7.6.07
Emotion: Can I do this?
So, I’ve decided to start journaling and sharing my journal to the world online. I’m in Indonesia now and after a year in what I can only describe as the absolute of absolute poverty – Ethiopia – I welcomingly embrace Indonesia and all the amenities it offers me – paved roads in the city that one can drive down without competing with oxen and sheep. . Don’t get me wrong, Ethiopia has its charm and I could gladly return there despite the hard times I experienced there. . Besides my chosen flied is develop and what country needs more development than Ethiopia. My experiences of poverty in the most extreme sense, lack of luxury, and hardship have truly shaped for me what my role of this earth is and why I am here- at least at this stage of my life. I mean who wouldn’t have grown as a person – working like I did at the oldest hospital in Ethiopia and despite the deplorable conditions and the lack of adequate financing – some healthcare was available free to all those who cannot afford it 0 and that is most of the country – Healthcare is a human right and anyone who is denied access to quality healthcare is having their humanity trampled upon. Accordingly, the US is probably one of the most inhuman countries on earth; because the healthcare is there it just isn’t accessible to majority of the population. In Ethiopia, it’s the facilities and not the M.D.s that are not up to par... . So many things are going through my mind right now and I fear my pen cannot write as swiftly as my mind thinks. Natalia is by y side struggling through some subtraction problem I have given her. We are in the apartment that my friend Tia found for us – and believe me I was nervous about moving in here. I was moving into t an apartment site unseen – just hoping that my dear friend would get it right. It’s Friday and the Moslem call to prayer is blaring in the background from the new pale blue mosque a few hundred yards from my house. We (Nat and I) are sitting in our very Javanese living room complete with wayang puppets and lots of Javanese artwork. Our landlady is a jovial Catholic widow who has completed opened her home and her heart to us since we arrived. Nat has unofficially adopted her dog, Tom. As her own and proudly parades him around on the leash we bought for him from America. Today, they had a picnic together on the Ibu’s front porch complete with a blanket, sunglasses, umbrella, rice and fried chicken.
So our apartment is close to everything. I went jogging i.e. power walking in the early morning only to find the streets just a few hundred meters from our house bustling. There are a plethora of shops, restaurants, stands, and coffeehouses. After a year in Ethiopia – the birthplace of coffee, I have become rather a coffee snob and although Starbucks has come to jogja, it is still outnumbered by the small pleasant coffee shops I have grown to love and Indonesia does produce exceptional coffee. Many people ask me why did I choose Yogya when there is Jakarta – a city of 10 million and the 10th most densely populated city in the world - a cosmopolitism city filled with high rises, low rises, and everything in-between – where you can shop at Gucci, Guess, and then rock your wares at a nightclub till 5am while drinking Crystal and ALize. Jogja on the other hand is far more chill and quiet. The metro area is around 300, 00 to 400,000 much like the city of my birth, but unlike my hometown Jogja has soul and culture – a heartbeat. Jogja is the second most visited city in Indonesia after its legendary sister – Bali. Jogja is the artistic capital of Indonesia and it feels like it. The old meets the new as traditional artist, musicians, entertainers and energetic and a ton of radical young students meet to make Jogja the city that it is.
Natalia is finishing up her math now and once she is done, we will feed the fish in the pond that abuts our porch. She is angry because the photo calendar up in the living room has a photo of me with some friends and not her. She says she doesn’t like the way it looks and that I should replace it with a photo of her - I’m thinking that when she is older I will tell her the Greek story of narcissus, but for now I tell her that we will go out to eat tonight and urge her to finish her work. I’ve given her some pumpkin seeds to help her with the addition/subtraction that she is working on. But I have digressed so much. I was talking about my apartment. While I was in the US waiting for my visa authorization number to be issued I watched a lot of real estate shows (reality TV has become all there is in America) and they always indicated that the three rules of real estate are “Location, location, location!” and we truly are in a divine location. It’s a quiet small street. Our apartment is within a gated compound which houses about 10 apartments that house a myriad of other ex-pats and Indonesian. There is a big huge field a couple house down which chickens run through. We have a kitchen or a kitchenette which is pretty basic, but suits our needs – I am no Emeril Lagasee. Oh and our house has air conditioning and hot water – still a rarity. Our bathroom is as modern as they come in an apartment that is very traditional Indonesian. There is an American style toilet as opposed to the squat toilet that I feared and a shower and mandi (bucket bath). My apartment may be a little pricey by Indonesian standards, but my laundry and maid service are included in the price as well as all my utilities. Natalia and I both have our own room and Nat immediately took to her room, she slept alone in the room on her very first night in the apartment.
It just started pouring down raining and Nat and I have moved to the front porch (kinda defies logic). She is still busying herself with mathematics. I love the rain in Jogja, because it is usually short-lived, strong, and cools everything off. A woman just ran by our gate holding an infant in her arms trying to desperately to get home or at least out of the rain. That is another thing I like about housing in Jogja (or at least some housing) – having a gate – and not the fortified individual compounds of Addis Ababa and the fact that I can walk down the street and not have an entire family – mother, toddler, child, and nursing baby following me through the whole city (yes the same family) begging for “und birr becha” and sucking their teeth to the point that I want to straggle the whole family like that woman down in Texas did or at least strangle the mother serial killer style and chop her into to little pieces so she can’t inflict her and her children on another passerby.
Natalia has moved from mathematics to English – synonyms to be specific. She is trying to find a synonym for enjoy. She is chewing her tongue like she usually does when she is focused on something or just bidding her time. She has her feet propped up on my thigh as she stares intently at her Barbie reading book. We are both seated on a baboon loveseat on our front porch... In the immediate neighboring apartment lives an Indonesian man whose name I can’t remember, but who looks like a much younger and Indonesian version of Steve Tyler. We both have apartments that face the street – the other apartment’s fact the courtyard.
Late the same day
Natalia is eating dinner now. We walked through the neighborhood and I stumbled upon my fav restaurant Gadjah Madha and so we picked up take-out – of course when we walked home, our Ibu had prepared some nasi goring for us – the same thing we hade ordered at the restaurant, so Nat ate Ibu’s rice. I wasn’t really hungry to begin with. The climate in Jogja has turned me almost strictly to my great love – fruit and I have a stockpile of fruit to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The man is on the loud speaker again singing in Arabic calling Muslims to prayer, Nat says she wishes he would be quiet because she doesn’t like the prayer. I say Nat welcome to the most populated Muslim country in the world.
We (Nat and I) worked on her room today. Ibu took us to a shopping mall, where we purchased a plastic drawer (multi-colored) and Nat and I put a lot of her clothes and toys into it. Ibu is also bringing us another armoire from her house shortly.
Natalia discovered or rediscovered lemon squash this evening. I ordered one while we waited for our take-out at Gadja Madha restaurant. She saw it and in typical Pittsburgh closed-minded fashion reminiscent of many members of my family and apparently the motus operand of a TV character she knows said that she didn’t want any – little did she know that lemon squash is actually lemonade – her favorite drink and my mom didn’t get a chance to make it for her fresh while we were at home. When Natalia found out lemon squash was actually lemonade she of course had a change of heart, but me being sick of closed-minded tantrums reminded her of the rule “You don’t have to like it, but you have to try it” and after explaining to her that she shouldn’t be so quick to judge things let her have a sip which in Natalia land means giving her the whole thing. I’m tired now. My body still hasn’t completely adjusted. . Why I don’t know. . It seems like I have been here long enough. My tiredness today could be doing to me going for a walk today. It was my first workout since I got here. I plan on joining a gym later, but for now it’s just me and my yoga mat and the streets...
I am being conservative with my money until I find out the cost of Natalia’s school and after school program and transportation etc. I just have to take it easy. Her old music school is within walking distance from our house. I also plan on enrolling her in piano lessons there.
My first loads of laundry got picked up today and apparently they will be back in three days. I had to count exactly what I put into my laundry bag and make a list (10 pairs of underwear, 5 pairs of jeans etc)
As soon as Nat is done eating, we are going to bed. I have so many things to do. I plan on finishing my immigration stiff nest week and then jumping head first into my research. Yeah, I know in all my ranting you and I may have both forgotten that I’m in this beautiful country hundreds of thousands of miles away from my family and friends for a purpose. It feels good to be here and although we have a TV which is a completely different experience from Ethiopia where we didn’t have one we don’t have cable, which means unlike in Jakarta where we were bombarded with the Disney Channel and Darby who seems to have usurped Christopher Robin in Winne the Pooh and whose presence according to some article I read awhile ago sent Pooh enthusiast around the world (which probably means in the US and Europe. . cause who else has freakin time) into an uproar as well as E TV and its endless coverage of Paris Hilton who by the way looks especially horrible sense being release from jail and has to be one of the most unattractive women on the planet and did this sentence has a point cause now I’m joining the folks who annoy me and rambling about nothing. One thing that is really messing with my brain is the whole Sam Libby thing. . . I have continuously asked myself and those around me what kind of legacy does Bush want to leave for himself? And the answer wasn’t more clear when he commuted Sam Libby’s sentence (commuting means he still retains his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination during any civil suit). . BUSH DOESN’T GIVE A FUCK . . . sorry about my language mom, but some words just fit the situation. I mean if Iraq did not slam the point hope than maybe the Sam Libby thing will brand it on our foreheads of at least our asses, the American people have gotten screwed there enough times. Bush and his cronies got paid and so its to hell with the rest of us and of course there is a couple million redneck, Christians, and conservatives happy as well cause guess what folks .. . . gays still can’t marry and “we” are winning the war on terrorism cause “we” (not the Iraq government cause there is no government there. . at least not a real one) hung Sadam Hussein. But of course no one really mentions anymore that Osama is still skipping through some caves with a nonfunctioning kidney.
As I watch America deteriorate, I realize the battle I am fighting abroad and the issues I am tackling “development” are just preparation for the greater battles I will have to face in my own country. AM I making sense? Does anyone who is reading this . . . get what I am saying? Or are people in the country I love (and I do love America my ancestor’s blood and sweat built this country) so focused on Paris Hilton’s prison exit outfit to care. I remember over ten years ago when a wonderful professor at my alma mater introduced me to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and truly loving it. . .but it is only now that I am truly experience the pain and loss that comes with seeing the light. . .each step I take closer to the light sears my eyes and I try to close them, but I am forces to reopen them I see friends falling to the wayside into perpetual ignorance blissful ignorance or at least it seems and I continue to move forward in agony.
. The video does an excellent job of showing you a variety of exercises perfect for toning your upper body and getting arms like Michelle!
Unload your weight bar: After you finish using a bar, leave it completely empty. Don’t assume that everyone can lift the same amount of weight you can. This rule doesn’t just apply to heavy lifters. Clean up after yourself! Your momma does not work at the gym!