August 19, 2010
Epilogue
Now that I’ve officially been back in the States for 3 days, I wanted to write a follow-up post with some closing highlights. Other than tests, ending presentations/evaluations, and traveling, I don’t have an excuse for not keeping my blog updated the last 2 weeks of the trip. But I can also say that the time was well-spent with the people I’d grown to know and love in Indonesia.
First, here’s a quick rundown of some final experiences in Yogya, Jakarta, and en route to the US…
After 6 weeks of relatively laid back and conversation-based language classes, Sanata Dharma University decides to give us 5 tests during our final week. They covered the whole realm of language learning skills- grammar, reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Yes, I reviewed all my notes and unending lists of vocab, yet buying street-food, directing taxis, and chatting with the ladies next door still proved to be the best way to study. I was pleasantly surprised when I thought back to the days (only a few weeks ago) when my brain wanted to shut out the foreign noises that incredulously composed a language, when the urge to revert to Spanish was irresistible, and when I was met with blank stares after inadvertently rearranging the vowels within words. We’ve come a long way. After our tests, Sanata Dharma gave us a closing ceremony, and by that I mean a full-fledged 2 hours of singing, dancing, and of course eating. We all dressed in traditional constumes and performed (my friends and I performed a Javanese dance we had learned from our culture classes). It was an entertaining time to be had by everyone. Overall, I really appreciated the time and effort Sanata Dharma poured into the ceremony, which was indicative of the time and effort they poured into teaching us overall. We were very fortunate to have such personable, enthusiastic, and intentional teachers.
Once classes were over, we had 5 days of free time in Yogya before heading back to Jakarta. These days were both exciting and bittersweet. No longer tied to the “class and work” routine, I was free to make plans and venture around Yogya on my own initiative, yet I also felt locked into a countdown of “the lasts.” I generally spent my time doing last minute shopping, meeting friends for coffee and dinner, and putting together a couple of presentations for FINIP’s capstone seminar. God also provided me some dance-related ministry opportunities at YIC. At the Sunday service, I danced to the song “Hallowed” by Jennifer Knapp (the lyrics are the Lord’s Prayer) and improv’d to “Heart of Worship.” That same weekend, I met with the children’s Sunday School teachers and taught them a dance to “My Jesus, My Savior” that they plan on teaching their kids during the fall. Once again, God proved His ability to move, despite limited choreography time and physical dance space. Sunday evening, the whole congregation went out to a restaurant called “Quack Quack” (named appropriately for its fried duck entrees) and I was grateful for one last time to talk with them.
In Jakarta, the capstone seminar passed much more quickly than I expected. I enjoyed listening to presentations from each group about their respective NGOs, and we also had several brainstorming sessions to compile feedback for IIE/IIEF. Overall, we emphatically encouraged the program to continue. Especially for a pilot year program, it was exceedingly well-organized and thoughtfully prepared.
And now for the journey home… My trip consisted of 43 hours of air and airports, and the majority of those hours were lodged in Saturday as I travelled backwards through time differences. In New York, I was callously welcomed back to the US with frank orders from customs and security officials – quite a contrast from Indonesian flight personnel. After a few delays, I safely arrived in Abilene, exhausted and glad to be home.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed time to process and string together some final thoughts. To close, here’s a small summary of the things I’ll miss most about Indonesia, and the things I’m happy to say I can live without. Some are funny, some are practical, some are more meaningful than they probably appear. I hope they can provide one last snapshot into Indonesia.
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What I can live without…
- Using “the force” to cross the street. In Indonesia, the buses, cars, and swarm of motorbikes make it nearly impossible to find a gap in traffic. If you want to get from one side to another, you have to muster your courage and use your hand as a stop sign while you dart across.
- No AC. Our bedrooms were furnished with individual air conditioners, as were our classrooms at Sanata Dharma. But for the most part, indoor sweating was a daily companion.
- Attempting to phone taxi drivers. I was pretty comfortable with face-to-face communication, but understanding someone over the phone was a different story. Since our boardinghouse was also in a difficult-to-describe location, I usually ended up asking the owner of the downstairs mini-mart to call a taxi for me, or my friends and I would walk the 2-3 kilos to the nearest taxi stand.
- Being my own photo exhibit. Whether it was the zoo, the beach, or the market, I was a popular target for picture-taking. I didn’t mind the attention at first, but after 6 weeks I found myself trying to avoid eager faces with cameras. On the other hand, I usually had my own camera with me as well, so I guess it was a fair trade off.
What I’ll miss…
- Breakfast for a quarter. In the mornings before school, breakfast was always available from shops across the street. We could get rice made with coconut milk, fried bananas, fried pastries filled with vegetables and chicken, mystery snacks wrapped in banana leaves, and more. The best part is that for about 3 items, I usually paid about Rp 2.500, which is a quarter in USD.
- Invites from friends. Without fail, when we would meet a new friend for the first time, he/she was always eager to take us around the city, invite us to dinner, etc. The Yogya culture is well-known for being friendly and hospitable.
- Bargaining. Once I mastered my numbers in Indonesian, the art of bargaining took on a whole new enjoyment. I usually try to avoid shopping in the US, but something about knocking the price of a shirt down from Rp 80.000 to Rp 25.000 is a little addicting.
- Bahasa Indonesia. Learning Indonesian brought with it many laughs, confused looks, and entertaining stories. The simple grammar structure, countless opportunities to converse, and relevancy of knowing the language always encouraged us to keep communicating.
- Sights and sounds. It’s impossible to express Yogya’s atmosphere in words. Just imagine a public bulletin board that is overflowing with fliers and announcement postings. Now, extend the length of that bulletin board for several blocks, and you have a picture of all the signs crowding Yogya’s streets. Add in a mix of people – market sellers and buyers, girls wearing the hijab, street-food vendors, people napping on a shaded stretch of sidewalk, tourists, students, and beggars. Also add in the call to prayer 5 times daily for Muslims, the freely roaming chickens, the motorbikes, cars, and buses, and the pedicabs and horse-drawn carriages. Fill your plate with a portion of white rice and fried chicken, or choose from fried noodles, meatballs, spicy fish, sweet eggs, roasted corn, and fresh fruit and veggies. This is the atmosphere that welcomes you in Yogya.
NGO work
The following description of YABINKAS is an excerpt from my FINIP evaluation.
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YABINKAS is a social welfare organization that primarily seeks to benefit women and children. It promotes values of gender equality, minority empowerment, and community development through numerous forms of education. Its operations are multi-faceted and all of its departments are treated with equal importance. YABINKAS provides most of its services in Yogya: schools/playgroups for neighborhood children, family counseling, small-business development workshops, NGO networking discussions, and street-food production. It also reaches out to Yogya’s surrounding villages and even other islands in Indonesia, mostly through trainings and workshops that promote women empowerment. Yet despite this extensive influence, YABINKAS is a family-based organization that aims to stay small-scale.
As an intern, I felt that my main task within YABINKAS was to absorb as much about the organization (both its areas of operation and the causes it advocates) as possible. I then gained experience by working directly within many of its departments, offering skills and ideas as needed. I also provided feedback to our director through a weekly journal and final evaluation.
Main projects:
- Library- One of the ways YABINKAS generates revenue is through operating an in-house library. Bianca and I helped shelve books and catalogue the ones that were numbered incorrectly. This was a good “beginning job” for us, yet I also feel that it initially distanced Bianca and I from the rest of YABINKAS, since we were usually by ourselves in the library.
- Village training- We attended a village training where our director was addressing ideas about gender equality. We observed the way she approached the villagers – an adult farming community who has elementary-level education. Afterward, I enjoyed debriefing the training with our director, and I tried to brainstorm ideas/activities she can use for similar trainings in the future. I grew to greatly respect our director and the work she does within the villages.
- School/playgroup- We assisted in one of YABINKAS’ neighborhood playgroups by playing with the children and creating a couple of games/activities for them. Our favorite activity was teaching them English words with flashcards, and they learned fast. At times, I felt like a baby-sitter instead of a teacher or intern. But overall, I appreciated being around children from the local community and learning about how the playgroup is operated (how much parents pay, how long the children stay in the school, etc).
- Curriculum- We developed 3 sets of curriculum for the school, which helped me to recognize an added benefit to spending so much time in the school itself. After direct interaction with the children, Bianca and I had a better understanding of how to format the curriculum and what activities to include.
- Teaching English- When Bianca and I had spare time, we taught English informally both at YABINKAS and also at IDEA (the NGOs were located close to each other). We focused on basic conversation, grammar, and pronunciation.
- Translation/Editing- This was probably my favorite “project” to work on. While Bianca worked on translating a book from English to Indonesian, I edited some of our director’s articles that she had written in rough English. The articles were about case studies and analyses of women who had been imprisoned because they were trapped in human trafficking. I enjoy writing, and I appreciated the challenge of diving into a project that lasted about 2 weeks.
Measuring Influence
During FINIP’s final capstone seminar in Jakarta, everyone will give a presentation over our respective NGOs and the projects we worked on. Bianca and I have been thinking about our presentation- we can talk about attending village trainings, working on translation or editing projects, cataloguing YABINKAS’ library, developing lesson plans for neighborhood schools, and teaching English classes. Sounds like we’ve been busy, right?
But in reality (and the reason I haven’t elaborated more on these projects in my posts), the parts of this trip most meaningful to me don’t consist of anything I’ve done. The main reason I was initially frustrated with YABINKAS was because they hadn’t prepared tasks for Bianca and I to dive into as interns. Even now, our director is still more interested in feeding us and sharing stories, which sounds like a great deal at first, but after awhile you start to question if there’s a point to the internship. Yes, Bianca and I have been active in a scattered variety of YABINKAS’ services, but I still wonder how much we’re really helping the organization. Several of the other partnerships feel the same way about their NGOs.
Once we’re back at our home universities in the fall, FINIP requires us to carry out a campus outreach project to promote the program. I’m planning on hosting a table at study abroad fairs and speaking to internationally-focused student organizations. I have plenty to share in regards to learning bahasa Indonesia, living in a foreign country, and growing from daily experiences, yet after a summer’s worth of work in an NGO, it almost sounds absurd that I don’t have significant “accomplishments” to recount, at least according to Western ideals. Here in Indonesia, success is less quantitative; it’s better defined by relationships and human interaction. These are concepts that I often read about in Communication classes, but they have a whole new weight when you experience them firsthand.
I’m grateful that I’m living with 5 other students who feel similarly, and some good conversations have come as a result of our experiences. All of us are like-minded in the sense that we want to help others and believe that we’re making a difference while we’re here. Yet we (especially the Americans) have had to swallow the reality that when we define the idea of “making a difference” by a number of works or importance of projects, we limit the scope of its capabilities.
Making a difference, leaving an impact, influencing others. All these qualities are good aspirations, but the question is how are they possible? I like to think of the significance of good works as an endlessly dividing fraction. At the time they’re performed, they may seem desperately needed, sincerely intentioned, and flawlessly executed. Yet as time passes, no matter how great the work once was, its significance slowly but surely becomes negligible. The same can be said for people as a whole- no matter how great of an impact we want to make and how hard we try to do so, we are fallible and replaceable. And even the current relationships we have will one day die just as we will. Yet for some odd reason, eternity is set on our hearts. We want to be part of an infinite influence. I describe this as “odd” because of the paradox that comes with mortal people being able to yearn for eternity in the first place. It’s not part of human nature. Our nature is fixated in the present world, the world in which the significance of both our contributions and ourselves are endlessly dividing fractions. The beautiful side of the paradox is that we are created in the image of an eternal Creator. We can share in His desires for eternity. The challenge is recognizing these desires for what – for Whose – they really are.
July 27, 2010
Taste of Translation
I just started a new project within my NGO. The director of YABINKAS, Ibu Nunuk (the same woman who leads village trainings, coordinates and networks within NGOs, travels worldwide, and does anything else in her power to promote advocacy work), has written several articles on women’s rights in developing countries that will be published as academic research. Her language proficiency is high enough that she writes the articles directly in English, but usually the grammar is incorrect and the style of writing falls short of academic standards. Being a language nerd myself, the task of “editing” these articles is a welcome challenge.
I quote “editing” to explain that even though the articles are in English from the start, I still encounter a lot of language and translation barriers. The biggest challenge is retaining the original nuances of Ibu Nunuk’s writing while reorganizing entire sentences and sometimes paragraphs in a way that an academic English audience will accept. Usually, the mistakes are grammatical and relatively easy to fix. For example, sometimes Ibu places a modified noun in front of its adjective- “lifestyle oppressed,” instead of “oppressed lifestyle.” But other times, she throws in an ambiguous phrase like “feminization needed to fix problem,” without being clear as to what the problem actually is or how feminization can be used to fix it. Or possibly, the reference is perfectly clear in Indonesian writing (which is very simple syntactically), but I have to add meaning and interpretation for the paragraph to make sense in English. I have a list of questions to ask Ibu tomorrow to make sure I correctly understand the intended meaning and emphasis of her writing. I also want to be as transparent as possible when relating facts and case studies. For example, the article I’m working on now combines several interviews Ibu conducted with young women (early 20s) who are in prison in Jakarta. They are awaiting their execution because they were sold and trapped in narcotic mafia networking. Ibu recounts each of their stories and then analyzes their situations as a whole. I was astonished when I first read these studies. Neither their details nor their conclusions can flippantly be reworded.
But all in all, my work is cut out for me with nice, straight edges. I’m working from a source text in English, and I have easy access to its author, who I can directly question when needed. I can’t even imagine the challenges that must arise when people are translating (random example) koine Greek into a marginalized tribal language that has an exclusively different form of grammar and cultural references. Add these linguistic difficulties with the fact that the words being translated carry infinitely more weight than any type of human rights issue. No, not a random example at all. Working on my articles in YABINKAS has often brought to mind the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators, an international ministry whose mission is to translate the Word of God into the 2200 minority languages that are still without it. Wycliffe missionaries are pursuing the humanly impossible task of “interpreting” the Bible so that other people groups can understand it and relate to it personally. When I think of the list of questions I have for Ibu, I’m reminded of the countless “translation check” and “back translation” processes that Wycliffe performs in pursuit of accuracy and correct understanding. Yet regardless of all their precautions and revisions, they must ultimately rely on the Spirit to speak, or write, its way through their linguistic knowledge, Biblical discernment, and petition to God for a fruitful translation of Scripture.
Conversations about Bible translation have come up a couple of times during the past few weeks. I recently met a missionary family who is preparing to move from Yogya to the island of Papua to pastor a church there. Their home church in the Netherlands also supports Wycliffe translators in Papua. Additionally, I’ve been talking with another woman who coordinates a college student ministry in Yogya about the possibility of supporting Wycliffe translators in Indonesia as a long-term mission project. I’m hoping to talk with a group of the students themselves once they come back from summer holiday. Once again, it’s been a blessing to see how God opens doors and convicts hearts.
July 21, 2010
Ramayana Ballet, Borobudur, the Sultan’s Palace, and Water Castle
Some of the most popular tourist attractions within Yogya- enjoy!
July 20, 2010
Touring Takeaways
The past two weekends have been an exciting whirlwind of traveling and touring. Last weekend, the FINIP participants from Bandung and Jakarta came to stay with us and see some of Yogya’s main attractions, including the Sultan’s Palace; Borobudur (the largest Buddhist temple in the world), Prambanan (a Hindu temple); and the traditional Ramayana ballet. This past weekend, the majority of us flew from our respective cities to the island of Bali, another tourist destination. Here, we experienced three different beaches, some parasailing, river rafting, quite a bit of shopping, and a couple more temples.
If I had to choose a favorite activity, rafting would win. I’ve rafted a couple of times in the States, but just like the outdoor activities from Java Summer Camp, rafting in Indonesia ranks higher on the intensity scale than it does in Wyoming. In my previous rafting excursions, I was introduced to various rowing techniques and ways to navigate the raft. Here, I learned four different commands for how to best stay in the raft through 2 hours of a rocky river, a four meter waterfall, and low-hanging bamboo bridges. And as if the exhilaration wasn’t enough, during the calmer stretches of our trip we enjoyed a visual feast of palm trees and waterfalls descending from the sky. It was a remarkable illustration for the beginning of Psalm 19, of “the heavens declaring the glory of God, the sky above proclaiming His handiwork… their voice goes out through all the earth.”
I was grateful for the opportunity to experience so much and reunite with our friends from Jakarta and Bandung. At the same time, as we drove back from the airport to our boardinghouse last night, I couldn’t have felt happier to settle back in to the “daily life” routine. Yogya has become home in Indonesia. For me, the best way to maximize the rest of my time is by doing less “touristy” things and simply enjoying living here. I’m excited to spend our final 3 weeks walking around traditional markets, meeting new friends in cafes, and exploring more of the city and surrounding villages.
July 15, 2010
Straight Through the Trees
There’s a local hangout place called Alun-Alun Selatan that my friends and I went to the first weekend we were here. Two large willow trees rooted about 7-8 meters apart from each other mark this place as unique, as does the main challenge associated with them. According to a Javanese myth, if you can walk blindfolded in a straight line through the trees, starting about 15 meters back, your wish will come true. So of course, everyone has to try, including my friends and I. It’s quite a spectacle. The whole area is clustered with groups of friends circled around the blindfolded person, taking pictures and giggling to themselves as Frankenstein walks with arms outstretched in what he hopes is a straight line. It shouldn’t be that difficult, right? And as a dancer, I have a good sense of balance and hip alignment, so I should be able to successfully place one foot directly in front of the other.
Yet after my turn, I took off my blindfold to find myself far to the right of the two trees. Another of my friends naturally turned to the left, only he ended up making a gradual 180° rotation and found himself heading in the opposite direction. Both of us could have sworn we were walking straight. We didn’t trip over our feet, and we knew that we never took a huge side-step or did anything obvious to cause such a tangent. What happened was a series of small steps that were ever so slightly angled a few degrees in one direction or the other. At first, the shift seems negligible. But thanks to the rules of geometry, down the line you end up in a much different place than where you should be.
This was the beginning metaphor I shared at the Yogyakarta International Congregation this past Sunday. As Christians, we are naturally inclined to veer away from the straight path in different directions. Yes, we are sanctified and secure in Christ our Savior, but we are still fallible humans who can’t will ourselves to go straight. Unfortunately, Satan knows and exploits the rules of geometry. He doesn’t have to tempt us to knowingly step to the side, and he doesn’t have to tangle our feet and trip us. All he has to do is rotate us a few degrees. We won’t even notice at first, but as we keep walking along that diagonal, we’ll stray further and further from the path we’re called to walk as Christ’s disciples.
Sometimes Satan tilts us to the left, sometimes the right. Sometimes he overcorrects us from one direction to another. But luckily for us, God, who is walking alongside us, isn’t like the friends who laugh, take pictures, and are overall unconcerned with where we’re going. As CS Lewis says in “The Screwtape Letters,” when Satan approaches us to find a child of God on his or her knees seeking direction, he is powerless to divert us. With God as our guide, we can successfully complete our mission of walking straight through the trees, right into our “wish” of an intimate, eternal relationship with Him where we know Him fully, just as we are fully known.
