FISH, SUPER SWEET TEA, AND CHAIN SMOKERS

After spending ten days going from island to island, visiting village to village, I was really sick of eating fish (not too often actually, but sea food is never my favorite), sipping super sweet tea they offered at every house we visited, and murdering myself slowly, being surrounded by chain smokers. Some of them said it would be better for him to break up with his love than to break his smoking chain. Oh, my!

But I took delight in the motor boat rides back and forth to the small island. It was not too short to be dissatisfied of wanting more to still float, but not too long to start feeling the sea sick. I loved feeling the wind blowing my hair, and the fresh sea water splashing to my face through the slightly open window. And I loved staring at the deep blue ocean around our small boat. Never seen any water so blue like that.

And I couldn’t help thinking about the tsunami victims. The sea had been their source of life, but then suddenly it hit them with death. Hundreds, even thousand of death. It took their belonging and beloved ones. I wonder how long it will take until the survivors can enjoy the sea again, without any trauma or sorrow.

It’s so funny how people in Java were in panic over the potential tsunamis or earthquakes that now seemed to be able to happen everywhere, and there I was, out in the sea, wishing I could be near it as often as possible, because it was so beautiful.

The following day I had another boat ride, it was longer, but still pleasant. The color gradation of the water really took my breath away. I was so amazed to see how direct the deep blue turned into light greenish blue when there were tiny islands with corals surrounding them. Very pretty.

I had to speak in front of lots of people who were gathered formally by their leader, some ladies kissed me when we said goodbye. They were the smallest village of all, yet they took us very seriously. I was sad to learn that in all the villages we visited, the local language we were surveying is dying, because Indonesian has been invading and replacing it more and more. One thing those villagers didn’t know was, that kids who grow up as bilingual or trilingual are usually smarter than the monolinguals.

As usual, we had to sleep at many inns and houses, and it was getting worse as we went further to the more isolated areas. In some beds, I was ruthlessly bitten by some invisible bugs. I have a very sensitive skin that gets irritated or itchy very easily, so it was torturing me. And as we went into many different bathrooms, we often asked each other, “is the bathroom civilized?” before going there ourselves (the sweet tea made our bladder short, of course). It is funny how our ‘standard’ of calling the place civilized went lower and lower. As long as there was a hole and relatively closed, we called it civilized.

Well, I’m not a city girl nor a Jane. And I prefer the freshness of the sea or the green forest to a polluted city of course, but after more than a week in the boonies I found myself missing Jakarta. And after a few weeks in the office working on boring reports, I usually miss the adventures. But I think I shall be happy living in a smaller city like Bandung, for example. Ohh, after too much traveling, I don’t really know where I belong now.