Here are some snapshots of the festivities I have been up
to.
Riza’s wedding
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| Riza and Lia signing the legal documents |
Riza is my close friend in Mojoagung. He is the 10th
of 12 siblings (one person died though, as a baby) and my host cousin.
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| Here it is, the picture I have been waiting for for 16 months. All 11 siblings!!! |
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| Just a few of the grandkids...literally, just a few of them. There's about 35 and counting. |
We also work at schoo together.
His journey to marry was a tumultuous one. He was dating a girl for about 3
years and wanted to marry her. However, his parents didn’t approve because they
didn’t know her and didn’t want to get to know her. Additionally, they had
already arranged weddings for all their other childern (save one), so they
wanted to arrange Riza’s wedding, too. He was heartbroken but as a good Muslim
son does, he did what his parents asked. He met with the first girl they wanted
to set him up with, but he really wasn’t feeling it, so that quickly ended. The
next girl, Lia, was apparently more his type because a few months later, they
were married. How well did they really know each other before getting married
is not clear, though my guess is not well. Riza’s other siblings hardly knew
their spouse before marrying. One sister-in-law, Dia, told me that she was
scared to marry Ria’s brother Lutfe. Lutfe had really long hair that he didn’t
cut until the day before the wedding, so she thought he was a little crazy! Fit
and Khuna, Riza’s sisters, married men about 10 years older than them.
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| Riza and Lia at the ceremony at her house. Check out that fancy background! |
Anyhow, Riza and Lia clearly met a few times and got to know
each other a little. At least to the point where Riza would come to school and
I would be able to tell when he’d been to see Lia because he was so upbeat and
smiley.
Me: “You just saw Lia, didn’t you!?”
Riza (huge smile): “Yes, how did you know?!”
Me: “You are beaming!”
Riza (blushing, if a brown-skinned Indonesian could blush,
that is): Eeeeeeeeeee!
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| Aisyah and Salma, the cutest wedding attendees and Riza's nieces. |
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| Riza and I playing with Lia's hijab after she took it off! |
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| Riza (married the day before), brings Lia to his house, accompanied by her parents. |
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| Costume change! This is at the reception at Riza's house. |
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| Lia sans tons of make-up |
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| Cooking up a storm! |
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| Spying on Riza's make up session! |
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| Al Banjarian. Riza's friends spice up (or maybe "holy" up) his wedding part with some Arabic tunes. Aka reciting the Al Qur'an. Best to just call it what it is... |
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| Teaching 'em young! |
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| The crew Lutfe and wife Diah, Khuna (with the knife pointed at her brother), Titik, Nisak and Yul's wife Titin. |
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| People were EXHAUSTED! Just sleeping anywhere and everywhere!! |
.....................
That crazy day when I
took 18 kid to the pool…by bicycle
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for milk.
If you tell a neighbor kid that you went swimming, they are
gonna ask to go with you sometime.
If you promise them you will take them, they are gonna
invite their friends, too.
I knew all this, yet I was shocked by the result of this
group. As soon as I promised to take a handful of these kids to the pool, I
knew that there would be a ton more who wanted to come. So I told them for
every 3 kids, one adult. No adults, no pool. I was not about to bike with a
million kids down a very busy road (picture highway 19 in Sun Prairie, or the
highway into Northfield at Carleton).
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| Right before I freaked out they were gonna drown! |
The morning came and the one other adult girl who was
committed to going with me very Indonesian-ly cancelled. I was left madly
texting all my friends. “Have pity on me! There’s a million kids going to the
pool with me!!” After a 45-minute, anxiety filled waiting period, six of my
friends were ready to chaperone the 18, yes, 18 kids. Lord.
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| Endah is endel (loves attention)! |
We set out for the pool at least three miles away on lots of
bikes. All my friends were on their motorcycles with kids hanging off the front
and back. That still left about 12 kids on bikes. Imagine a long line of kids
going down the highway with a white lady screaming at them to get to the side.
Cars are whizzing past, the kids (who have never biked outside of the village)
are passing each other on the busy road. The motorcycle-riding chaperones are
going forward and falling back to scold the kids to stay in line.
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| Check out that awesome Muslim lady bathing suit!! |
Miraculously, we made it there and proceeded to swim. And by
swim, I must point out that only about 10 of these kids, if even 10, could
actually swim. So there was a lot of me catching kids as they went down the
waterslide. Only 2 of the girls went in over their heads once and almost went
under. Fortunately, one of the chaperones was there, because God forbid an
Indonesian pool have a lifeguard. Aka, there were over 150 kids there and no
lifeguard anywhere.
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| The crew. Lord. Have. Mercy. |
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| Thankfully, Aan was ready with tools in his motorcycle for when one of the kid's bikes needed some repair! |
...............
Weekend at Rois's House
Aside from being my es
degan (coconut juice) provider, Rois has also been a close friend since my
arrival! He was my Bahasa Indonesia/ Bahasa Jawa teacher for 2 months when I
first arrived in Mojoagung. He is fluent in English, Javanese, Indonesian, and
Arabic. He’s a middle school Arabic teacher now, but he’s going to school for a
second undergrad in English.
I met his wife Linda and son Azam and quickly fell in love
with his family.
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| Rois and Azam |
I have stayed the weekend at Linda’s family’s house, and a few
weeks ago headed over to Rois’s house in Mojokerto city. We made delectable gurami bakar (grilled fish). I played
with Azam. And I drank about 5 glasses of es
degan. Oh enak!
I was coached through cleaning and cutting the fish, but
Rois was unsatisfied with my crappy job. Whoops…
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| Filet that fish! |
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| Gurami Bakar (Grilled carp), oh enak! |
...............
MGMP Mojoagung
MGMP is a group of teachers of the same subject area who get
together and share ideas and information about the subject area. I attended a
few times with my school, but the English MGMP was sorta a drag. So I made my
own!
If you’ve ever read the book The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you will be familiar with a
“connector.” A connector is a person who is very good at bringing his/her
various social networks together and introducing people to each other. Since my
Carleton days this is something I have loved to do, and my new MGMP is no
different.
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| Commands, maybe? "Raise your arms!" |
So far, we have met 3 times. We have had PC volunteers,
middle school English teachers, high school English teachers, student teachers,
university students, private English tutors, and general English enthusiasts (read:
Rois!) come to the meetings. We have a blast hanging out and chatting. The best
part is that the attendees bring other friends, so the connections keep
growing. My hope is that this can be a really sustainable resource for English
speakers to gather and hang out even after I leave.
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| Unscrambling a story, "The three little cows" (best not to use pigs here as they are Muslim!) |
We have shared English vocab/grammar games, storytelling,
Total Physical Response (TPR) activities, and I remain nothing short of
dumbfounded by the humility, fluency, confidence, and passion of these people.
When people ask me how to help the education system in Indonesia, I tell them
that they don’t need me. The resources and the outstanding teachers are already
here (like everyone who comes to the MGMP). They are simply overworked and
underpaid.
........................
Lilik and Faik
I swear that friends in my village just come out of the
woodwork. I didn’t know Faik and
Lilik well until about 6 months ago, and now we are joined at the hip! Faik
teaches LES for elementary students in the evenings (tutoring). I teach about
10 elementary school students English on Tuesday afternoons at her house. After
that, we usually cook and hang out together.
I taught them the card game President.
Because this is not the USA with “beverages” as Julia says,
we use powder or make-up to draw on each other’s faces when we lose. I was
introduced to this concept months ago, but my friend Brian was totally confused
when we played cards with our friends when hiking Semeru.
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| Coret!!! |
Brian: “Why do they drink a glass of water when they lose?!”
Me: “Brian, this is Muslim Indonesia. Ain’t no alcohol
here!” So the loser’s choice is to get powder on his/her face or drink a full
glass of water. Brian promptly concluded that if anyone was gonna get sick from
this drinking game, it was not alcohol-related but the fact that that cup was
dirty and definitely had some bacteria growing on it. That’s living on the edge
for this particular group of Indonesians, I guess!
....................
Idul Adha
Idul Adha is the
Muslim holiday to remember the time Abraham was going to sacrifice Ishmael but
God delivered Ishmael and provided a ram instead. In the Christian story
(Genesis chapters 16, 21, and 22), Abraham is going to sacrifice Issac because
he is the true son of Abraham and Sarah, the son that they waited to have for
so long. Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Hagar, a maidservant of Sarah. God
promised Abraham many descendants but Abraham essentially got tired of waiting
and had a child with Hagar. This son, Ishmael, would have descendents who
became Muslim, while Issac’s descendants would be Christians.
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| Walking the goats pre-slaughter |
Muslims do not believe in animal sacrifice as a way to be
forgiven of their sins. It is simply a way to remember the sacrifice of
Abraham, God’s mercy, and the sacrifice of ourselves as we serve God on earth.
Additionally, one of the five pillars of Islam is to give to the poor, and
giving out the meat from this sacrifice is a way to do so.
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| Nothing like watching a cow die while one's name is on the list of people for which this cow is being sacrificed! (Clarification, not MY name, just names in general) |
My school sacrificed 1 cow and about 6-7 goats. Cows and
goats are very typical of Indonesian sacrifices. Maybe a lamb or a sheep here
or there, too. One of the PC staff went to the Muslim country of Morocco last
year at Idul Adha, and she said that
they celebrate this holiday there even more than Idul Fitri (the day after Muslims finish fasting for Ramadhan). She said the streets were
literally red with blood. In this part of Indonesia, this is not the case.
Generally, people gather at their mushollas
(small mosques) by their house to sacrifice a cow or goat with their neighbors.
They distribute the meat to the neighbors and that’d that. My school
distributed meat to all the teachers (this year I got some good cuts of meat as
opposed to last year’s mixture of innards, skin/fur, and a little meat!), the
poorer students, and community members.
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| People are always strangely gleeful to have their picture taken as they hack away at the meat... Note that my students are just sitting around the meat in their school uniforms that they will just put on again the next day for class... |
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| Portioning out the meat, just on some old tarp. |
....................
English Camp
This English Camp could not have been more awesome.
I didn't plan anything, so it will be 100% sustainable.
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| My girls! 15 people in a gutted out van? No problem-o! |
The woman leading it is named Bu Yam. That’s “Boo Yum.” The
co-leader was a woman named “Sofa.” “You can call me Sofa, but not chair!” she
joked. The student representative was Hani. That’s “Honey.” These are their real names!!
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| Bu Yam, after taking the center stage, held her arms up like this, and then prompted freaked out. "Hello, I am Bu Yams Imyute (The cute Miss Yams). I am so happy you are here. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I'm standing like this and I haven't bathed yet! You poor people, smelling me!" What a lady! |
I gathered 12 students, 2 friends, rented a van, and drove
up to Wonosalam. We joined other high school students, university students, and
community members in a beautiful, secluded bamboo structure.
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| Rosyid and our wheels |
I presented about English idioms, symbols (I love you in
sign language, you drive me crazy, winking), and how to interact well with
foreigners. Bu Yam presented on fun grammar, and Sofa did listening and
pronunciation. We had a campfire, a yell-yell competition (like group cheers),
and outbound. All in all, it was an exhausting but very successful weekend.
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| Yell-yell competition (team cheer) |
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| Andrian is the most spirited of them all. Rivaled only by another guy nicknamed "Panda." |
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| Problem-solving |
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| A birthday celebration. Hit with flour! Instantly aged for one's birthday |
