Schoolchildren in the village of Pelangan
In the backwoods, there is dengue fever, diabetes, typhoid fever, and during the rainy season, illness comes from 'warm humidity,' where fungus grows and other infections breed. Malaria here is yellow, occurs rarely, and is treatable. It wasn't here before, but civilization is catching up: first appeared in Mataram and Senggigi, and now in the vicinity of Pelangan village. Diabetes is increasingly from diet. The Sasak, if they can afford something more than a rice-and-vegetable diet, love food that is heavily fried and spiced. So that chicken meat is reduced to coals, and oil drips from fried bananas in batter. Typhoid fever comes from bad water and food. Water is taken from wells; it's brackish here (the sea is close), but there is no other. Bottled water is a luxury not for everyone.
Foreigners are loved in the village, regardless of gender. When Andreas came to Pelangan twenty years ago, a local boy saw him through the window and yelled, 'A foreigner in the village!' And the other children started shouting and running. They surrounded Andreas in a tight circle and stared. Adults followed as a second echelon and also stared. Blue eyes attracted attention. Old men came up and waved a hand in front of his eyes – to see if he was blind. 'I see, I see,' replied Andreas.
Pointing a finger is impolite. Saying 'no' directly is also impolite. 'Yes' is the answer of a polite person; it's better to replace 'no' with 'maybe.' If they didn't understand the question, they will still say 'yes.' 'Where is the hotel?' 'Yes.' 'Do you understand the question?' 'Yes.' 'I want to ask, where is the hotel here?' 'Maybe better to turn right.' 'Have you been to Bali?' 'Belum – not yet.' 'Will you buy water from me?' 'Sudah – already have.' 'Are there tomatoes?' On such a simple question, you can answer 'no.' 'Tidak ada – no tomatoes, all sold.'
The market in Pelangan is spontaneous. What is brought is sold. Prices have increased two or three times over the past year; because everyone is busy with gold, goods for sale have to be bought in neighboring villages. The cheapest are vegetables: for 10,000 rupiah you get a bag of tomatoes, eggplants, small red onions, and garlic. Smoked chicken Pelangan-style is 20-30 thousand. A piece of tuna caught early in the morning is 5-20 thousand. From experienced vendors you can buy potatoes and onions familiar to us. There are many fruits. Six mangoes for 5,000, bananas by weight and individually, apples, mangosteens, limes, and 'snakefruit' – a fruit with a thick snake-skin and a delicate cream-colored flesh.
Women do the trading. Men bring them in the morning, then go to the canopy where DVDs are sold. There is a TV and a TV series about love. 'Cinta' (love) is the most interesting. They learned to make series from the Mexicans. Twenty years ago, Indonesian television had two channels; on one of them, every day at midnight, they showed the Mexican soap opera 'Maria Mercedes.' As if on command for 'lights out,' everything closed, and villagers ran to those who had a TV to watch the next episode about Maria. In the morning – mandatory discussion.
Not only TV series fill the day, of course. Life is loved in all its manifestations. Gambling is a universal male pastime. Cockfights, the World Cup, even the election of the village head they might bet on. They play for high stakes, with not only money but also personal property up to houses and land on the line.
Five years ago, mobile communication and cell phones appeared in the village. The latest model, so you could watch videos. If you are walking down the road and see two or three people staring at their phones so intently that they don't even pay attention to you, a foreigner, be sure, everything on their phone is much more interesting.
Selingkuh – an affair on the side. If you don't do selingkuh, you are a fool and not a real man. You can't have selingkuh with a married woman; touch another man's wife, and you'll be in for trouble. Last year, the owner of a mini-shop got involved with the wife of another mini-shop owner, rumors spread, so the elders gathered and chased both of them out of the village for three years. They returned after five months, paid money to the village council. They returned, by the way, to their families and continued living as before.
If you have a selingkuh and a cell phone, another pastime is to chat with your lady on speakerphone. A group of six people sits, at least one will definitely be chatting with his selingkuh. But you have to be careful. Su once came in the morning with his face scratched in five lines from nose to ear, puffy eyes, and dragging his leg. What happened? He left his cell phone unattended. With the wrong SIM card. The phone rang, his wife answered, and there was a female voice. Su's wife is stern; he is afraid of her; she can carry five bricks on her head at once, while he carries three on his shoulder and barely keeps up with her.
Su is popular with girls because he has a beautiful long nose. The standard of male beauty is white skin, a long nose, a thick wallet, and tall height. Once a tourist from Sweden came, a binge alcoholic, with a huge porous red nose, and local girls were crazy about him. They wanted to marry him, because girls believe that Western men rarely divorce, so you can build a nest and live with him alone long and happily.
In Pelangan I have a friend, Dini. She is a teacher, came from Java, teaches something about tourism and English. A tourism school was built on a grand scale. They bought land, made a plan – here a hotel, there a restaurant, classrooms in the back. They had been building for two years, two rooms were ready without finishing, and cows grazed on the rest of the land. Nevertheless, the school operated in a regular school building, in the second shift. Students paid 5,000 rupiah per month, and for that money they were trained to work in the hospitality industry, which doesn't really exist in the village yet, but everyone is expecting a miracle.
I was invited to the school as a guest of honor. But not so. I had to get the students to think and answer questions.
The first class was all boys. I didn't understand what subject it was; the teacher was absent, and Dini found it hard to explain. So we spent a long, tedious time going over what tourists like and don't like. That the room must be cleaned before check-in, not after. That trash must be swept out from under the beds, bed linen changed, and don't pester with questions about how they are and where they're from. We made two lists, one student even thought to copy them into his notebook. I told him he'd get hired, and the rest of them we sent home.
The second class was made up of lively little girls. Before me, the school director himself, friendly and smiling, had told them about restaurant service. The girls asked questions in English, and I delighted them with a story about how mangoes and bananas don't grow in Russia, but various berries do. And I had to explain about the weather. What plus 10 Celsius meant was clear. But what minus 20 was was beyond comprehension.
The third class was mixed. The lecture was called 'cultural differences' and consisted of questions and answers. For example, to the question: you got up at five in the morning, arrived at the hotel at six and started cleaning, then a tourist rushed out of the room, terribly angry, why? There were several answer options. 'Because the room was poorly cleaned yesterday.' 'Because he doesn't like the way it's being cleaned today.' It took a long time to lead them to the correct answer: we don't get up that early, you woke the poor guy up; if you want to clean the room, come after ten in the morning, or better after eleven.
It turned into an interesting conversation. About what is customary for us and what for them. What to say and when to keep quiet. How to address whom, and whom not to even go near. About personal space and polite communication. About how a tourist is not as foolish as they seem.
They asked me questions too: where I live, what I do for work, what I like and what my hobbies are. And the students understood about cultural differences – not all, but many. And one girl noted at the end: 'How different we all are.'
Svetlana SYSOEVA.
Photo by the author.