doing. It’s obviously a topic a care deeply about and could talk about forever… and here I was, offered the opportunity to teach three classes about it. One of the coteachers commented afterwards that when I brought the group back together again to discuss the four girls, my eyes lit up and it was quite evident that I’m very passionate about this!

Watching the video about Malala

Discussing in small groups

On Saturday after my class, Carlie and I met up with Susie, the Fulbright researcher to explore Kota Tua (Old Town Jakarta). We wandered the square, answered interview questions by eager high school students, and got extremely lost wandering a shipyard/marina. Always an adventure! 😀

We were trying to go to this hotel/restaurant/marina but got a bittttt lost 😉 When we finally found it we realized we were stuck on the wrong side of the wall! NOOOOO

Peeking through the wall at where we had tried to go… lol

But at least we found beautiful water!

It was a great week in Jakarta! But unfortunately, Sunday we had to head back to Palangkaraya… Initially, we were excited to go back. It had rained a little and the air pollution levels had gone down. I was excited to get back to school and settle in. Plus, we still hadn’t received one of the documents for our visa conversion so we had to go back in order to ask for an extension on our 60-day visa (which was expiring in 12 days…). More on that in the next post!

Mackenzie

A Look Back