Archipelagos

These past 4 years have been almost exclusively spent on an island—Java. In addition almost all of our travel has extended to other islands. While these island experiences have been incredibly diverse in their characteristics it’s fun to start linking them together in different ways. We have visited:

·         Some of the largest islands including an island continent (Australia), the worlds 3^rd (Borneo), 6^th (Sumatra), 11^th (Celebes or Sulawesi), 12^th (South Island of New Zealand) and 13^th (Java) largest geographic islands in the world.

·         2 of the world’s most densely populated islands (Singapore and Hong Kong)

·         The world’s largest island by population (Java)

·         Islands off of other islands (Nias off of Sumatra, Gili Trawangan off Lombok, Bunaken off of Sulawesi, Philip Island off of Australia).

·         An island in a river delta (some tiny little island in the Mekong delta where we stayed for a night) and an island on an Island (Samosir at Lake Toba on Sumatra)

·         Both tropical island resort paradises (Bali and Lombok) and islands with glaciers and penguins (New Zealand’s south island and Philip island)

·         A island housing a famous volcano (Krakatoa)

 Not only are these islands linked statistically, they may also be grouped by our experiences in each of them with different friends that we may have travelled with, stayed with or even the stories that we have shared with others about those places.   Perhaps most of all, these places can be joined by the Christian communities that exist there, even though often we just travelled there to see a new place and have a good time.

When speaking to friends back in North America, Janet and I often feel that our experiences in Indonesia (Java) have been a very isolating. Realities (friends, experiences, day to day life, travel) in Jakarta are just so different that any attempt to connect our life here to a North American context has been almost impossible. Some of this is our fault as we lack the ability to tell a good story or to seize opportunities to relate relevant perspectives to our friends back home.   In spite of this fact, as we end this journey here and move back to the U.S. I pray that our time in Indonesia will build archipelagos of knowledge, understanding, and faith to all the places where we live.

Thanks for listening for these 4 years.

Ibu

The north side of Gallup is a working class neighborhood with homes built in the twenties and thirties near the coal mines of Gamerco and Coal Basin.  In addition, it has a lot of small businesses targeting the Native American clientele drifting south off the reservation.  Some of these businesses are great (tire and feed stores, barber shops) and some not so great (bars, pawn shops).  If you know anything about Gallup, New Mexico, you would know that alcoholics abound in this area. Nestled amongst all this hubbub is Casa San Martine, a soup kitchen started by Catholic Nuns of the same order as Mother Theresa (In fact Mother Theresa visited this outpost and Gallup twice in the 1980’s). During my days as National Honor Society mentor at Rehoboth High School, every year I led students on service projects to Casa San Martine to help the nuns serve meals and do wash.  It was great to roll up our sleeves and help cut vegetables, hang and fold laundry and then at 4:30 PM serve hundreds of drunks as they piled in to the mission. 

The nuns were always short, extremely hard working and almost always from places like India, Africa or the Philippines. They worked tirelessly except Thursdays (their day of prayer) and Sundays.  On days we were there, we observed the nuns constantly taking crap from rude drunks who harassed them 90 percent of the time and begged for prayers from them the other 10 percent.  I always wondered where these amazing servants came from and where they got their patience and disposition. 

Now I know.  

2 weeks after arriving here, Ibu Warshi began working for us. Almost every day since then, she has cooked and cleaned tirelessly around our house—without complaint and often amongst ours. 

Similar to the nuns at Casa San Martine, my 4 foot 7 inch Muslim maid has modeled Christ to me more than anyone else in my life.

By the way, Ibu in Indonesian is the title given to all adult women.  It means mother—Our entire family will greatly miss mother Warshi next year.

Calvin Assignment

This semester I took an online graduate course in education from Calvin College.  As part of the application process to the program I had to complete the following essay.  Because my assignment pulls in some experiences from Indonesia... I thought I would share it with you.

Please write about an educational experience that you had from which you learned from it.

Relatively new teachers in small Christian schools most often get to teach the classes no one else wants and I was no exception.  As a social studies teacher with 3 years of experience, the school needed someone to cover the new World Religions class that had started the previous year, and I was slated for the course.  Already swamped with other classes, a second child on the way and the commitment to coach varsity Basketball for the first time, I did not look forward to the assignment.  Seeking to minimize the push that would happen during the school year, I spent a few pivotal days of the summer seeking the advice of the first teacher of the class.  In addition to teaching the course, Theo was the librarian and yearbook sponsor (obviously low on the seniority ladder as well) and while he did lots for the school, was not trained to be a teacher.  Theo, lived in the duplex next door, and I went over to his apartment, sat on the floor with stacks of his manila folders full of brochures, photocopies and printed and handwritten notes for the class.  With my legs folded, hippy style, I listened as he explained the course and how he taught it.  I found myself asking lots of questions.  The framework that he selected to teach the course resonated with me and suddenly many of the isolated, dry details of different religions and worldviews I accumulated over the years suddenly found their way into the framework he laid out.  During our 3-4 hours of conversing, the course became insightful, needed and fresh. 

In my 20 years of teaching, whenever I embark on a new course, the first year is almost always brutal as I hack my way through the material and stumble through the words and lessons I choose to convey the important ideas and material—and this is usually in content areas I am trained for!  The exception to this is a World Religions class that, even though I only taught it for one year, flowed out of those question and answer sessions with Theo on the floor of his duplex, and led to some of my most interesting classroom situations including a visit to a mosque for Friday prayers and a visit from a Wiccan practitioner who explained earth based religions to my students.

Since that year, so many situations in my life have relied on the material I learned and taught in that class.  This is especially true these past four years as I teach students from Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim homes in an International Baccalaureate school in Indonesia.  These students find themselves challenged by the secularization of their very traditional world and as many of them prepare to go off to large Western universities in the U.S., Canada and Australia, I hope they can find the framework needed to understand and interpret their world, just I did on the floor of that duplex.

New Zealand

Just over two years ago, we spent 2 weeks in Australia and I walked away raving about it as it seemed to have about everything:  beaches, open spaces, friendly people etc....  This Spring break we went to New Zealand's south island with the Comrie family (friends and colleagues from SPH)... and as much as I loved Australia, I now love New Zealand more.  lthough they are limited and don't do the places justice, here's a few pictures to confirm why:

Janet and I at Milford sound  (sorry about the glare off my head :)

The road to Milford Sound

The boys and I on the glacier walk at Franz Josef Glacier

In the Glacier



Jet boat ride at Queenstown



Neil before the Super 15 professional rugby match



All the kids on the Moeraki Boulders

Tourist Slogan

I have sometimes thought that Indonesia should adopt the following tourist slogan:

“Indonesia: where small things are big and big things are small”

In our travels here, all the amazingly large things we have seen are relatively small things(walking sticks, beetles, bats, moths, rats) and all the amazingly small things we have seen are relatively large things (Javanese hippos and rhinos, Sumatran elephants, Indonesian people).

The validity of this observation was confirmed again this week as we visited Kalimantan (Borneo) for a 4 day tour which involved flying into a very remote part of the island (Pankalan Bun) with 27 others from our school and taking 6 small river boats (about 30 feet long and 8 feet wide) up into an Indonesian national park. During the trip we saw the world’s smallest species of ape, the Gibbon (see picture below), and what had to be one of the world's largest ants, the Bull Ant (sorry the picture just didn't do it justice, so I didn't post it) .

 

Gibbon outside an information center- while it looks like a monkey, notice that it has no tail



The name of the National Park was Tanjung Puting and it protects orangutans and also serves as a rehabilitation center for some of them to transition back to the wild, which accounts for their friendliness. The remote park borders a river, which has spawned a scenic river boat industry where locals charter out their small boats so visitors can easily traverse into the park to view all the exotic wildlife, which, in addition to lots of orangutans, includes proboscis monkeys, wild boars, hornbills, kingfishers, sun bears (didn't see), spotted leopards (didn't see) and crocodiles. Here are some pictures of our trip:



Eric on a boardwalk with Orangutan

Proboscis Monkey-  notice the large nose (males have even a larger one)



River boats, called Klotaks,  heading up to the national park.





Neil, hanging out on the bow of our boat


Borneo has the reputation as one of the most distinctive and unique ecosystems in the world, and it didn't disappoint as we were amazed by what we saw.  In fact, we just scratched the surface as we heard about many other scenic travel options on the island that we will never be able to visit.  Sadly, Borneo's abundant native environments are under tremendous pressure as its resources are easy pickings for opportunistic people seeking quick profits from cutting down forests, planting palm oil plantations, extracting coal, natural gas and oil. To multiply the tradegy of this is the reality that most of the money earned from these sales will not help develop infrastructure, education and health care on the island but will flow to Jakarta and points beyond (China, Japan, South Korea, Europe and North America).

Sadly, this was easily observed as we flew over the island on our way in and on our way out. 

Advent Travel

Most holiday travel, we know what to expect. We decide where to go, buy a map and travel book and start highlighting, talking, emailing and calling. This Christmas break, however, we took up our maid’s three year standing offer to visit her village for a few days. She had described it to us as very poor and very remote—she also told us that no white people had ever visited her village. When we repeatedly showed her a map of Java, she couldn’t really point out where the village was. Not knowing much else, we left on December 17 for a two night visit. Here is what we found:

  

• A very scenic village (probably about 100 houses) tucked into a valley in the cool highlands of south central Java . You can it see its approximant location on this satellite image as it is just north west of the larger village of wadasmalang ( http://mapcarta.com/25102430 ). Most of the people subsistence farm (corn, rice and cassava for crops as well as goats and chicken for meat). The little money earned in the village comes from a surplus of the crops they raise and money that flows in from villagers sending earnings back home from the cities that they have migrated to.

Picture above is the village view from a rock outcropping that we hiked to, below is a street in the village. 

   

• The warm hospitality of a family that greeted us. With only limited knowledge of Indonesian, language was a larger barrier than it usually is as most villagers spoke primarily Javanese, not Indonesian (yes, they are slightly different languages). Therefore, we just smiled, laughed and listened through our maid’s interpretation.



The welcome wagon

  



The sister Hope always wanted.

 


Everywhere we went, people wanted to shake our hand

 

• Children, children and more children. We had lots of fun with all the kids in this village as we played soccer, read books, played “bebek, bebek, ayam” (duck, duck, goose), shared candy and just batted balloons with them. Play is a universal language.



"duck, duck, goose"

 

Neil on the local soccer pitch

 

Eric batting balloons with kids

  

Our maid's dad wearing a "hand me down" from Neil

  

In addition to my thoughts above, other questions also swirl around my head:

• What is progress? On one hand, people here seemed happy and they were certainly living sustainably and their simple lifestyle resonated with me. They have a lot more than others (and some of them) think they do. On the other hand, people here have very few choices in life, most importantly in healthcare, vocation and education—but also in smaller choices to learn music, visit places, study drama, play sport or learn about other things and places. Is there a way to gain more choices without losing the simplicity? 
• What will globalization and rising incomes take away and give to this village? Indonesia is on its way up economically. More money and access to media will forever change this village as larger Asian and Western cultures break in. Undoubtedly, good things will happen because of this—but what will be lost?
• What would Christian faith look like in a place like this? While generally a good place, evidence of misplaced fear, deception and superstition certainly exist here. How would the transforming story of God’s Love enhance the beauty of this place?

Hopefully, these questions won't keep me up too much over the next few weeks of vacation.  Have a Merry Christmas.  Next stop... Kalimantan (Borneo)!

Saturday mornings

Our church has a program called Faith in Action, which financially and physically supports lots of non-profit organizations in Indonesia.  Unfortunately, these are located in places that are hard to get to, which has meant we haven't been able to be involved in physically helping out.  However, last spring, a friend of ours started Saturday visits to a local Catholic orphanage.  We go every 4th Saturday and spend a couple hours singing, telling Bible stories and doing crafts.  The kids get to practice their rudimentary English and we get to practice our rudimentary Bahasa.



Janet working on crafts

 

Hope, de facto Goodwill Representative of the Weeda Family



Eric, enjoying circle time