Food

(an all too long post from Sunday-Monday)

This is likely the last post for this trip. I’m writing it as I leave Indonesia--though it’s been many weeks in the making--and it won’t be published until my return on Monday or Tuesday. As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about Indonesian food just about three times a day for the last six weeks, even when I was in East Timor.

Indonesian food is so different in the States and in Indonesia. This can, of course, be said about many cuisines, but the difference with Indonesia was dramatic. I don’t know how many of you have been to Thailand, but I discovered that there is no Thai food in Thailand, or at least what was called that in the States (except for sticky rice and green papaya salad). Most Indonesian restaurants offer a lot of diversity, but few are all that different from one another. The selection for me was even less as a vegetarian—far less, in fact—and I quickly realized that I’m used to a very international palate, one that just wasn’t available on a daily basis in Indonesia.

Traveling as a vegetarian is often a real challenge. I decided 15 years ago, after that trip to Thailand, that I didn’t want my vegetarianism to get in the way of experiencing a country. After all, so much of culture is wrapped up in food, and I had passed up so many quirky and popular dishes that were offered to me in Thailand. So I try to at least taste things and now always eat everything that is offered to me if I’ve not had the prior chance to let my hosts know about my vegetarianism.

Indonesia is and isn’t a pretty easy place for vegetarians. For those fake vegetarians who sometimes refer to themselves as “pescatarians”, Indonesia is a breeze. With 17,000 islands, all surrounded by water, seafood is central to many an Indonesian meal. But for the non-cheating, Indonesia still has quite a few options. It’s the home of tempeh, tofu is available at about half the restaurants I visited, vegetable dishes are rarely mixed with meat, and there is no shortage of lovely fruit. But then every so often, I would find a whole bunch of dried fish eyes in my meal, and at other times, the flavor of fish sauce was all too unmistakable. Earlier tonight, I told the waiter at the airport café that I was a vegetarian, and he brought me a plate with a few different treats. It was the fifth place that I had stopped at—none having anything veg—so I was pretty hungry once the plate arrived, and very excited about the braised tofu. The tofu did not disappoint but the fried rice tasted far fishier than it should. It wasn’t until I dug into the peanut dish that I noticed that the little noodles were actually not little noodles but some kind of tiny sea worm or skinny fish since each had a pair of eyeballs. It was a death camp on my plate, and some of the critters had likely migrated to the rice and masquerading as a pilaf. Not vegetarian.

Rice is everywhere in Indonesia, or at least everywhere that I visited. Most Indonesians—as well as their neighbors in East Timor—eat rice in some form 2-3 times a day, and I’d be happy to not see any of it for the next week or two. I did come to like the rice cakes quite a bit and would like to learn to make them at home, but most of the other rice dishes tired pretty quickly. Fried foods were also everywhere, and I’m happy to report that I didn’t tire of those one bit (and had no gut problems to show for it). Nor did I tire of the tropical fruit. When I arrived, rambutan—one of my absolute favorites—was everywhere, and then I got turned on to some other new fruit treats once the rambutan was no more. Durian was not one of them. Not terrible, but not as good as its bright orange distant cousin which seems part jackfruit, part chirimoya, all wonderful. Here’s a photo of it:



Perhaps the food highlight of my trip was the amazing avocado shake that I had one of my first days in Jakarta. It was loaded with condensed milk and drizzled with unsweetened chocolate, and sadly I’ve not had another one as good since that day. I’m also including a picture of that, and am committed to duplicating such an avocado smoothie at an upcoming Frugal Foodies:



One thing that’s very user-friendly about eating in Indonesia is that many restaurants show their food in their front windows. Not a beautiful plastic version of each dish but the actual food in stacked plastic bowls for everyone to see. In some cases, it’s self service, in some cases, it’s ordered and brought to the table, and then there’s Padang-style. Padang-style food is one of the most popular in Indonesia. There’s nothing quite like it in the States—likely for health code reasons—and dim sum is likely the closest thing to it. The way it works is that you sit down at a table with an empty plate in front of you, and literally 15-25 dishes are placed on the table. Fish, chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, tempeh, soups, curries, noodles, rice, eggs, potato patties, and on and on and on. And every combination and permutation that you can imagine. So you eat and eat and eat, and then at the end of the meal, you’re charged for what’s consumed, and the food plates travel on to someone else’s table, once of course they’ve been recharged with the proper number of fish heads, the rebuilt pyramid of potato patties, and the perfectly sized mound of rice.

Food in Indonesia is also incredibly cheap, at least for someone with dollars. Most large meals cost around a dollar, and I never once spent more than five dollars for a meal on this entire trip…and that includes meals at Western places that included tall beers and side dishes. You’d think that at that price, I’d just throw out the plate of dead noodle worms and look for something else but I still have not evolved (or devolved?) to that point. If it’s in front of me, I’ve got to do my best to eat it.

So here we are at the last paragraph of my last blog entry for this latest trip in my current life, and I want to close with a story of something that I didn’t eat. The food that got away, if you will. As I wrote earlier in this blog entry, so long ago now that it needs to be referenced, I’ve tried to be less dogmatic about my vegetarianism ever since my trip to Thailand 15 years ago. One of the things that I “missed out on” in Thailand was eating dog, and I’ve sort of regretted it ever since. Not that I dislike dogs, but figured that it would be a good thing to try in the same way that I’d likely eat a bite of person if hanging out with cannibals. But something happened on the way to that taste of pooch that surprised even me. I got a heart. While working for my fourth client, CARE Indonesia, we visited a women’s textile cooperative, where CARE was doing a breastfeeding awareness program. The women would arrive at the meeting with food or drink to share with one another, and would spend the whole morning weaving, talking, and eating. One of the women was someone who I had photographed earlier as she carried a beautiful tray of food up a gentle hill. She smiled and laughed, a bit embarrassed, as I photographed her, and then offered me a look at what she was carrying. It was a dark brown meat, chopped quite finely, and within it lay two jaw-bones studded with small teeth. Even though I had my hunch, I wasn’t totally sure that it was dog, but my translator confirmed it a few moments later, and when I was offered a taste, I had to say “no thank you”. I had to decline because, in the past year, I’ve fallen in love with a dog like never before, and it’s my girlfriend’s dog. So I wasn’t sure if she’d kill me if I ate the dog, if Zoe the dog would kill me, sensing that I had eaten one of her own, or if I’d kill myself for eating one of my own. But it did feel like one of my own, and that’s a new feeling for me. So now I can end this trip, knowing that I’ve grown in at least some small way, and isn’t that really the ultimate beauty of travel?

Bahasa Indonesia

When I was a Freshman in college, I had this grand plan that I would become fluent in 12 languages, and had them all charted out (Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, Italian, German, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, and Swahili, in addition to the English, French, and Spanish that I already spoke). So I jumped head first into Japanese during my first quarter at UCLA and pretty quickly sunk to the bottom. Somehow, the grand plan had been derailed.

Later I would study Portuguese and end up doing quite well with it, but efforts to learn Russian at Cal Extension and Turkish in Turkey didn’t yield such positive results, and I think part of me gave up. Maybe most of me.

And then came Indonesia. I had been told that Bahasa Indonesia was one of the world’s easiest languages. Not tonal, no verb conjugation, no tenses, and perhaps most importantly, it uses the Roman alphabet. And while I never planned to master the language, my performance here could be described as nothing short of pathetic. Or maybe it’s precisely short of pathetic, not even meriting that distinction.

I’ve been in this part of the world for nearly six weeks (I say “this part of the world” instead of Indonesia because I was in East Timor for a week), and all I have to show linguistically for my time here is about a hundred words, and perhaps the semi-mastery of 20 phrases. And of those, I think that I’ve picked up about half of them in this last week alone, meaning that I advanced from horrible to terrible, and I’ll likely end up just about there.

This performance might be understandable if the English level of the average Indonesian were high, but it’s absolutely not (and this should not be taken as any critique of their language skills since just about everyone I met was at least bilingual and often trilingual). While there have been a few places where one could get by with English, that’s been the exception. I can speak to people in English, but I really think that it’s my hand gestures and their grunts that are doing a lot more than any standard comprehension of language. This performance might also be understandable if I had been with translators the whole time, but that’s also not been the case. I could make up many reasons about why I did so poorly, but I think that the fact is that I’ve just been lazy. After all, I learned to say “good morning”, “good day”, “good afternoon”, but not “good evening/good night”. You’d think that I could have at least followed through on that one.

And it’s too bad since Bahasa Indonesia has some interesting elements to it, and has some phrases that sound nice and that are fun to say. I’m going to butcher the spelling, but here are a few examples: Terima kasih (thank you), said in a very sing-songy way, is followed by sama, sama (you’re welcome, or same same), selamat siya (good day) is followed simply by siya (which sounds like see ya most of the time, but sometimes has a more nasal “siyang” sound so I might have been saying it wrong all along), and sampai jumpa lagi (see you later) is just a great sounding sentence that I want to say over and over again. Pluralizing is done, as I understand it, by repeating the word, so “orang” is a person, and “orang orang” are people. But perhaps the most used words, and certainly the most important are “bloom” and “sudah”. The first one means “not yet” and the second “already”, but they’re really much more than this because they are the way that tenses are described. So someone might say the equivalent of “you eating already?” or “you paying for the room not yet?” Actually makes the language quite easy…that is, for anyone who invests even a tiny bit of energy in learning it. I was not that person here.

I am studying Hindi with my girlfriend this year and my experience in Indonesia should really make me think long and hard about whether I’m capable of learning another language. Actually, I know that I’m capable. The only question is whether I’m willing to invest the energy to do it right. It would be good to get to the bottom of that now so as to not waste any more of her and my time since she’s serious about it, and she’s good. Must be that she’s seven years my junior and young people learn languages far more easily than us old folks. Or at least that’s the excuse for today.

Maninjau

(from Thursday)

It’s Thursday afternoon, my last Thursday in Indonesia—why haven’t all the Thursdays been this good?—and as I write, waves lap up against the shore of the lake, all of 15 feet from the front of my bungalow. I’ve just been delivered a tall glass of sirsak juice, which has become one of my favorites, and I’d like to know what it’s called in English because I’ve never seen the actual fruit. Perhaps something tropical that’s not available even at Berkeley Bowl.

I came to this lake—Lake Maninjau—not for the creature comforts, though I’m quite enjoying those, but instead because not only had I read that it was beautiful, but the fishing is supposed to be a sight to behold. And the drive here was gorgeous as well. I sat for two full hours in the station, waiting for the bus to leave, and for once in my life, didn’t get so stressed out about it. The wait wasn’t so lovely, but the ride was, mostly through terraced rice paddies, and then down forty some odd switchbacks (I didn’t count but they’re numbered, some with cafes, nearly all with sponsors, but not at all crassly done).

I’m staying at Arlen’s Paradise, and it’s about a quarter mile jaunt through the rice paddies from where the bus dropped me off to here. For $15, I’ve got a queen-sized bed, private bath, deck, electricity, mosquito netting (strangely only the second place on the entire trip that’s had it) and natural air conditioning coming right off the lake. I think that this should become my favorite place in Indonesia over the next 24 hours, and if it does, perhaps I’ll stay 48.

Bukittinggi was easily one of the nicer cities that I’d visited in Indonesia—not saying all that much since they’ve been consistently short on charm and long on traffic and people—and until I came here, I didn’t mind the thought of going back. Like this lake, it’s at an elevation of around 1000 meters so it’s got great weather and a fair amount of character. And like the rest of Indonesia, folks are most friendly, and that (nice weather + nice people + interesting stuff) is a winning combination just about anywhere. I’m really glad to be finishing up my trip here.

So...

Everything that I’ve written in this blog may be wrong. I make bold statements, and then sometimes, the facts on the ground change. Yesterday, for example, it drizzled after I said that doesn’t happen in the tropics, and the other day it threatened to rain, but didn’t. And, after talking about the perfect weather over the weekend was, the last two days have been painfully hot. Hot like Dar Es Salaam. Dripping sweat off the forehead hot. Three showers in one day hot. So hot that I drink nearly a gallon and don’t have to pee more than once. The only thing that’s saving me now is sitting in the airport next to one of the largest air-conditioners I’ve ever seen. Must be eight feet high by five feet wide. Big. And powerful. I can only hope that my next destination, the last one on this trip, is much cooler than this one. And, if not, I guess that spring in Berkeley is less than a week away.

Sabang

I’d read that it rains a lot in Sabang but this was otherworldly. Water poured down from the sky and all that my shuttle bus could do was to divert a portion of it as it drove faster and faster. The vehicle was leaking—it could do nothing else in such a downpour—or better described, it was bleeding water through every conceivable orifice and non-orifice: the doors, windows, ceiling, floor, all simultaneously, all ferociously, rather like The Shining, and I sat in the exact middle of it all, the only one to not get wet.

And then it was over. There was rain one minute and then the next there was none. The tropics are good that way. Very seldom is it drizzling or threatening to rain. When it rains, it pours, and then it’s done. There’s been a lot of such storms during the trip, but somehow a warm rain isn’t nearly as problematic as a cold one. At home, when it rains, I generally stay home. I don’t want to go out, traffic is bad; in short, rain changes everything. Here, nearly nothing changes. Rain comes, people get wet or take a short break to take cover, and generally within 30 minutes or an hour, they’re back to whatever they were doing beforehand.

I’ve had good luck with the weather on this trip. I’m not sure that one can go too far wrong being in the tropics during the northern hemisphere’s winter. It’s been mostly 70-100 degrees, depending on the island and the elevation, and that’s one of the reasons that I choose this time of year to travel. It’s certainly been hot on this trip, and frequently enough, a bit too hot for me. Not at all hot like Ghana where I would be drenched with sweat within five minutes of leaving the house, but still hot enough. And on a very few occasions, it’s been too cold (overnight on a ferry, sleeping on a thatch floor on a mountain, riding on the back of a motorcycle in shorts, in a car with too much air conditioning). But it’s also been perfect on a few memorable occasions. I love that sensation of the weather feeling “perfect”. When the air temperature and the breeze are just right, or when the water temperature is ideal. I’ve been fortunate to have a handful of those moments on this trip, and while fleeting, I think that it’s one of my most favorite things. And on Sabang, I had one or two of those moments.

Sabang, or Pulau Wei as it’s also known, is an island just off the north coast of Sumatra. On it lies Kilometer Zero, or the point where the Indonesian archipelago “starts”, “ending” thousands of miles later in Papua. Kilometer Zero is not only the most westward point in the country but also the most northern, and, as such, it’s actually closer to Bangalore and Chennai than it is to Jakarta. It’s also the home to world-class diving and snorkeling, and I spent nearly two hours doing the latter in some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen. I’m a total novice with such things, but I think that when one sees thousands of beautiful fish of all sizes and colors, including a small shark, that it’s a good spot. I rather felt like I was in someone’s very expensive aquarium as I swam about, taking it all in. The only spot that was dicey is when I came upon what appeared to be a swarm of very tiny jelly fish and freaked out a wee bit. I didn’t want any part of a jelly fish sting, and had also read that jelly fish are what attract the manta rays, another creature best avoided in my book.

Places like this tend to attract “travelers” (not quite nice enough or close enough for tourists), and I’ve been trying to figure out how I fit under that title. I mean, technically I’m here working, so I’m not really one of “them”, but I also wasn’t working this weekend, and certainly not as I snorkeled around. And some of them perhaps aren’t technically “them” either. Perhaps they’re NGO workers who are here on break. But they look and act the part, and I wonder if I do too?

I’m not sure what makes me so uneasy about being one of them. One of the first travelers I saw upon my arrival in the beach town of Iboih—or perhaps he’s not a traveler at all but has gone local—was a man in his early fifties with braided or dreaded hair down below his knees, tattoos littering a good part of his body, and his bare chest adorned with two nipple rings (one in each). For me, he was less appealing than the manta ray, and I was trying to figure out if I feared becoming him or if I already was him in a small way. It’s complex, this whole traveling thing, and I’d really like to square a few things away in my head before I do it again. I think that it would give me more of a sense of purpose, something to ground me.

But maybe the shuttle bus ride where all of the others were getting wet and I sat bone dry was a sign from above, a message saying that I was different than all of those other travelers, that my calling was a higher one. But probably not. More likely, it was just dumb luck, the same dumb luck that made me be born in the first world to a middle class family. The same dumb luck that allows me to travel to Sabang, to spend part of a day snorkeling, and to spend the rest of the weekend trying to figure out if I’m a tourist, traveler, or none of the above. I really shouldn’t complain.

Aceh Five Years After

The last two days I’ve been in Aceh, way at the western tip of Indonesia. It was nearly ground zero for the 2004 tsunami which killed an estimated 230,000 people in this region of just over 4 million. In many seaside communities, 80-100% of the inhabitants were killed, many being washed out to sea, never to be seen again.

Walking around, one would never know. Now more than five years later, there are very few visible signs of such vast devastation. Roads and towns have been reconstructed, the natural landscape has mostly recovered, and lives have been rebuilt. It’s a testament to the strength of the Acehnese people that something like this could be overcome, and they seem as cheerful and welcoming as the Indonesians who I’ve met throughout the archipelago.

It’s also a testament to Islam. I think that this is one of those situations—and I must acknowledge that there must be many—when religion has great utility. The people I’ve spoken to in this very predominantly Moslem region—widely described as the most conservative in Indonesia—believe that the tsunami was the work of Allah, and possibly even a punishment for things that were happening on the ground. One man told me that he was very sad to have lost his family, but that “they were now with Allah”, and that this was part of his destiny. He was not an uneducated man, he had clearly spent a lot of time thinking about his place on earth, and this was his worldview, and one shared by many.

This man, Elias, a small machine repairman, had listed all the people in his family who were lost. He survived only by the luck of being at work a few kilometers away, the shop where I met him. The tsunami worked in seemingly strange ways, decimating entire villages and leaving other nearby spots completely untouched. Imagine going home to find your entire community flattened, your family lost, your life obliterated. I can’t even imagine, or perhaps I just don’t want to. I’ll be returning home shortly after being away, and the thought of losing even one of my friends, someone who adds so much to my life, is incomprehensible. And then multiply that by hundreds. I don’t think that I could go on.

Today I visited a radio station, the last one in my work for the Media Development Loan Fund, and got to spend an hour with the on-air host, Rina Anwar. Between delivering the news and spinning songs by Frank Sinatra and Dolly Parton, Rina talked about her response to the tsunami. She shared that the 9.0 earthquake trapped her in her room, an aftershock helped her get out, and then she just started running when she saw the wall of water. At some point, she found a two storey building and climbed to the second floor. The water filled the first floor but didn’t reach the second. Half of her family, spread out over many parts of Aceh, were killed that day. She told me that some of the survivors didn’t even cry, and she, after a week of grieving in her ancestral village, decided that she must move on. She’s been helping others since then, but trying to not get caught up in the past, and not letting herself get sad. Nothing is going to bring these loved ones back. Nothing.

And so many people have done what Abdi, another man I met yesterday, had. He had been a village chief and lost his entire village, including his wife and kids. He has since married another woman who lost her family, and together they’ve had more kids and started a new family. The story is repeated time after time. People are resilient. They survive tragedy. They start anew. And somehow, some happiness flourishes out of the rubble.

Reflecting

This evening, I sat in a botanical garden in the town of Bogor, 60 kilometers south of Jakarta, and was trying to remind myself that I’m in Indonesia. Sometimes it’s been really clear to me that I’m in Indonesia, far from home (think food, language, heat) and at other times, I think it’s easy to forget (think nice hotels, air conditioning, WiFi, airplanes). And Indonesia is quite complex that way. It’s many things for many people in many places. What’s important to me—I think—is that I spend my last two weeks being in Indonesia, as I may never come back to this part of the world, and it would be nice to make the most of it.

Does that mean that I need to sit on a crammed bus for 40 hours? Maybe it does. Should I eat only Indonesian food, even when it might make me a bit crazy meal after meal (my tempeh dish today, actually one of my favorites, had lots of little fish eyeballs in it, and that didn’t help). Should I unplug myself from the Western media for the next two weeks, and instead use that time to learn a bit of Bahasa Indonesia, the language that I really should be speaking more of by now? I’d like to think that I’d do all of these things, but they also seem hard, and I’m not sure that I want to put myself through them.

Maybe one of the problems is that I didn’t really have any clear goals for the trip, I don’t think. I just wanted it to be nearly as good as my unbeatable trip to East Africa. But I’m not sure what that looks like in the real world, what that means I should do on a Monday night after my work is done and when I’m due to be up early for a flight the next morning. It’s become a little like my life at home in this regard: I work a little, and am quite programmed when I do, and then I sit around, rather lazily, and do things I fancy as they arise. Maybe it’s good that Indonesia is not all that different for me, but maybe it’s not. Perhaps I’m missing out on an opportunity to really learn and grow, to stretch myself a bit. Perhaps.

Yogya

Yogya has been a nice change after Bali. It’s a real city, and a big city, and has its pros and cons for sure. I’ve enjoyed walking around, talking to people (especially since there are a lot more English speakers here), and seeing some of the sights. The climate is also nice as Yogya has some altitude to it, and thus is a bit cooler than some other places I’ve been.

The street where I’m staying would generally be a turn-off to me, studded with guesthouses and restaurants, but since it’s nothing like Ubud, I can live with it. It’s also quite close to the train station, which is really nice since I’m taking an overnight train to Bandung tonight for a relatively full and diverse weekend with a group of Indonesian photographers. Should be quite interesting for me.

One of the reasons that I came to Yogya is that I’m photographing another radio station this afternoon. It’s the second of three that I’ll be visiting for one of my clients, and we set up a 3PM visit for this afternoon. So I had a long morning to do a self-guided walking tour of the city, checking out some of the history, commerce, and local character. One of the last places that I went to was the bird market, one of the stops that I was actually most excited about. It started off tame enough with the crickets and mealworms, and other grains to feed your birds. But then it got dicey fast with cage after cage of far too many birds in too small spaces. One thing that was most sad was seeing a whole section of tropical birds that I’m sure were caught in places like I visited in Kalimantan. It’s places like this where they end up being sold, and from there it can’t be a very happy life. But what was most horrifying was stumbling across the nocturnal creatures for sale in tiny cages in the middle of this hot market. First were the terrified bats—who buys those?—and then a handful of owls. The owl that really caught my eye was a mature adult who could not even open up his or her wings the cage was so small. The sun was beating down on it. Absolutely no place for an owl to be.

Last night, I watched The Cove, the wonderfully made but horrific documentary about dolphin and porpoise slaughtering in Japan. I pondered how if I had it in me to just start smashing all of the cages and setting the birds free. And then I wondered how many of these animals could now live on their own, many having been taken as babies and now far, far away from their homes. After seeing The Cove, doing nothing was not an option, and taking a few photos here and there to share with friends back home was absolutely insufficient. So I asked what the asking price was for the adult owl, and was told 100,000 rupiah, or about $11. The smaller adolescent owls were twice that amount, and while I would have liked to have bought all of them, they didn’t seem to have it quite as bad as this big one. So of course I bargained, which is totally ridiculous when a life is at stake and it’s only $11, but it pained me to have these people making excessive profits off of such cruelty. It didn’t work, and I knew I was going to buy it at any price, so 100,000 it was. They then said if I wanted the cage, it would be 30,000 extra (much of this through sign-language since I didn’t speak their language nor they mine). When I told them that I didn’t want the cage, the saleswoman went looking for something, presumably a rope or a cloth bag, and I gestured to another man that I wanted to set it free, throwing my arms into the air and waving them profusely. That seemed to translate, and soon enough the lady was back and taking the owl out of the cage. The owl starting screaming when she tried to grab it and I was concerned about its wings as she wrestled to take it out through the door that was only about 3 x 4 inches big. But it made it and soon it was in the arms of the man who I had spoken to about setting it free. He gestured to me a few more times, ‘are you sure you want me to let this bird fly away?’ and I nodded yes. And then he threw it into the air and it quickly flew away to the applause of all of the shopkeepers who had gathered. Perhaps the best $11 that I’ve ever spent, or at least it felt like it at that moment.

This all was done without much thought and I’ll be interested to hear comments and think about this more myself. But for the moment, here are some crappy photographs from the great escape:

What a Difference 24 Hours Can Make, Part 2

(a continuation of the previous post that was getting painfully long)

The guesthouse room was very nice. The mattress perfectly firm. A spacious tub with hot and cold water. A toilet behind beautiful carved doors. The hosts very friendly. The gardens gorgeous. And breakfast included in the $15 price, fresh fruit, pancakes, juice and toast. I debated whether to eat or shower first, whether to race out to find a travel agent and bookstore or brush and floss. What Bali offered that I’d not had before on this trip was choices. I could choose from haute cuisine, drinks one couldn’t even imagine, the whole spectrum of experiences for the mind and body (massage, yoga, cooking classes, explorations into Hinduism), and world class arts performances and crafts.

Soon enough, I was out on the street, wanting to gorge myself on all of this newfound abundance. But it was way too much, and not just because I had just spent nearly a week in Oecussi. Immediately, I was smacked in the face by Billabong and Dolce & Gabana (sp?) along with ethnic art places as far as the eye could see. Hawkers called out to me to visit their stores or ride on their motorcycles. Every shop had people calling out. Others had cute women posted on the street corners, announcing an evening show or luring people into their establishment. In short, everyone was pimping themselves out, and the tourists were just eating it up. Later in the evening, I overheard a conversation, a young woman glowing about her two months in Ubud. I’d be nauseous after two days.

The way that I’d best describe Ubud, and perhaps southern Bali in general is ‘hell on earth with yummy food and really cute places to stay.’ Think Indonesia meets Sausalito meets Vegas. I mentally flogged myself as I had my 6PM veggie pizza (from a wood fire oven, but of course) at the Bamboo Bar and then the 8:30 Cuban style veggie burger plate (with salsa dancing in the background) at Café Havana. Fact was that both places were quite chic, had good menus, good prices, good service, and I enjoyed them once I was inside. But they were 40 yards from one another and there were 4-5 other such places in between. If a place had ten percent of Ubud’s commercialism, and let some of its real self shine through, it would probably be really lovely, and I guess for some people a place like Ubud still is. Hell, people go there on their honeymoons. My friends Darcy and Lou were two of them and like to tell the story about how Lou came back from Bali with three assholes, after having arrived with only two. They claim that a nearly fatal infection came from bad water and improper ass-wiping but I think it was karma. You don’t go to a place like Bali on a honeymoon and get off scott-free.

But can you fault Bali for its own success? It’s got the highest standard of living in Indonesia, I’m told. And as long as the going is good, Balians can continue to be world-class artists and get paid for it. They can also work in tourism and the related service industry. But I didn’t see the happiness here that I saw in other parts of Indonesia. Ubud was fully in the rat race, and that breeds competition between neighbors, and in some cases desperation. I fear seeing some of the sadness in people’s eyes that I saw in Vegas’ workers. Can it be that far off? And if there’s another terrorist attack here like there was in Kuta several years back, this place will be fucked with a capital F. Tourist dollars are fickle, and danger doesn’t jive with Ubud’s laid-back vibe.

I’ll close by saying that I’m sure that there are wonderful places in Bali, and something for everyone. I shouldn’t totally damn a place where I spent less than 24 hours, but I certainly didn’t mind getting up at 3:30 this morning to catch an early flight out of town, and that’s a rarity for someone who loves his sleep as much as I. I won’t be there for the Thursday night salsa lessons, the Friday shadow puppet performance, or take in the $6, hour-long, full body massage. But somehow, I feel like wherever I am, whatever I do, it will be more real, more true, more sustainable. Or at least I hope.

What a Difference 24 Hours Can Make, Part 1

(this entry is taking so long to write that I’m going to publish it in parts)

In the last 24 hours, I’ve gone from sleepolis to metropolis, with a short interlude of something else in between, and it’s a striking contrast. Yesterday at 5PM, I was sitting on the ferry from Oecussi to Dili, and, with the exception of all the smokers polluting the wonderful sea air and my bony butt not giving me much cushion, it was a super relaxing time. Today at 5PM, I found myself in Ubud, the “cultural capital of Bali”, less relaxing and far more garish than I could have ever expected. I actually chose Ubud because it was supposed to be far more mellow than some of the other hotspots near the airport. Ubud was described in the guidebook as a contrast to the “Sodom and Gomorrah-like Kuta”, so I can only imagine what the latter is like after seeing Ubud. But before I lay into Ubud good and proper, let me back up so that I don’t leave out some of the things that happened along the way.

I was awoken this morning by one of the crew members who needed me to move my makeshift nesting spot because the ferry was nearing the shore. At 6AM, I was off the ship and walking around Dili, the capital of East Timor. I headed to a hotel that someone had told me about, not to stay but to use their internet and to book a flight to Bali at their travel agency. By 9AM, when all of that was done, I decided to take a walk around town for a few hours before heading to the airport. It was ferociously hot. The city, from what I could gather, had little to no character, just a lot of NGO types racing around in their air-conditioned SUV’s while the other Dilians eked out a life through petty commerce and service sector work (much of it supporting the NGO types, to be sure). I was hot, sweaty, uninspired, and could not get out of that town fast enough. I’m just so glad that Dili was not my first stop in East Timor, as I imagine I would have hated the experience and not stayed in the country for more than 24 hours. I only stayed in Dili for 6 hours, and certainly hope that that steamy cauldron of nothingness does not shape my memory of East Timor, which otherwise, though I saw so little, was pretty wonderful.

From Dili I flew to Bali as it’s the only Indonesian air destination from East Timor. I never expected to come to Bali—it had never appealed to me—but flight connections conspired against me. The idea was to just use this as an overnight landing spot between East Timor, and my next stop, Yogyakarta, but as Bali neared and I read more, I was open to extending my stay here, thinking that I might really miss out on one of Indonesia’s crown jewels if I only gave it a matter of hours.

The touts came touting shortly after I arrived at the airport. Each had his hotel, his taxi, his tour service, and I was quite grateful that I had my Lonely Planet guidebook to keep me on the straight and narrow. Tired after a long day of travel and wanting to make the most of my short time on the island, I opted for a taxi (I’ve been riding lots of taxis here as the most expensive ride I’ve taken—well over an hour and perhaps 40-50 kilometers—ran me only $12). What was striking about the 70 minute ride was that the roadside was filled with commerce perhaps 75% of the way. First up were furniture vendors, miles and miles of them, rattan, beds, stunning doors. Then came the stone cutters—giant pieces, many with a Hindu theme, and weighing in some cases a thousand pounds—and again, store after store for miles on end. Then an interlude of open-air restaurants sunk into rice fields and a series of opulent hotels and resorts, each one with its own unique design look, all several stars but absolutely boutiquey. More driving took us through a gauntlet of oil painters, metal workers, and 12 foot tall playful wax sculptures. And then we were in Ubud.

If the thousands of wholesale vendors along the way were not sufficient indication of what this place was about, Ubud put the cherry on top, though packaging it a bit differently, all in nice gift shops nestled between restaurants and guesthouses of all makes and models. I had chosen a guesthouse that was set well back from the street yet was centrally located enough to explore everything on foot. When the taxi rolled to a stop—having gone as far as it could go but still a football field away from Loka—I grabbed my stuff and started walking down the path. But before I had gone five feet, a young man said “Are you going to Loka? They’re full”, which I knew was a distinct possibility since they had only three guest rooms. Disappointed, I asked if there were other places he’d recommend nearby, and he said that there were a few in a similar price range just down the way. Now I had a decision to make. Do I trust this guy who seems nice enough but who I’ve never met before, or do I play the role of arrogant asshole foreigner, and say “I think I’ll check for myself”. I choose asshole, and I’m even more of a dick when he offers to help me carry my bag down the bumpy path, and I say “sure”. Right before we get to Loka, my luggage is again able to roll on its own, the guy gestures to a kiosk and says “I’m going to light my cigarette, and wait here for you to come out.” God, I’m a dick! But sure enough, Loka does have at least one room, my assholism is sadly rewarded, and I remark that this is the first time in nearly a month of travel that I had to deal with a real Southeast Asian sheister. I guess it was a sign of what Bali can do to some people.

Taking Stock

I took a mostly lovely overnight ferry ride from Oecussi to Dili last night and will return to Indonesia today. It’s also about the halfway point of my trip and I got to thinking about all the things that I’d like to remember.

I don’t want to forget…

1) the smiling faces
2) the excitement of the people I meet when seeing a foreigner
3) the seemingly endless curiosity of so many of the people
4) the tropical breezes that somehow soften the brutal heat
5) the gorgeous sunset on the ferry ride to Dili
6) the beautiful stars and the chirping frogs
7) how it was so easy to be a photographer with picture-taking being so positively viewed
8) everything being so consistently inexpensive that I never stressed about money
9) how I felt very trusting and never unsafe
10) my joy upon arriving in Oecussi and my sadness when leaving
11) the frustration of not being able to effectively communicate
12) the horror of so many smokers—everywhere!
13) the litter being thrown overboard into the sea
14) all the teeth ruined by chewing beetlenut
15) a world that allows me to travel to 50 countries but keeps others from traveling more than 50 kilometers
16) the time that I’ve had to reflect about life, love, and work
17) how many times on this trip it could have been so much worse

Those are some of the things that I don’t want to forget. And there will be others.

Far From Home

It’s been three days since I’ve had internet access, a very good thing for helping me cure an addiction. And when I got back on it today, somehow it wasn’t so great. Too bad since I’m uploading some large files and so am sitting here with internet access for 3-4 hours, and it would be great to love the internet right about now.

Today, my penultimate day in Oecussi, was spent doing some photography for Oxfam. The other day as I was walking around town, I stumbled upon the Oxfam office, and I walked in to introduce myself and offer a day of pro bono photography, as I’ve long been an admirer of their work. And I guess that there’s some cache in perhaps being the only professional photographer within a hundred mile radius, because first he said it would be impossible since they had meetings on Monday and Tuesday, and then made a few calls and told me that they’d pick me up at my hotel at 9AM. By 10AM, I had written them off, and started to walk out to explore on my own when right then their truck pulled up. One asked “are you Mo from America?”, and we were on our way. The driver spoke some broken Portuguese, the main Oxfam dude, Otto, some broken English (both rare in this part of the world), so I learned in a roundabout way that we’d be visiting three communities and seeing three of their programs: water and sanitation, economic development, and one other that might have been health or agriculture.

At the first location, we visited a rain-collection project with a cistern that provides year-round water. I saw women washing clothes, kids bathing, and all of the drain water fed into three pools where they’re farming fish. Towards the end of our time there, Otto asked if he could introduce me to the crowd that had gathered. He explained that I was a photographer from America working with Oxfam, and they oohed and aahed a bit. Then I asked them, via translation, what they knew about America, and they said “that it is good”. I asked why, and they responded that America had supported East Timor in their fight for independence (after actually supporting Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor nearly 30 years earlier, I am told), and has given it some development assistance. I wanted more. I asked if they knew who the president of the United States was, not that I know who the president of their country is. To my surprise, none of the 20 or so people did. I asked them if they knew any US actors or musicians, and said that they should but didn’t. So then I started listing some names: “how about Michael Jackson?” The response was nothing. “Arnold Schwarzenegger?” Blank stares (these two are normally big everywhere around the world). I thought, maybe it’s the women they favor, so I rattled off Brittney Spears, Madonna, and Beyoncé, but nothing. I was a bit dumbstruck, yet perfectly thrilled at the same time. This was a rural community, but certainly not primitive by any stretch of the imagination. Their livelihoods are tied up in the same global economy as yours, they pray to the same god as most, they have access to other communities, some media, yet Michael Jackson and Madonna are not part of their lives. And the mention of Barack Obama gets me nowhere with them. Imagine that!

In both the first and second communities, both in the mountains, I was successful in making most of the children under 2 years old cry. I think that it was more the camera than my face, but whatever it was, the parents were very understanding. The fear of cameras seems to pass quickly enough, and I was quite a hit with the 5-15 set. In fact, at one point, I counted 31 kids following me around village #2, and they would explode in applause every time that the flash went off. I also got to see some preparation for a corn growing ritual where they were going to slaughter 4 pigs and have a big celebration.

At the last community, this one on the coast, we visited a fishing collective, and got to talk about gender roles. This group is hoping to have their fishing become successful enough so that they don’t have to also farm. They told me how the men go out each evening at sunset and stay out until they’ve caught their haul. None of the women fish, and they themselves justified it by saying that they ‘can’t swim and don’t know how to handle the boats’. Instead, it’s their job to clean the fish and cook. The men said that they DO know how to cook, but don’t do it. I wondered what happens when a man or woman is not married, and they surprisingly told me that there is not a single person over the age of 20 in their community who is not married. Every single one of them. So I guess it works. Then they asked me about my wife, and I told them that not only was I unmarried, but I lived alone, cooked for myself, and sometimes even for my girlfriend. They were shocked that somebody ‘as old as 42’ was single and without children. I told them that I was waiting for the perfect woman, which put a bit of quizzical look on their faces.

All of this talk of coupling brought me back to a scene from this morning, eating breakfast and watching the pet pigeons at the hotel hopping and flying about. Now I don’t know anything about pigeons, but it just seemed like there was a dude pigeon following around a chick pigeon everywhere she went, and every so often, trying to stick it in. And it made me think, what’s the appeal for women to put up with us men (in both the pigeon and person world)? Either giving too much attention or not enough, lacking sensitivity and communication skills, and being biologically programmed to want to hump even when she just wants to eat. What’s in it for her? Perhaps it’s more understandable in the hunter and gatherer world, or even in rural America, but I’m not hunting or gathering anything for my girlfriend. I’m not buying her nice jewelry or taking her out to nice meals. I’ve not bought her a house, nor should she expect one. What really am I good for? What are any of us men good for? I’ll have to watch the pigeons a bit more closely tomorrow morning to see if I can figure it all out. Otherwise, maybe one of you out there, the 15-20 people who read this blog, can venture a guess.

Sticking With It

I have a problem getting anxious when I travel (and perhaps in life). I often look ahead, am planning things weeks out, and have a hard time living for the here and now. One symptom of this when I travel is that I often come home a week or so early, because my head is already finished with the trip, and I’m ready to go home. Sometimes I make excuses to make myself feel better about not finishing up what I started, but the fact is that I’m almost always disappointed and feel like I quit on myself. So that’s why I’m most proud that I’ve extended my stay in Oecussi fivefold, and instead of having left today, will stay until Tuesday. It actually scares me more than a bit since this is a sleepy place, only has electricity at night, and I didn’t bring a reading book. That means that it will be a test of whether I can put up with myself with limited outside distractions, whether I can take this time to relax and reflect, and whether I can be in a lovely place and not get bored. I did almost bolt today, and I thought about it lots. You see, there’s a ferry that leaves here for the capital twice a week. When I arrived yesterday, I thought I’d spend one night and then catch the Friday ferry, but I just liked this place a bit too much to leave. And that meant that I’m “stuck” here until Tuesday, or blessed to be here, depending on how I look at it.

Today I went back up to the border with West Timor, as I wanted to retrace the beautiful path that we took yesterday afternoon. So I got dropped off right near a massive sandstone rock that juts out of the jungle and walked along a goat trail towards it. My thinking was that I wanted to find a spot where I might come to meditate each day, and even if that involved an hour-long motorcycle ride each way, it would be a good way to slow down. And I did find a very peaceful spot—a small cemetery actually—but before I had been there for even ten minutes, I was joined by a half dozen teens who wanted to watch what this foreigner was doing. Since meditation is hard enough for me—perhaps impossible, and I dread the thought of doing it by choice—the idea of doing it with twelve eyes on me was a bit too much, so I started to walk down the hill. I might have logged 6-8 miles in all—made easier by the steady downward slope that kept me moving forward at a good pace even in the blistering sun—and the whole time was just playing it by ear. I’d say “hello” to people, stop to have really basic conversations (most people here only know a few words of Portuguese, even though it’s the official language, so my dream of finally being able to effectively communicate on this trip will have to wait still a few more days). 500 pictures and a sunburn later, followed by a band of 15-20 kids, I made it to the river that I targeted as my stopping point, and spent the last hour cooling my feet as kids played, women washed, and the 5PM ferry left the dock far from where I sat.

It felt good. And while I don’t know how I’ll feel about it tomorrow or the next day, it’s a bit of proud moment for me. Even as recently as 3-4 days ago, when I knew that my paid photographic work was finishing up, when I didn’t know what I’d be doing afterwards and none of the options really spoke to me, I thought about coming home. And that was only two weeks into the trip. That would have been a failure of mass proportions, and I would have missed out on all the things that have come since, the things that come with slowing down, the things that I might see this weekend, if I only allow myself to…

Something Found

Two weeks in Indonesia and I finally feel as if I’ve arrived. Or better said, I needed to leave Indonesia, at least temporarily, to find what I might have been looking for. Today, against the suggestions of most of my Timorese hosts, I went not eastward to Dili, the capital of East Timor, but northward to a small enclave of East Timor, totally surrounded by Indonesia, called Oecussi. And what a lovely choice I seem to have made. It’s not that Indonesia has not been lovely. It’s actually been beautiful with incredibly friendly people and of late even some political intrigue. But it’s not so far captured my imagination in the way that this off-the-beaten track place where I am now has in only an hour.

First, I traveled up the hill to the border in one of the strangest Jesus-mobiles I’ve ever seen, replete with stuffed animals, window painting, and mirrors galore. Each stop on the five-stop border crossing (3 in Indonesia, two in East Timor) averaged five border agents for every one crosser (I being the only one of the afternoon). Then it was an hour long motorcycle ride down the hill to the coast, to what’s known as Oecussi town. And while my butt is still sore now close to an hour later, I would do that ride again and again. It could only be described as “stunning”, both in terms of the vistas and the people that I saw along the way. Sometimes, even as a photographer, I experience beauty for which photography does no justice: it could be a sunset, 360 degree vistas, or a moment of such intense emotion. I feel in those situations, it’s not even worth trying to take a picture, as it would surely disappoint, and today was one of those times. It was also one of those occasions when making great photographs of the people I passed would have been easier than shooting fish in a barrel (didn’t I say the same thing about East Africa?), and maybe I fear that the photos I would have made would have only been good, and that wouldn’t have been good enough.

I’ve been grappling a lot with my future as a photographer. I’m realizing on this trip that I might not ever be great. For a long time, I felt as if I wasn’t in National Geographic yet because I hadn’t caught the right break, hadn’t met the right people, hadn’t come up with the right story angle. But now I’m starting to believe that I’m just not good enough, and that maybe I should look for a different line of work if I really want to be great at what I do. I’m good at what I do. I could continue to travel and do some interesting photography for years to come. But I fear/believe that I won’t ever be truly outstanding, and I think that this is one of those times when good enough is just not good enough.

Travel is a good time for reflection, and I’ve started to hatch some ideas of what I might do next, just in case this is my last trip as a professional photographer. Regardless of what comes next, I hope that this trip ends fabulously and that I have the time of my life. I’ve not up until today, but maybe this is the turning point for me, a time when I feel a bit more connected in a disconnected world. Or maybe it’s just all a mirage, and feels right for the moment, but will show a different side come morning. Life is often like that, with new people, new places, new experiences. It’s often easy for me to get seduced, to think “this is the place”, only to find something that I already know, that almost everything in life is more complex, and that falling in love is more about me than the other, regardless of the situation.


Postscript: It’s now nighttime, three hours after writing the above post, and both the stars and the frogs are just stellar. With no street lights, there’s a lot to see. Now I just need to figure out if I’d like to hop the boat to the capital tomorrow, or to wait five days for the next one. The hopeful impatient one in me says “why no boat on Saturday or Sunday?”, but alas, I must learn to move on a schedule not of my own making.

Hepatitis Jumpee

(from Monday)

I was back in Jakarta over the weekend and pretty much dreaded going back. What’s to like about a big city with almost zero charm? But from the moment I arrived in Jakarta this second time around, everything was just a bit better. This time, there was someone at the airport holding a sign with my name on it, and what’s not to like about that? And the Saturday night traffic back into town was minimal. When I got to my mediocre hotel, it was still mediocre, but the wireless was working upstairs, and somehow the crap food at the restaurant was just the crap that my body wanted. The real highlight came the next day, on Sunday, when I got to spend a good chunk of the day with Hope Worldwide (www.hopeww.org), and to visit their programs in three of Jakarta’s slums. They’re doing some wonderful TB eradication work, and run both a clinic and a pretty aggressive outreach/community education program. We visited several families, both with people who were still patients and others who had completed their treatment and who were now peer health advisors. For me, it was great to get see part of this city that I might never see on my own: several of these slums were tucked away behind seemingly middle class communities. Turn left into an alley and right across a makeshift footbridge and there you are, into a maze of tenement housing. But what activity lay in store, at least on a Sunday. Most of the three communities had small stores, a bustling informal economy, and most services outside of basic sanitation. Most of the residents in the smaller slums are new migrants to the city, living semi-illegally in places that might soon be torn down. One man reported that he makes about 60-80 dollars a month as a bicycle taxi driver, and pays $16 for “rent” and electricity. Toilet and water facilities are extra, and are pay per usage. His particular slum was clearly built on landfill—and with a dump right next to it—and walking just about anywhere outside of the “houses” felt like navigating a jumpee. At first, I feared that my legs would fall through into the goo, but later learned that it was as sturdy as your typical North American jumpee and was more about sloshing around playfully than being swallowed into the hepatitis morass below. This is what happens when far too many people flock to anyplace where work can be found. People live where they can, they make due with what they can find, and the city’s health resources are left to catch up. But outside of the poor sanitation services (many of the poopers looked a lot like they were straight from the latrine scene in Slumdog Millionaire), these slums were not as depressing or desperate as many I have seen in the past. In fact, the happiness quotient was quite high, and for many, they may see their future chances as being better in the big city than what they were before. Here there are jobs, or at least the hope of jobs. Here there is electricity and activity around the clock. Here there might be TB brought on by the overcrowding (and other diseases tied to the close quarters and lack of sanitation services), but at least there are also the health-care services to address the looming health crises. So why shouldn’t there be happiness? Even I’m a bit happier in Jakarta this second time around. I’m starting to see this city in a new light, which is good since I might have to pass through it two or three more times before this trip is over.

The Jungle’s Bounty

(from Friday)

The Kalimantan jungle seems to be one of Indonesia’s last frontiers. In the eyes of many, it’s underpopulated, bursting at the seams with resources, and a ripe place to help address some of the country’s other shortcomings. And to a certain extent, they might be right. I’ve been struck by the common Dayak practice of not picking fruit from the tree but instead cutting off huge branches, letting ripe and unripe jack fruit, rambutan, and other lychee-like treats fall to the ground. It’s quick, it’s easy, and even if some goes to waste, there’s plenty more where that came from. The government has taken a similar stance, resettling people from other islands in Kalimantan, and opening up huge tracts of land for energy exploration, logging, and the planting of non-rainforest plants. The impact seems striking and will only continue to transform the Borneo landscape and one of the last remaining jungles of its kind. Logging has not only stripped the land of its hardwood trees, but of habitats for many endangered species, including orangutans. I’ll share more stories about the orangutans in my slide show, but trust me that the consequences of logging for our primate cousins—as well as other animals—have been dismal. Logging has also scarred the Kalimantan landscape with roads leading deep into the forest, and thus opening up more access for migrants to the area. Oil and coal exploration has also followed, with vast tracts of forest being peeled away to access the resources lying just below them. But while the pictures of these are horrific, at least they offer the potential for future forest development, and there seems to be an 80% success rate in returning these areas to some sort of sustainable rainforest. Not the case with oil palm. This most insidious import is the sexy choice du jour for settlers and others looking to make a quick buck. Pull out your hardwood trees (lumber companies like this) and clear your land. Plant free or low-cost oil palm trees, which require almost no maintenance, and wait for three years for them to come to maturity. Then pick the bounty and see it turn into a salary of $5000-10,000 a year if all goes well. The problem is threefold: 1) the oil palms are quite inhospitable to other flora and not the proper home to local fauna, 2) the oil palm seeds must be in a processing plant no more than 8 hours after they are picked, meaning that it can’t be done by anyone but large corporations, and growers are thus entirely dependent upon said corporations for their new livelihood, and 3) if growers decide down the road to no longer grow oil palm, they must dig out a 4 meter by 4 meter by 4 meter hole for each palm in order to fully remove the root structure. And local environmental workers feel that prices will only fall as the government opens up four times the amount of forest for oil palm trees, and growers are forced to sell their goods to the multinational corporations at the prices that they set.

Charming and Cute

(from Thursday)

Until today, I’d not seen anything/anyplace in Indonesia that was charming and cute. Indonesia is that middle school girl in the midst of puberty, a bit too grown up in some ways, not quite grown up enough in others. She perhaps was really cute earlier in life. She’ll perhaps be really charming again, but for the moment, she’s just a bit awkward to look at. I’d experienced that sentiment again and again in my first week here. Very friendly people, not much to look at that has any sustainable beauty, of course based on a very limited sample size.

Today, nearing the end of my week of work with CIFOR (www.cifor.org, I believe), we’ve come to a Dayak village in East Kalimantan, and it’s quite lovely. Not “lovely” in that it’s traditional and quaint, but in that it seems to be comfortable in its own skin. The first village we stayed in was not charming or cute. The folks there in Gunung Lumut did seem at ease with who they were, but perhaps problematically so. They suffered more from their abundance. They’ve got so much fruit and other natural resources that they don’t really have to work very hard, and in fact they don’t pick fruit as much as they just cut off giant branches with fruit exploding from it. They have so much wood lying about that they don’t have to be more efficient with their fuel usage (and thus cook on open fires). They generate enough surplus income that they can have a village store and the low-quality foods that go along with it. And they have enough free time and money that cigarettes are the number one expense for just about every household, with most men, and some women, smoking 2 + packs a day. They smoke when they relax (and they do a lot of this), they smoke when they work (not so much of this, and good for them), and they smoke when they take care of their young. Basically, they smoke all the time, and the only physical problems that I saw in the community were some dental health issues and some hacking coughs that sounded like asthma in young people and far worse in some of the adults. The community leader, also a shaman, told us that there are many local herbal cures for such things like cancer, but also admitted that there are some modern diseases coming along that he can do nothing about. This community had been moved and rebuilt by a logging company, and that might explain some of the uninteresting architecture and odd location, more than a kilometer away from the nearest river. In any case, it had none of the good lucks of the Amigos community that I found myself in 25 years ago in the Venezuelan Amazon, one that was also about a hundred people, but was near the edge of the river, and built up almost entirely from local resources.

With the first Borneo community a bit of a disappointment (from a charm standpoint), and a few others that we passed through also lacking promise, I was hoping that this last one would be more photogenic. Upon our arrival in the community house, we looked out from the back porch to see kids vaulting themselves into the picturesque river below. We saw boats passing by, laundry being scrubbed, and a fellow strumming a guitar in a nearby open-air hut. I ran out to spend the last two hours of the afternoon talking to people, seeing the lovely architecture, and photographing some of the daily life. With six more hours of photography tomorrow morning, I’m very hopeful that this will be the first set of exciting images of the trip. If nothing else, it’s quite cute and charming, and I’m sure I’ll sleep well in anticipation of what lay ahead.

Translation Frustration

(from Wednesday)

I wrote earlier about how my photography is really only a means to an end, and that end is hearing people’s stories, learning about the world around me. It’s for that reason that this week has been filled with great frustration. I’ve been in this new country for less than a week. I’m excited to learn all that I can. And I feel stymied by my assistant’s lack of translation services. A few days ago, I sat down with him to share my concerns. He’s a very nice guy, and said that he’d be happy to put more energy into translating, but I think that he’s just not cut out for it. Not because he doesn’t have the English skills—he absolutely does—but because he seems sometimes so self-absorbed that he can’t take his own love for conversation out of the equation. I’ll ask a very simple question to someone I’m photographing, like “how long have you lived in this community”, and then I’ll wait a full five minutes to get a three word answer from him as they seemingly talk about everything but what I’ve asked. I’ve told him that I need translation every 15-30 seconds, and that if he’s going to add a question, he should translate that for me so that I know what he’s asking, yet it just doesn’t seem to be getting through, as I often have to interrupt him to say “translation please!” Car rides and meals have been especially isolating as I’ll be seated with 2-3 other people and not more than a few words will be shared with me, even though I’ve posed some questions to the others with me. Tedi will give me a quick answer and then ask a follow up question in Bahasa Indonesia, leave me in the dust, and this can go on literally for hours. English is quite a rarity here, so I’m really dependent on him for this entire week, and I feel like I’m missing out on so much interesting learning. On one or two occasions, someone else has translated a few conversations and my experience has just been so much richer, even if their English was not nearly as good as Tedi’s. On some levels, the saving grace of the week so far has been that I’ve gotten sick with the flu and have slept through several meals and for much of the long car rides. Otherwise, I really might have bitten his head off—and I still might—for feeling so cheated. I’m not sure if I hope that he’ll never have to feel what I’ve felt with him this week, or if I absolutely want him to feel what I’ve felt so that he knows to never repeat such treatment.

When I Grow Up

(from Sunday)

I’m a working photographer this week. And I’ll be one for the next couple of weeks, and perhaps for the remainder of my six week trip here in Indonesia. It’s exciting to get paid for doing something one loves, and I’m quite stunned that I may make more money while traveling in a far off place than I do at home. But I also realize that the photography is only a very small part of why I like photography, and is not enough unto itself. Sure, I love seeing a great photograph, and I love even more making a great photograph. But photography is really only a tool for me to learn about my environment and hear cool stories, and without the stories, photography kind of feels empty. Today took me around a small Dayak village on the island of Borneo, one where people were friendly and happy to be photographed, but I don’t feel like I learned anything new. I think that this has a lot to do with the language barrier and not having a true translator, but it made me wonder about what kind of work I could have that would be sure to be chock-full of stories all the time. Something where I would meet interesting people who weren’t too interesting that they became just weird. Something that’s consistently providing new challenges but which I feel like I’m doing well. And, of course, something where I’m my own boss. Trivia master? Restaurateur? General Manager of a professional baseball team? Stand-up comedian? Can I do better than what I’m doing now? These are the questions of a mid-life crisis traveler navigating not only new cultures but also the uncertainty of my present and future.

Jakarta

(from Saturday)

For some reason, before my arrival, I was really nervous about coming to Jakarta. I’m seldom nervous about arriving someplace new, even if I’ve not done too much research about it. Maybe it was that I didn’t speak the language. Maybe it was that it was a city of 20 million people. Or maybe it was just that I had a bad feeling that something untoward might happen. But so far, everything has gone quite smoothly. While it’s a sprawling city with occasionally horrible traffic (I spent just under two hours in a cab yesterday to go maybe 15 kilometers), it doesn’t feel oppressive, and just about everyone who I’ve met has been friendly without being overly friendly. Indonesians are friendly with their eyes, and they—or at least the ones in Jakarta—pass the stranger smile test, where they nod or smile back when I smile or say “hello”.

I’m developing a belief that the friendliest people—outside of perhaps Mormons in Salt Lake City and anyone from Minnesota—are Moslems in Moslem countries. If I look back upon all my travels, it just seems that I’ve been consistently so much better received in places such as Kurdish Iraq, Turkey, Tanzania, Northern Mozambique, and now in the grand-daddy of them all, Indonesia (the only place that didn’t work out so well for me was Morocco, but I’m hoping to give it a second chance later this year as I was sick as a dog the first time around).

In light of this, it’s a small wonder to me that I know so little about Islam, and rather exotify it regularly. I try to fit it into tidy boxes so that I can easily make it work in my mind. Seems like I’ve met enough Moslems in my life that I shouldn’t try to oversimplify them. But I do. Last night, I went to photograph a Jakarta independent radio station where they had an outdoor Valentine’s Day concert with a handful of live performers. I expected the concert to be melodic and quite staid, being the most populous Moslem country, after all, and nothing could have been further from the truth. Hip performers rapped, crooned, covered Elvis and Brittney (the latter thankfully as a joke), and all the while, twenty somethings in the audience screamed with glee and swooned, regardless of whether they were wearing fitted t-shirts or head scarves. Not quite what I expected and most delightfully so.

I Love Talking to People

(from Thursday)

I'm just now back from a jaunt around Dubai. Well, not much of a jaunt because I didn't really know about any place to go see except for the tallest building on earth (less impressive at night). Others suggested the malls, but that had less appeal to me for obvious reasons. So I had some decent food in a hookah cafe, watched a bit of soccer on TV and strolled back and forth to the metro station. On my return back to the airport, I struck up a conversation with two women who worked at the metro station—both coming to Dubai from far away for work. Not sure how we got started, but it reminds me that I just love talking to people. And they were delightful. We talked about work here, life at home, love, freedom, travel, the like.

Dubai was fascinating that way: far more South Asians and East Asians than Arabs. I guess that gives it the feel of a very international city, but it’s clearly stratified in the jobs that people are doing. The women with whom I spoke were from Malaysia and Kenya, and told me that they came for the experience and the money, respectively. And they were making close to 10k a year with almost all of their expenses covered, and this was tax-free. That’s better money than I make, and they work that they were doing at the metro didn’t seem particularly taxing. Ninie told me that could make more in Malaysia but that it was a good life experience. Julie said that this was far more than she could make in Kenya but didn’t like the lack of freedom to be herself in Dubai. She flies back to Kenya 2-3 times a year to have enough sex and alcohol to last her another six months in Dubai.

Flying Again

For those of you who read my blog last year when I traveled to East Africa, you may know that I experience much more luxury on my international flights than at just about any other point in my life. It’s one of the few times that I just sit and relax and enjoy most everything that comes my way. That’s why it should be no surprise that when given the following choices, I chose B.

A) $950 ticket on China Air, 18 hours of travel time going there, 20 hours coming back.

B) $850 ticket on Emirates going the wrong way around the globe, via Dubai, 33 hours going, 28 hours coming back.

I must say that I was a bit concerned about how I’d face a sixteen hour flight from San Francisco to Dubai. Now I’m concerned that I won’t have enough time for all the things that I’d like to do. I’d like to sleep—and have three seats for doing so—eat and then eat some more, maybe have some free drinks, and watch a whole host of movies and TV shows that I’ve wanted to see. This airline is really luxurious. You should see the seats up front: even in business class, the travelers have little pods that they can retreat into, basically making their seat into a bed (for those who don’t have three seats). First class must be even better, but that’s off limits for us little guys. But even for us, the going is quite good, and I’m not doing any complaining. The steam towels that they brought were flavored, maybe with kaffir lime leaves, the menu looks quite nice, and they just brought me a lovely little goodie bag with, among other things, the cutest toothbrush-toothpaste thingy in it. Now I might have been a little less excited if the flight were full and I were locked in for sixteen hours, or if the horribly smelly man sitting kitty corner from me were sitting a bit closer, or if they had forgotten my special meal. But for the moment, life is really good. I think I’ll try to catch up on a bit of sleep now…

Djibouti or Bust (the international version) Is Back!

Djibouti or Bust, the travel blog, is back. I’m keeping the same blog name since not only is it fun to say, but also because I’ve not made it to Djibouti, and I don’t see myself as a bust quite yet. As you may know, I’m about to spend six weeks in Indonesia and environs, and if I’m able to collect half as many interesting stories as I did last year in East Africa, I’ll be a very lucky man. Once again, I’ll be working with several international nonprofit organizations, which I expect will take me to some off-the-beaten-track places and through which I’ll meet some fascinating people. Not sure how many photos I’ll include this year, as these are quite frankly a pain in the ass to upload while traveling, but you’re all invited to the slide show in the spring/early summer to see all of these. In the meantime, enjoy the stories and please, please post comments on the blog. Those make writing especially fun for me.

Upcoming Djibouti + Sad Note

If you've not seen the 90 minute version of Djibouti or Bust, two more shows are on the calendar for November 14th and November 21st. The first one will be hosted by Kay Cheatham in Piedmont, and the second by Laura Goetz in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Please let me know if you're interested in attending and I can get you some more information. There's sure to be some space in the second show, and maybe even at the first one. Or please consider hosting your own!

I received some sad news this week, indirectly tied to my trip to East Africa. Along the way, I was taking lots of water pictures for a group called the Clearwater Initiative. This organization was founded and run by a gentleman named Ben Sklaver who had learned about the conflict in Northern Uganda and its impact on clean water while serving in the US military in the Horn of Africa. This week, I followed up with him about the photos only to learn that he had been killed in early October while serving in Afghanistan. I'm including a Time story about him, as well as another interesting piece about Jews in (or not in) the military:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1930683,00.html

http://www.forward.com/articles/116674/

People Love Djibouti!

I presented my new 90 minute slide show to a group of strangers on Friday night, and the woman who coordinated the event got a whole host of unsolicited comments about the event. Here are some of them (I've removed the names since these were forwarded to me, but maybe folks in attendance will chime in with their own thoughts about the show):

“I really had a wonderful time. Moses' slide show was amazing; not only are the photos beautiful, but he also provides a witty and touching narration of his thoughts and experiences from when he took the photos. I can't believe this Born into Brothel-esk slide show was free. ”

“Firstly, A big thank you to Moses for opening up his studio to all of us. Great food and nice photolog presentation. Brought back a lot of memories of my childhood and safaris through East Africa. Inspired me to hit the books and brush up my Swahili.”

“Great evening, great food, great people and Moses is very entertaining and educational. My daughter even loved his slide show.”

“It was a well organized party and the slide show was excellent!”

“Everything was awesome, the food, people and the slideshow was especially informational and entertaining. I had a wonderful time!”

“Great food and people, travel photos to boot. If only a small band of raccoons had ran through the place, stealing little morsels of food and startling people, then it would have been perfect.”

Again, if you're interested in hosting a slide show, all you need is 20 people and a couple hours. Find all the info here!

Djibouti or Bust is Hitting the Road!

I did my first "public" presentation of the Djibouti or Bust slide show yesterday at Transfair USA. It was very well-received and I hope that it's the first of many slide shows that I deliver. It went 82 minutes, and with a few tweaks here and there, it should be ready to go nationwide, or even world-wide. For more information about hosting, check out:

http://enlightstoryworks.com/DjiboutiOrBust

East Africa Slide Show on Saturday Night

Please come see pictures and hear stories about my recent travels to East Africa.

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
8:00PM-12:30AM
Slide Show at around 9:15PM

800 Heinz Ave #14
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-540-7008

Free and Open to the Public

Slide Show will likely be outside. Please dress warmly and bring folding chairs, sleeping bags, small convertibles for the drive-in slide show experience.

Some Closing Thoughts

(from Wednesday/Thursday)

This will be my last post from Africa, and it’s a bit of a hodgepodge of thoughts from the last several days, sometimes weeks. I’ve got another entry to do while traveling, and then I’ll try to post some of the pictures from the trip once I’m home and have better access to high-speed internet. I’m not sure if I’ll post the pictures in previous entries, where they sort of belong, or do some photo only entries, or save the images for a photo show that I’ll be doing in a few months time. Perhaps a combination of all of the above. In any case, thanks for reading the blog, and here are some closing thoughts:

So I’ve not said anything about Malawi, and that’s mostly because I was only there for a few days and saw a very small portion of the country. But what I did see was really very pretty, especially the tea fields that met me immediately as I crossed the border from Mozambique. Not sure what it is about tea fields and people picking tea that is so calming and romantic. It’s likely back-breaking work for the people doing it, yet I really love seeing it from afar. I’m not really a tea drinker so I’m not sure what the connection is besides gorgeous countryside, but it’s certainly worth seeing.

• Internet speeds picked up a great deal in Malawi. It may be a very poor country but they’ve got the internet figured out. I didn’t have a chance to talk to anybody about Madonna and Malawi, but the thought crossed my mind to do a web search of that when I was in an internet café. I’ll have to do that upon my return, since that seems to be Malawi’s claim to fame in the last couple of years. Too bad!

• Malawi also has beautiful roads and almost no pot-holes at all. That made traveling much less tiresome, and considerably quicker. What made travel in Malawi less enjoyable, at least on one long-distance ride, was the number of drunk people who got considerably more drunk over the course of the trip and wanted to engage me in conversation. We saw such a small number of drunk people on this trip—what a joy—but interestingly and sadly it seemed to increase as the trip moved southward.

• The majority of the people with whom I interacted with on this trip were either Christian or Moslem, and my guess is that those two groups were pretty evenly split across the trip. And I was struck by how much the Christians want to put their Christianity on other people, where that was seemingly absent within Islam. At meals and meetings and other gatherings, it seemed that Jesus and amens had to be there, and I can recall a bus ride in Malawi where a Jesus-lover came on and spent about 15 minutes ranting to everyone about the role that Jesus needed to play both in regard to the bus trip, and to life. Quite obnoxious.

• Never has there been part of the world where I’ve consistently enjoyed the music so much, and I’m referring to the music I heard on buses, in restaurants, and on the streets. I’ve always claimed to have been born without rhythm but there’s certainly been something about much of this music here that connects with me. Maybe I need to take an African dance class, but the African music that I heard in East Africa seems much different than what we get in the States. What I heard in Uganda was particularly delightful.

• I can’t remember where it was that I experienced this before but I got to once again participate in a sweet “community event” in Malawi’s commercial capital…rain. I was in a Blantyre travel agency when it started raining, but really really raining. It started raining so hard that the streets in Malawi’s largest city turned into rivers with water at least six inches deep. And everything in the city—at least everything that was outside came to a halt for the twenty minutes that it rained, and people either stood or sat under overhangs to just watch the water come down.

• Perhaps one of the most frustrating thing about third world travel is the practice of filling up buses before they depart. Now from a environmental and efficiency standpoint, I totally understand and appreciate it, but from a getting somewhere perspective, it’s quite maddening. After all, who knows when the bus (or taxi or truck) is going to finally fill up and when we’ll be able to leave on our trip. I can remember several instances when I waited for at least two hours as a vehicle seemed to get closer and closer to filling up, when the conductor would tell me ten more minutes or just another half hour, and then the wait become eternal. And once, when it looked like we were just about there, and I had finally committed to buy my ticket, the professional bus-sitters would get off the bus—about ten of them—and their seats needed to be sold. I guess nobody ever wants to be the first person on the bus, the first person to buy a ticket on a vehicle that may never sell out, so it helps to sell the “idea” that we’ll be hitting the road shortly as an attract to all the other passengers. In fact, I’m not sure how much it mattered to the locals. Even if they were in a hurry, they didn’t seem to be, and they seemed calm while my impatience grew by the minute. It was a bad feeling for me, and I tried to tell myself that it’s more about the journey than the destination, but rarely to any avail.

• Once the bus arrived from Blantyre to Lilongwe, the final bus ride of my trip, I was struck by how many of the people stayed on the bus. It was around 10 or 11PM by that time, and I inquired if there was another stop, since it didn’t look like a very busy bus station when we got there. Maybe this was not the place I was supposed to get off. But it was, and all the people on the bus intended to stay right there. They were some of Malawi’s famous “bus sleepers” and they would remain on the locked bus until 5AM. I’m not sure if it was a law or policy, but bus companies were not supposed to let people off the bus after dark unless they had someone picking them up or were going to an announced nearby destination. So while I couldn’t wait to get to the nearby hotel to sleep and shower, they were combining lodging and transportation and seemed perfectly happy to be doing so. And rumor has it that it’s had a significant impact on crime rates dramatically in the country—far fewer people to be preyed upon late at night. Seems like good policy to me, but I’m also glad that I didn’t get locked on the bus myself.