Terima kasih! A belated Thanksgiving Thank You!

Thank you Rumbai Camp.  Thank you for friends who have opened their hearts, homes, and kitchens to us.  Thank you for sympathy, guidance and understanding.  Thank you for loving my children and treating them as your own.  Thank you for random advice that turns out to be exactly what we need.    Thank you for a school and a staff that is unparalleled in their excitement and pleasure in teaching and learning together. Thank you for jungle walks. Thank you for the musang in my attic. (More or less. Better than a snake.) Thank you for parties and stories that will last a lifetime.  Thank you for shaving your mustaches.  Thank you for gibbons singing in the trees.  Thank you for baby kitties that are loved and nurtured and adopted.  Thank you for days of rain and gorgeous sunsets.  Thank you for batik and fabric shops.  Thank you for rainbows. Thank you for the freedom to not know where my kid is and be ok with that.  Thank you for coconut. Thank you for Pete and his Rock and Roll friends. Thank you for back patios. Thank you for black langur, slinky monkeys. Thank you for $80, 10 pound turkeys imported from America. Thank you to Ibu Lena who just fried up some plantains, coated them in coconut and brought me a snack because I'm too thin. (Bless her sweet heart.) Thank you for constant kindness and enthusiasm. Thank you for a continuing adventure.

The Band, which is likely to have an unprintable name as the rights were auctioned off to the bawdiest guy I know.  Can't wait.

The most dramatically lovely rainbow ever!

Peterovich Tsaryenko Nesterov, or Pete Nester before he shaved the 'stache.  That hairy article was auctioned off for charity and men's health and my lips are grateful.

Shopping at a fabric store can turn into a three ring circus.  Made some new friends.

Bunch of little turkeys

Beginning our weekly jungle walks and push to improve camp trails.

The fabrics will kill you.  So gorgeous you buy them all and suffocate....

Our back patio and new rattan furniture.  Handmade by Pak Rizal.  So beautiful.

The aforementioned turkey.  Turned out well...

Team America International Thankgiving hostesses.

the bigger world

One thing I do worry about here in Rumbai Camp is the ability to lose yourself in a very friendly and very comfortable version of the western world.  That said, I'm not sure I'd be able to live here with as much aplomb if I didn't have such a deeply rooted support structure. There are good friends, grey market liquor, an American school, familiar foods  (we found lentils, cannellini beans, and prunes at LuckyMart yesterday AND there are also crazy expensive turkeys flown in from Jakarta so the American contingent can have it's Thanksgiving fix,) very comfortable (air conditioned) homes, and 110 plugs.  (You laugh?  110 plugs are magical, especially after you blow up your coffee maker by attempting to plug it in a 220.) It is an incredible comfort zone, buffer zone, between us and the Indonesian world we live in.
That said, there are fairly massive cultural challenges even within this community.  I've heard myself express irritation and impatience in ways that I really hoped to avoid.  I've had a really hard time adapting to new faces and names and figuring out which goes with which.  I've tried to bite my husband when he attempts to engage me in conversational Bahasa.  Also?  There is a civet cat living in my attic and the pest control guys come by a few times a week, take away a few mice, and laugh at my inability to cope with such tiny pests (Civet cats are as big as a fat raccoon, just FYI.)  I guess I ought to just name the creature, consider him a permanent resident "pet"  and move on. 
Pete and I have a continuing conversation about not taking this move for granted and making sure we take advantage of and fully appreciate the differences.  As many of you saw, Pete was invited to dance with his Indonesian work team at a cultural event last Saturday.  He had serious dance practices leading up to it, and he had a traditional costume made and given to him.  It included a pretty awesome turban.  (Together with his Mo-vember mustache, he looked quite Turkish/Middle Eastern/French/Absurdly Tall Indonesian.) 
With the girls, absorbing a foreign culture often boils down to this paradigm: "No, it's not weird, it's different. It is interesting.  Let's find out more about it."  If our kids come home with anything, I hope it is that.  An ability to keep their minds open to new ideas and experiences, and an interest in finding out more about the world around them.  As far as this specific move goes, Clara is full of wonder over the dancers and their amazing and beautiful costumes.  Nora is thrilled with the jungle and wildlife. 
And me?  I'm eager to truly speak Bahasa.  I'm learning, and already have a lot of the important kitchen words down.  I've been working out lots of new ingredients, was thrilled when I found galangal (similar to ginger but smells more flowery.)  I'd come across it in America, but only in dried form.  I also found a chile and tamarind sambal today that I'm eager to work on - Ibu Lena laughed and looked at me speculatively and said one word: "Spicy!"  But she's learned that we are game and willing to try.     
Ibu Lena and I spent an awesome day in the kitchen today boiling down coconut oil. Her mother taught her to do it, and today she taught me.  You take the coconut meat and grate it, add a little water and then boil for a couple of hours.  The oil will rise to the surface.....  it's a cool process and smells heavenly.  The process helped me feel a real connection to this country and perhaps a deeper understanding of an Indonesian kitchen.
And so, obviously, we are having pizza for dinner......

an irritatingly philosophical birthday post

It's been a month since I posted, and in that time, I've covered a gamut of transition emotions.  I've also composed a number of mental blog posts, but I thought them up at odd hours like 3am, and never got them written down.  The first blog post was a whiny one.  It was all about the loneliness and feelings of being cut off from the rest of the world.  It also had a pretty direct correlation with being smoked in for a couple of weeks.  The next blog post was about the joys and freedom of escape and travel, about hidden temples and fantastic beaches, and coffee and spices and volcanoes: Bali. It never got written because the next one, and I'm just telling you the embarrassing truth here, was about the flight home from Bali, which was horrible.  It was also about being stuck in scary Jakarta - even if only for a few hours, and the general anger and misery that all things Indonesian evoked in the next few days after we were home. But, here we are on the other side of all that.  Right smack in the middle of school and work and friends and no more smoke and running and planning for holidays and my 41st birthday. And it feels good.
I've been thinking a lot about my twenty and thirty year old self, and wondering if she could have taken on this adventure.... and frankly, I'm not sure she could have.  She'd probably have hidden in her room and read her book; Which makes it even more amazing to actually be doing it, enjoying it, and holding the world together for our family.  Running helps.  And new friends really help.  Volunteering with community events is good.  Doing weird stuff in the kitchen too.  It's all about making a world that is safe but interesting, calm but exciting, and centered but open, all the while figuring out how you and your family fit into a new community and culture.  I wonder, does that make sense?  I'll try one more time.  It's about making a home that is comfortable and safe and "known", but allowing it to embrace the new and unusual, allowing room for new ideas and traditions and friends. I don't know if that explained it either, but i'll leave it there for now....I think I need an editor.
  My Uncle (Hi Uncle Hugh!) apparently told my mom how impressed he was at the way I was coping with the life transition to Indonesia.  After mom and I quit laughing over that remark, we realized that sometimes putting a good face on things is enough to convince you that things are good. The really embarrassing blog post, written in the midst of deep smoke and misery, was way too whiny to publish.  It was one of those that posts that discourage you from making eye contact with the author for a while afterward because you know too much about her brand of crazy.  So maybe you don't see the everyday small things that get me down.... but I can tell you that 2 months and 2 weeks in, each day gets a little more settled and a little more at home.  Conversely it also means that my world is expanding and I'm brave enough to take on a little more here and there and stretch my wings and try new things.  (As a poet, I'm on par with Dr. Seuss.)

Reboot.....I'm finishing this post a few days after I started the above.  The smoke is back.  There is jackfruit in my refrigerator that is making my world stink and I DON"T like it.  There was a big monkey tearing up my trash can this afternoon and eating a lot of gross things he found in there.  Ugh.  Additionally? I got a strep test today and am waiting on the results.  So, yeah.  What was I saying about ups and downs and handling it?  Meh... I'm still laughing and we are having satay for dinner, so the world can't be too terrible a place.
(Oh.  And did I mention that a friend is getting tested for Dengue fever?  ha ha?)

DIY

There are a few philosophies to life as an expat: 1.  Bring a ton of toilet paper and hope it lasts the length of your assignment, or 2. Meh, you can get it here, or 3. Why did you come on an international assignment if you are going to cry over triple-ply double-roll American toilet paper? At this point I'm not sure where I fall on the spectrum. 
It's early yet, we've only been here for 5 weeks, so right now I'm making personal challenges out of things I can't find.  I tried to recreate Trader Joe's coconut chips... not so good.  Need to do some serious fine tuning.  They aren't getting crunchy and they are shockingly bland.  I did make homemade granola bars, though, which are magnificent and filled with peanut butter, honey, and coconut oil.  For tiny three year olds, they are serious nutrient dense snacks.  For grownups, they are delicious time bombs.  I'm hiding them from myself.  (Sigh.  And my Ibu made golden fried doughnuts today.  Suck it Ithaca-apple-cider-doughnut facebook taunters.)  I'm working on a new sourdough bread starter and have been baking bread almost daily. Yogurt is next on my list in a low tech manner... problem is that there's a little eww factor when working with milk.  I also made some enchilada sauce that compared favorably to some favorite Houston Tex-Mex restaurants.  This was followed by my own refried beans.... easy enough, but the connoisseur of the house  wasn't completely satisfied.  Soon after I found canned refried beans and jalapenos and other Mexican delicacies in the commissary.  Nora is pleased.
So the make it yourself attitude is not uncommon here in camp, and it can become a great excuse for both indulging a craving and having a party.  Necessities both.  We were invited to a grand sausage making last weekend, and it was both incredibly fun and incredibly productive.   We came away with a jolly outlook and 6 pounds of sausage in the freezer. 
The pig was ordered on Thursday morning, butchered on Thursday night, more or less, and picked up and brought to Rumbai on Friday morning.  The fun began on Saturday.  I'll tell you that skinning a pig on Saturday morning before you've really embraced the day can be daunting, but an enthusiastic crowd was ready, waiting and sharpening their knives.  The pig was skinned, cut up and in the grinder before noon.  Octoberfest sausages took precedence and were set aside for another great party to be held in the future, and two other varieties, a Cajun and an Italian sausage were made.  They are all incredible.  Do you people know how much fat goes in to the sausages?  Mmmmm, sausage!
As we were butchering hog meat, I was remembering reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid, and all the fun they had at the hog butchering.  (They blew up the pig's bladder and played with it like a balloon!) I recall stories from those books emphasizing the importance of community: the whole neighborhood would turn out for a work party, and while the work got done, it was just that, a party.  You get to know and like someone pretty quickly when you are elbow deep in pork fat. Mmmmm, pork fat.

Someone's in the kitchen with Ibu.

Before I left America, many people (oddly enough, especially my dental hygienist) were gleefully hooting about the fact that in Indonesia I could have a full house staff and I thought to myself "I don't know.  That sounds pretty terrible." 

Well, here I am a month later in Rumbai Camp: My name is Elizabeth Humbert and I have a cook.  And a housekeeper.  And a gardener.  And I'm looking for a driver.  And Pak Tony is building our patio, fixing my car, and bringing me vodka. And Pak Mukhlis brings both the beef tenderloin and the red wine.  And Ibu Khartini comes by daily to deliver fresh fruits and sometimes seafood from the Pasar Bawah open air market. Four men came by from Facilities maintenance yesterday just to pick up the phones and ascertain that they are working.  It's both welcome assistance and random people in my space. I need a closet to go shut myself into. 

Things are actually going really well with the Ibus who work in my house with me.  They are helpful and really kind to the children.  They also know when to stand back and let me scrub the bathroom myself.  Or make a bizarre "Egg pie.'  My number one, the cook and general head of house, is Ibu Lena.  She's a fabulous cook.  She's been going through a bottle of olive oil a week, and makes kick ass tortillas.  My pants are tight.  I taught her about quinoa yesterday and just borrowed a juicer from a friend.  Ibu Imun is our number two.  She irons our sheets and Pete's underwear.  She also bleached my beautiful colored kitchen towels I splurged on at Target.  She's just one of the nicest people and so easy to work with.  Ibu Lena speaks enough English that we work well together and though Ibu Imun's is minimal, we are getting things done. 

For the first few weeks, I let Ibu Lena loose in the kitchen.  I was adapting and learning basic stuff about life and eating in Indonesia, so I was fine with that.  I went to a kitchen store in town this week and got items that I consider necessary...  so I'm raring to cook now.  Ibu Lena is not irritated that I'm constantly under her feet and following her every move as she cooks.  I want to learn.  We've had incredible sate with peanut sauce, beautifully prepared stir fries with tofu or chicken.  Today was tempeh.  The tempeh is amazing.  Handmade, wrapped in banana leaves, and ready to go.  We've had coconut curries and chicken nuggets.  Even Clara ate those nuggets.  Hand made, hand fried.  Oooh yeah. Did I mention my pants are tight?  We've had gorgeous shrimp and a lovely fried white fish. I've seen huge red snapper at the market.  Doing that next week. 

Ive been baking a lot - and Ibu looks at my love of whole wheat as bizarre.  White is better.  White rice too, when I encourage brown for my family....  The ability to choose to eat healthily is so easy here.  So many fresh vegetables and a platter of fruit at EVERY single meal.  Yellow and red watermelon, honeydew type cantaloupes, mangoes, guava, my beloved mangosteens, and the most glorious pineapples you've ever eaten. (We're still shy of papaya.  I just don't love it. There's this weird meaty thing going on there.) Our fruit bill must be $20 a week!  Outrageous!  And so wonderful!

mind over matter

Been thinking a lot about things I miss.  Both philosophically and consumptionally.  Consumptionally isn't a word, but I'm going to use it here to indicate that I am a crass American who overpurchases and overuses consumables.  So, where to start? Simple stuff.  An easy trip to the grocery store that has everything I need.  A chip clip.  An ice maker. A Nordstrom Rack.  A 24 hour gas station.  Bacon. Real Cheetos that aren't boiled chicken or corn flavor.  (Heaven help us, the "Corn Flavor" labelled on the front of the gorgeous orange Cheeto bag sounds sort of misleading.  I mean, you know, toasty corn, roasted corn. I could handle that.  Nope.  This tastes like an expired can of cream of corn from 1976.) My toaster oven, Kitchen Aid mixer, parchment paper, and real vanilla. I also miss the EPA, but I think we've covered that.
Honestly, the things I miss are small and often rather silly.  In general, we've been able to find almost anything and everything we need.  The commissary is on camp for general stocking of pantry - and it might be a bit more expensive, but it is easy and accessible.  To get to town, one must take a taxi or hire a driver.  (For those who don't know, driving off of camp is a bad idea in general.  Traffic is heavy and confusing and motorbikes are like dandelion fluff - here there everywhere - and they generally have small adorable children without helmets hanging off the seat.  I personally, don't want to hit one. So we leave the driving to the folks who know what they are doing.) But town is still fairly easy to get to and contains everything a crass American could want. Cheap shoes, pokemon toys, mochi balls, ice cube trays, lollipops.  Plus, batik clothing for the whole family!!!
We came over from America with 14 duffel bags filled with the most important things we would need for the first three months.  In looking at what I packed in retrospect, the duffels I packed in June for our pre-assignment trip appear to be packed by a person who was rational and really thinking hard about what things really counted as necessities.  The next ten duffels, which were being packed the week before we flew out, are bizarre and contained a lot of playdough and cheez-its.  ("Cheez" flavored snacks appear to be my downfall.) I brought a lot of books and blankets too - which I assume are subconsciously representative of comfort.
So for three months, we live with the stuff brought over in the duffels and furniture and such provided by Facility Management.  Then comes the magical day that our house goods shipment arrives from America.  It is currently on a boat sailing over the Pacific.....and we hope to see it in early December.  For the first week in Indonesia, I was gleeful about living such a clean, stripped down life.  Someone laughed at me and said, "That's nice.  But soon, you will be dropping I can't wait to get X from my shipment in to every conversation."  And I'll be damned if she wasn't right.  I need my bike to get around.  I need all of the air purifiers, right now!  I need my special pillow.  I need silly little trifles.  I really need my stinking chip clips.  And Tupperware.  (That's right Vincents, I said Tupperware.)
It does seem that when our overloaded shipment arrives we'll really be able to pinpoint what we need, what we want, and what is fluff.  I hope to continue a weeding out process that began 6 months ago with a much clearer vision of how to "make room for what matters." (Thanks Janna P.)  And in the end, even with small daily annoyances, I think I'm surprised that there isn't more I'm longing for.  This settling in and discovery of new foods, new routines, new friends, new experiences isn't leaving us much time for missing stuff.  We go up and down in our transition, because the building of this new reality is a challenge, but our family is intact and happy to be together and I'm pretty sure that really is the heart of what matters.

red flag!

There is a downside to living in paradise with monkeys. 

The downside is air quality.  You've seen the pictures of Chinese cities covered in smog, well in Sumatra we get smoke from jungle fires that are purposefully set to clear land.  It's been a really bad year for the smoke.  So much so that many families were evacuated in April to Singapore by ferry (the planes couldn't fly because visibility was next to nil.) 
We are currently in the dry season in Indonesia, with rainy season beginning sometime in October.  It is commonly pretty smoky during the dry season because fires built hundreds of miles from Rumbai follow air currents and sit here on top of us until the currents shift or a good rain scrubs the air.  We've had about 3 red flag days in a row, and today is the worst.  Red flag means air quality is above a certain amount of particles (ppm) in the air. 
Not only can you see the smoke, you can smell the organics, wood and peat, that are burning.  It's incredibly distressing.  No outside play for the kids, Masks on everyone when you step outside. Houses taped up to try to lessen smoke in the house.  Loud air purifiers running all the time.  And we're totally unsure when it will diminish.  I thought we were slaves to the weather report in Houston, waiting on that first cold front in fall.  Here we are slaves to the weather report, hoping we can breathe again.
So I'm sitting here thinking "Thank God for the creation of the EPA in America."  You may not like everything they do, but pollution in America has become so much less of an issue in the last 25 years.  Remember acid rain?  Remember how bad the smog used to be?  I don't.  Or I just barely do... thanks to new environmental restrictions....
Here in Sumatra, large corporations, with owners sitting in smog free, lovely Singapore, own giant tracts of land upon which they plant palm plantations.  They are not allowed to burn to clear land.  But, small local farmers with a small acreage can.  So the plantations "sell" the acres back to farmers, the farmers burn, then the land reverts back to the corporation.  The burning is so pervasive and sometimes so awful it shut down Singapore's airport a few years ago.  That's when people started paying attention.  It was so bad this spring that the president of Indonesia issued a "shoot to kill" order for anyone setting fires.  A new president is now in power, and some think that the burners are testing him. 
It's not an easy black and white issue though.  Perhaps this is the thing that being out of America for even just two weeks is teaching me.  Nothing is ever as simple as you want it to be.  Everything has repercussions, and someone will get hurt on either side.  Poverty is widespread in Indonesia, and farming can mean subsistence. Burning can mean prosperity. 
So, why all the burning of jungle?  Why the decimation of so many species?  Why tolerate the smoke?  Palm plantations.  Again, why palm?  Pick up almost anything in your pantry or your cleaning supplies.  It ALL contains palm oil.  Crackers, soap, chips, laundry detergent.  All of it.  I remember seeing signs in Whole Foods a few years ago that showed their insistence on Responsibly Sourced palm oil.  I remember thinking, Really?  Who cares.  Now I know why, and now I care. Now I choose to support Indonesians fighting for a real burn ban and a future that's bigger than the palm oil industry.