I spent over 24 hours in transit, leaving Boston at 5:30 PM on June 28 and flying to Newark, to Stockholm, to Kuala Lumpur, finally arriving in Surabaya at 10 AM on June 30 (shout out to Jamie for turning 20). I was greeted at the airport by the welcoming Dunkin glow, which is all over Indonesia, who knew? Cooler than a Starbucks anyway.
I caught a cab to my hostel only to find that my group had just taken off to visit a university in a neighboring city. I was jetlagged and unwashed but ready to rage this new place so I jumped on Dian Natalia’s motorbike and cruised around the city. Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia, which is the 4th most populous country in the world. I don’t know what I expected but it was not this bursting metropolis. Luckily I had a down guide, and I learned much about the city and Surabayan youth culture from my new friend. This is the first time I’ve been oriented to a new country outside of the context of an official program, and I have to say zooming through crowded city streets perilously perched on the back of a motorcycle with a cute 20-something comes highly recommended.
The next day I met up with my volunteer group, 12 American and British college students including myself. At my request we visited some Lonely Planet highlights. First was Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong, a Chinese temple with mixed elements of Buddhism and Daoism. This temple was active, with older Chinese genuflecting and rolling oracle bones. It was quite beautiful, but it made me miss China and wonder what is uniquely Indonesian. I got a clearer idea of this when we walked up the street to Mesjid Ampel, the most sacred mosque in Surabaya. We were forbidden from entering as none of us are Muslim, but just trawling through the crowded marketplace and snapping some flicks of surrounding architecture provided a satisfying first experience of Indonesian Islam, a unique cultural formation I look forward to exploring in greater depth.
After only one full day in Sura I had to move on again, grudgingly, but filled with anticipation for the next destination. This was Malang, the city where I will be living and teaching for the next four weeks. I moved into my host house on Papaya Street, but will not meet my family until later in the week as they are currently touring China (I’m banking on a month of heavy Chinese practice). A few days ago we visited schools. I’ll be teaching at a private high school five minutes away from my house. Additionally, I am the only volunteer who will be teaching night classes. These will be at a vocational school for adults who can’t afford university, so I am extremely excited about this. I’m suspicious of the overall premise of international volunteerism (a subject for another post), but I feel that by teaching this night class I’ll be directly contributing to a truly underprivileged group of individuals for whom speaking English is an invaluable skill set. Plus, they already like me because I am in a punk band.
There’s a lot more I could bore you with but I’ll just leave you with abstractions for now. East Java is just south of the equator, the light is direct and pure, the day is from 6 to 6, the night is lit by a horizontal crescent moon that looks like the winking eye of black sky. And the light permeates everything and turns color into an almost palpable dimension of the environment, a mist through which I’m wandering and which permeates my reflections, blots out the minutiae that have been clouding my mind in recent weeks and allows me to be transcendently here, physically grounded and metaphysically ground into the fabric of what’s around me. For the first time in a long while I feel free, I feel now. And it’s winter here with nightly lows in the 70s and I can deal.
Next time: Jagger meets a Tiger, water saves me again
-Josh
1 comment:
what up homey. keep up with this shit bro. im enjoying it
i want extensive street food blogging. we will need it for inspriration
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