But I Voted for Obama

           In the years since Obama assumed his presidential role, “ but I voted for Obama” has become a sort of get out of jail free card for saying somewhat un-pc mildly racist things while still feeling like a bastion of tolerance. Oh I would never walk through Harlem at night, but I voted for Obama. I’m sure we’ve all been witness to it in one form of another, exscpeically in the days when the news was seriously announcing how we now live in a post-racial society.

                                                               

            I for one have always considered myself extremely tolerant and culturally aware.  Pictures of  my friends from college look like a modern day Rainbow Coalition pamphlet, I can talk intelligently about various religious practices and I mean come one I chose to live in Indonesia. Tolerent and culturally aware card verified. When I first arrived in Indonesia there was a story in the Jarkarta Post about an expat living in a suburb of Jakarta who had been here for something like 15 years. One day he snapped, and in the wee hours of the morning he went to his local mosque and unplugged the speakers that transmit the call to prayer 5 times a day. Needless to say he is currently in jail. When I first read this story I was horrified.  No one was holding a gun to this guy’s head and saying, hey you have to live here.         While Islam isn’t mandatorally enforced releigion, it’s no secret that Indonesia boasts one of the most populous muslim populations in the world.  As a result Islam, and the calls to prayer, are part and parcel of living here. Unless of course you live in a Christian area, but apparently they pump out hymnals so you really can’t beat them for joining.

                                    

            However 9 months into my stay I can honestly say I totally understand where this guy was coming from. Yes, culturally tolerant religiously well versed me often fantasizes about unplugging the speakers to the four, yes four, mosques that  are within a mile of my home. Things get even louder during holidays when they sometimes let young kids sing on the speakers, which is really a joy.All of this came to head a few nights ago when the saga of the gong began. There I was peacefully sleeping, earplugs firmly in place,  when out of no where somewhere is banging a gong outside my house at 2 am. This banging continued every hour on the hour for about 20 minutes from 2am to 4am, and wrapped up just in time for the 4:30-5:30 call to prayer.  Anyone who knows me understands that I am at my worse when I’ve been woken up out of a good sleep. I’m about as far away from a morning person as you can get, so one can imagine the string of explicatives that erupted from my mouth as I  was so violently ripped out of good sleep. 

      Traditionally during some Muslim holidays, such as Idul Fitri, someone would walk around the neighborhood banging a drum on gong in the wee hours in order to guarantee that everyone was awake for the first prayer of the day. The first few nights of being jolted awake, I consoled my rage by holding on to this little bit of cultural information. It must be for some special holiday I don't know about, I thought to myself. Not wanting to be the token insensitive foreigner on the block, I kept my mouth shut and just went with the flow. This meant that I would just start my day around 3 or for 4 am and simply deal with it. Well this solution lasted about a week until my "hell day" or what some of you like to call Wednesday rolled around. On Wednesdays I have seven straight hours of class, 128 students to corral, and my day starts at the ungodly hour of 6 am. When the nightly gong show  began at 2 am Wednesday morning I snapped. Grabbing my robe, I ran out of the house like a crazed woman and confronted the gong wielding culprit, tolerance be damned. As it turns out the culprit was my mild mannered security guard, Iphul, doing "security rounds" because hoodlums, like wild animals, are scared away by rhythmic noise. Faced with the reality that the gong had no religious value, I told Iphul that this was the stupidest security plan I've ever heard of, asked him to please stop waking me up, and fully satisfied slipped back into bed with a smile on my face. And I guess I'm still a card carrying member of tolerance anonymous.