It's May 15th. My program officially ends in 7 days. I'm leaving Indonesia in 3 weeks. It's surreal, sitting back and thinking about how quickly time has flown by. I'm a bit hesitant to return home, although I miss my friends and family. I'm anxious to see how how I adapt to the fast-paced atmosphere of American cities. I'm so accustomed to the island pace here, jam karet, or rubber time...delayed flights, meetings that start an hour late, no sense of rushed deadlines. I've fallen in love with doing things on my own personal time frame - zipping around on my motorbike, walking through the traditional market, chilling after school with my kids. I love learning Bahasa Indonesia and being active in my community here. It feels like home. It IS home.
Right now, I'm sitting here, looking around my room, feeling like I just moved in last week. In the blink of an eye, I'll be on the plane heading home, bracing myself for culture shock and familiar surroundings that now seem so distant in my past. I'm trying to figure out how to jam everything I've accumulated into my suitcases without incurring horrendous fees from greedy American airlines. Maybe I'll cross that bridge when I come to it in 7 days. Or...maybe I'll start packing now, since I seem to have accumulated an entire life's worth of oleh-oleh from friends here in Indonesia.
As I flip through photos, though, I'm nervous because I'm not sure how people back home have changed. In July, I'll attend my best friend's wedding as the maid of honor. It's such a surreal feeling, anticipating the impending marriage of my best friend since 4th grade. Suddenly, I've realized I'm growing up. My friends are getting married and several of them have children. It's an odd feeling to be the person who isn't ready to settle down and who hasn't found that one person I want to spend my life with. When I go home in June, I'll see people I haven't seen in almost a year, former romantic interests, close friends, neighbors, relatives. But I'm not the same person.
Looking back over the years and over the past eight months, I realize how much I've grown from the personal experiences and changes I've gone through. From spending time in school in Amish country, Pennsylvania to moving alone to Washington, D.C. to spending whirlwind crazy busy years at U of M, my experiences have broken, molded, and developed my worldviews and who I am as a person. I came, I saw, I learned, I grew. I've taught kids from all different backgrounds and ages, worked on campaigns, interviewed religious leaders for my research project in Jakarta, and talked with refugees from North Korea and human trafficking victims. I've met people and lost touch with people and found new people. I've loved someone deeply, lost someone close to me, and found new people who've contributed so much to my life. Looking in retrospect, the twists and turns of the past several years have helped me grow in ways I never could have imagined. Of all the experiences I've had, Indonesia, my current life adventure, has perhaps changed me the most.
Indonesia has profoundly influenced the way I look at everything. I've seen poverty unlike anything I've ever experienced in the States - beggars who look like Holocaust survivors with bones protruding from wrinkled, dehydrated skin. The economic disparities here are shocking. I've browsed at Jakarta's largest and fanciest mall, Plaza Indonesia, filled with exorbitantly wealthy Indonesian women and their nannies who juggle their bosses' Tiffany's and Gucci bags and privileged children at the same time. Right outside the doors of the mall, there are shacks consisting of boards nailed together, where entire families huddle under a roof filled with holes, unable to keep out the tropical rains that daily flood Jakarta. In Jogja, children as young as 2 years old weave their way through crowded streets to rap on car windows, begging for money. Seeing such poverty on a daily basis has shown me how little I need to be happy
Indonesia has taught me to accept circumstances instead of bemoaning when things don't go my way. The attitude here, from Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus alike, is that everything happens for a reason and you can't waste time wishing for situations to change. "Insyaallah, if God wills" is what I hear from friends and neighbors on a daily basis. Even my 15-year-old student, whose father passed away at a young age in December, told me that God wills death at times and we have to move on and keep living. One week, I was having a rough time - plans fell apart, doors to opportunities closed, the students were having a difficult time paying attention in class - and I was sitting at home in tears. I texted my counterpart and friend to share some of my frustrations. She responded, "Rachel, everything happens for a reason because God directs our lives. If something does not work out, it is because God did not want it to. He has something better for you and you have to trust that everything will be better than you imagine. You can't waste time worrying about things you cannot control. You have to trust that something better is in store for you."
Indonesia has demonstrated the characteristics I've always been taught to live, but shamefully often fail to implement in my life. For example, people here are genuinely kind and often go out of their way to help strangers. As a busy American, it's often easy for me to overlook people in my rush here and there. I was stuck in the Medan airport, after trying unsuccessfully to book a flight that Lion Air refused to let me book over the phone or internet. I was at the ticket counter, trying again unsuccessfully to get on standby for a flight to Jakarta. A kindly, middle-aged man noticed my flustered attempts to communicate in Bahasa Indonesia, leaned over to the counter, and spent the next ten minutes advocating my cause in Bahasa Indonesia. I got on standby and was able to get a flight to Jakarta. Another time, I took a harrowing bus ride through the rolling hills of Kalimantan back to my hometown of Bontang. When I got out of the bus, a woman I had barely acknowledged offered to drive me home, stopping along the way to buy me lunch and insisting on giving me her number in case I needed anything in Bontang. People have continually showed me unbelievable kindness since I've been here.
Indonesia has taught me to make the best of the worst circumstances. When I visited Jogjakarta, I took a motorcycle ride up through the mountainous roads leading to Mount Merapi, the volcano that had violently erupted in October, killing many people and devastating the surrounding landscape. I arrived at the outskirts of skeletal villages, filled with the remains of houses barely standing, with windows blown out by scorching air, and walls crumbling to the ground. The landscape looked like a nuclear holocaust zone - everything was grey and bare, like a ghost town. As I trekked toward Merapi on foot, sifting through ash knee-deep, the villages disappeared, for those closest to the mountain were buried meters deep in ash and hardening lava. In spite of the devastation, though, people had already moved back to the location and were rebuilding their houses. While it is true that many people still suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, others have begun the long process of rebuilding, refusing to allow the disaster break their spirits.
Through all of my experiences, particularly Indonesia, I am convinced that the point of human existence is to bring joy to others and ease the sufferings of this harsh, brutal world. Life isn't about the cliques we form or games we play to get jobs, become popular, gain friends. It's not about partying and drinking, or spending your life pouring over data in labs. It's not about competition. It's about compassion. We shouldn't be so wrapped up in drama, work, and our own lives that we miss the opportunities to reach others around us. I've met so many amazing kids who live with so few material possessions, but whose passion for being community leaders is helping them make a difference in Bontang and in their schools. Take Dzakiyyah, for example - the student I brought to the WORDS competition in Jakarta. She's a sweet girl, top in her class, and she's passionate about making a difference in her world. She comes from difficult circumstances - her father recently passed away in December, leaving her mother with 8 children ages 3-16. Yet she doesn't let her circumstances extinguish her passion for human rights and for bringing gender equality and respect for women to Indonesia. That's why I'm here, to help kids develop into compassionate individuals who will change the world. I want my kids to learn English so they can communicate with a globalizing world in a global language and share their passions and aspirations with others.
This experience has been so deeply rewarding in so many ways. I can't begin to verbalize the extent to which I've been blessed.
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