I'm Baaaaaaaaaccckkkk

In Indonesia.
No Really.

In the three years (and some change) since my last post I've moved to the Bay Area, started a PhD program in Performance Studies (not puppets) at Berkeley, survived course work, advanced to candidacy, officially gained the title of ABD, and begun my field work.

Which brings me back to Indonesia.

I've been here for about five months ( with an all too brief five week hiatus back to the states) and I'll ostensibly be here until July, pending visa issues. Over the first few months I struggled over if, or how, I would write about my experience. Should I reboot the old blog with all of it's embarrassments? Should I start a Tumblr ( that's what the kids are into these days)? Is Tumblr still cool? Should I micro blog? Should I write about the day-to-day stuff or just the research? Am I ready to write about the research? Will I ever fulfill my dreams of becoming a soap star in Southeast Asia?

 I've decided to stop worrying and simply write what I feel like writing when I feel like writing.

Today that's the difference between the questions "dari mana?" and " anda berasal dari mana".
I'm by no means an Indonesian grammar expert (although I'm officially working on it for 12 hours a week here). But from my understanding (and my experience with the type of questions thrown my way), these are two of the most common ways to ask someone where they're from. Dari mana mostly implies "where are you from" in terms of nationality and berasal implies more a of a sense of origin or ethnicity.  My Indonesian is crazy formal, my accent is weird and I look different, so I get asked the first question a lot. I usually respond with "the United States". This inevitably brings about looks of confusion, a slightly harder stare at my face, and some version of " anda berasal dari mana?". What this implicitly says, and what is sometimes explicitly stated) is that I don't look like an American so there must be more to the story.  3.5 years ago this is the point where I would try to explain the Atlantic slave trade, why I claim Alabama as my ancestral, how I should be able to claim American without question or consequence. More than anything, these questions highlight the desperation with which I find myself struggling to claim Americanness. To drape myself in what that means here and avoid looking into the void that is "asal" or origin.

So what do you do when you're in a space where your Blackness has no context?
And what do you do when you must face the fact, institutionally, sometimes interpersonally,  that America doesn't want to claim you? It doesn't want your nails digging in to hold it close?

A few days after I arrived in Surabaya in August Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager,  was gunned down in Ferguson, MI by a police officer. Because of the time difference I happened to be on Twitter the moment the news started to spread and shake some last feelings of complacency loose. Over the next few weeks, and to this day, I've been glued to Twitter in the mornings as protestors hit the streets at night, and glued to Twitter late into the night as actions and outcomes are processed. And I've been thinking about what it means to be Black here, where the bigness of my hair or the juicer than averageness of my booty may cause stares, but I mostly get to be a care-free Black girl loosed from the (ever-present but not quite as heavy) mantles of White supremacy and anti-Blackness as they take shape in this space.

The End is Nigh

          So a lot has happened in the last week, the most exciting of which is the fact that I’ve hit the two-week mark until the end of my grant. While Indonesia has been an often challenging but ultimately rewarding experience I can’t help but to think of this as the days tick down

         As is usually the pattern with me when living a long way from home for long periods of time, as the end draws near, I’m really just chomping at the bit to get home. Feelings of nostalgia/wishing time would slow down usually don’t kick in till about a month after I’ve settled back into old routines. So while I would love my last few posts in Indonesia to consist of thoughtful reflections about my time here and its impact…I’ve got a 11 day whirlwind tour of Vietnam to plan. However I do regret not taking more photographic documentation of the absurd things I see every day. My lack of visual evidence is partly due to the fact that I’ve tried to exist here offering the same respect that I wish to receive. My first few weeks in Indonesia consisted of an endless round of photographs, some with permission, but many taken on the sly with camera phones as if my friends and I were the Indonesia equivalent of the Kardashians. So while I might want to take a picture of that man on the street cradling his rooster like a baby, we get what we give. However seeing that I’m in the final stretch, I’ll see what oracular surprises I can come up with.

Last weekend also saw the completion of the long awaited WORDS competition. No, WORDS is not an acronym, but we’ve been writing it in all caps for so long that it just feels wrong not to do so. WORDS is this big fancy national English presentation competition that began about 3 years ago and has fallen to me and my fellow ETAs to continue the legacy. Last Friday 86 ETAs and students descended upon Jakarta for an exciting weekend of English speaking, bowling and sight seeing around Jakarta.  The competition itself was held in a venue aptly named “@America” in the fanciest mall in Jakarta. Obvious grammatical issues aside, @America was a really cool venue that teaches young Indonesians that upon their arrival to America, an fancy new iPad will be placed into their waiting hands. No seriously, all of our kids got to play with iPads during the competition, which unfortunately turned out to be more of a problem for ETA attention spans than the kids’.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of the competition since I was stage-managing, aka doing damage control, during the entire event. However I did briefly turn over my duties to my assistants to I could watch my student Iin’s presentation.

       After the competition we took all of our student’s bowling. Although I haven’t been bowling in years, I have this deep and abiding hatred for the “sport”.  However it wasn’t until about two rounds into wearing used shoes that I remembered why…I’m embarrassingly bad at it. And like any self-respecting type a perfectionist, I really hate participating in activities that I’m no good at. However, what mattered is that IIn had an awesome time (did I mention she got to meet one of the hottest Indo-pop stars at the Ambassador’s house in Jakarta), I got to indulge in TWO types of free wine at the ambassador’s house, tiramisu doughnuts were consumed, and at the end of it all Iin’s driver dropped me off at home so I didn’t have to fight with a taxi driver at the end of the what was possibly my longest weekend to date in Indonesia.