Jalan Jalan

In Bahasa Indonesia to jalan-jalan is to walk. In my brief experience I’ve learned that Indonesians don’t really like to walk anywhere, which is many ways is understandable since it alternates between being hot as Satan’s crotch or monsooning on any given day. Because of this frame of thinking, my choice to walk to places in my neighborhood causes quite a bit of confusion and consternation for the people around me. My favorite security guard, Iphul, would rather ride his motorbike from the front gate to my house, all of a hundred feet, instead of walk around the corner. Why not take a becak, their eyes all seem to say. Or at least buy a motorbike.

                      

I don’t often miss New York. I loved my time there and created some amazing memories, but I would rather trade my right hand than live in a snowpocalypse again. Funnily enough, when I do experience separation pangs from NY, it’s rarely about people (although I do miss some of you and you know who you are). Mostly it concerns walking. I often miss walking around the city I was beginning to know and love so intimately. I miss the freedom of moving confidently, iPod intact, as a soundtrack of my choosing swirled around me, enhanced by the pulse of street noise and the occasional catcall. I’ve come to learn from one of my students that walking with my iPod here is considered somewhat snobby, even though I take pains to smile brightly at every Tom, Dick and Harry that clamors for my attention on the street.

Walking in Indonesia just isn’t the same, and not only because the city planners of Makassar didn’t seem to consider intact sidewalks an important contribution to the residential quality of life. Walking in Indonesia is often a decision that requires you to consider how much you love being alive.  Urban or rural, perils abound.  Oops I walked into a cow, got to be careful because they bite sometimes (Rural).  Hmmm got to watch out for those roosters blocking my path (Urban).  I wonder if that patch of ground in front of me is solid or a sewer ditch that I’ll fall into an could possibly cause a Typhoid infection (happened to a friend of mine and apparently the typhoid vaccine is only 50% effective). Hope a motorbike doesn’t come zooming out of this alley and almost run me over (every day).  I hope today I don’t step on a dead cat…again.