Indonesia to withdraw from OPEC, to continue using clubhouse, steam room

Jakarta – Last week Indonesia’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro announced during lunchtime remarks at the Jakarta Foreign Correspondent’s Club plans to leave the cartel and social committee of oil exporting nations. Purnomo unveiled the move to the gathered jeering and giggling Australian journalists as a footnote in a broader speech concerning recent cuts in fuel price subsidies.

However, the Minister did not give the bombshell short shrift, explaining the arduous process and hours of ministerial (and even sub-ministerial) meetings that undoubtedly vetted the plan. “Indonesia, you see, does not really export so much oil anymore. And, as you may not know, that is an essential part of the acronym. We are an oil-consuming nation and we must embrace out identity. OPEC, the past 45 years have been something special, just a couple of crazy governments trying to make it honest.” The Minister went on to add that the 2 million euro yearly membership fee will represent “a substantial savings to our government.”

Indeed, the membership fee, which also carries access to all of the lush facilities that the cartel’s clubhouse offers—squash courts, mahogany-accented locker room, shuffle board, spa, and a wedding hall—along with two ticket’s to the cartel’s annual “An Evening to Remember: Historical Tyrants in Love” dinner ball, was a sticking point for the Minister. “We all learned when Ecuador [snigger] withdrew from OPEC, that is before they came crawling back, that membership fees are non-refundable, ha ha! What is wrong, did you get tired of only running into Gabon at the prime rib station? They looked so silly! Therefore, though I tell you today that Indonesia will leave OPEC, we will not do so until 2009; in the interim continue make use of the steam room and crude emulsification treatments thrice weekly.”

As a buzz went through the room, the Minister resolutely declared, “Indonesia does not care if things will be awkward in the locker room with Iran and Qatar, we will continue to take full advantage of what is our right to healthy living and a relaxed lifestyle!”

Later, under heavy questioning from the assembled spawn of convicts and profiteers, Purnomo’s assertion of “Who knows all the things we may be able to do with those 2 million euros?” eventually cracked. Instead, the clearly humbled veteran of 3 presidential administrations looked unusually shaken.

“It is true, Indonesia was dared by Venezuela to leave the OPEC, and we all at the Ministry figured that a place with such a crazy name could not really exist. We thought those brigands from Nigeria were trying to have their fun with Indonesia! Venezuela? Who knew? Next you will tell me there is a Timbuktu!”

Reaction within the cartel, notorious for its secrecy, has been muted, however Kuwait noted, “Sure, we all made fun of Indonesia during the turban-tying component of the cartel decathlon, but my heart is saddened to think of entering the three-legged race without Indonesia. Have you ever looked at a map? Try the 16,999-legged race.” Saudi Arabia kept a stiffer lip, pointing out that Indonesia’s production of militant Islamists in recent years was, “nothing to write home about.”

The announcement has sent veteran Indonesia watchers into a tailspin, with many seeing it as part of a new, reverse-jinx foreign policy that seeks to extricate the nation of 270 million from membership in the world’s most influential organizations. With OPEC down, many expect that an announcement concerning the UN, where Indonesia holds a temporary seat on the Security Council, is imminent.

peace!

I was on my way to work Monday morning when I realized that something was different about the day. Even before I was picking my way through the exhaust flecked sunshine, while still in bed I noticed that the call to prayer was somehow mellowed. How could we as a community be such letting down out guard against the demons? Truly, I was concerned. Out on the street, I could swear there were fewer overturned cars lining the street, and when I hired a motorcycle, I was happily handed a sturdy helmet. Something was up.

The gangs of hepatitis-addled stray dogs that roam the streets looking for the next meal had turned into adorable puppies that playfully nipped at my heels and rolled over expectantly when I turned. Even the mosquitoes had changed their stripes and were planning a Roger’s & Hammerstein revival for that afternoon’s siesta.

All through the afternoon the unmistakable buzz was in the air—you could just tell that virtually everyone on the streets had put aside their work to reestablish the caliphate. Men were shaving 20 year old beard, and babies were being baptized in the open sewers. ‘Death to the foreign infidel!’ had become ‘Yo, bro, what’s up?’

Math and science were flourishing, and our neighborhood bombmaker told me, ‘I don’t want to make the bomb, man, ‘cause love is the bomb.’

Honestly, readers, I was stumped. Something out of the ordinary was going on; I felt like society was being perfected before my eyes. But what—or who—could be behind the glorious final plan?

Then, in the evening, I saw a news ticker. The state department, characteristically riding the very crest of the trend, had lifted the Indonesia travel warning. It is true, that just that morning the dark ages had seemingly lifted, terrorism evaporated, and peace and harmony reigned. Indonesia finally was safe! What a fortuitous, fortuitous thing for the state department to be so closely monitoring.

And so, I exhale, after 8 months of living dangerously. I am finally safe.

fair warning..

Jakarta, as a place, drips with contradictions. Take a movie billboard for an Indonesian version of ‘American Pie.’ Besides the surfeit of unusually good-looking youngsters, leather jackets, and fishnet stockings, the bottom of the advertisement comes with a warning, like a pack of cigarettes. It translates: “Warning: Careful with free sex.”

In a country where no one pays any attention to posted warnings, the inclusion of this one bears pause. Not just that there are 10 meter tall, hair revealing (shocking, I know) representations of saucy vixens on the street, but that the cultural gulf between Jakarta and everywhere else is so wide.

If anything, this type of warning is a reminder—‘Hey! You down there! We are still religious and traditionalist!’—more of its own impotence than of society’s underlying piety and conservatism. Outwardly, almost every place in Jakarta bears the markings of Westernization. You can assuage your personal lotioning needs at The Body Shop, buy bathroom fixtures at Ace Hardware, see a movie on the same day it premiers in the United States (I saw Iron Man), and even find the greatest American tradition, the wet t-shirt contest.

Of course, if you duck back into the kampoengs (traditional neighborhoods), you get catapulted back in time. Gas lanterns hang from pushcarts selling porridge and boiled peanuts; old men spend the day leaning against a greasy bench watching luxury cars jockey for space in the confined alleyways. If you ask an ojek (motorcycle for hire) driver to take you to a café with wireless, they stare at you blankly.

Indeed, Indonesia still is very religious and traditionalist and one need not trek to Banda Aceh for evidence. Mosques belonging to the Ahamadiyah sect of Islam are frequently attacked no more than 30 km from the city. The government with announce its decision on the potential banning of the sect on Monday. It may be difficult to perceive from the glossy thoroughfares of Jakarta, but Indonesia remains agrarian, religious and reactionary.

In many ways, Jakarta embodies the stark economic inequalities of Indonesia and in truth, the ‘westernized’ represents a stratus of consumption that few Indonesians can hope to attain. Economic growth in Indonesia was resource-led and these factors of production were concentrated in the hands of very few to whom immense wealth accrued. Jakarta, which over the past decade has managed to evolve a middle class, in large part because of its never ending supply of cheap labor, is an Indonesian exception, both because of its exposure and its middle class.

For most Indonesians, the benefits of growth have been concentrated among the few. The majority of the agrarian base has very little purchasing power, access to credit only through government-run pawnshops (a laughable concept I may blog about at some point), and are enslaved by a narrow and cyclic menu of consumer goods (satellite tv and motor scooters on long-term leases). These people are under-exposed, nominally Muslim, superstitious and, except for satellite tv and motor bikes, unchanging. I was talking with an ojek driver who asked me how many women I lived with back home. When I explained none, he seemed genuinely stumped. He was kind enough to explain to me that in the movies—satellite TV, and HBO no less, strikes again—bules are sexually involved with many women at once, so why was not I? That I was not trying to land an Indonesian girlfriend he called a downright lie.

So, I saw a funny movie poster; what any of this mean?

I cannot say I know for sure, but Indonesia is two countries, on the same billboard, even on the same boulevard, but sometimes they seem irreconcilably far adrift.

help wanted: kids!

Eating sweets that come in a banana leaf sealed with a traditional staple, I was in a coffee shop Sunday morning, the TV blasting away with its usual omnipresence, when I was winged back to childhood memories of watching weekend cartoons. That and being forced to dig my parents sprinkler system when I was in second grade. All that digging and sweating and pvc cement might seem like a strange association to make, but as you might expect, Indonesia TV is rarely what you expect (and frequently hazardous to the health of young ones).

However, instead of cartoons, the children of Indonesia can look forward to a tabloid-style program, loosely translated to ‘Kid World,’ that mostly seems to extol the virtues of working.

The first segment was a tight little piece about a family of brothers and sisters who go wading around some of the ‘rivers’ in Jakarta to collect a certain type of water-growing plant. The best word to describe Jakarta would probably be swamp so I feel obligated to scare quote. These stalks, nourished at the bosom of Jakarta’s runoff, when dry are used to weave mats, something I am sure these lucky kids get to play blindman’s bluff for the privilege of doing.

I would get bogged down here, but why waste time when the next segment is coming, right, at, you!

The next piece is about a special place that all Indonesian children dream, bi-nightly, of being magically transported to. Undoubtedly a land of dreams, in this town the local elders have decided to sink their community activity funding into building child-sized becaks to be peddled around a child-sized course. I think somewhere between the shot of the local welder fashioning mini becaks and a 7 year old negotiating hard with a fare, you could really see how lucky these kids are. I should be clear, becak-driving is one of the lower rungs of the Indonesia employment ladder. Any life as a becak driver categorically involves poor dental hygiene, one of those really long-term sunburns, emphysema (though this issuance extends to much of the populace), several traffic accidents; and all this in only the base package!

Though, when I take a step back from the fact that children’s TV programming is openly plugging child labor, I realize how much I just cannot wait to have kids of my own, so they can love life in their highly-competitive, by-admission nursery platform (for when the word ‘school’ is a scosh too traditional).

fighting the socialists, in my ceiling

Yet another installment from the situational comedy for everyone:

Stepan: [entering the room] Matthew, ve need to have a conversation about food waste.

Matthew: [incredulous at his good fortune] Awesome.

Stepan: Yes, vee must be so very careful about leaving food out.

Matthew: I could not agree more…

Stepan: …and covering ze rubbish…

Matthew: …Yes, though I think the housekeeper just throws the trash over the wall into the swamp next…

Stepan: [become more clipped, emphatic] because vee vill gets da rats.

Matthew: [after observing a respectful pause commensurate with Stepan’s gravity] That would be a bummer man.

Stepan: And once you gets the rats, then they will go—eh—will go Svedish and live in the ceiling and [staccato] you vill nevah be free of them.

Matthew: [stifling laughter] Wait, so a rat who lives in the ceiling is Swedish?

Stepan: [seriously] Yes, and impossible to get out.

Matthew: Where does that come from? ‘Swedish Rats?’

Stepan: [indulges in a little laugh] Eh—I don’t know. Svedish rats, you know you Americans talk about paying, ah, you know, ah, paying Dutch. Is like these rats, you, ah, you go Dutch. Svesdish, Dutch, what do ve know?

a threat to our way of life

Life in most parts of Indonesia is life with the menagerie. Chickens, cats, water buffaloes, cows, dogs, horses always seem to be around, mostly looking to cross the road. However, there is no animal more of a complete and utter menace to society, no beast on either two legs or four that lacks such a fundamental respect for fellow creation as the goat.

Where to begin? Well, the devoted of you may recall my prior complaints dealing with the goat penchant for inopportune road crossings. Heck, even Slate has run a piece on goats, where the writer and the proprietor of the suspiciously photogenic and Labrador populated ‘Bedlam Farms’ (est. 2003) complains that his goats will not stop jeering him. (Perhaps they know that they are being exploited.) Uncouth or not, surely this is enough exposure for goats?

I say no, readers, and let me tell you why.

More than anything, the entire goat program is based on a simple and utter refusal to acknowledge the limits of good taste. For your average goat, the quest for chaos and disquiet is never completed. Whether it is ‘accidentally’ wandering into the path of an approaching motorist, breaking into even the most secure location, or generally ballyhooing late into the night, a goat is never satisfied. After all, can you ever really trust something with a digestive tract so tenacious that can handle tin, drywall, and parsnips?

This is frighteningly apparent the first time you truly gaze into the subtly askance, completely off-center gaze of a goat, eyes that intone, with fiendish repetition and indefatigable vigor, but one thing: “I am a goat. I am a goat. I am a goat.”

What is more, the goat mind is truly the mind of a mad, mad genius. Confronted by a fenced vegetable patch, the goat not only employs his omnipotent doggedness to break in, but also his calculating shrewdness, leaning and casually butting (miming what the uninitiated interpret as innocent scratching) against the fence. Hours later when the fence crumples, the goat, having prepared long before, just happens to tumble ‘accidentally’ into the veggie patch in question. Throwing the sauciest of ‘if these veggies were not for me, you would have built a better fence’ looks over his shoulder, the goat then proceeds to devour the garden, pausing only to catcall and abuse (with his mouth full) anyone within earshot.

Of course, the goat life is not always vegetable gardens and traffic snarls, and most of the goat schedule is devoted to trotting, trash foraging, and throwing loud mouthed and embittered insults at the good, god-fearing people of their communities. They must be stopped. I have taken to running them down with my bicycle. What will you commit to do today?

meeting with beneficiaries, not always a parade

I have always read about how the Acehnese are an especially proud people. As the first foothold of Islam in Indonesia (it was introduced to maritime communities by Arab and Indian traders who—smartly—married up and down the coast), the Acehnese are prone to self-aggrandizing, nicknaming (in violation of all rules governing nicknaming), for instance, their home ‘the verandah of Mecca.’

International NGOs operating in Aceh cower in fear of so-called ‘social jealousy,’ the term given for the idea that people will get upset when their neighbors have something that they do not have. The first time I heard about this I thought it sounded kind of funny, until I realized the deference and lip service paid to this idea, as it can be wielded by communities to the point of extortion.

Nor does it take a long time on google to be able to dredge up message board posts where Acehnese advocate the expulsion of all foreigners and the sealing of the province’s borders. The most astonishing revelation is that the author then goes on to detail how then utopia will be achieved, social problems will evaporate, and (—the best part) mathematics and science will flourish.

However, in spite of all this, I had yet to internalize how proud these people are until I interviewed some of my organization’s housing beneficiaries.

Perhaps the idea of visiting this village looking for an easy and ‘ready made’ beneficiary story was a bit naïve on my part. Perhaps my colleague’s idea of a ‘funny joke:’ explaining to the beneficiaries that I come from the university where ‘all the wealthiest people send their children,’ did not help me set off on the right foot. Either way, I arrived in this village, about 500 meters from the ocean with a list of questions and a notebook (though I probably could have left the notebook in the truck), brimming with positivity just asking to be squashed.

Spending time in a village is always a trip, whether it is the excitement of the kids, the hilarious supporting cast of livestock, or the utterly troubled looks on the faces of the babies (probably my favorite part). On this particular visit I met with several mothers in the village’s communal pavilion like structure, as particularly mangy chickens ran around my feet (which I tried to discreetly keep off the ground).

Things did not get off to a really good start, as apparently most of the people in the village were unhappy because some people in the next village over had bigger houses, courtesy of another NGO. The people also refused to paint their houses, insisting that they would only pick the colors they wanted while the organization was responsible for the painting. Apparently a disagreement had ensued.

To say a few things about the houses, they are full wood stilted structures, designed with traditional architecture in mind. They have three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a ‘living room’ that runs the length of the house. As a beneficiary, albeit in a different village explained to me, “In my house before, you had to sit this close to the television [indicating a distance of about 1 meter with his hands], but now you can sit much further back [about 3 meters] and its way more optimal.” Though I must admit, I don’t know the Indonesian word for ‘optimal’; sometimes guys can just tell these things. Also, all of the houses have permanent toilets (with running water) out back.

All of my attempts to get the quote generation moving in the right direction summarily failed.

“How do you like your houses?”

“We don’t.”

“Do you have anything to say about the process?”

“It could have been better.”

“What do you like best about your new houses?”

“They need to be better”

“Do you think your children are healthier since they moved in here?”

“I don’t know.”

Finally, asking if anyone planned to make any improvements or personalize their homes in any way after they were handed over to the homeowners, I only seemed to elicit confusion and stares. In fact, I later found out that long after my organization’s houses are handed over (in effect, transferring the titles), people continue to call the construction department saying they have to come fix their fence or change a fuse in the circuit breaker.

An Indonesian colleague, feeling, I imagine, a bit embarrassed, tried to prod one of the most vocal of the group into saying something pleasant: “Maybe you want to say something as we wrap-up [it was pretty apparent that we were leaving] perhaps ‘thank you’ to S_____?”

“No. I will not say ‘thank you.’”

Wow.

In a way, I completely understand that the people of Aceh have been through a great deal of trauma (30 years of conflict, tsunami) and the last thing they should have to stomach is a goofy white kid poking around their village trying to massage quotables for a slick exploitation piece. I also understand that lots of posturing takes place in these sorts of meetings and there is an inherent and flexible power balance between an organization and its beneficiaries.

However, on the other hand, it bears pointing out that before the tsunami families like this one lived in a one room hut and went to the beach to go to the bathroom. Immediately after the tsunami they lived in a shanty of debris they found and went to the beach to go to the bathroom. While I certainly was not expecting anyone to throw themselves at the feet of the organization, I had no idea that they would be so demonstratively ungrateful.

in town

Sometimes, especially now that I have a bicycle, I occasionally find myself pedaling around Banda Aceh in the evening time. I say ‘find myself’ not because I am especially lost—I know that I can always point myself towards the massive cell phone tower and, failing that, the loudest and most vitriolic sounding mosque—and thereby become un-lost, but because I never go out with any fixed intention beyond eating dinner.

It is not quite dusk, but at the tail end of the day. To me dusk represents the most difficult time to see all day, darkness in some ways included, and the time I am thinking of is certainly not dusk. It is a far too visual time for it to be that time yet.

It rains a lot in the afternoons, in spite of it being ‘dry season,’ though the local people do not pay much credence to such designations. To them, if it is raining, it is ‘rainy season’ and vice versa if that day happens to be clear. I suppose if you can have multiple Buddha’s birthdays every month, there is no reason why the seasons need to stick to any sort of schedule either. Anyways, I think Banda Aceh is situated (as you may know, at the very northern tip of Sumatra) such that the weather is kind of wacky, as it spirits back and forth across the equator, without much land mass to scold (or sivilize) it into a properly regimented monsoon weather pattern.

The environs of Banda Aceh itself are flat, paddy flat, which you get the impression much of it was not long ago. I imagine I have already told you about how the unimproved lots go back to being kind of informal paddies, and this helps spread the houses out, in spite of the lots sitting right on top of one another. Banda Aceh itself is ringed by mountains, probably about 2,000 feet, to the south and west. They sit right up over the city, but most of the time a haze of heat, dirt, and exhaust draws down over them and moves them far off. Only after the rain, when the air has been all scrubbed and rinsed, can you realize how close they actually are. It is amazing how much these hills jump; you can suddenly clearly make them out, and easily examine the logging scars that trace most of the way up the sides.

Again, I cannot speak on any authority, but something about the lay of the land makes the sky seem massive. It feels nothing like New England, with a big expansive sky in all directions. Of course it could be the clouds, massive and coiled thunder cells that drift aimlessly around this big basin, leftovers from the afternoon’s storm. I think they are some of the sheer tallest clouds I have ever seen, and the fact that you can look up and see half a dozen of discreet masses—each like the fortress of Le Monte Saint Michel, which my grandfather saw in the war and always told me about—contributes to the sky stretching effect.

You cannot tell where precisely the sun is, but you cannot miss the incredible oranges and purples that it bathes the entire scene in, diffusing and fracturing around the thunder clouds onto every surface. Biking and walking are probably about equal, as far as head height is concerned, so there must be something about having your feet off the ground, because you are liable to miss it all on foot. But when I go spinning around in this twilight, and it is cool from the rain, and all the mosques are bouncing all around the air, echoing the evening prayer (the most mellow and melodic of the day’s prayers), and there are big thick shafts of color sluicing through the expanse just a little ways off, something about it is really quite striking.

toothpaste, the insidious side

Here is a funny piece I wrote about a tooth brushing exercise I went to:

At the SD Suka Jaya in Pidie district, many students are getting a crash course in the essential properties of a substance many might take for granted: toothpaste. The results are, in a word, messy, as no one seems to be able to shake (literally) free of the interloping white goop. Stowaway toothpaste goes from cheeks, onto a hand, only to end up on the other hand, and sooner or later shirts and pants too, as the children frantically try to get rid of it, most only succeed in spreading it around their persons. Eventually sympathetic teachers circulate, proffering boxes of tissues, through the besieged ranks.

Tooth-brushing activities like this one are part of S____’s School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program, which partners with schools and communities to address the critical health and nutrition factors that keep children out of school. Suka Jaya’s SD (elementary school), one of S__’s retrofitted schools boasting child friendly features and handicap access, serves as the ‘lead school’ in its sub-district level cluster of 6 schools. As the ‘lead school’ it functions as the cluster’s pilot for SHN initiatives, responsible for the dissemination of information, training, and staff within the cluster.

On this particular day, in addition to the school’s 163 students, teams of ambassadors from each of the other 5 schools in the cluster are participating in the activities, enabling them to bring back the information to their schools as trainers and mentors for their peers. This makes the day special for the children, especially Auranazilla, an 11 year old in Class 6, who says, “We are especially happy today to see all our friends from other schools.”

This day’s activity begins with a computer presentation—featuring a dastardly looking tooth decay character—designed to teach the children about dental hygiene and proper brushing. After the presentation the activity moves out of doors where every child receives toothbrush, toothpaste, and a plastic cup before a practicing brushing together. The children are especially taken with their new possessions and when the time came to brush, some of the children take such care to tidy up a patch of the school yard to place their cup on—some even casting about for pieces of plastic to use as coasters—that they have to be gently reminded to start brushing.

Auranazilla says, “I had knowledge [of tooth brushing] before, but it was not yet clear. Today I learned the swing technique [of brushing] and also to brush my tongue. Thank you so much.”

S______’s SHN program is an integral part of the mission to increase access to and quality of basic education through these school-age health priorities, working at multiple levels to this end. For instance, when the principals of this cluster came to S___ with concerns about snacking amongst the children—specifically that many snacks are laden with industrial dyes and preservatives not health for children—the organization convened a roundtable discussion with key stakeholders, including representatives from the ministry of health. This dialogue helped initiate a campaign for better snacks, emphasizing good materials, processes, and a return to traditional foods.

Another principal, Asnawi, from the nearby SD Desa Blang Raya, spoke to the effectiveness of S___’s initiatives: “Before SHN, almost all the children were infected with worms, and this affected their learning. After S___ distributed medication, this ‘spirit’ of learning has been renewed in our school.”

Mohammed Kausar, age 12, says of SHN, “We learn all about healthy behavior, for example, daily tooth brushing, hand washing, and where to put our garbage. I can share it with friends and family. Thank you to S___”

The success of the SHN program is an example of how S_____, working with strong partners, can devise both cost-effective and immediate solutions to address fundamental educational issues. Through SHN not only is the quality of schools improved, but children achieve better individual outcomes, learning healthy and beneficial habits that they can share with the entire community.

malnutrition in Aceh

Here is something that I recently wrote for my NGO that I found particularly interesting. Please forgive the double dip as well as the 'corporate voice:'

In Aceh, the unfortunate problem of malnutrition is not merely confined to poor families. Rather, raising healthy children is a challenge that tests the entire Acehnese community. Positive Deviance (PD) is one of the novel methodologies that S_____’s health sector promotes to address children’s health and nutrition.

As a method, PD seeks to describe children who grow and develop adequately in spite of a background of poverty. Accordingly, these families have adopted ‘positive deviant practices,’ in essence strategies that promote health and nutrition in spite of more structural disadvantages. In turn, PD focuses on how such ‘deviant’ strategies can be applied throughout the broader community.

S_____ coordinates PD training for key health actors, particularly midwives and healthcare volunteers from communities where malnutrition is above 30%. The 12 day training program is led by 2 facilitators from the Department of Health and teaches the six steps of PD, from defining the challenge, to discovering the ‘positive deviant’ strategies, to effective dissemination in the community.

At a recent training day in the T_____ sub-district of Pidie Jaya, 26 trainees from three villages met to discuss and determine the practices that contribute to good nutrition. After participating in an activity in which participants pinned symptoms or activities onto cartooned posters of either the ‘healthy child’ or ‘unhealthy child,’ Mohammed, healthcare volunteer in the Rawa Sari village spoke to the practicality of PD: “The theories that we learn here have a direct application in our lives and help us devise new ways of helping each other; helping us to connect both rich and poor.”

And indeed, one of the hallmarks of PD is devising solutions that healthcare volunteers can both relate to and immediately apply. It can be said that PD is the practice of new behaviors: solving problems by better using the existing resources available to all, rather than focusing on needs and solutions that require external aid. PD is both highly sustainable and culturally appropriate.

Interestingly, malnutrition is often more of a problem amongst Aceh’s wealthy than it is among the poor. Therefore, PD participants learn to identify habits, often rejected by some members of the community for social/cultural reasons, which actually hold solutions to malnutrition problems. One such example is the inclusion of small fishes, dried and eaten whole, into the diet. Rich in calcium and other nutrients, these fishes are seen by many wealthy people as ‘garbage’ and of no value because they are ‘for the poor.’

Faphlina, another volunteer from Rawa Sari, articulates another example, “Rich people in the village do not like eating boiled bananas in a pancake, and yet it is truly better for our nutrition, not just a snack for poor people.”

Instead, PD trainees learn to look to the successful habits of the poor for nutritional wisdom, learning to identify, mentor, and communicate strategies that promote nutritional content and healthy habits. Faphlina emphasizes, “When things like nutrition and health are not good, we have to work together in the village to solve our problems.”

PD succeeds when it empowers members of the community to look for solutions from within their communities and communicate them effectively. As Faphlina espouses, S______, through strong partnerships with these communities, is instrumental in intervening to help the neediest children and strengthen Aceh’s social fabric.

acronyms

One of the most important elements of development work is acronym building. Without the cutesy communicative powers that only a clever, thematic, and catchy acronym can deliver, even the most well designed programs are doomed. No NGO can live without them. It is like it is in their blood, or something.

In fact, next time you need a development program, I would recommend coming up with the acronym first. Think about what you want to convey, preferably something that implies progress. AHEAD (Accelerating Health, Education, and Adolescent Development) is a great example. PEARL (Peace Education And Rebuilding Livelihoods) does not make much sense, but sure makes you feel good inside. Invoke children if at all possible, even if they are not directly involved, as in the case of TOTs (Training for Trainers).

One does not need to feel hemmed in by the secular world, as a choice like PRAISE (Peace Rehabilitation And Initiatives through Services and Student Empowerment) not only implies a better place, but maybe even with a shade of the higher power. It also brings up the point that a successful acronym need not actually really correspond to the long form. Take ENABLE (Enabling Aceh to Combat Exploitation through Education) as a shining example of the liberties one is able to take, provided some other criteria (in this case progess and jus plain feelin' good) are met.

I, of course, am terrible at the acronym game. I am far too attached to the idea of writing the program first, often with disastrous results. I guess donors just are less than interested in investing in something called SSKINY (Services Supporting KIds and Youth). I know, I was surprised too.

teefs and fishes

Part of my function for my NGO is to visit project activities in the field, taking notes, talking to beneficiaries, snapping photos, sort of as an internal (and wholly biased) journalist for the organization. It is always a good time to be the white person who inexplicably turns up at, for instance, a breastfeeding discussion group so if you can handle all the attention, requests for your cell phone number, and prying questions (as well as shaking every single hand there, often including people who just happen to be hanging out), it is a fun job.

This week I did just this, spending a few days traveling up and down the North Coast visiting various project sites. I went to a tooth brushing training, a unit on how to combat malnutrition using community-tried practices, a vocational training program launch, and a village where we built some houses. Interesting experiences abounded.

The tooth brushing campaign was predictably cute. It took place at a school that my NGO had rebuilt post-tsunami, just a couple simple buildings in the middle of a paddy ringed village (actually about the least clarifying description one can give of an Indonesian village: there was a paddy). After a puppet show on the material (lo, be still my heart!) all the kids received toothbrushes, toothpaste, and plastic cups, before lining up for the brushing ‘practice.’ It was abundantly clear that toothpaste is a new substance for the kids, as it ended up everywhere—faces, fingers, noses. Things only kept getting worse as they unsuccessfully tried to wipe it off, only to end up with more on their hands and I walked around dispensing tissues for the strong of heart who would chance taking anything from this towering foreigner. The rest of the time I spent with a star-struck principal especially enthused to tell me all about his theories on the Indoensian snack industry: long, sustained ramblings about the use of addictive chemicals to create what he termed ‘fanatical snacking.’

Later on down the road I went to training for midwives in ‘Positive Deviance’ and its application to combating malnutrition. It basically describes children that live and grow in families that are impoverished and the practices that help them succeed in spite of poverty. It is an interesting way for the development community to address problems because it looks a resources that are available to the entire community, not those that require external aid. The solutions are generated by the community and are thereby what those in the biz (warning, buzzwords imminent) would call ‘sustainable’ and ‘culturally appropriate.’

This method has even more traction in Aceh (and Indonesia) because, as it turns out, many of the rich are the ones who are malnourished. A large part of this is related to classist views and taboos about foods. For instance: tiny fish. These little fish are a great source of vitamins because they are so small that they are just eaten dried and whole.

I can recall in Sukadana that this was how many in our community got their calcium, often from the mixture of peanuts, chili, and tempe that was served with many meals. Well as it turns out, the Indonesian rich view these little fish, along with plenty of other foods like tempe and some veggies as well as certain preparations, as ‘garbage’ and ‘for the poor.’ My NGO facilitates midwives in the identification of these strategies and then trains them to communicate the information with the entire community. I was simply surprised that even in Indonesia, where the cuisine appears so linear to an outsider, society still finds such simple (and unfortunately in this case ill-advised) stratefiers.

the matt and stepan show

Matt enters to Stepan, wearing a red flannel shirt and sea foam flannel boxers, watching Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant engaged in a tense and serious movie moment at 90 decibels.

Matt: Whatcha watching?
Stepan: Eh...Music and Lyrics.
Matt: Oh, wow. Hmm, what is it all about?
Stepan: Eh…you know, ah…[clearly involved in the moment, on screen Drew looks expectant]…eh, [suddenly, quite directly] a man struggling with middle age.
Matt: Wow, I never gave Hugh Grant so much credit. It looks a bit sappy, no?
Stepan: Yes, and, [drifting]…and, fun.

The cathartic love confession/symbolic stage duet montage rolls almost on cue. Stepan appears blissful.

Ed note: There is something really German about this guy, in a good--no great--way. ‘A man struggling with middle age?’ Strange. Provoking? Upon second glance, genius!

Trip to Central Aceh

So I have been out in the field a good amount lately, hence not being able to put much up here. The ‘field’ is an interesting place to go, but after the first visit the immense boredom of actually getting to and from it, really puts a damper on the experience. There are not a lot of main roads in the province and there is one that runs across Aceh’s North Coast and through our project area—250 km of top-heavy semis, mini buses, bicycles, motor scooters, and daredevil goats ebbing and flowing (but mostly abruptly and unpredictably stopping) every which way across two lanes of blacktop. It takes a very long time to go anywhere and the scenery is a sun shimmering mixture of clear cut forest (dotted by the occasional timber protection tower, a hilarious feature that proves, as my boss pointed out, “Well, he did a pretty shitty job.”), banana plantations, and fish ponds.

Last weekend I had the good fortune of going to Takengon, in Central Aceh, to do some research, specifically on the coffee economy, on an area where my NGO may extend their programming. Central Aceh is coffee growing highland (1000 meters and up!) and produces some absurd percentage (I heard as high as 90%) of Indonesia’s total Arabica export. So, in more than just a way, I saw firsthand the coffee that will soon help to bring you the venti lattes you (and America) love so much; mostly there were dogs sleeping on it.

One of the most interesting things I learned about coffee is that in Indonesia it is a highly decentralized industry. There are no sprawling coffee estates, large scale collectives, or economies of scale. Instead, coffee is a family level livelihood, with small plots (something like 65,000 ha are under cultivation by 60,000 families) producing piddling yearly yields of about 500 kg/ha. Considering that unwashed, organic Arabica sells for about $3.85/kg, this seems a precarious existence. (I also could not help but wonder when the rest of the money ends up when I buy the coffee for $30/kg in Cambridge.)

The other unexpected thing that I learned was that people do not really take very good care of this coffee. I had heard that Sumatran coffees were among the most inconsistent in the world, and now I understand why. Farmers, angling for better prices, often try to perform themselves as much of the processing as they can. This leads to them pulping (separating the fruit, called the cherry) with ancient hand cranks and drying the coffee (to convert it from ‘wet parchment’ to ‘dry parchment’—parchment meaning that the inner seed case is still attached, ie pre-hulling) on the ground beside the road. Exhaust and dirt shower the coffee all day, school children walk over it on the way to school, dogs sleep on it all afternoon (it reminds me of a Brookstone ergonomic bed for doggies), the children stomp back over it on the way home. No one seems at all concerned about any of this.

The region itself was one of the most beautiful places I have been in Indonesia, complete with towering mountains, cool coffee groves pinched into every nook and gully, an active volcano, a 26 km long mountain lake, less Islam than found in the Aceh lying at sea level, and some fantastic afternoon thunder storms.

Central Aceh, like most of the province, is post-conflict (I may have mentioned this before, but Aceh has a long history of rebellion, the most recent incarnation against Suharto’s natural resource plundering, Java-dominated centralism) and between 1995 and 2002 50% of the residents were displaced, usually by force. What I found was one of the most chronically left behind places in Indonesia, with an infant mortality rate of 47 per 1,000 live births (Indonesia’s figure, by contrast, is a none too rosy 32), a complete lack of basic sanitation, a large problem with disaffected young men who had their school disrupted by the conflict, and a staggeringly high incidence of trauma (it is estimated that half the people have post-traumatic stress disorder) from the tactics of both the guerillas and Indonesian military. If I know one thing about developing communities it is that idle, young dudes never portend anything good, and many are concerned the peace might not last.

Takengon, in some ways, is a sad place to be. In terms of toilet facilities, schools are particularly lacking and girls often stop attending for this reason. Last month someone settled an old conflict score by locking 5 men in a building and burning it down. There is a lot of overheated rhetoric surrounding the creation of a new province and how it will be akin to an ethnic partition (the area now is tri-ethnic: Acehnese, Javanese, and Gayonese). However, there are some bright spots: the people are much more genuine than the lowland Acehnese and it is close to the only beggar free place I have ever encountered in Indonesia. Usually intersections are trolled by children who surround the cars—often surreptitiously pulling an arm into their shirt—wailing for money, usually as their ‘pimp’ leans on a lamppost waiting for the take. In Central Aceh I did not see any of this, and as one of the government ministers I met with explained to me, society seems to have reached a collective sense of dignity and decided that the children in Central Aceh have already been through enough.

rapscallions

Another addition to the ‘things I saw' file:

While riding to work, I saw a bunch of children chasing en masse after a bouncing tennis ball. A boy managed to corral it and the moment it was under his stewardship turned and pegged a girl, 7ish and wearing a jilbop, in the side of the head. She crumpled to the ground.

I was so stunned that I failed to notice the ricochet, a pretty honest 10 yards off the side of her skull, as well as the flock of children that turned on a dime to chase it down. This time a girl picked it up and instantly nailed a young boy in the gut, sending him quickly to the turf. Another girl collected the ball, and, with a surprisingly efficient throwing arm, dispatched another boy to the ground.

Just as I was considering what a sadistic game these children have invented, I noticed the gym teacher (gym teachers look pretty much the same across all cultures) standing on the side of the melee, sporting pretense in the direction of officiating. I was stunned. I guess the dodgeball debate has yet to reach Indonesia.

i am not jaded, all these things really happened

Stepan, forty five years old, builds reconstruction houses on the north coast of Aceh, enjoys fried meats of all hooves, and has an ongoing and unspecified grievance against Filipinos. An engineer from Germany, he also recently drew the short straw in the latest housing reshuffle, netting him the dishonor of bunking with the new ‘California boy’ American in town.

Scene 1
Stepan enters, in only his underwear, from his bedroom. His accent is palpable. Matthew is on the couch, laying under an oscillating fan while doing a crossword puzzle.
Matthew: Hey Stepan, how are you doing?
Stepan: [urgently] What are you doing? How did you get here?
Matthew: Yeah, I just moved from across the way. I am living in Room 1.
Stepan: Since ven?
Matthew: Ah, about 15 minutes ago?
Stepan: [shutting the door to his room] Strange days.
And, scene!

Scene 2
Matthew is reading a book on the sofa, while in the background a pot of tomato sauce simmers. Stepan enters smelling the air.
Stepan: Agh! Gad! Vat is that smell?
Matthew: Oh, hi, I am cooking some tomato sauce—have you already eaten?
Stepan: [smelling noisily] Does [another deep inhalation, followed by a cringe], does American cooking always smell so terrible? [exit]

Scene 3
Matthew is on the couch, half watching American idol, half solving a crossword. Stefan enters with a plate filled with individually wrapped Laughing Cow brand cheese bites and fried beef.
Stepan: [bracing his plate] Oh god! Oh no! The Asians, they love this care-a-oh-key stuff.
Matthew: Yes, I know, but for some reason I find my present keyhole view of American culture mesmerizing.
Stepan: Why this guy? Who is he? What does he know? We have in Germany and he is even naughtier.
Matthew: I think it is more about his persona, in addition to our fascination as Americans with British accents. I think the chick must be on drugs, though.
Stepan: [rising] There are two things destroying your country: American Idol and the Iraq war.
Mattthew: [confused] Oh, well…
Stepan: …Many people call this ‘cultural prostitution.’ I will! [exit]
And, scene!

on the coast

Most of the NGOs are based in the southeast corner of Banda Aceh, in an upper middle class neighborhood that was minimally affected by the 2004 tsunami. The walls of my room are ringed by a line, albeit one that took me several weeks to even notice, about 4 feet off the ground, but if anything this is a testament to how unobtrusive the tsunami seems in this quarter of the city.

However, once you leave my neighborhood, things change drastically. The road out to the harbor is long and straight, and conspicuous in its newness as it runs northwest out to the coast. I had been on this road before, but always inside a car, and never out in the open air.

I drove the road the other evening (to go look at a scooter), on the back of a motor bike with one of the transportation guys from the office. That which struck me the most was the inescapable flatness of the landscape. Five hundred meters off to the right the sea lolls rather stagnantly, but all around the crusty land, crisscrossed by scars from earth moving machines, is terrifyingly flat. Distant one thousand meter hills tower, screened by a detaching haze, over the coastal plain, but the sheer lack of relief seemed as nightmarish as the thistles of steel rebar that sprouted from the crown of every cement pillar.

We eventually found ourselves in a neighborhood, not two hundred meters from the tepid looking water, where every house, each the identical mirror image of the house adjacent—four cement corners framing the rough wooden walls of a bedroom, center room, and a kitchen out back—was crisscrossed by ad hoc bamboo scaffolding. Everything, including the dirt, bore an eerie and unmarked newness.

It being prayer time, and all the men away at the mosque, I was invited into someone’s house for some ‘cappuccino,’ the super sugary type (Indonesians would not have it any other way) that comes in an individual serving satchel. The house was pretty bare, TV, rattan mat on the floor, refrigerator, rice cooker, double burner gas stove. The people were very gracious and pleasantly surprised to have a bule in their home, especially one who could BS in Indonesian and keep up a steady stream of crazy white person witticisms.

After a while my host told me that he had something to show me and he produced from his wallet a folded up triangle of paper. Carefully unwrapping it, he shook out two razor thin gold flakes, each one about the size of a pencil eraser. Upon closer examination, these delicate little wafers appeared to be some sort of coinage, decorated on both sides with beautiful ornate script. They were brilliant; when I asked him what he had used to polish them he just laughed, clearly proud of my assumption, and flicked his head.

And, indeed, they were of an impressive lineage, as he found them on the beach, not far from his home, the day after the tsunami. As he told it, they were resting with a 250 year old underwater wreck when the waters reach down and dragged them back to terra firma. I asked them if he would sell them because, after all and especially in a culture that values charms and cosmic items (later that same evening someone tried to wow me with the invisible powers of their pet photoluminescent stone), they must have some value, but he vehemently assured me that he never would.

I must confess that I went home wowed by my host’s gold. For some reason I could not shake the utter contrast that his treasure embodied, how these of the most delicate and pristine were eventually repatriated by an event of unprecedented physical power and destruction. And, sitting on his new cement floor, while the mosques echoed through the twilight, I could not help but feel and admire the bravery and strength of the peoples of Aceh.

Night at the Medan Tiara

For some reason, describing hotels really tickles me. In a few years, when I end up writing about places to stay in Leland, NC (‘The Gateway to Brunswick County’) for the ‘Excursions’ section of the Youngstown Buckeye Review, it should prove easy enough to see where I went wrong. Into the abyss-


Medan is the quintessential Indonesian working city: congested, polluted, and busy. It is the third largest city in Indonesia, with 2.5 million inhabitants. Situated in the North of Sumatra, with good proximity to the Strait of Malacca (and thereby international markets), Medan serves as an entrepot for much of the province’s natural resource driven (oil, gas, mining, forestry) development as well as its manufacturing industries. The Medanese are an interesting lot, a mixture of Chinese (who control the business community), Batak (an ethnicity from highland Sumatra known for their ferocity), and Tamils. Indonesians can always be counted on to refer to the people of Medan as ‘orang keras,’ or ‘intense people’ and Medan is the same way.

The crown jewel of the Medan hotel hierarchy is the Hotel Medan Tiara (and Conference Center), the preferred choice of all my colleagues in Medan. I think we even have a special rate. The hotel, by consensus the nicest in the city, is in the first tower of a two tower complex, while the second tower (conceivably the Convention Center) straddles the line between uncompleted/bombed out with uncanny aplomb. I had no idea what awaited me inside.

The lobby of the Tiara is, naturally, still feted with cheap themed Chinese New Year Decorations more than a month after the holiday. On the left lies the Kutaraja Restaurant, featuring a menu where the nightly buffet is cheaper than everything on the menu, and to the right the Tor Tor Lounge, where you can redeem your free ‘welcome drink’ voucher received during check-in. Speaking of check-in, this is a protracted process, for me involving a long argument of whether I have to leave a US $40 deposit on the mini-bar (contents of the mini-bar: peanuts, bottled water, beer, coke lite, sweet tea, pocari sweat, and, inexplicably, twelve Toblerone). Eventually winning out on the grounds that there is no way they make a humanitarian organization put money down on the mini-bar, I bask in my victory as the young associate named ‘Trainee’ is chastised by management.

My room (the Tiara has an ambiguous room hierarchy: executive and quality) has the largest bed I have ever seen, a TV, an electronic safe, one shoe, a cellophane encased plate of cantaloupe slices that have shrunken so substantially that I spend my night playing ‘giant’ with them, and a bedside command post unit with buttons for everything in the room. Realizing the window is a sliding door that opens onto space, I resist the urge to explore further.

The lobby, by day a pacific respite decked with red firecracker garlands, becomes by night the scene of full contact prostitute derby. Heels and sequins lay in wait for the unassuming guest returning from dinner. Realizing the infinite wisdom of my decision to eschew the Tor Tor’s ‘welcome drink’ (suspiciously only valid after 9pm) in favor of TV, I strove to avoid eye contact of any kind, a strategy I quickly abandoned a few steps inside the front door. With my arms simultaneously pulled in three different directions, and verging dangerously close to being swept into a slipstream (terminating, temporarily, no doubt in the karaoke-belching Tor Tor) of halter tops and Chanel No. 5, I stiff armed my way across the rest of the tile between me and the elevator bank.

Back in my room, and after some devoted hand washing, I finally settled into bed. 'Shakespeare in Love' was on the Tiara’s movie network, a movie that, in its Indonesian incarnation, is surprisingly manageable to watch, like the digest version, clocking in at around 50 minutes. Thank you, censorship.

The next morning, happily, I got out of Medan and on to Simeulue.

an open letter

Dear People of Indonesia,

Thank you for your ongoing interest in me. There is nothing so welcoming as to be unable to eat a meal, read a book, or walk down a street without interrupting your laughter. I must have amazing timing or you must be a people always joking around, and though I sometimes feel left out, I can always tell from the outside that someone hit a good one.

One thing that I must protest is the constantly taking my picture in public. Yes, you two tables over, I realize that you have been shooting pictures of me throughout my dinner. Yes, teenager across the street, I can see you and your friends documenting my cup of coffee. In the future you might consider bickering and pushing at each other less in order to escape detection--the game was up long before your friend fell into the gutter as his end of the camera strap broke. Yes, person ‘just sending a text message’ with your phone perpendicular to the ground and two feet from my face, I have penetrated your fortress of stealthiness. Yes, person inexplicably jostling up against me on the ferry and giving what I am sure passes for a ‘gang symbol,’ I can see your elph-toting compatriot hiding behind those deck chairs.

I know all your friends will be impressed with this specimen of a white person that you ‘know,’ but I really need a break: I feel unpretty, skinny, and sweaty. I understand that there are few of us roaming the wild, and who knows when the next opportunity to bag one might come, but please, put away the glass for a moment. Yes, my skin, it is mesmerizing, something so aspirational that I too would apply toxic things to my person twice a day if I wasn’t so lucky. It is a shame that I even have to go out of doors for food and work, otherwise I could better preserve myself for our special photographic moment. For this I apologize.

No? Well, thanks for introducing yourself; it was great to meet you. Enjoy the souvenirs of all those crazy times we had together.

Sincerely,
Matthew Busch

ed note: everyone say it with me now, "Saatirre"

swayze: a retrospective

This is a departure from convention, but when I heard about Patrick Swayze's fight with pancreatic cancer I wanted to make some gesture (I am still kicking myself for failing to get my act together and put together something to mark Norman Mailer's passing). You may say to yourself, 'Matt's just putting us on and cashing in on cheap laughs,' but my devotion to Swayze is as serious as, actually, as serious as pancreatic cancer itself.

And so, in no particular order, why I hold Swayze close to my heart:

1.

2. The incredible Chris Farley 'Chippendales' SNL sketch: few others have come so close to the rarefied air of the infamous Bowie/Jagger 'Dancin' in the Streets' collaboration.

3. The Bodhisattva

4. "Good looking people turn me off. Myself included."

5. For being being a part of Keanu Reeves delivering the lines 'I am an FBI Agent!' in two different feature films [Youngblood, where Keanu plays a French-Canadian goalie, and the canonical Point Break]

6. "Back off Warchild, seriously."

7. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

8. "Chill, brah. You know who this is? Johnny Utah. Ohio State, all-conference"

9. Being involved in Keanu going to law school on a football scholarship.

10. Road House: "Pain don't hurt" and "My way...or the highway."

This could go on for a while (and would involve a link to the entire Point Break screenplay), but I think that is sufficient. Feel better soon, brah.

development thoughts

After working with a development organization (and around many others) for only a few weeks, I must confess to a bunch of opinions on the experience, first and foremost of which is that we (the wealthy world) do not do enough development work. Undoubtedly, a great deal of money gets spent (in Aceh and Nias reconstruction spending will amount to US$5.7 billion over five years) and while some goes for SUVs and high-priced expatriate staff, irregardless, in the field the marginal return on dollars spent is truly staggering. Like both of the Bills (Gates and Clinton) pointed out at commencement, wealthy countries can dramatically improve the fortunes of poorer countries for what amounts to relatively small sacrifice. This is the best investment we have going in terms of both philanthropy and security and we need to do a lot more of it.

However, I do not intend to sell the process as the paragon of efficiency or to make it sound easy. Often it is the exact opposite of this, such that even though I was surprised the first time the Chief of Party for Aceh used the idiom ‘like pushing a rope,’ I also understood.

Note: This was originally a much longer piece and I have tried to make it more managable by cutting in back as well as organizing separate sub-headings. I don't know if it helps. If you skip it, I will understand.

Today’s secret word is ‘unprecedented’

To digress, it is important to differentiate between disaster relief and development work—they engage differently, have different goals, prioritize differently, etc—but bear with me for a moment. I say that the disaster in Aceh blurred this distinction, not necessarily because it was completely unpredicted (after all few natural disasters are ‘predictable’) or the scope and scale of destruction, but because of two unique elements. One is the fact that Aceh already was in desperate need of development work (of which there were many organizations already engaged) as a result of 30 years of military conflict. The second is simply the sheer (and simply unprecedented) scale of the humanitarian response from the wealthy world. $5.7 billion has a way of obliterating the niche. Maybe I am lazy, but I am going to talk about them as one in the same.

Local Context

A key part of the problem is that you end up with a massive mobilization of people and resources hitting the ground with little or no ties to the community and cultural context. In any situation where money is being given out (in a figurative sense) inefficiencies will be created and in situations light on local contextualization, organizations often create suboptimal incentives and undertake projects that are both wasteful and alienating to the community. Stories abound about NGOs spending lots of cash to start up something like a livelihoods project for a local mat weaving cooperative that has no market and, after six months, a room in someone’s house overfilled with mats.

Community Mores

This sounds a bit snobby, but I have been amazed at how little some of the NGO community here actually understands local mores, both in terms of their work as well as private lives. It would be misleading to think that this only refers to westerners getting into the sauce or showing off a bit too much arm, as in fact there are a group of missionaries in town (the best way to pick the missionaries: Carolinians who work for obscure, never-before-heard of NGOs) who in a strategy apparently designed to ingratiate themselves to the community all (the females) wear jilbops (Islamic headscarves) in public. Not only is this kind of weird, but it offends many Muslims to have something Islamic appropriated by people who are not Muslims.

What exactly is an NGO?

Another element that has stood out to me is that local people, including (and perhaps most stunningly) the staff, do not seem quite clear on what NGOs actually can and cannot do. People certainly understand that these organizations have a lot of money but there is decidedly less understood about what some of the key tenets of development—sustainability and investment, to name two—actually mean. Many people (again, including the local staff) believe that there is a great deal of ‘free’ money and do not see why they cannot spend it on whatever they want. One colleague, our communications director in the province, is famous for handing in stories (per his job description designed to trumpet the organization’s successes) that focus largely on how craven and miserly our NGO is, for example, only replacing things lost in the tsunami/conflict, rather than building its beneficiaries bigger houses or more techy boats.

I think this sort of challenge can be expected and, what is more, in a way further underscores the argument for more development, as global inequality looks even more lopsided from this vantage. Moreover, in terms of capacity building among the local workforce, exposure to these types of organizations is something that I think will prove really beneficial. Not only does it provide stable, enumerative employment for local people who want to build their communities, but it demonstrates an organizational framework that is predicated on phillanthropic, consultative, and sustainable interventions.

Professionalism (and my Economics rant)

In terms of improving the quality of programming, a greater degree of professionalism would go a long way. Basically too many of these organizations are trying to design microeconomic interventions without the proper tools to get at the effects they are interested in. Basically what ends up happening is an organization tries to cobble out assessments and strategies based on an awkward synthesis of macro-style baseline indicators (often at a national or provincial level) and anecdotal evidence. Their capacity to analyze microeconomic effects is virtually nil, a considerable problem when you trade is in household-level interventions. Many of these organizations have no capacity (and what's more troubling, no idea anything is amiss) for in house data collection or analysis, a weakness that has really surprised given the state of funding and sophistication of other elements.

Night at the Wisma Bireuen Jaya

There is not a whole lot happening in Bireuen, a sleepy little corner of the east coast of Aceh where I have traveled down to for the handover of a few new schools to the community tomorrow, but the shinning light of town is the apt named Wisma Bireuen Jaya. [Tough to translate, but this means something like ‘extraordinary/transcendent guesthouse of Bireuen.’]

Seemingly modeled after the great American motor court, all pastel-painted cement and themed moulding, I initially described the Wisma as ‘less skeezy than expected.’ Check-in happens in a shallow, smoky room dominated by a massive slab of keys and tenderized by the radioactive glow and hypersonic drone of early evening Indonesian soap operas.

Checking-in being almost complete—facilitated by two increasingly incredulous looking women with hard eyes sunk into faces that exude an eerie pallor from the bleach (seriously, why do you want to be white? Do I look cool to you?) they rub into their faces each evening—when the proprietor, shirt open to his navel, mustache that kind of reminds me of the law enforcement fellow who always gets his pants cut open in ‘Zorro,’ descends on the business end of the room. Based on the amount of gold on his person, it seems reasonable to conclude that he does not trust banks.

As is a fairly common occurrence in Indonesia, the process will now need to be repeated, less efficiently and with greater confusion, to complete the operation. As the cigarette fused to his lip dwindles to a stump, keys are doled out, passports are ritualistically examined, voices are raised, and keys are snatched back again. The only thing that seems to obey any tug of time is the clay colored cigarette filter growing—at a pace that approaches imperceptibility—a salt and pepper crown not unlike the proprietor’s. I check several times in the free time I now have as the staff sorts out the conundrum of me and he seems somehow preserved by the air conditioning. Eventually the (still correct) set of keys is returned and one of the ladies of the manor escorts me to my room.

She forces the doors open with a polished lunge of the shoulder that, as I find out later, betrays less force than must actually be involved. Wielding a bazooka-imitating can of air freshener, I feel like I am on a ride-along police mission as the first imperative through the door (left, right, up, down) is to hit the entire room with a strong dose of the florally goodness. I somehow resist the urge to scream out ‘Clear, Sarge!’ now that all the room’s dirtiness has been dispatched.

Turning on the air conditioner, she prepares to give the room a killing dose of the other aerosol product included free in the room cost: the mosquito killing cloud. As much as I like bathing in something that causes immediate catastrophic neurological damage in insects, I managed to pull the Indonesian out fast enough to stop her. Genuinely stupefied, she graciously offers to leave it on my night stand (rather than across the room), presumably for my easy nighttime access.

As in many hotels, the bottom sheet and pillow shams are some sort of matching/themed affair (in this case that means…kittens!) and, based on the suggestion (as well as other tactile evidence) of the folded sheet on the pillow, not changed as often as the top sheet. Later, I sleep in the least favorite of my two sarongs, proving that I have yet to exhaust this wonderful garment’s many practical uses.

The bathroom will provide a crisis that yet again prompts the consideration of the slipperiest (and thus far, elusive) theoretical question of my life: Can and does soap clean itself?

"street truths" or "love and consequences, fo real"

There is nothing like some sassy twelve year olds on motor bikes to remind you of your place. Banda Aceh, where there seems to be absolutely no societal coalescence arouns an unacceptably youthful age for motor bike operation, is as good a place as any to get your fill.

Often I might be walking through the neighborhood, perhaps returning from an especially innovative rice dining experience only to have my twilight reverie pierced by a revving of engines and chorus of ‘misters.’ The dust that is always and everywhere hangs from the weak headlight beams tangled up in my legs and I hold my breath.

While they are not very adept with their steeds (some also have trouble comfortably accessing the pedals), causing the bikes waggle and hiccup along as the try to match my ambling pace, they generally are able to ride along for a stretch while yelling ‘rokok!’ and ‘uang!’ before disappearing into a cloud of giggling, exhaust, and budding fohawks. These of course are the Bahasa Indonesian words for ‘cigarette!’ and ‘money!’ (The insult around Banda Aceh being that all development workers are good for is cash handouts), respectively.

Trust me, its degrading enough to have to go through middle school once, but now this? Maybe I should cave and buy off the little whippersnappers with cigarettes or start trying to work out an importing scheme necessary to turn them into my minions through a complex Sunkist-based reward system. Until then, I will not be leaving my room.

looking for biscuits

“…so the first place to try is that unfinished woods shops near the flooded lot/fishing pond on the corner. Ask the old lady for ‘biscuits.’”

Yes, I am frantically trying to get this all down and, even worse, he is talking fast.

“If not, go to the grocery store called ‘ramai’ across the street from the grand mosque. The trick there is to go in and mill around in the back of the store until a Chinese man with three thumbs approaches. He will take care of it.”

* * *

Back on the street, the becak driver who dropped me off is fitting quick drags on a cigarette into the pauses of a slanted grin, his old time Dutch motorcycle helmet, cocked to one side, seems to be in cahoots with the smile. His teeth look like they have been out too long in a strong wind.

Trying to nonchalantly schlep a lumpy black bag as well as I can, I hop into the sidecar: whether I like it or not, this is a round trip. Off we putter into the twilight, he chattering away and helpfully pointing out every roadside police post along the route. I squirm and try to change the subject; he laughs short bursts of clove smoke at me. Thus was my first experience buying beer in Banda Aceh.

* * *

Aceh is different than everywhere else in Indonesia because in addition to the conventional civil and criminal legal systems, there is an Islamic legal system, called syariah. When the peace accords were signed in 2005, ending the conflict between the government of Indonesia and GAM (the Acehnese separatist movement), syariah’s extension into criminal law was one of the ‘concessions’ that the central government was willing to make. Islamic courts in Aceh have long dealt with issues of marriage and inheritance, marriage, and divorce, but the criminal element was new and the first elements enacted were capital punishment for sexual relations outside marriage, possession or consumption of alcohol, and gambling.

This has presented an interesting situation on the ground because while the Acehnese are certainly some of the most pious people in Indonesia, many Acehnese are unhappy with syariah, claim they never fought for it, and see it as a way for Jakarta to co-opt Acehnese grievances by casting them as a bunch of religious fundamentalists. Many former GAM leaders (a highly devout group), who since the peace have been elected to various public offices, have openly campaigned for an end to syariah.

It seems as if much of the popular disenchantment with syariah stems from the police force that has been set up to enforce it, sometimes known as ‘the vice and virtue’ patrol. In my estimation, most Acehnese already live their lives according to Islamic principles and want Islamic law applied to probate and family issues. These same Muslims though cool on the idea when it manifests itself in yet another wrinkle to the already crooked police/community power dynamic. More than anything, it seems that the Acehnese are pretty laid back people and are no religious fundamentalists and they simply do not react well to anything that results in forced, on-the-spot hair cuts for women caught without headscarves.

Anyways, for foreigners, things are a bit more casual; I think we are expected to behave a little bit like the infidels that we are. Caught with beer, nothing too terrible would have happened to me, perhaps a bribe. I went home, my heart nonetheless beating a little bit stronger, ordered a pizza, drank brews, and watched westerns.

coffee culture

The popular claim is that in Banda Aceh everything happens in the coffee shops. This speaks both to the quality of kopi aceh as well as the Acehnese approach to life, both of which I have been enjoying. The coffee is the best I have ever had—fresh, highland grown coffee—prepared by straining piping hot water back and forth between two long handled tin cups through a ground filled sieve. The whole process is mesmerizing to watch—all dip and flourish—like a juggler slicing deliciousness through morning’s pleasant vapors.

All day the shops are humming, filled with men nursing short glasses of the black stuff over a conversation or a smoke, the swirl of steam and crackles of kretek nearly ubiquitous. This is the way the Acehnese have always preferred it, casual and laid back, so much like Java (outside of the fact that Java’s coffee is decidedly average) that it is a wonder these two rival identities do not get along better.

The other morning, on the way to the office by way of the coffee shop, I ended up catching a ride with one of our vehicles that happened to be passing by. The driver and I ended up going in together, me for my usual rice/coffee breakfast, he for a coffee/raw egg/condensed milk combination, the name of which slips my mind.

Anyhow, after exhausting my reserve of Bahasa Indonesian small talk topics (marriage status and children leading the way, followed by the heat, followed by how terrible the city of Medan is) the Simeulue earthquake came up. We talked a little bit about it and its strength and then all of a sudden we were back in December 2004, me listening as he talked quietly about the 9.3 earthquake that set off the tsunami.

He talked about the unbelievable violent strength of the quake, about not even being able to stay on one’s feet. When it was over everyone came out in the street, stunned and unaware that in less than 20 minutes the city was going to be inundated. He talked about families, missing persons, foreign prospectors buying—cash on sight—orphaned children and spiriting them out of the country, bodies stacked in the courtyard of every mosque in the city. Mostly he talked about the smell, an asphyxiant haze that hung over the city for weeks.

The tsunami is rarely spontaneously talked about by the Acehnese—too much trauma, too many fresh graves—and listening to him was both humbling and completely heartbreaking. It amazes me even more because this driver and I have been around each other frequently with nothing approaching this level of intimacy. In fact, between Monday and Tuesday we probably spent 15 hours driving around the province together, and while I always try to speak Indonesian with the local staff, we did little more than exchange greetings and smiles. But, as I am learning, this is typical to many Indonesians. Initially, before they feel as if they know you (especially difficult for a foreigner), they are often shy, guarded, and obscure in their interactions. However, once you spend a little bit of time together they truly become some of the most wonderful people in the world: kind, genuine, and generous. In this case it was so spontaneous that I was stunned, looking around the shop it was clear that many of the other customers felt the same. All the time he kept talking, quietly reflecting on all that he had seen, never demanding the pity and emotion that I found anyways impossible to withhold, and a personal catharsis that I was not even aware I was waiting on. I finally arrived at the office late—as we ended up sitting around for about an hour talking—feeling blessed to have passed a morning as the Acehnese do.

my newest caption contest

Trolling the news this afternoon, the item 'Gates Seeks Closer Ties With Indonesia' crawled across the news ticker. Stunned by the big day Indonesia was having in world affairs ('rocking' quakes, tsunami warnings, bank scandals), I immediately thought of Bill Gates and his billions and though I was wrong, it is not like Defense and Development do not already hail from the same alphabetic enclave.


Anyhow, while I had no idea our Defense Secretary was in Indonesia, I am delighted by the news. While here, Gates has pledged to help Indonesia reform its military, support democracy, and provide airlift/maritime support. As anyone who I have buttonholed on the strategic importance of Indonesia can attest, it is really important Indonesia's nascent democracy succeeds, both because of its wealth of natural resources (read: commodities) as well as to disprove all the haters that claim Islam and Democracy are less than halal. Easy to miss, but I promise that what we seem to have here is a real, live, kicking, and civil war free democracy—absolutely chock full of Muslims!


One of the more interesting things about Indonesia as a democracy is not only that it came into existence with an unusual amount of spontaneity (in 1998 then-President Suharto had to interrupt a state visit—he was playing golf—in Egypt to come home and resign the Presidency), but that in spite of broad religious homogeneity, Islamists hold nothing close to a political monopoly. Muslims in Indonesia do not poll as any sort of monolithic bloc: in the last legislative elections the best performing Islamic party (PKS) polled just over 7.3% (7th best overall), running largely on a staunchly ‘we are the only party who can deliver you the anti-corruption goods’ plank and opposing syariah (Islamic) law. Political pluralism is seemingly alive and well in Indonesia.


Anyhow, having verged from my original train of thought, Defense’s interest in Indonesia is truly good news. Even if all they really want is the same thing they wanted in the early 1960s: a firewall against the Chinese and a place to sell military hardware (evidence that the Bush administration is taking the economic backslide seriously: Gate’s itinerary—Indonesia, Turkey, India), it is still an important and somewhat overdue gesture.






Anyways, I found this awesome photo, of Gates and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (or SBY), the President of Indonesia, and had to figure out a way to get it into wider dissemination (i.e. my grandparents, people in my mom’s office whom I have never met, Winslow Pogue). So, I want to announce my first caption competition since the abortive 2004 Colby Echo Joke Issue Caption Contest. Just to clarify, I am not joking; I really hope people send in entries (yes, Sahil Mahtani, looking at you), mostly so I do not have to make up the winners myself. And because Steven and Noah (not to mention the McCaferty Challengees) are unavailable for shot-gunning in the dark room.

So here are a few just to get things started:

“Sorry, about that whole supporting 33 years of brutal totalitarianism thing. Yeah? He got you this job? Get. Out. Of. Here.”

“Soo, using covert military force to resist an internationally sanctioned democratic election and in the process inciting an attack on a UN compound was just a one time thing, right? You guys! Now, how about buying some fighter planes?”

“I hope this doesn’t end up on the internet: just think what happened to Rumsfield and Sadaam.”

the latest from Aceh

So a few words on my latest posting, as a way of contextualization for posts yet to come--

I am newly based out of Banda Aceh (the northern tip of both Sumatra Island and Aceh province) working with an NGO on their programming in the province. This idea began to germinate while in Yogyakarta, where my first day of Indonesian school coicided with the last day of Mark, the head of this organization . We kept in touch, and we eventually put together what I see as a mutual beneficial job description to get me out to Aceh (a place on my list since before I arrived in Indonesia).

Basically, the idea is for me to spend a good amount of my time around the organization's various field projects (the NGO's banner programming areas are health, education, livelihoods, and child protection, all with an eye on at-risk children and their mothers) in a sort of research/strategy capacity. For one, I will be working my way around the programming as a sort of journalist for the organization, covering various human interest stories and chronicling the stories of our beneficiaries. What I end up putting together will end up on the organization's website and included as color in Donor Reports and brochures. In additon, I will likely spend a few weeks on Simeulue (where the earthquake last week was, though the news ticker says there was another one in the Mentawis a few hours ago, nobody worry) working on a strategy paper for the scale-up and sustainability of what has been a long neglected and geographically isolated corner of the Aceh operation. Simeulue, both physically remote and the poorest subdistrict in Indonesia, is a place where the organization already has a foothold and, with some guidance, has the opportunity to make serious contributions to the welfare of the children there. I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to this.

This new relationship is something that I am really excited about, largely because it gives me an opportunity to have an exciting, meaty, and supported project that I can feel really good about contributing to. After all, who can say no to cute kids? Moreover, it gives me a chance (and a purpose) to get to know the province of Aceh, a location with an interesting and unclear place in the Indonesian constellation--devoutly Islamic, partially autonomous, post-conflict, post-disaster, grass loving, natural resource wealthy--that makes this country so diverse and so difficult to tackle.

one afternoon in Simeulue

This afternoon in Simeulue—where I have been since Monday observing my NGO's programming here—we felt a pretty big earthquake. Sitting in a sort of raised pavilion that functions as the ‘meeting room’ for the field office here, we all sort of stared at each other while cups clattered and the water cooler took a spectacular dive before clattering down the steps and out into the driveway. It probably shook for a little more than a minute and gosh was it a strange sensation. There have been about 2 hours worth of aftershocks.

Without much of a frame of reference in terms of earthquake experience, I can only relay that we were told it was a big one (7.5) and centered right on Simeulue. As far as I can tell, though it was felt in Banda Aceh and other parts of North Sumatra, everything should be fine: no signs of the sea receding and the sounds of nature are alive and all around (apparently before the tsunami all the birds and insects put up). The most serous complication seems to be the motor bike packed road (there is truly only one road in Simeulue), snarled as everyone preventatively heads for the hills.

Nothing really happened here in the compound, but I don't know much more than that. If it is big as they say it was on the radio, I am sure it will make the world news, so please don't worry, I am fine.

Electricity, cellular phones, and the internet went down immediately after the first shake and it feels a bit disquieting to be so cut off. Until something happens I will be sitting here in the middle of the badminton court watching the ripples reverberate through the mud puddles.

Update: 7:15pm- Internet is back, generators are running, everything is still fine. No tsunami materialized and the BBC says few deaths. Hope all are well.

feline update

Translation from a text message that I recieved today from Farizhal, my housemate in Kalimantan:

"Hello, mas! Last night Harimau birthed five kittens on top of the sofa."

This means that not only did my decision to get a cat with two weeks left in my stay saddle them with a promiscuous kitty, but also 5 more already on the way. Hopefully it skips a generation?

bucking the motorcade

Having hooked up with an NGO here, I have recently moved to Banda Aceh. I should be here for a few months, keeping occupied with a post-conflict project (in addition to the tsunami, Aceh has had 30 years of violence centered around its independence movement) in some of the non-tsunami affected areas. It is great to have a project that allows me to simultaneously feel stimulated (and excited) while also contributing something that helps other people. Too often during my time in Indonesia I have found myself only fulfilling one of these desires.
From time to time I field complaints about this blog, of which one of the leading has to be ‘you never tell us what your living situation is like.’ So, in an attempt to rectify this, let me tell you a bit about my new home in Banda Aceh.

My NGO has put me up in one of their many guesthouses here in town, which means that I have a room to myself in a nice middle class neighborhood. The house backs up to a fairly large mosque, ensuring daily 4:45am wakeup calls, and the neighborhood is largely expatriate (NGO workers), ensuring that they will be especially amplified. My room is massive—king sized bed, dual air conditioners, two makeup tables, three wardrobes—and it feels a bit like sleeping in a vault. My bathroom, private, has hot water, an absolute first for me in Indonesia. Lying in the middle of the bed, I can just get the very side of the mattress with the tips of my fingers. A big bed, but with only one pillow, I am unsure how to handle all the responsibility.

The nature of guesthouse living is that it is difficult to pin down exactly who you live with, since so many consultants, field workers, and members of the downstream branches are shuttling in and out of the head office, but I have taken to (and they to me?) the people that are around on a fixed schedule, the security guards that keep an eye on the place.

If you have ever heard of the ‘compound’ lifestyle of NGO workers, it is true. All of the guesthouses are gated the entire time and it seems as if all of the workers are shuttled everywhere—to and from work, to eat their meals, on personal outings on the weekends—in a fleet of sleek and burly-looking SUVs.

This has been the first thing that I have cropped up against, and my buddies the security guards are less than sure how to handle me. During the first few days as I met each security guard, I would roll out of the house to go get something to eat. Usually I might ask of a place to eat nearby—we bullshit for a little while. The problem always comes when I start to walk out the front gate. These guys, bless them, start to look absolutely apoplectic. They cannot believe that I am not taking a car. To me it seems logical: it seems a bit ridiculous to call a car (they all stand-by at the depot across from the office) to drive me less than a kilometer to get some rice. Mostly though, I do not really relish rolling up to a small little warung in an SUV with blacked out windows; I imagine this has something to do with the community relations troubles that all the NGOs scratch their heads about. Inevitably, a conference ensues, often involving security guards from other guesthouses on my road: Are you afraid? Do you know the way? Won’t you get tired? But, but none of the bules do this! In the end, we usually cobble out some sort of middle ground: he gives me a ride there on his motorbike, while I manage to extract the right to walk back on my own.

It certainly is funny, and probably only further secures my status as one of the crazier bules around, but I think it does say something about the difficult mission that NGO workers face, especially in emergency (of which Aceh is no longer, but was recently) situations where people hit the ground regardless of any linguistic, cultural, or local familiarity. In spite of all the good that they do (which people recognize) you still hear people on both sides complain that things could be better. Locals often do not feel as if their views, status quos, or contributions are accounted for, while NGO workers feel misunderstood and a bit like cash machines (i.e. ‘people only want to see me when they are getting something’). I do not want to sound too judgmental; after all I speak Indonesian and have had the experience of taking care of myself here for a little while, but for me this experience makes me reflect on a few sleek and shiny ways that NGOs could improve upon their relations with the community.

i've been scooped

The more devoted of you may have noticed that the blog has been on a bit of a break of late. After the experience that I will presently unfold to you, it needed a bit of time to breathe.

I was browsing through the bookshop in Singapore’s Changi Airport and trying to decide if I was willing to shell out twelve Singapore dollars for a New Yorker (I wasn’t) when my eyes alighted on the jaunty looking paperback, Hardship Posting: True Tales of Expat Misadventures in Asia. On each cover of the series’ three volumes (and counting) is a walrus-mustached, knee sock encamped, floral shirt sporting, Rip Taylor look alike (clearly the publicity photographer misplaced his pith helmet that day) engaged in some sort of ensemble scene with two scantily clad Asian beauties—themes like Noodle House, Massage Parlor, or Beach Bar. I would have kept moving, but I was puzzled, mostly by the fact that they were all autographed copies.
Closer examination revealed a self described,

“A no-holes-barred romp through Asia! Great reading for the expat that can’t remember what he did last night, for once-were expats to remember what Asia was like, and for might-be expats to what they’re really getting themselves in for.”

Putting English Grammar aside, I was understandably disturbed. The back contained a fitting catalogue of the low-brow ‘misadventures’:

· What you maid might be doing with a jar of Vaseline and an Indian gentleman while you are at work!
· The guy who bought a Phuket bar with his AMEX!
· Confusing hair remover for lubricant!
· The guy who used rupiah notes for toilet paper!
· The guy who left a 500 baht tip under his wife’s pillow!

I know, it does sound like a rollicking ride, and one that, to be truthful, many expats that I have met could enthusiastically do you one more. Perhaps this is why I avoid hanging out with most expats. Yet while I have avoided blogging about all my boozing and whoring (at friendly exchange rates, no less), it gave me pause. True, some of you have had the pleasure of hearing about the continuing (seemingly interminable at times) misadventures of mas Zach, but how are my wacky ‘misadventures’ any different than something that is decidedly tasteless and unliterary (and makes me bitter that it has made it to three volumes)? Maybe I have been going about this all wrong? Give the people what they want: shitty grammar and VD!

Well, I tried to emulate during the break and I just can not seem to carry it off. This generation of pieces really lacked any verve (or any depth of research). Maybe in a few years, but for now you’re stuck with my writings about Nescafe and Vespas.

You and Your Body

Harimau (in Indonesian—tiger) proved ruthlessly efficicient at killing rats. Unfortunately somewhere between the swaddling and the fish heads (though, what is an Indonesian cat that will not eat rice?) I managed to impress upon her something along the lines of: ‘I am your master. Share all kills with me.’ This resulted in the unfortunate tribute of precisely half of each kill being deposited at the foot of my bed. The bitch always kept the better half for herself; I always got the (uncomfortably lengthy) tail.

Anyways, the only thing that the cat proved more efficient at than exterminating was entertaining the fellas. Yes, soon after her arrival, our house became the hub of the gentleman-cat-caller circuit. It got bad. The constant barrage of seriously unsettling foreign sounds, feral cats breaking into our house (only to be chased out again by our broom-wielding superstar, Ibu), the term ‘tag-teamming’ making it into the constellation of my roommate’s dinner conversation repartee, all these things combined, precipitated this conversation:

‘So, ah, Harimau, I think we should talk.’
‘About what? Oh, nothing in particular, we just don’t talk like we used to. You used to tell me everything, remember? Best-est friends, right?’
‘Well, if you are not going to come out from behind the oven, I will just have to talk through it.’
‘So, I, umm, well, I couldn’t help but wonder, while I was going through the rubber tub of dirty water where we all wash our clothes, who these belonged to?’
‘Your silence is damning! To begin with, I find it hard to believe that these are even remotely comfortable! What’s more, what makes you think you are old enough for this? Who even bought you these?’
‘I am not ruining your life! And it is not just about the thong underpants! It is about the sullying of your good name and our fine home! I refuse to be merely a crash pad for the neighborhood harlot!’
‘Now, look, that was unfair, I am sorry I raised my voice. All I want to say is that I brought along these helpful little pamphlets: ‘Changing Bodies, Changing Kitties’ and ‘You’re not Crazy, You’re Just Polyestrous.’ There. See? They look pretty, ahh, crucial. Yep, very legit. Umm, you know, they seem pretty good, I, uh, learned stuff, uh, that I didn’t even know.’
‘Redundant? Don’t change the subject, young lady, or I’ll cuff you. I am going to leave these here and I expect you to read them and straighten up.’
‘I am glad we talked.’

I figure it should tide things over for the next few years.