“I am teaching English to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am not a Peace Corps Volunteer to teach English.” My mind has gradually evolved to embrace this motto during my first seven months in Indonesia. I have taught for about four months, and I have come to the conclusion that I am enjoying teaching English as much as I expected. This Peace Corps experience will likely not make me want to pursue a career in teaching, or general education, when I return to the States. I also find it unlikely that I will want to continue teaching English abroad after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer comes to an end. I do, however, still bask in the moments when my students are exceptionally well behaved or grasp a lesson particularly well. I reflect on that phrase several times a week, if not daily. It makes me nervous, because oftentimes I see it as a negative view of my service in general. My nerves get the best of me (Addison, why the heck did you move to Indonesia for 27 months?!?!), and I start asking myself daunting, negative questions that can only be countered with ominous answers. Teaching English is the central pillar of my service in Indonesia, so how am I supposed to be successful or happy if I’m not thoroughly enjoying my primary job? I repeatedly try answering that question, but I still haven’t come up with a sufficient answer. When I struggle to think positively, or can’t imagine how I will get through a particular day, I use the statement to remind myself what truly excites me in my service. Instead of asking myself, “How can you possibly be happy,” I try to think, “If I am willing to teach English as a means to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, then what about my Peace Corps service do I find so alluring?” This thought process emphasizes the “alluring” parts of my service, which helps put my mind in a positive and motivational direction. I still don’t have a complete answer to any of the above questions; nor do I have an answer to the looming question, “Why did I join the Peace Corps?” But, I do know that I am enjoying the community integration and cultural adaptation portions of my service. I work hard to improve my Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese, subscribe to various list serves to follow Indonesia’s political and economic developments, and read books about Indonesia to gain better insight of the country’s history and culture. I do those things so that I can spend adequate time discussing multifaceted topics with my host family, teachers, and the Indonesian nationals who work for Peace Corps. Fortunately, those conversations, articles, and books are infinitely more fascinating when I can relate real-life experiences to their main points. The experiences I garner during everyday desa (village) life provide a backdrop when I am reading about the country in news articles or book. Simultaneously, literature provides abundant information to help explain why the people in my desa live the way they do. It’s a cycle that helps me feel more cognizant during my conversations with community members, and I think that their realization of my knowledge is what paves the way for me to become more integrated into Indonesian society. After all, I cannot effectively integrate into my desa without the support and acceptance of my community members. I find a lot of joy in observing the most basic things about Indonesian culture. Learning about and enjoying Indonesian food has been the easiest way to bond with Indonesian people, especially my host moms. Participating in religious and cultural celebrations—Idul Fitri, weddings, and funerals—leaves an everlasting impression on host family members (my Ibu still tells people every day that I fasted for the entire month of Ramadan). One of my favorite—and simultaneously frustrating—pastimes of observing Indonesia and the country’s people is traveling around the island on a bus. One might be surprised that a trip on a simple commuter bus would yield such fascinating experiences. I am going to try my best to accurately depict what a bus trip on Java is like. The many crazy encounters on the bus do not represent a “crazy and nonsensical” culture; however, the experiences that are permanently engrained in my brain provide a base of understanding for a culture that is completely different from that of the United States. I think to myself on every bus ride, “that explains a lot,” or I harness a certain situation as an oversimplification for a deeper, more constant frustration that I struggle to overcome. It takes anywhere from four to six hours to go from my village to Surabaya, which is where Peace Corps Indonesia headquarters are located. With a population of over a million people, Surabaya is the capital of East Java, the second largest city in Indonesia, and is home to the airport closest to my village. I have made several trips to and from Surabaya for official Peace Corps business and personal travel too. I bike approximately forty-five minutes from my house to an intersection on the highway, where I store my bike and wait on the side of the road until I can wave down a bus. Once I am on the bus, traffic, weather, passengers, the driver, and Allah himself determine the length of time it takes to journey all the way to the bus station in Surabaya. The route is roughly 90 miles, but inadequate transportation infrastructure and extreme congestion make every trip at least four hours. My bus trips back to site always seem to be the most intriguing, which is why I want to start my story from Surabaya. I was the first person to board the bus at Bungarasih, which is the bus station in Surabaya. The buses leave every fifteen to thirty minutes so I just hop on the next bus that is waiting to leave. When I got on the bus, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was empty. I shouldn’t have gotten excited, because the bus was packed by them time it pulled away from the terminal. Java, the most populated island in the world, is home to over 140 million people. The overall size of the island is roughly the size of North Carolina, which means that the population density is extremely high. A person will rarely, if ever, find him or herself alone in a public space with ample breathing room. This information supports my claim as to why the term “packed” carries a different connotation when used to describe a story that takes place in Java. The bus was filled with passengers. The rows of seats on either side of the aisle—one sits two across, the other three—held more bodies than butt cushions. The back row of seats, which is walled off as the designated smoking section, must have held close to ten people—two times more than the original five seats were meant for. From my seat I counted twenty-six people standing in the aisle, filling all the aisle space from the front steps of the bus to the back exit. I was getting anxious. How many more people need to board the bus before the driver decides to drive away? I watched four men run towards the bus. I hoped that their eagerness to get on the bus meant that the driver was about to pull out of the terminal. Fortunately, I was right. Unfortunately, those last four men turned the bus from “crowded” to “packed”. The four men carried boxes of trinkets and food (items to sell), a ukulele (to play), and a handmade percussion stick (to perform). The bus turned sharply out of the station’s parking lot; we were on our way. The four men shoved their way along the aisle full of people, passing out fried tofu, wallets, and nail clippers to the people sitting down. Many vendors placed the items they were selling on the passengers’ laps during their first walk along the bus aisle, and then returned to collect the trinket—or money for payment—along their second pass. Imagine someone at a baseball game yelling, “Get your hot dogs” or “Ice cold Miller Lite!” That is comparable to what these vendors do on the bus, but for bottles of water, facemasks, or peanuts. The man with the percussion stick pushed his way to the back end of the aisle and began singing; and another man with the ukulele sang and played in the front of the bus. They are on the bus to make their own money too, which means they have to compete for air space with the vendors. The first portion of my bus ride consisted of me trying to block out the overabundance of announcements, performances, and shoving that repeatedly made their way up and down the aisle. I have had the privilege of riding on the bus with fellow Volunteers, which is great. It is always more fun to observe a spectacle like this alongside other Americans. People bond with each other by enduring exceptional, unforgettable experiences. A five-hour bus ride through East Java certainly falls under that description. This trip, however, I was riding on my own, and the vendors and musicians rubbing against me as they passed through the bus frequently interrupted my attempts to find solace in my own thoughts. Instead of focusing on the chaos that was taking place around me, I turned to focus specifically on my own row. I sat on the aisle side of the bench, with two people sitting between the bus window and myself. I tried putting my left leg out into the aisle, because my knees hit the back of the seat in front of me and it is very uncomfortable. That strategy proved to be ineffective due to the sheer lack of space available throughout the aisle. Instead, I was forced to sit at an angle so that my legs could fit in my row without banging on the seat in front of me too hard. I held my stuffed backpack on my lap. The guy sitting furthest from the aisle leaned his head against the window and seemed to fall asleep immediately. Impressive. The elderly woman sitting in between us carried nothing but a bag of oranges. She opened the bag and began peeling her first orange, seemingly unconcerned about her lack of personal space. She threw the orange peels onto the floor as she unwrapped her snack. She popped an orange wedge into her mouth and—after separating the seeds in her mouth—she spit them out at the back of the chair in front of her. Occasionally, the seeds bounced off the headrest and landed on top of my backpack. I glanced over to see if she noticed; the lady was either completely oblivious, or she did an excellent job ignoring my looks of inquiry. I spent a lot of time during that bus ride debating if it was the former or the latter. The bus repeatedly pulled over to the side of the road to pick up people who waved it down. The original sellers and musicians had disembarked, but people with new items for sale, and new instruments to play, replaced them. More people boarded for their journey, but few of the passengers were getting off. The bus was filling up with more people! I sat in silence, listening to a mute man playing the guitar and attempting to sing—all while flicking orange seeds off of my lap. The traffic was horrible. To my dismay, the bus was inching forward. One traffic accident on a small, depleted road in Java means that traffic can stand still for a long time. The roads simply aren’t wide enough to permit traffic to continue moving. The traffic didn’t seem to cause any consternation for the woman sitting next to me; she continued to eat her oranges and look out the window. Eventually, the seed-spitting woman next to me signaled she was getting off at the next stop. I smelled the citrus on her breath as she moved past me into the aisle. I was relieved to see the bus pull away, leaving the orange lady on the side of the road behind it. See you never, orange lady! Immediately after the orange lady left her chair, another woman and her toddler filled the vacant seat. There were now four people sitting on the bench. The gentleman against the window continued to sleep. Remarkable. The toddler fussed, then cried, then screamed, then pooped, and then cried some more. I was in a worse situation than before! I missed the orange lady. I would take orange seeds falling onto my lap over an earsplitting, smelly baby and his mom any day! Come back orange lady! Come back into my life! The bus continued winding down the road, abruptly pulling over to drop off and pick up passengers. The sudden turns caused the passengers standing in the aisle to fall onto the passengers sitting down. A man playing the guitar fell into someone’s lap mid-song, but got back up right away to carry on. I had to brace myself with the chair in front of me on multiple occasions to avoid falling into the aisle myself. It must have been the jerking movements of the bus, or maybe it was the steadily growing scent of baby feces, that caused the next scene. The woman sitting in the middle seat of the row in front of me began heaving. I buried my face into my backpack, hoping that it was the sound of an intense Indonesian sneeze, maybe a bad case of the hiccups, or perhaps she was laughing so hard that she was desperately grasping for air. I peeked over the row of seats to realize my worst fears. The woman cupped her hands together, and used them to hold her vomit. She had puked all over her hijab, shirt, lap, and her boyfriend/husband’s entire right side. Judging by the amount of puke on the two of them, I was confused why she even bothered holding the puddle of puke in her hands. The gentleman accompanying the woman stood up and proceeded to the front of the bus, where a bundle of plastic bags hung on a hook that dangled from the bus ceiling. I watched his puke-covered jacket wipe against the backs of peoples’ heads sitting next to the aisle as he pushed his way towards the front. I sat in awe, and somewhat mesmerized at the situation. What the heck was this couple going to do to remedy the puke situation? The culprit continued to hold puke in her hands until the man returned with plastic bags. The smell of puke wafted in my face, and mixed harmoniously with the lingering smell of poop from the toddler sitting next to me. Why did I ever complain about smelling citrus? Oh, how I missed the orange lady! They wiped up the puke using tissues—a fleeting remedy at best. The tissues went into the plastic bags, and were placed underneath their seats. I noticed that I wasn’t the only passenger looking on; I saw a man across the aisle gazing through the standing passengers to watch too. I was surprised to see that he was using a hand mirror and razor to dry shave during the trip. Then I thought about all the events that transpired prior to seeing him shave—orange seeds, ukuleles, puke, oh my—and realized that I shouldn’t be surprised at all. At least he was being productive on his trip! The commotion of the bus ride caused the puke bags to fall onto their sides, and the vomit slowly inched across the floor towards my feet. My legs already faced a space challenge; now my feet met a puke challenge! Fortunately, the bus arrived at my stop right before the loose vomit reached my shoes. I got off the bus at my intersection and spent the entirety of my bike ride home reflecting on what I was doing. More specifically, I thought about how I ended up in rural Java, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, experiencing things such as that eventful bus ride. Riding the bus gives me the most blatantly obvious culture shock that I have ever experienced. Culture shock came at me from all directions on that bus: orange seeds and drafts of poop from hard right, panhandling from the left, puke from the front, and cigarette smoke from the back. I still look forward to riding the bus. I have debated why that’s the case, and I think I have come up with an appropriate answer. That particular bus ride, or any other one for that matter, wasn’t enjoyable in any sense of the word; it was, however, undoubtedly fascinating to witness in every sense of the word. My Mebabus rides between New York City and Washington, D.C., or between Madison and Chicago and Minneapolis, don’t compare in any shape or form to my bus rides in Indonesia. Actually, there is nothing that I can think of back in the States that is analogous to my bus rides as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It occurred to me that this is exactly what enticed me to join the Peace Corps in the first place. I wore a suit and tie to work, and sat in front of a computer screen at a cubicle five days a week. I considered that to be the most monotonous, uninspiring work that I could do at this point in my life. I might struggle to find inspiration while teaching English, but adventures like my bus ride are why I find the remainder of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer so alluring. I finally got back to my house, mentally exhausted from the bus ride. My host mom was so happy to see me, and she couldn’t stop telling me how handsome I looked with my new haircut. It slipped my mind that I got a quick cut while I was away from site. I spent the majority of my time during dinner explaining what I witnessed on my bus ride, frequently acting out some of the moments when my language wasn’t going to explain clear enough. I was excited to go to school Monday and to see my students after being away from site for an extended period of time. I went to bed that night thinking about the orange lady and her citrusy breath. It’s people like her that make me want to keep teaching English in Indonesia. She made quite the impression! Shout-Outs:
HSO to both of my friends who are pregnant! Thank you for being persistent about a phone call so you could relay the news over the phone. I can’t wait to meet the little ones when I get back to the States!! SO to Peace Corps staff for putting together a great In-Service Training conference. ESO to my fellow East Java ID11s for making the conference so constructive and dynamic. HMFSOs go to the Badgers and Packers for putting together six great weeks of football. I haven’t been able to watch many games, but I thoroughly enjoy waking up Sunday and Monday mornings to highlights of wins! ASO to the Vikings for ending Rodgers’ season, for dampening my Monday morning, and subsequently, for ruining my entire week. Just when I thought I couldn’t dislike that team any more… SO to my friends and family who send me postcards and letters. I have quite the eclectic compilation!
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May 2019
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