I once read an article about life in a Dayak community (Borneo) claiming that it is impossible to be truly alone in a Dayak longhouse. Although each family unit has their own quarters, the permeability of the partitions creates a constant flow of sound down the longhouse. After four weeks of living in an Indonesian kost (boarding house) I cannot help but draw parallels. Each resident has their own room and bathroom looking out onto a communal square, but for some reason the upper segments of the walls are made of netting. The sound of people coming and going can be quite comforting - in a foreign country it is quite nice never to feel alone - but can also be intensely irritating. My neighbour, for instance, has a penchant for country music and, somewhat incongruously, bad 90s dance tracks, blasted out at unsociable hours. Also, because my room is located next to the external entrance I can hear everything that goes on in the street. When a motorbike goes past in the street it sounds like it's driving right past my face. Likewise the calls of the street sellers, so intriguing and amusing in the day, become massively irritating at 7am. Nevertheless, I like living in the kost and although I get woken up early in the mornings, I fall immediately asleep most evenings which, after months of insomnia, is blissful.
Monday was Chinese New Year so we headed to Glodok, the Chinese quarter, which was a bit of an eye-opener. The area is pretty run down compared to Tebet and a million miles away from the imposing sky-scrapers of central Jakarta. There were a lot of beggars and I felt awful walking through the streets clutching my digital SLR. The temple was absolutely beautiful though - hundreds of candles (some taller than me), shrines covered with food and money and incense everywhere (so intense that my eyes started streaming and I had to leave). We then went to a New Year performance in one of the malls (malls, it seems, are Jakarta's cultural epicentre), which was absolutely swarming with people. In the end we couldn't actually see anything of the performance and just sat on the floor listening to the music, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the crowds. Whilst we were sitting there people kept asking us to pose for photos with their children, who stared at us wide-eyed.
I spent the latter half of this week at a conference in Bandung, a city about 3 hours drive from Jakarta. Spending time in Bandung helped me to clarify why I dislike Jakarta. Although they are similar in size, Bandung is a whole lot more pleasant than Jakarta. Bandung has wide, roomy streets, lots of greenery and hundreds of cheap 'designer' shops, whereas Jakarta has congested streets, no pavements, parks or trees and actual designer shops (which are, of course, no use to me whatsoever).
The conference was interesting - it was about school accountability - but the same old frustrations arose. When I was arranging my placement I was told that the two working languages in the office would be Indonesian and English, which I now consider to be slightly misleading. Although the NGO publish reports in English, all meetings are in Bahasa. For the first day of the conference they kindly arranged for a member of staff to translate for us, but for the remaining two days I understood nothing. Not only is this slightly dull, but it means that we, as volunteers, are very limited in what we can contribute. Also, I'm still struggling with the different working culture here, particularly the propensity of plans to change at the last minute. For instance, after spending a week reading up on accountability in schools and traveling all the way to Bandung, I was told by the programme director that I probably wouldn't be working on the project any more. Also, our start time on the last day was changed from 9.00am to 7.30am AT 5.30AM THAT MORNING (which involved ringing around all the hotel rooms to let everyone know). I do love how relaxed it is here, but I have my limits!
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