Poonam Goreng

Hi family :)

I just read your comments and checked my facebook, and realized how much I miss you all (and friends and home in general of course). Not to the point where Im homesick and resenting Indonesia (oh noo not at all!!)... but i wish i could hear Pooja's sarcastic remarks when funny things happen, or talk to Mom every now and then (my cell phone and sim card are broken, which is the nice way of saying that I accidentally disabled my SIM card and cant figure out how to unlock my phone. Plus, I'm in a rural village where the signal is slight). Don't worry Dad... I'm eating lots of fried Indonesian food and thinking about you and the chum chum incident in India.

Speaking of fried food. EVERYTHING IS FRIED IN INDONESIA. Goreng means fried, which leads me to my blog title... Poonam Goreng. The humidity is off the charts ridiculous, so I along with the food I eat, am a fried little beast. The mosquitos especially love Poonam Goreng. Then when I go to itch the bites, my skin explodes in rash because I'm allergic to the sun.

ANYWAY. Despite being eaten alive and sweating like a very large fat man, I really love Indonesia. The village experience is nothing like what I expected, and is in fact a large slap in the face dose of reality. I thought I could just march into this random village where I dont know the language and make a difference. ha. wrong. Life isn't like that, and a lot of developing countries don't need the kind of help I thought I could give. Anyway, Ive been doing a lot of thinking, which is much easier because my idealistic views are more in check.

The project i'm working on is an entrepreneurship venture where we're trying to convince women to sell opac (fried plant roots that takes like fried nothing). We must convince them because they don't really feel like going through the trouble of making a business out of it. Their farmer husbands make enough money, but alas, we need a project and the nutrition/health in the village is better than in Jakarta (my first project was on public health, when we assumed it would be a problem).

I just realized that there's so much to say.

Village conditions: simple, can get dirty because we're a bunch of students living in a house, and students are universally dirty. Hole in the ground toilet, which i'm very used to and now kind of like. Cold bucket showers, which are nice in the heat, but not so nice when the water is brown. The food is good, but i'm done with anything fried or rice related after this trip.

This past weekend the international interns and I (two girls from holland, one from egyPt) and I escaped to a beach town with huge huge waves and watched the final world cup game. I was cheering for the dutch because i've gotten pretty close to the dutch girls and don't really care about the outcome of the game. Although I can't even IMAGINE the parties going on in Spain right now. Anyway, this was a nice break. We had real mattresses and hot showers!! Oh, and non fried food at a swiss restaurant.

And of course... I must share with you all the story of the gin. The gin are creatures living among humans, but they're dead and we're not supposed to see them. However, they sometimes emerge and are scary. They're hairy little islamic ghosts for the most part.

A few nights ago, I wake up around midnight to hear frantic chanting. The Indonesian students I'm living with are praying like mad, and this continues until almost 4 am. So, i'm pissed because there are 5 designated times to pray and this was not one of them. Also, it's very hot, and I had diarrhea. The combination of it all left me cranky. The next day, I find out that they were praying because they heard THE GIN! Meaning that at midnight for a couple nights in a row, they heard loud masculine snoring, even though we're a house of girls. So loud snoring at bedtime is apparently unheard of. The other international interns and I occasionally snore, so any one of us could be ' the gin '.

Then, Carolien (one of the dutch girls) opened a little cupboard by my bed (yes, I snagged a bed!) and lo and behold, we found the gin. It's a little teddy bear with one ear ripped off and shoved in the corner of the cupboard. We've been making lots of gin jokes. I really wish Pooja had been there during the 4 hour chanting session.

Also, writing this post took a lot of energy because this computer is incredibly slow and is programmed in bahasa indonesia, so I had a lot of trouble finding the 'sign in' button.

To summarize, Indonesia is hilarious. The people are so incredibly nice (except some creepy men) and Indonesians love foreigners. While walking down the street, especially with the blonde dutch girls, we're constantly being yelled at ("hello miss! buy my cheap trinket! Insert some dirty phrase in bahasa!"). Palm trees are everywhere, and the houses are pretty bright colors. The interns I'm staying with are really cool and help me maintain a positive attitude about the internship, which can sometimes be slow. Time is in some kind of warp, because people really do move in slow motion. Everything is really cheap, and not knowing the language is such hindrance. I love the rain, and the random events.

We're having a meeting!! Whooo productivity. The Indonesian interns keep ignoring me when I talk about the importance of costing the opac to figure out the price. I guess people globally hate accounting.

Selamat malan (good night).