Indonesia- Journey to Sumatra
Finally, my stomach was on the mend, and I was off to Sumatra to visit the small town of Bukit Lawang, a launch point into Gunung Leuser National Park, aka THE RAINFOREST!
Rainforest is a buzzword in US culture, especially in elementary school for some reason. "Save the rainforest! Medicine comes from the rainforest! Cute animals live in the rainforest! 'The man' is cutting down football fields of rainforest every day and only YOU can stop it by donating your pennies! If we lose the rainforest we all will suffocate and die!" So, if you went to 2nd grade in the United States, you know there is a lot of hype about the rainforest. Which means I had been anticipating this visit for at least 20 years. To top it off Gunung Leuser happens to be one of the very few places in the world you can see wild orangutans. I researched many different spots to go and decided on this one. It almost broke my heart that being sick might have prevented the trip, so I was very very excited to finally be on my way to fulfilling a dream.
First I flew from Jakarta (which is on the island of Java) north to the city of Medan which is in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. I was having mounting anxiety on the plane as I realized I was the only ONLY white person, which had never happened before in my travels. In the airport, I also found myself to be nearly the only woman not wearing a hijab and suddenly felt very self-conscious in my shorts and t-shirt. The reality of what I was doing started to sink in. I was flying to Northern Sumatra to a city I had barely heard of to meet a driver I didn't know who was going to drive me 4 hours to a tiny village on the edge of the rainforest. I had talked with some nice people on facebook about it but that was all the assurance I had that this was going to go well. If I disappeared, no one would ever know where or how. And there was nothing I would be able to do about it. The bigness of the world and the smallness and helplessness of myself were suddenly juxtaposed in a way that made me stomach turn. Those two conditions are always true but I cannot always see them so clearly.
I am glad I experienced that feeling as it is far from a part of my normal life, and probably a common part in the lives of many.
I walked around the airport looking for my driver. It was a strange feeling to notice that no matter where I looked, people had already been looking at me. Eye-contact everywhere. Staring. Occasionally a stranger approached to say, "Hello miss, where are you going?" It was a little uncomfortable to have so many strangers single me out in a crowd and ask kind of personal questions like where I'm going and where I live. It was kind of scary honestly. I am sure people were just curious or wanted to practice English, but it was a very unfamiliar feeling to be so singled out. It occurred to me that this might be the way someone in a hijab would feel walking through the Anchorage airport.
Eventually, I found wonderful Edi who would drive me alllll the way back to Bukit Lawang in the blessed air-conditioned car. In the middle of the drive he stopped, left the car running but got out and said he would be back in ten minutes. There were people everywhere and I was suddenly an American girl alone in a very strange place locked in a car. A few moments of panic passed...and he came back with some delicious fried snacks for us to share! What a guy! He didn't speak a lot of English, and after teaching me a few simple Indonesian phrases, we resorted to music for the next 3.5 hours. Edi's genre of choice: Classic 80s rock.
The drive was fascinating. We drove through Medan, and Binjai before entering a more rural areal. We passed palm oil plantations and small villages for hours on a very very narrow, sometimes washed out, very potholed road. In Bukit Lawang people asked me if we had any roads in American that were as bad as that one, and they were very surprised to hear that the roads in Alaska can also be very bad. Well, not many people had heard of Alaska, but they were surprised that anywhere in America had roads like theirs.
The driving though, oh the driving! The driving. Wow. Everything was totally different. A road barely big enough for one car was driven like a 4 lane highway, people passing each other on all sides, at all times, often veering into oncoming traffic, very abruptly breaking and accelerating. Scooters with 3-4 people on them, often several children zipped around and between big trucks. Horns are used just to let people know 'hey I'm here' so you honk at just about every car you encounter. For the life of me I could not figure out how the turning signals were actually used. If two cars were approaching each other they would both signal toward the middle of the road. Maybe indicating "Pass me on this side" or maybe saying "Hey stay on your side." They were used in so many different ways, including occasionally to indicate a turn. I cannot overstate the craziness of the driving, even back in the jungle. I will always remember careening through tiny jungle towns in terrifying traffic listening to Guns and Roses.
My favorite moment came while I was glued to the window, watching the complete foreignness of another place, feeling so helpless and vulnerable and suddenly, THE MACARENA! I showed Edi the dance, but he was not familiar with it, and was maybe a little embarrassed for me :)
When we arrived the guide, Adi, who I had been corresponding with met us outside the homestay. As soon as I met him I felt very safe and was sure things were going tobe OK. I stayed with his sister Ita in her home very near Bukit Lawang. They were wonderfully warm and welcoming! Adi's wife and Ita cooked delicious food and were very careful not to feed me anything that would bother my stomach. It was easy to talk about all kinds of things with them. I was curious about their lives, their town, their country, their culture and they taught me so much! We talked about Indonesian and American politics, religion, healthcare, social systems, etc. Amazing stuff. I will always treasure sitting at the kitchen table talking to Adi and Ita as it got dark outside, just across the river from the rainforest.
Turns out it takes an entire day of emotional rollercoasters to travel from Jakarta to Bukit Lawang, but it was so worth it.
Rainforest is a buzzword in US culture, especially in elementary school for some reason. "Save the rainforest! Medicine comes from the rainforest! Cute animals live in the rainforest! 'The man' is cutting down football fields of rainforest every day and only YOU can stop it by donating your pennies! If we lose the rainforest we all will suffocate and die!" So, if you went to 2nd grade in the United States, you know there is a lot of hype about the rainforest. Which means I had been anticipating this visit for at least 20 years. To top it off Gunung Leuser happens to be one of the very few places in the world you can see wild orangutans. I researched many different spots to go and decided on this one. It almost broke my heart that being sick might have prevented the trip, so I was very very excited to finally be on my way to fulfilling a dream.
First I flew from Jakarta (which is on the island of Java) north to the city of Medan which is in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. I was having mounting anxiety on the plane as I realized I was the only ONLY white person, which had never happened before in my travels. In the airport, I also found myself to be nearly the only woman not wearing a hijab and suddenly felt very self-conscious in my shorts and t-shirt. The reality of what I was doing started to sink in. I was flying to Northern Sumatra to a city I had barely heard of to meet a driver I didn't know who was going to drive me 4 hours to a tiny village on the edge of the rainforest. I had talked with some nice people on facebook about it but that was all the assurance I had that this was going to go well. If I disappeared, no one would ever know where or how. And there was nothing I would be able to do about it. The bigness of the world and the smallness and helplessness of myself were suddenly juxtaposed in a way that made me stomach turn. Those two conditions are always true but I cannot always see them so clearly.
I am glad I experienced that feeling as it is far from a part of my normal life, and probably a common part in the lives of many.
I walked around the airport looking for my driver. It was a strange feeling to notice that no matter where I looked, people had already been looking at me. Eye-contact everywhere. Staring. Occasionally a stranger approached to say, "Hello miss, where are you going?" It was a little uncomfortable to have so many strangers single me out in a crowd and ask kind of personal questions like where I'm going and where I live. It was kind of scary honestly. I am sure people were just curious or wanted to practice English, but it was a very unfamiliar feeling to be so singled out. It occurred to me that this might be the way someone in a hijab would feel walking through the Anchorage airport.
Eventually, I found wonderful Edi who would drive me alllll the way back to Bukit Lawang in the blessed air-conditioned car. In the middle of the drive he stopped, left the car running but got out and said he would be back in ten minutes. There were people everywhere and I was suddenly an American girl alone in a very strange place locked in a car. A few moments of panic passed...and he came back with some delicious fried snacks for us to share! What a guy! He didn't speak a lot of English, and after teaching me a few simple Indonesian phrases, we resorted to music for the next 3.5 hours. Edi's genre of choice: Classic 80s rock.
A little visual information about the road (a little Journey here (the band))
Some houses on the side of the road (and a little AC/DC here)
Another house (and top it off with a little "I Wanna Know What Love Is" by Foreigner. The 80s rock experience was EVERYTHING)
The drive was fascinating. We drove through Medan, and Binjai before entering a more rural areal. We passed palm oil plantations and small villages for hours on a very very narrow, sometimes washed out, very potholed road. In Bukit Lawang people asked me if we had any roads in American that were as bad as that one, and they were very surprised to hear that the roads in Alaska can also be very bad. Well, not many people had heard of Alaska, but they were surprised that anywhere in America had roads like theirs.
The driving though, oh the driving! The driving. Wow. Everything was totally different. A road barely big enough for one car was driven like a 4 lane highway, people passing each other on all sides, at all times, often veering into oncoming traffic, very abruptly breaking and accelerating. Scooters with 3-4 people on them, often several children zipped around and between big trucks. Horns are used just to let people know 'hey I'm here' so you honk at just about every car you encounter. For the life of me I could not figure out how the turning signals were actually used. If two cars were approaching each other they would both signal toward the middle of the road. Maybe indicating "Pass me on this side" or maybe saying "Hey stay on your side." They were used in so many different ways, including occasionally to indicate a turn. I cannot overstate the craziness of the driving, even back in the jungle. I will always remember careening through tiny jungle towns in terrifying traffic listening to Guns and Roses.
My favorite moment came while I was glued to the window, watching the complete foreignness of another place, feeling so helpless and vulnerable and suddenly, THE MACARENA! I showed Edi the dance, but he was not familiar with it, and was maybe a little embarrassed for me :)
First view of the forested mountains we would trek in
Adi has a school to teach local kids English in his sister Ita's house where I stayed. So awesome.
Evening from the room I stayed in.
When we arrived the guide, Adi, who I had been corresponding with met us outside the homestay. As soon as I met him I felt very safe and was sure things were going tobe OK. I stayed with his sister Ita in her home very near Bukit Lawang. They were wonderfully warm and welcoming! Adi's wife and Ita cooked delicious food and were very careful not to feed me anything that would bother my stomach. It was easy to talk about all kinds of things with them. I was curious about their lives, their town, their country, their culture and they taught me so much! We talked about Indonesian and American politics, religion, healthcare, social systems, etc. Amazing stuff. I will always treasure sitting at the kitchen table talking to Adi and Ita as it got dark outside, just across the river from the rainforest.
Turns out it takes an entire day of emotional rollercoasters to travel from Jakarta to Bukit Lawang, but it was so worth it.
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