Out of Indo

In 1913 a young Danish woman followed her new husband (who also happened to be her second cousin) to Kenya to establish a coffee plantation. The Baron and Baroness Blixen started life in the Ngong Hills well enough–many a hunting safaris and coffee planting days were had, until Karen Blixen contracted syphilis from the philandering Baron and returned to Denmark to recover.

There have always been aspects of Karen Blixen’s life that I have loved and admired. I like the idea of Ms. Blixen arriving in Kenya not quite understanding what she is entering into, yet embarking anyway. Karen allowed herself to be shaped, and ultimately transformed by Africa itself. Her stories of plantation floods, bankrupt businesses, cultural faux pas, disease and an affair with an intriguing safari guide are the kind of redemption stories and silver linings we readers love.

I reread her memoir (published under her male nom de plume Isak Dinesen) two years ago when I accepted my Peace Corps invitation to Indonesia. At the time, it was the grandness of her experiences abroad that struck me the most. This past month I picked up her book again. This time, the only thing I could think about was the syphilis.

Thinking about syphilis became almost a sickness in itself. I thought about Karen Blixen and syphilis in hospital waiting rooms, on x-ray and examination tables, and propped up in a hotel bed. I had been biking with some of the kids in my neighborhood when a few of us collided over a pot hole and I landed flat on my back. Sustaining four fractured vertebrae while casually biking in my village post giant bike trip to New Zealand is almost too ironic to even mention.

“But at least it’s not syphilis” I told myself as I hunched my way to electro-stimulation therapy in Surabaya. And when Peace Corps informed me they were medically evacuating me to the states I read the words of Karen Blixen with renewed fervor. “God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road” she writes. I hold these words in my head the first day I learn how to walk in my back brace.

Being sent home to heal has been more complex than I thought it would be. The prematurity of my homecoming in itself has left me in a strange position, like a sheepish party guest who has made a great show of saying goodnight to everyone and then finds she must return to retrieve her car keys. I understand now, what Ms. Blixen must have, upon her return to Denmark: the feeling of having left something behind only to realize that what you left behind was your life. To have left my life in Indonesia, which is so beautiful in its complexity and so maddening in its mystery leaves me with a feeling of buzzy muzziness unrelated to cracked bones.

There’s no way to know what makes life go in one direction and not another. I could not have foreseen that the breaking of my back would rebuild and reinvigorate my sense of purpose as a Peace Corps volunteer. As Ms. Blixen notes, “difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”

It is true. The love and support that has been revealed to me is a gentle reminder of how lucky and enriched my life both here in Colorado and back in Indonesia is. It’s the kind of love that is almost tangible. It makes me feel fierce and humble and gathered up inside. This accident has left me trembling, but glad.

In the end, Karen Blixen is able to take back her life from syphilis, and return to the hills of Africa she loves so much. Later in life, she will write a memoir about her experiences there. In 2015 I will reread “Out of Africa” for the third time and wait and hope for the day in the not so distant future when I too will return to the country I love and cherish so much.

The Known Unknowns

Every three months the Peace Corps sends out the infamously bureaucratic Volunteer Response Form (VRF). Essentially a survey to collect data on the activities, classes and projects each volunteer has been working on, the question that causes me the most angst is the following:

Question: Finish the sentence. “If I could share one thing about my host country with my friends and family back home it would be ____.”

Only one?

Last month I had the privilege of joining my family on a long and jolly jaunt around New Zealand. My first time out of Indonesia in 11 months, I fulfilled every self proclaimed prophesy of cheese gorging, hot shower reveling, and marveling at all the traffic law abiding citizens who fully stopped for pedestrians. What I hadn’t anticipated was how closely Indonesia would shadow me as I did my best to forget it for a while. It’s also hard to put such a multifaceted, multi emotional experience on the back burner of attention when it is what people most want to discuss at cocktail hour.

“Tell us about Indonesia.”
“Tell me about the Peace Corps.”
“What’s it like living out there?”

What IS all that like? Answering a few of those VRFs should have prepared me better. The truth is that I know both more and less about this amazing country since moving here one year ago. A conglomerate of cultures, languages and religions, I love Indonesia because it is still so unknowable to me. Certainly I have come to understand some of the customs and traditions my community is so deeply steeped in, but other aspects remain clouded to my sense of logic.

Now, I’d rather be sodomized by a plastic lawn flamingo than vote for a Republican, but as I consider that VRF question, I can’t help but quote the former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who quite wisely said: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know that there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Let’s start with the known knowns.

1) I know I will wake up at 4:30 when the call to prayer goes off at mosque.
2) I know I will be plied with rice and hot, sugary tea multiple times a day.
3) I realize my students’ sweet smiles are the greatest gift.
4) I’m quite sure buying large quantities of exotic fruit for under a dollar will never get old.
5) I understand the freedom that is the muumuu dressing gown and I’m never going back.

Which brings us to the known unknowns.

1) Status nails.

Here on Java it is the custom (fashion?) for a man to grow out one or two of his fingernails to an extraordinary length. I have been told that a nail of such length indicates that the gentleman enjoys a certain amount of status and privilege. Perhaps he works in an office rather than a rice field and can afford to keep a fingernail long and manicured. I understand the general idea, but there’s something about witnessing a full grown man daintily cleaning his lovely french-tipped nails that bemuses me.

2) Karaoke power ballads.

I can barely get my students to raise their hands in class, or speak above a whisper when called on. I’ve come to understand that Indonesians are not fond of direct, personal attention (a characteristic that fits within a culture that values the communal over the individual). But hand any one of my kids a microphone and suddenly they are prancing around like Mick Jagger for all the world to see. “Timid karaoke belter” is an oxymoron in itself, which is why I’m always shocked when my students, fellow teachers and Indonesian friends select the saddest, most heart-breaking of power ballads to rock out to. I’m talking Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. There’s a lot of Bruno Mars and Eric Clapton as well once the vocal pipes grow weary.

A few months ago my amazing counterpart and I had to drive the six hours to Surabaya for a training. Renowned for his love of karaoke, he had prepped the car for a karaoke-singing-road-trip-marathon. With not one, but two flash discs full of background melodies and a compiled book of more than 50 song lyrics that car ride was one of the longest (and one of the best) road trips I’ve ever taken. Pak Zen and I will challenge you to a Sad Song Sing-Off any day.

3) Ghost culture and black magic.

Last night my house was broken into and a laptop and some jewelry were stolen from my Bapak’s desk. A theft inside my own home has been very unsettling, but it has been heartening to hear the outpouring concern and compassion from my fellow teachers and neighbors. I have been told multiple times today that naturally, the thief (like many thieves, of course) was practiced in the art of “sirep” which is the ability to charm people into a deep sleep while you sneak into their house and rob them. This is not the first time my community has insisted that magic and spirits are at work. There is a particular rice paddy in my neighborhood the kids will not bike past because that is where three ghosts reside. I have come to love the voodoo-esque spirituality of Java, even if I’m not fully convinced. Hey, I was sleeping deeply last night when my house was broken into so what do I know?

And finally, the unknown unknowns.

1) Because Peace Corps has forced me to face problems I didn’t even know existed, I can only imagine what the next 15 months have in store for me.
2) And yet,
3) And yet!
4) I love how unknowable it all can be.