A Cultural Rant

I have a headache, culturally. I am in my last week in Banda Aceh, and I have been thinking about how I have spent my time here, and how I feel about that I have accomplished, and what these lessons mean for my future. The one thing that I keep coming back to is the community that I have kept, and how much that has defined my time and my experiences here.

I am very lucky. I speak Indonesian very well—so well that most people think I am Indonesian over the phone. I still have the accent of a street kid from Pontianak, and with a few exceptions, my bahasa gaul, my understanding of the pop terms and phrases, is very good. This means that I can easily stay in conversations between two Indonesians my age, and I can, linguistically, work my way into Indonesian culture. But that is linguistically. Culturally, I am still the brash, unrelenting person I am in America. I will argue about my opinions, I will ride my bike, I will go out alone, and go swimming, and everything else. This is who I am comfortable being. But it is not the culture that fits with the Bahasa Indonesia. These are not the actions that I need to adopt to fit into Indonesian culture, and to have normal Indonesian girls think of me as a peer. My personality separates me in a way that no linguistic skill can reconnect.

And then there is the expat community, the international relief aid workers. There are so many of them here—it would be easy to only spend time with bulés. And here, my cultural expressions fit in. I can be loud, and ride my bike, and reminisce about home. But this community has so little to do with Indonesia itself. It is a community that transports itself from emergency to emergency, from Darfur to Aceh to Kabul with only a few changes. And there is simply too little understanding of where we are, and what is culturally acceptable, and what matters here, for my taste. Many, (by no means all), of the aid workers have no connection to Indonesia, and to the world that really is my second home. If I have to listen to another bulé talk about how he or she hates rice, or how it is too hot, or not know how to order dinner, I may flip out. There is so much that is secondary to me here, that is not picked up on my any one I know in the relief aid community. I end up playing tour guide, and meal orderer, and telling people what they should try for lunch. It gets wearing.

Our unfortunately named strategic planner, Paul Mecartney, grew up for 12 years in Northern India. He said that growing about abroad felt like walking into a Wal-Mart. There is simply too much to choose from. It is overwhelming. Neither he, nor I, would choose this any other way, but I think he is really right. There is too much, and too many things can not be fit together. I am certainly not the first person to have to deal with this, I know. Even in my office, there are a number of people who fit this bill. The two most obvious, and the two closest to my age, are Lisa and Koldo. I have mentioned Lisa before—she is a 30 (birthday a few days ago)-year-old Australian, and has spent over 5 years in Indonesia, and is married to an Indonesian. Then there is Koldo, the 23 year-old who goes to school in Java. Both speak incredibly good Bahasa. And both, in their way, have found a cultural balance. Koldo simply is Indonesian. He only hangs out with the national staff, he has an Indonesian girl friend, and I have to interact with him with the cultural expectations of an Indonesian guy. He seems happy enough. Then there is Lisa, who also seems to spend more time with the Indonesian staff than the bulés, but I know also wrestles with the cultural expectations. Still, in many ways, she deals with the cultural expectations of Indonesian womanhood better than I do.

And then there is simply the situation we are living in right now. I went to a UN party a couple of nights ago—the World Food Program was having a Bar-B-Q. I know some people in the WHO, so I decided to go along. First off, I have many issues with the UN presence here, enough that I should certainly write something separate about it. But, as a small example, all UN staff drive around in their large white hummer-like vehicles, with UN painted in huge blue letters. They are not allowed to travel in local transport, or even take a walk by themselves. Nothing that could put them at risk with interacting with real people. And, in microcosm, I think this is a pretty accurate image of the UN presence here as a whole. Anyhow. So, I went to this Bar-B-Q. There were no Indonesian people there, besides the guy at the grill and the drivers who had been told to wait. They made you pay for the food—100,000 a meal—way more than anyone on a national salary could pay for a meal. But the part that really got me was the beer. We are in an area of Shariah Law, were one of the most unacceptable things is to drink alcohol. There was unlimited beer. It was nice for us, but not for people’s impressions of us.

At this party, was Carston Hilson, the head of security for the UN in Banda Aceh. I have had to listen to this man give a security briefing each week, and he always, always ends it with “watch out, it’s a jungle out there”. This is made worse because he looks the picture of the colonial leader—fat, white, with clearly died blond hair. Somewhere in his sixties. Anyhow, we got into a rather heated debate about what this phrase meant for people who did not know Aceh, and who were here to come and help. To me, there is no phase that could be more other-ing, designed better to separate the aid worker from those in “the jungle” who needed their help. Nothing better to make them seem like savages who were not worth one’s attention. He clearly had no idea what I was talking about—he liked his phrase. He informed me that it was from a movie.

And of course this is not just with the UN. Save the Children staff certainly can be less than considerate. Today, a driver tried to take a picture of three of us with out asking. We were all irritated, and we asked him not to. Then, half an hour latter, at a warung (food stall), one of the people I was with busted out his camera and, without asking, started taking pictures of the guy preparing our food. The guy was not pleased. Can people simply not see the connection?!

Anyhow. In the end, it comes down to my decision of who I spend my time with, what I decide to tell the bulés, how much I can be myself with the Indonesians. And, in the end, I have really chosen to spend time with the bulé staff. Mostly, these are the people I interact with on an everyday basis—the people I know the best at work. But they are also the people I feel I can be my American self with the most. But, at the moment, I feel like this may have been a mistake. I have learned so much, but I still feel a separation from where I am right now. I still feel like I have not given where I am as much chance as it deserved. No regrets, just thoughts about what other options might have been. But it makes me think about my next, future, options, and what I want to do. More people, and certainly more of where I really am.