Trusting the Locals

I met a man at the airport on Monday. Two days later I was at his house breaking the fast for the first night of Ramadhan with his entire family.


Allow me to explain..
I was waiting for my baggage at the airport on Monday after going to Aceh, when this middle aged Indonesian man casually started some conversation with me. Usually when this happens, people just want to practice their English or are fascinated with talking to a bule (slang for white person). I often just give simple short answers but since we had already waited over a half an hour for our baggage to arrive, I figured we had time so I started to tell him about my research. Within minutes we had exchanged numbers and he told me to call him to meet his wife who wears the jilbab. Now, most people would just take the number and smile and never look back. I, on the other hand, called him the next day. The day after that he and his lovely wife picked me up and we spent the next 8 hours together all around the city between his office, his sister's house, and his mother's house (stopping at many markets along the way) talking about the jilbab and Islam and just life in general. Between his wife and his daughters I was able to get some very interesting information for my research, but even more so I completely bonded with these people. They were truly a wonderful family, and insisted that I was part of their family too (sorry mom and dad, but they told me to call you and say that I would not be returning home). I hope to see them again soon.

Ika (the man from the airport's wife) and me

Yus' daughters and family members after dinner at their house

 This is part of my attempt to get back in the Wisconsin mindset. No offense to probably 90% of the people reading this, but living on the East Coast has left me somewhat jaded. When someone now approaches me, I tend to think that they must have some sort of ulterior motive. I hate this. Consequently, I am trying to revert back to my Midwest ideals that everyone is a genuinely good person and honestly just wants to help. My story above shows that it proves to trust people and luckily enough for me, I had a similar experience earlier that same day.
 I stopped into the visitor information center the other day to get some general information and ideas of things to do in the area. Before I even was able to ask any questions, I found myself deep in political and philosophical conversation with the old man who worked there. Eventually I told him that I was thinking about going to Bogor (a town about an hour away). He insisted that I just go with him, "not as work but for human relationship"... whatever that means. haha. Torn between being skeeved out and completely trusting of this old guy, he called me later that night and convinced me to go with him early the next morning. He took me to the train station, toured me around the beautiful botanical gardens all morning and refused to let me pay for anything. At the end of the day I kept expecting him to be like, "ok that will be 2 million rupiahs" but he just shook my hand, told me to call him again, and we parted ways. Crazy. For the record, he claimed he was 75 years old. If he would have told me that he was 40 I probably would have believed him, but then again Indonesians seem to age very well.

• On a different note, I (somewhat) figured out the deal with the phones. All phones here are prepaid. Additionally, there are about 6 main service providers, which work something like those in the US such that all calls between people with Verizon are free. Consequently, it is not uncommon for someone to have three phones: one with SIMPATI because this is the company that all of their co-workers use, one with XL to talk to their family, and a third with some other random company that is cheap to talk to most other providers with. Confused yet?? It seems like quite a hassel to have to deal with three phones and constantly figuring out which one to call who with. This also leads to the frequent problem of trying to have a conversation with someone while their other phones are ringing in the background. I will no longer complain about the phone service in America.

• One last noteworthy observation- In Islam women are required to cover their aura, which is all parts of the body except for the face and hands. Naturally, this means that feet are required to be covered too. However... most people here wear flip flops. This presents an interesting dilemma. How do they go about this issue? Socks with a toe-slit just between the first and second toes. Clever solution, if you ask me, but I think they look like camels. However many times women will wear dressy sandals or high heels and still wear these socks, which looks quite silly to American eyes.