A Wild Patience Has Brought Me Here

While you are waiting for back bones to heal it is discovered that there are a limited number of activities you can accomplish to help the time pass. You sleep in with no call to prayer to wake you up. You spend all day strapped into your pajamas by your back brace. You gorge on copious amounts of dairy disregarding the carnage it will inflict on your digestive system later. You spend an entire day binge watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians and silently judge their life choices. You eat brownies. You eat brownies while judging the Kardashian’s life choices.

It has been four months since I was sent home to recover from a freak bike accident I sustained while playing with kids in my community. Four months of healing, waiting, wondering and grappling with how it feels to fail unexpectedly. Sitting at home watching tv and chowing down brownies made me feel like the ultimate failure. This was not what my 24th year was supposed to look like! At age 24 I was meant to be in the thick of my Peace Corps service. I wasn’t supposed to be reading People magazine while getting a pedicure! I needed to be doing something that was gritty, gratifying and life changing! My poor off-road biking skills I was able to come to terms with, but what made things worse was the internal ringing inside that clanged “go back to Indonesia” and “don’t” simultaneously.

As these conflicted emotions grew stronger, it seemed as if fate had nailed another nail in the proverbial coffin in May, when I learned from my counterpart that my host family was no longer able to host me should I return to my community. With Ramadan’s strict fasting and praying schedule looming, there was no way my counterpart would be able to find me a new house until it ended a month later. Without a place to live, I would not be able to return to work. I put my reinstatement paperwork on hold with relief, grateful I had more time to think about what I wanted to do and waited. Was returning something I really wanted for myself at this point? Was moving on to something different a cop out? What was the right thing to do? The ringing grew louder.

While my bones began to calcify, my self-image started to crumble. If I couldn’t be a Peace Corps volunteer, who was I? In the life blueprint I had drawn up for myself, there was a big blank space post Peace Corps. Thoughts of graduate school, alternate jobs, relocating to different states and different countries raced through my brain like slides on a projector. I applied to a job in West Africa. I mapped out an 8-week hike across Colorado. I seriously considered medical school. All these options felt like desperate attempts to whip up a new version of myself. None of it felt right.

In May I went out for Indian food with a beloved family friend. Over naan and curry and all the delicious foods I lamented I wouldn’t eat if I went back to Indonesia she told me “you already know what you are going to do. The decision is buried somewhere inside and it is up to you to dig it out.”

She was as usual, right.
I once watched a TedTalk on hard choices. I don’t remember much, except that the speaker talked about chocolate doughnuts and the way tough decisions define who we are, and who we become. I also remember I thought that the thirty-something year old speaker had already forgotten what it feels like to be a twenty-something year old.

I think what my elders say I will miss about this time in my life is the very thing that drives me mad. What I will miss later and don’t miss now is the feeling that nothing has started yet; that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the rest of my life. What an overwhelming privilege it is to choose to go back to Peace Corps or move to West Africa or apply to medical school! What I don’t want to forget about this age is the loneliness of it all. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything yet.

This is why the choice I had in front of me was a difficult one–I had no prior “hard” life experiences to draw on to back myself up. By having no former knowledge of what to do in a situation like this my decision would become a characterization. What kind of young woman did I want to be? Was I a person who returned to Indonesia because she stuck to her guns and followed through on her commitments? Or was I a woman who understood that sometimes it is better to let go rather than to hold on, and move forward in a different direction?

Wondering if I was returning to my Peace Corps service or moving on has been a lesson in growing up. Probably no one ever feels like an actual grown up, except for certain high school math teachers or members of Congress. These past few months have taught me the importance of the progressive, the “ing” ending on grow. It was realizing that most of growing up is an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally–and sometimes maddeningly–who we are. It was noting that all of us on a gut level already know the answers to the questions we ask. How difficult. How divine.

24 has been a big year for me, a painful, wonderful, deeply necessary year. A long relationship I was in ended and continued forward simultaneously. I trimmed my hair with a swiss army knife, met interesting people, butchered a cow, and could feel the engine of my life quietly revving up beneath me. I took a pottery class. I tried listening to jazz music. I couldn’t afford books on Amazon but sometimes I bought them anyway.

My decision to return to Indonesia is at the same time surprising and not to me. That both could be true is the very mystery of becoming that Rilke so beautifully writes of; the notion that you can know and not know yourself at the same time. There is a sense among many of my friends and peers that these next couple of years are the precious few we have to make something of ourselves. To grow into the people we want to be; to manifest the vision we have for our lives. The most important lesson this injury/recovery has taught me is that transformation is often quiet and sans big revelatory bangs.

We grow into the people we want to be and also already are. Looking back, I wish I had trusted more in my ability to make the right decision. I should have felt for the quiet blossoming of truth that would ultimately be the choice I always knew would take me to where I need to go. It was not the frantic transformation of growth but a wild patience in myself that has brought me here. And so I am returning to Indonesia to finish my final year of Peace Corps service. I am nervous about the traffic I will have to once more navigate on my bike (my back can’t take another fall!) I am jittery about laying down a foundation yet again with a new host family, and rebuilding the relationships I left so quickly back at site. My language skills need brushing up on. All of this is simply an indication that there is more grow(ing) and learn(ing) to do.

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.

Joy, Actually

Tis the season for sugar cookies, twinkly holiday lights and that annual viewing of the amazingly saccharine film “Love Actually.” Little pleasures I would most certainly be reveling in if I were stateside this time of year. But because I am not, I find myself humming little ditties like “Joy to the World” to the baby in my house and doing my best to convince myself that I don’t need that peppermint latte to feel fulfilled. Which is a lie. No amount of fried tofu can ever come close to a delicious holiday beverage. I was griping about the lack of such wintry customs to a friend a few weeks ago on Skype when she asked me if, in spite of it all, I was happy. Such a simple question gave me pause, and as it is the season to cherish life’s happiness, and to wish even more “joy to the world” I can say with absolute certainty that while I am happy in Indonesia, it is a happiness hard won. I’m basically Emma Thompson’s “Love Actually” character if the sequel were to take place in a humid Indonesian village. Like her character I’ve been listening to an inordinate amount of Joni Mitchell lately too.

For the purposes of this post it might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road–you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience. And if you were to ask me if I considered my Peace Corps experience to be a pleasure or a joy, I would answer the latter. And if you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life right now, I wouldn’t be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves to be such a difficult emotion to manage.

Perhaps the first thing I should say is that I experience at least a little pleasure every day. I wonder if this is more than the usual amount? It was the same even in adolescence, when most people are miserable. I don’t think this is because so many wonderful things happen to me but because small things go a long way. This has proven to be helpful as a lone volunteer. A squishy mango from one of the fruit venders on my road has the genuine power to turn my day around. All day long I can look forward to a glass of es degan (my favorite Indonesian drink: shreds of coconut meat in fresh coconut water). The persistent microstresses that fill the rest of my life are calmed for as long as I have a delicious flavor on my tongue. And though it’s true that when the glass is empty the microstresses return, we volunteers do not have so many reliable sources of pleasure here as to turn up our nose at the ones that are so readily available. A juicy mango. Even the burden of the relentless Indonesian heat can be lifted for the eight minutes it takes to eat a mango.

My other source of daily pleasure is–but I wish I had a better way of putting it–staring into space. A cool breeze, the crowing of our roosters and that delicate tropical sunlight that arrives only at the very beginning and very end of each day here. I can sit on my back patio sans book, music or company and enjoy the nothingness of it all for hours.

I think it’s important to note that I am enjoying my Peace Corps service, but not necessarily finding pleasure in it. Occasionally Peace Corps is a pleasure, though it mostly is a joy, which means in fact it gives me not much pleasure at all but more that strange admixture of terror, pain and delight that I have come to recognize as joy and now must find some way to live with daily here. I’d imagine parents feel the same way about their young children.

Living with daily joy–this is a new problem. Prior to embarking on my service I had known joy only four or five times in my life, and each time tried to forget it soon after it happened, out of the fear that the memory of it would dement and deform everything else. Let’s call it five. Twice I was in love, but only once was the love viable, or likely to bring me any pleasure in the long run. Once I was in water, once in the back middle seat of a crowded car, once sitting on a high mountaintop, once on a rollercoaster, and once in a tent.

It is hard to arrive at generalities in the face of such a small and varied collection of emotional data. What all of my pre-Peace Corps joys do include however is the great struggle that tends to precede joy, and the feeling–once one is “in” joy–that the experiencing subject has somehow “entered” the emotion, and disappeared. I “have” pleasure, it is a feeling I want to experience and own. An ice cream cone is a pleasure. Winter vacation is a pleasure. But here in Indonesia as a Peace Corps volunteer I AM joy.

At the neural level, I’m sure explanations can be given in very clear terms as to why the moment after giving a speech to a hundred Islamic middle schoolers can feel ecstatic, or swimming in the Indian ocean with somebody dear to me. Perhaps the same synapses that drugs falsely twang are twanged authentically by sea water, and sweaty pre-speech palms. We certainly don’t need to be neuroscientists to know that wild romances–especially if they are fraught with danger–do something ecstatic to our brains, though like the pills that share the name, horror and disappointment are usually not far behind. I used to have a wild, dangerous crush on Indonesia. My first few months in this country I couldn’t take enough of it in: the colors, the smells, the cadence of speech. Even laughter sounds different here. I remember climbing a high, steep hill in PST with a few of my fellow trainees simply because we could. We climbed so high and for so long that we did not consider how we would get down. When it came time to descend we weighed our options: a bruised ass or a long evening inching down as mosquitos swarmed. In the end we decided on a strategy that applied both, and eventually my prosaic infatuation with this country fizzled out. But what a wonderful thing, to stand on a hill with good people, dizzy with joy, thinking nothing of bruised asses.

I’d say my real love for this country came months later. It lay at the end of a long and arduous road, and I think the road will be longer yet at times. I was so surprised by its arrival, so unprepared, that on the day this love arrived I had already had a grumpy morning with canceled classes and was biking to what I was sure would be a pointless meeting while people on motorbikes hassled me with cries of “hey Mister.” But then it snuck up behind me and intermingled itself with the sweat on my skin. I was heading toward the intolerable, feeling the only thing that makes it worthwhile. That was joy.

The thing no one ever told me about joy is that it has very little real pleasure in it. And yet if it hadn’t happened at all, at least once, how would we live? Joy is such a human madness. The fantastic writer Julian Barnes once wrote, “it hurts just as much as it is worth.” For months after reading that book these words stuck with me, so clear and so brutal. It hurts just as much as it is worth. What an arrangement. Why would anyone accept such a crazy deal? Why would anyone agree to eight hundred days of pure, painful, beautiful, ever present joy? I don’t know, but for what it is worth, one third of my way through this twenty-seven month commitment I am so happy that I did.

A Tale of Two Women

How do I talk about my host sister except that I mention Charles Dickens? A stodgy, long winded writer, Mr. Dickens and I have spent quite a bit of time together this past month. Every afternoon when the atmosphere sags under the heat of the day, I retreat into his dark, and melancholy stories. In his books, it is usually cold and raining. I find this refreshing. If I am to be honest, I have also been using these books as a literary Irish exit of sorts, allowing me to circumnavigate stilted interactions with Wilda.

My host sister Wilda and I are the same age but the similarities stop there. Aside from the obvious (she is married, she is pregnant with her first child, a girl) there is a gaping cultural divide between us. Wilda acts her age within her Indonesian culture, and I act my age outside of it. This often leaves us at a loss for what to say to each other. We talk too much about the weather and count down the days until Ibu and Bapak return home. Our parents (her biological and my host) have been gone for a month and will not return until the end of October. They are making the pilgrimage (or Haji) to Mecca. It is one of the five pillars of Islam and it sounds to me both very important and incredibly boring. (Note: when I ask my host parents about Haji before they leave, they sum up the 40 day pilgrimage as “just walking around in circles and praying”). Wilda has moved into her parents house while they are gone for two reasons: she needs to be closer to her older sister as her due date draws near, and someone needed to babysit the American while Mom and Pops are away.

It is awkward to say the least, because we can’t quite figure each other out. From Wilda’s perspective, there must be something wrong with me that I am not married yet. There is something strange about me that I am here in Indonesia on my own, and more over, that I chose to be here independently. On my end, my Western liberal and feminist upbringing makes me wrinkle my nose at marriage and kids at this time in my life. The family jokes that Emily is afraid of nothing, and Wilda is scared of everything. While I have managed to move to the other side of the world, Wilda will not cross a busy street without her father or her husband holding her arm. One time she asks me to hold her elbow while we sidestep traffic, and I do my best not to laugh. I sleep with the lights turned off. The dark scares Wilda. In all things she seems to be the Charles Darnay to my Sydney Carton. Or something like that. And so it happens that we really don’t have much to say to each other. We are alone in the house, but don’t spend too much time together. Most evenings, my nose is buried in a book about orphans and pickpockets, while Wilda sends Whats App messages to her husband.

I like Wilda’s husband, Khusul. He speaks with the soft cadence of a boy who works in a crafts boutique, and for the longest time I affectionately referred to him (in my mind) as “Lady Butt”. He is not chubby, but curvy in a masculine way. He is quick to flash a smile, but rarely speaks. He spends long periods of time out in the yard, with a cigarette between his fingers, blowing lazy streams of smoke into the sky. I love it when he is here on the weekends. I like watching them together, hoping to catch a glimpse of the reason they got married. I want to see them in love, because Western tradition and Rachel McAdams rom coms have taught me this is why people get married and have babies. I am a little disappointed when I ask Wilda how they met, and she says they met in school and they texted a lot. That’s it. That is their story. I have grown up thinking love and marriage is the product of a fantastic meet-cute encounter. Wilda was raised to see matrimony as a necessary and practical step in becoming an adult. I ask her how he proposed. She says her parents talked to his parents and they set a date.

In contrast, my Mom and Dad met in their late teenage years. Their love story is the kind you hope for when you ask people how they came together. There are cheesy pick up lines, initial misunderstandings, red sneakers, love notes on gum wrappers, break ups, pizza in the park and Carole King love songs. I love imagining them then, knowing no more than I do, just that they liked the way it felt to be together. I try and imagine Wilda and Khusul, sending texts back and forth, the high “ping” of a message received making their hearts jump with anticipation. I wonder if Wilda’s daughter will be disappointed to learn that her parents’ marriage is built on emoticons, or if she will privately thrill at how her parents were brought together as I do with mine.

I give up on trying to find common ground with Wilda towards the end of September. I finish reading “A Tale of Two Cities” where Dickens writes “that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other”. When it comes to my host sister, I think no words could ring more true.

Around 3am on October 4th, I am roused from sleep by the bright kitchen light outside my room. I think Wilda has turned it on again after I’ve gone to bed (she is afraid of ghosts, so likes the lights on at all times). I can’t sleep with the glare, so I groggily rise to shut it off again. In the kitchen, I find Wilda pacing in circles. She has felt a few contractions and can no longer lie in bed. I proceed to privately flip out. I’m trying to recall anything I know about emergency home births and labor breathing techniques. For some reason, I can only think about Dennis Quaid. I remember seeing a movie with him as a kid where he must deliver a baby on the side of a highway. I forget the name of the film, and wish my eight year old self had paid more attention. Luckily, this baby isn’t on Dennis Quaid time, and we walk around the kitchen for a few more hours, until Wilda is exhausted and needs to rest. For a woman who is wearing Hello Kitty pajamas un-ironically, she shows immense maturity in these early moments of labor.

I have one class that morning so leave Wilda and Ninin (my other host sister) after a sleepless night. I can’t concentrate at school. I think about all the ways the date October 4th will be ordinary for most people, and how it will completely transform Wilda’s life. I rush home and catch Ninin and Wilda as they are heading out the door and I am hustled into the car with them. It is unclear as to whether my going with them was part of the initial plan, or if they are worried of what I will do if left at home unattended. Either way, I am pressed as far against the side window as I can be, giving Wilda a wide berth for her ever expanding and quickening contractions. I believe I whimper “oh man oh man oh man” all the way to the hospital.

The hospital is painted bright green and yellow and there are no waiting rooms. I am led into the delivery room with everyone else and promptly move to cower in the farthest corner. “Everyone else” at this point includes Khusul who has left work to meet us, and another female neighbor. We’re crowded into this sterilized space and I can see each of us are breaking down from the excitement and the trauma of it all. There are spazzy hand motions, raised voices, and nervous laughter. Everyone is freaking out. Everyone except Wilda. Wilda, who is afraid of moving traffic, geckos and the dark is the bravest soul in the room. She is a planet of calm, and slowly we all gravitate into her orbit, taking big, deep breaths.

What follows is an experience I can never give back. To say that “labor” is labor is an understatement. To be honest it looks fucking terrible. As the baby crowns I think that this is the way we get sexually active teens to use protection. Stick em’ in the maternity ward and I guarantee girls will never let boys “forget” a condom ever again. I think there is no way I will ever put myself through this unless I am positive I really want the baby I push out of my body. I become radically pro-choice standing by Wilda’s head.

Every time I freak out in that delivery room though, all I have to do is look at Wilda’s face. I am ashamed, adding to the nervous energy around her as she (not me) undergoes something so profoundly world shattering. Wilda is with us, but not with us. She is with herself on a different plane. We all could not be there and I don’t think she would notice. She seems to have gone to some place deep inside herself and alternately rests and draws energy from this point of focus only she can feel. Her strength is awe inspiring.

My host sister gives birth to a beautiful baby girl at 3pm on October 4th. She has a mass of dark hair and sweet puckered lips. They wrap her up like a Chipotle burrito and put her in a baby “health box” while the mother naps. The rest of the day and into the evening, family members come and go and sleep in the room with Wilda. I stay, because no one has taken me home yet. I stay because I can’t take my eyes off of the baby and her mother. Wilda looks the same, but she also looks different. She has undergone something I can’t even imagine. She is twenty four years old and she now has a little person who depends on her. We are the same age, but now I think she looks older than me, like she knows something I don’t.

Later that evening, everyone leaves for evening prayer and it is just Wilda, the baby and me. I pull out my copy of Charles Dickens and my host sister watches her daughter sleep. Quite suddenly, she breaks the silence. “Thank you for being here”, she says. I look at her, and she looks at me. I don’t have the words in Indonesian to tell her how moved I am. I don’t have the words in any language to tell her what she did this afternoon inadvertently changed me, and has changed how I view her. I don’t have the words to tell her I am sorry I held up her life and compared it to my own. I can’t communicate how much I admire her. Instead I simply say “Anda sudah sepurnah”. You were perfect. She smiles at me and drifts off to sleep. I go back to my book, where the following words leap off the page and hover over me in this hospital, over this experience, over my life here: “Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true”.

Beyonce and the Bule

A little while back a friend told me about an absolutely pointless but amazing tumblr called “Am I Beyonce Yet?” The title kind of sums up the entire blog, which documents the user waking up every morning and affirming that she isn’t Queen Bey…yet. Before this goes any further let’s both lean in closer to each other and confess that we all have had days where we wish we were living Beyonce’s life and not our own. Personally, I tend to pine for a Freaky Friday switch with Bey on bad hair days, when I watch that moment in her “Drunk in Love” video when she does that freaking awesome arm and hip twirl to ankle kick dancey thing, or that one time I foolishly thought I could pull off naming my future offspring colors. Beyonce, to use her own word, is flawless. The great appeal is that while her celebrity makes her someone to talk about, recently it seems everything she does isn’t just fodder for gossip magazines, it’s actual news. I’m referring to her knocking multiple socks off at Obama’s Inauguration Address a few years back, her restructuring of the music industry through her unannounced new album, and her not so subtle stance on feminism. Yeah, it would be cool to strut in Beyonce’s shoes but for most of us all we can do is dream on. Except–and let’s just suspend reality for a moment–what if you did, as the tumblr hoped, woke up one day as Beyonce?

I didn’t exactly fall asleep and wake up as a femme tour de force. For me, it took a little longer than that. Precisely, it took a move across the world, a thirteen hour time difference and a job in the Peace Corps to transform me into a diva. I have been living at my permanent site here in Indonesia for almost three months now, and I have to say, it is like no life experience I have ever encountered previously. I could wax poetic on the conglomerate of religion and culture here, my first few experiences slaughtering small animals, the incredible people I am surrounded by, or the suffocating heat. And I will at some point, certainly. These wonderful, frustrating, fantastic, sob inducing experiences are very fresh, staccato like nudges in my mind that I live on the edge of my comfort zone every single day here. The more constant, daily reminder of this is that I’m kind of a small town celebrity, and what I do and say isn’t just something to flip through in the market produce line. I’m real news too.

The first indicator of my newfound fame was the slip n’ slide sized banner with my face on it at my new school. The second was the ceremony that followed. This shindig was complete with a heartfelt, karaoke edition of Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” sung by my teaching counterpart, as well as the final parting of the crowds to reveal my new host family. I in turn, felt obligated to speak/sing the requested ballad “I’m Yours” to show my appreciation for such a turn out. And people were losing their minds.

I kind of anticipated making a few waves moving here. It’s to be expected when someone so strange and foreign just kind of pops up without warning. The town is gonna talk. For many of my neighbors and community members, I am the first bule (foreigner, white person) they have ever met. The range of emotion people feel when seeing or meeting me for the first time is extreme. Children will generally cry, or freak out and then cry. I was recently mistaken by an elderly woman for a ghost. In general, everyone is speechless at first, and then they sort of shake themselves out of shock to ask me five things: where am I going, what is my religion, what is my marital status, can I eat rice, and am I happy here. I have become a pro at these mini press conferences (Beyonce would be proud). The initial excitement over my arrival I understand, but I didn’t believe my fifteen minutes of fame would, or even could have lasted this long.

It is a strange feeling to be celebrated for being a bule. I didn’t win any competition, I am not a world class athlete or performer. I have not organized a protest against a corrupt government, nor taken a bullet standing up for my beliefs. Heck, I didn’t even make a sex tape (looking at you Kim Kardashian…not like that would be allowed in Indo anyway). But celebrated I am. I have received a constant barrage of social invitations to festivals, parades, soccer games and ceremonies. Who knew I would join the Peace Corps and become a quasi socialite? With all the showering of praise and appreciative comments from my fellow community members it is easy to get caught up in the glamour of it all. As I have learned though, it is dangerous to start buying into your own hype, mainly because you start to believe it. I am all for a healthy self esteem, but crossing that line by accepting everyone singing your praises as a fact rather than opinion is exactly what Carly Simon was crooning about too. And there are so many moments where my vanity must be checked at the door here. Because although my community wants to make everything about me, it is my job to make everything about them. I am here, quite simply, for everyone else. Easy to say on the internet, but an oh so hard thing to put into practice.

Being the shameless student and goody two shoes that I am I have put into action all the habits and suggestions Peace Corps recommended during training. Maybe I was hoping I would get a gold star for my efforts. I have thrown myself into participating in community events, and saying yes to activities that I know will make me uncomfortable and put me outside my comfort zone. I visit my neighbors and fellow teachers in their homes. I have lost count of how many fish heads I have eaten to make the Ibus happy.

For all that I put into my community and for all I have already been given in return, I am still on the outside looking in. It can be exhausting explaining day in and day out what I am about. I am an American, yes. I am a white female, yes. I like to run on my own but that doesn’t necessarily make me “very, very, very brave”. I know how to wash my clothes by hand. No, I do not like bakso. No, I cannot marry your son. Yes, I love Indonesia. I have become my own walking, talking Wikipedia stat page, an open book for everyone to read and analyze. It is not an easy thing to do, always affirming for others who I am, especially when I myself am still trying to figure that out. It can be lonely in the spotlight. Beyonce might as well have been singing “if you were a bule I think that you’d understand”…

The upside to all this unwarranted attention is twofold: First, I have uncovered vast reserves of patience I never knew I had. The second is all the free fruit swag. To the people of Indonesia: a sincere thank you to all of you who bring me baskets of my favorite fruits and then sit and watch me eat it every week. You make my life more delicious.

Not even the tastiest mango though can turn my more difficult moments sweet. There have been times–and here I have to be honest–where I wish I was someplace else. Mainly, back stateside. Because life in a culture you grew up in and know so well is so easy! Nobody questions what you eat, wear, or do. I do not need to convince you that I am not sad just because I am sitting by myself reading a book. I do not need to give a speech every time I participate in a social activity. But to have these difficult conversations has tended to bring about a much deeper satisfaction, something I didn’t experience in America. In short, the tough stuff has (so far) brought me the greatest joy in the long run.

This is where the patience comes in. A few days ago, I found myself sitting in a stranger’s house in a room full of people speaking Javanese (a language I do not, probably will not ever understand). I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I had no idea when it would be over. A few months ago this would have made me mad. I would have been frustrated that this seemingly endless afternoon was pointless as I couldn’t understand what was being said. I would have been irked because people kept pointing at me and sneaking photos of me on their cell phones. I would have thought that I had better, more productive things I could be doing. That was me three months ago. The me now is completely unperturbed. I sat there for four hours chatting while hardly understanding what was being said. I ate a handful of homemade coconut candies to make the host happy. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

What I have recognized as of late is this, and it seems so obvious but still: the only thing you can control is your attitude. This is such a bland thing to say. It’s the kind of generic phrase one might find on Pinterest set against a photograph of a sunset or something equally dumb. It is a universal truth I would have written off three months ago as being overused and cliche. Not so now.

Patience, it seems, is the source through which I can carry myself with grace through the Peace Corps. It is what helps me keep my cool when people follow me on their motorbikes yelling “hey mister” and it is why I’m okay explaining why I’m not married over and over again. Patience has helped me stop caring so much about the little grievances and refocus on the big picture. I could be aggravated that there are teachers at my school who want to bust my chops for not teaching as many hours as the others (Peace Corps rules, sorry). Instead I choose to appreciate the teachers who are passionate about their students’ education and all my amazing kids who are so excited to learn.

My new found fame comes with a lot of responsibility in terms of sharing a small piece of my old world with this new one. It’s hard. It is hard to break open your heart and let everyone in, even when you don’t think you can, or want to give anymore of yourself to the experience at hand. The great George Saunders once wrote that we must live our lives “so open that it hurts, world without end, amen” and that truly is what I must do here. All it takes is all I’ve got to have a good day in the Peace Corps. And when I am absolutely depleted well, that’s what the Oreos sequestered in my room are for. I’ve grown up a lot these past few months, and my skin has gotten thicker. I’ve adopted a potentially annoying zen attitude of “que sera sera”. The secret is to be patient and give it all you’ve got. I’m happier living my life this way, because when it’s good here, it’s great. Maybe that’s Beyonce’s secret too. She just does it in a leotard.

* I apologize for not posting in a while, I didn’t have consistent enough Internet for an update! I miss you all very much. Do me a favor and eat a bagel for me. Appreciate that hot shower. Hug all the loved ones who are physically in your vicinity right and know that I am sending my love to you all across the ocean.

On Cults And Courage

Stepping off the yellow angkot, something wonderful but vaguely creepy happened: namely, none of us knew what time it was. Right after we passed through the gates, a few of my students came giggling up to me “Selamat Pagi Miss!” “Pagi Miss Emily!” Pagi? Morning? Am I dreaming or is it not actually dark outside and 7 o’clock in the evening? “Oh no miss,” one of the braver girls replied to my confused question, “it is always morning here.”

For the past few weeks a clump of soon to be Peace Corps volunteers and myself have been completing our teaching practicum at the Selamat Pagi School in Batu, Indonesia. When we first arrived, we couldn’t believe our luck. On our first day we were greeted at the canteen with cold (real glasses!) of floating lychee fruit in sweet coconut milk. It is the custom of Indonesian hospitality to be warm and welcoming to guests, but these kids are on another level of psyched. Can you imagine a pre-teen girl and her best friend at a One Direction concert? Take that enthusiasm and direct it towards the sweaty American subtly trying to shake pee off her pants.

It is inspiring and gratifying to see these children so happy, because they come from not so great backgrounds. You see, this school is a special place. Not for your average Indonesian high schooler, the student body is comprised of 100 hand picked boys and girls. To be accepted into Selamat Pagi, a student must be orphaned, or come from a very difficult home situation. Knowing this, and after hearing a few of their stories, it makes me want to hug every single one of my students. “Thank God they have this place” I think to myself. That is until I put down my fruit juice and take a real hard look around.

Hanging from all the trees and cheerfully painted buildings are strings of modified prayer flags with catchphrases like “Grateful Is Our Breath”, and “Integrity Is Our Action”. Words that are a little short on sense and a little long on whimsy if you ask me. Resort music is always thrumming around the compound. It’s a constant playlist of songs like that weird O-zone ditty “Mai Ah Hee” and throwback Shakira jams. This is a privately funded school and home for these kids, which means that it has to generate its own income. The founder of Selamat Pagi decided to harness the enthusiasm (and maybe naiveness?) of youth and make the school a quasi retreat/conference location for businesses, families and other schools to bring in money. It’s what I’d imagine going to school at Club Med would be like. While we hold classes in beautiful outdoor bamboo classrooms, I can see other kids in the distance leading middle aged businessmen in a choreographed dance number to a Justin Bieber song. There is a swimming pool with aquatic aerobics for kids. Did I mention the zipline?

It is the peppiest place in Indonesia, but I’m not certain what they are doing here is legal, or entirely pc. To live and study here, the students must also run the place. While I get to sleep in every morning until the ungodly hour of 5am, chances are my students have been up since 3:30, cooking for the conferences that day, cleaning the compound, out in the fields harvesting produce to sell or rehearsing for the performances they have a few times a week for paying guests. The work is hard. It is easy to get caught up in the general cult like atmosphere here and frown at the structure of this school. Apart from a few secret society and kool-aid jokes here and there, we are glad that the students live in a safe and nurturing environment, and that schooling can be had when they are not putting on elaborate shows (there is fire breathing and acrobatics!)

To live my life as a Peace Corps trainee but also work every day at this school is like stepping off the angkot and into the twilight zone. This is not real life, and certainly not what I am expecting my actual school and students to be like once I reach permanent site. At Selamat Pagi, my students don’t leave the compound, because everything they could possibly need is there, and everyone they love is there too. It’s actually similar to how I’ve come to feel about PST these past three months. In PST we trainees never have to plan our own days, as Peace Corps organizes everything for us. And hey, we all get to do it together as one big bewildered and happy family.

So it was a bit of a wake up call on all switchboards earlier this week when two things happened. First, I looked at the calendar and realized I only had a week and a half left of training before I move to permanent site. Second, I taught a class on occupations and careers. I started class by asking my students if they had thought about what they would do when they graduated Selamat Pagi. Silence. I asked again, “what will you do, what do you want to do when you leave school?” Again, nothing. At last, my best student raised his hand. “Excuse me Miss, but we will want to stay at Selamat Pagi and work here after we graduate”. I didn’t really know what to say. Don’t they know that there is life outside of this school with new experiences to be had and new people to meet? Don’t they realize that there is a big, wide world waiting for them?

I could say the same thing for myself. I could never compare the suffering and real atrocities my students have encountered in their young lives to my own, but these past three months have been no easy cake walk for me either. It’s because of these past months that I understand why my students would be afraid to leave the only home and family they know. I’m scared too.

After the stressful and incredibly emotional months leading up to leaving for Peace Corps, it has been a blessing to fall into a routine here, and to be with people who completely understand what it means to be a PC trainee. My fellow trainees have become my biggest support system here, and it’s hard to imagine a day without them in it. That is why it was a shock to realize that once again, a week and a half from now, all that initial discomfort and confusion will be repeated, but this time I’ll be flying solo. It doesn’t help that Peace Corps has warned us time and again that the first three months at permanent site are the most difficult to get through. It’s like being pushed out of our cozy American nest with nothing but potential depression, physical illness, anxiety and other unsavory things below. Gee, thanks.

Let me tell you I have given myself many a pep talk these past few days to gear up for The Big Move. Motivational speeches in front of my mirror that may or may not include me gripping the edge of my desk and quoting the Somalian pirate from “Captain Phillips” (“Look at me, look at me, I am the Captain now!)

At the core of it, I know that I have to take to heart the same advice that I want to tell my students. I want to remind them (and myself) that being afraid of the unknown is the human condition, and it is the price we pay for this wild ride we call life. And if this fear of the unknown is inevitable, I think we can, and should all breathe a little easier. Because the truth is, the worst thing that could ever happen is death and that’s going to happen eventually despite all of our worries and effort. If you think about it in these stark terms it’s irrational not to say fuck it, and just go for it. Not that I would ever swear in front of my students. But if I know the upcoming months are going to be difficult, I’m not going to sit here and worry about it being difficult. Life keeps going and we have to keep going with it. I’m not saying that I am going to move to permanent site and defy my impending fear by riding motorcycles, or start hanging around outside my local mosque in a tank top and cut off jean shorts. I’m not going to tell my students to leave Selamat Pagi after graduation and start having sex before marriage or eat pork. But I guess I’m not going to tell them not to do those things either if that’s what will make them feel most alive. It would be a real shame if my students and I only schlepped through our days to “get through” them. Life is hard, but maybe it is supposed to be. So why not embrace it? PST has been a happy prelude that allowed me to transition into my new life here. Eventually though, the bubble had to burst and I will have to take whatever comes my way and figure out what will make me happy through it all. I guess at some point we all have to turn off the party tunes and face the real music.

Poco a Poco

Poco a poco. It is, hands down my favorite mantra. A common saying in Spanish, it literally translates to “bit by bit”, or “little by little”. This phrase took on new meaning for me the year I lived in Santiago, Chile. My host padre was the one who reintroduced it to me, explaining it one evening after I became frustrated trying to explain the basic concepts of fracking in Spanish. As I trailed off, Gerardo (my host father) reached across the table and kindly patted my hand. “Don’t worry, Emily. It takes time to find the right words. When trying anything new, we must be patient with ourselves. Poco a poco, it will fall into place. He was right. After a year assimilating to the bizarre culture that is Santiago, I was always able to find the right words, as long as I told myself to try poco a poco.

I found the phrase again at the end of my first semester. I would be leaving Santiago for a few weeks to travel with my American family in Patagonia before returning to Santiago in the Spring. The eve before my departure I was excitedly recounting to Gerardo all the things that would be coming up. “Before you know it though,” I said “I’ll be back!” My host dad grinned. “Yes, you will soon be back, and we will be happy when you return. But don’t rush ahead so much, take everything poco a poco, and keep your heart where your feet are”. Clearly Gerardo was some sort of spiritual guru in a past life or is simply one of the wisest people I know.

-Be kind and patient with yourself (especially when learning new things)

-Keep your heart where your feet are

I am reminded of these things whenever I glance down at my wrist. This past week I have been looking at those words quite a bit. After more than a year long application process, Friday is the day I finally embark on my Peace Corps adventure (!!) My bags are (basically) packed and I have said some very difficult goodbyes. Through it all, I keep my mantra in the back of my mind, trying to be patient with all these emotions, and truly trying to stay in the moment, where my heart and feet currently are.

I have enjoyed and cherished everything about these past few weeks and I want to thank family and friends alike for the outpouring love I have received. Voicemails, text messages, emails and Facebook messages wishing me well on my way mean so much. It has been a beautiful reminder of all the love I have in my life. To my parents, I say a deep, and heartfelt thank you. Encouraging me to leave and pursue a dream I have talked about since middle school takes an act of selflessness, and I am grateful. The hardness of these last few days, and these final goodbyes has a tiny silver lining in my mind. It leaves me incredibly determined to not only make it through these next 27 months, but really make the most of this experience. If I am to leave everything, and everyone I know behind, then I am going to give this job everything I have.

As I head into Staging in San Francisco and then Pre-Service Training (PST), I will probably not have access to a phone or internet for a few weeks until I get settled. Until the time we can Snapchat/Facetime/Whatsapp/email again I would love a real, old fashioned letter! Honestly, I’d love a letter anytime. I promise if you send me a line or two I will respond as quickly as I am able. You can address notes to:

Emily Werner

Peace Corps Indonesia
Gedung Perpustakaan Lt. 1 (Library Building 1st floor)
Kampus III Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang Jl. Telogomas 246
Post code: 65114
Malang-Jawa Timur
INDONESIA

Until next time (or blog post!)

Emily