The apartment complex is adjacent to the Jakarta branch of the London School of Public Relations, so the area is full of young people and has a great vibe. The students are always in our restaurants and coffee shops, doing work and socializing. I think many of the students live in the complex. On that note, the majority of the apartment residents are Indonesians (wealthy, definitely), with only a few "bule" (foreigners).
There is also a mosque right next to our apartment, and so everyday 5 times a day we hear singing and praying. It's not very harmonious (lol), but I really like it... and it has come to be a marker of time for me.
We signed the lease for 1 month to start, as a trial period, but told them we'd like to live there for 3 months. Sara wants to conduct research and I will volunteer; at the end of 3 months (January 12) she is going to return to the US, and I anticipate I will travel a bit or just fly back to the States as well.
So... we settled into our apartment and the next day I went to meet with the staff of a nonprofit I am interested in. It's a family foundation that funds all sorts of social programs (I'm particularly interested in SOS Children's Villages, an independent orphanage program they fund), and they also have a branch that addresses women specifically called WADAH. The husband and wife couple that started the organization is very wealthy, and their name is a household name in Indonesia apparently. (The woman's brother is running for president of Indonesia in the next election, and the husband's father is a famed Indonesian economist and professor). So I went into their office to meet them (their office is located in a fancy business building that is only a 10 min walk from my apartment! Bonus!) I met staff from both the Family Foundation and WADAH, and they sat me around a table and asked me all sorts of questions about who I was and why I was there... they were really interested in me, and I felt so honored to be taken so seriously by all these older, professional, amazing individuals. It was a sharp contrast to my previous orphanage experience, that's for sure. I started speaking to the WADAH chairwoman, Tyas, and after speaking to me for several minutes she told me her and a few staff people were going to be taking a 4 day trip to the other side of the island to survey some projects WADAH is funding; basically doing a project assessment.... and she invited me to go! They bought me a plane ticket on the spot (the ticket cost almost $200!) I am absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity I have encountered while here in Indonesia. Absolutely blown away!
I showed up at the airport at 6am the next morning, met up with the 3 WADAH women, and we caught a plane to Jogjakarta, a city in central Java that is known to to be the cultural capital of the island. We were to spend 1 night in Jogjakarta, one night in the neighboring city of Solo, and the last night in a rural town called Ponorogo in East Java. We had private drivers (in air conditioned cars!) drive us around to different sites to look at various projects. I saw a lot of schools, orphanages, community centers, and microcredit projects. We would drive up to a site, take lots of photos, then sit on mats on dirt floors or chairs if they had them, and drink tea and talk.
A few sites stand out in my mind... one was an orphanage for refugee children from East Timor. The site provided a home for the children, and it also provided life skills training. At the orphanage they taught the kids how to sew, how to make and use construction materials, how to fish (they had big tanks that they purposefully put fish in in order to teach the kids fishing as a livelihood), how to grow crops, and so on. It was so impressive! Another memorable site was a government school that had sought funding because their current government funding was not adequate. The school had experienced major flooding last year, and has not been able to repair the damage. Additionally, the school serves a very poor community, and many families have trouble with the mandatory fees: books cost almost $20 for a year, and uniforms are about $5. Many pay in monthly increments.... and if they fail to pay the full amount by the end of the year, students do not get their certificates (which means they can't advance). Apparently this happens to a huge number of kids.... so sad! I was a big hit at this school, all the kids wanted to say hi and take photos with me. ;-) Another project was a microcredit project for a cooperative of women in a rural village who cooked every evening in their homes from midnight to 3am to sell to vendors in the local markets. Each woman makes less than $2 per day. The interest made from their loans goes towards funding another microcredit project in the next village over. In our visit there, the women sat around us and gave us food to sample... we had a delicious cassava and coconut dish. Another site that we went to was the home of a woman who has recently tried to kill herself and her 3 children after her husband left them and she was faced with dire poverty... one of the organizations that WADAH sponsors has helped her out by providing chickens (I know, right??) and emotional support. We sat in her little house and met her kids; pretty crazy experience for me.
It's very unfortunate that I don't speak Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language), because it would have enhanced my experience to know what they were saying.... I would love to know what kinds of questions the WADAH women asked and how the dialogue went. But it was great to see Indonesian social work from the perspective of an Indonesian non-profit ("yayasan" in Bahasa Indonesia). I mean, I studied international development and came here to experience development firsthand... I feel so lucky to have had the privilege to go on a trip like this and experience social work through the eyes of locals!
The women met with the rest of the staff in a meeting on Monday, and it was there that they were going to be discussing budget allocation. I am curious to see what they decided (what is their criteria, how much money they actually are distributing, etc) and I hope that they let me see how they have allocated funding. It was great to see the work they do, but I'd really like to know about the internal logistics of a local (and professional-run) non-profit organization.
I came home from the trip late Friday night, ready to be "home" again. It had been an exhausting, action-packed trip!
The next few days Sara and I tried to take care of logistical stuff for our apartment... figuring out water & trash systems, internet installation, grocery shopping, etc. This has been an eye-opening experience. Everything takes SO long here... I feel like I only get one or two things done per day. Grocery shopping for example. We spent all Saturday and all Sunday grocery shopping. We wanted to go to all the different stores to compare prices and food items. Between the intense heat, and trying to figure out transportation, grocery shopping has been an incredibly draining activity!
As for water, you cannot drink water from the tap, so you must buy all drinking water. It is purchased in the 5 gallon bottles, and when we ran out of our initial supply, we made the rounds to the various mini-marts trying to figure out where we could buy refills. They all said they didn't have any, and to come back Friday. Friday??? At this point it was only Monday, and we refused to have to buy mini water bottles all week to cook with and drink. After 3 days of asking different people and lugging our empty water jugs around we finally found a man with a dolly full of empty water jugs. So we followed him (sneakily) for like 15 minutes hoping we'd find a place that sells water.... and it worked! We discovered a place tucked away in our apartment complex that sells (and delivers) water. Why it took us so long to figure this out, and why somebody couldn't have just told us (or taken us there), is beyond us.
Trash is a whole other story. There are no big dumpsters in the basement, like there would be in the US. Instead, there are 3 foot wide, and 2 feet high canisters (I think I have seen 2) that we have been told to put our trash in. WHAT?? Do people just not produce trash here? We filled the canister with just our trash. Somebody else said just leave our trash bags out in the hall and apartment staff will come by and pick it up in the morning... but we have our serious doubts, and don't want to be those rude people that leave their garbage out in the hall for someone else to deal with.
Internet has been the most frustrating. We have been on a waiting list for internet installation for 2 weeks. We were told there were 10 people in front of us... but we can't believe that they only serve one person per day. Additionally, they don't call when they say they'll call, and they don't come when they say they'll come. The system is so inefficient! (For the time being, Sara and I are paying the girls next door 50 cents a day for access to their wifi). Sara and I try to understand that the capitalist mindset just doesn't exist as much here, but everyday we find ourselves awed by the inefficiency and lack of infrastructure here.
I went to get my visa extended (the SOS orphanage organization is kindly sponsoring me so that I can stay!), and I spent hours in the immigration office. I literally took my passport file in hand and went from office to office collecting stamps, signatures, etc.... it was such a bureacratic and cumbersome process, and strange that I did it myself. I get the feeling that most people just drop it off and pick it up completed another day, without having to engage in the process themselves. Anyways, this was the day that I decided to explore public transportation. The taxi to the immigration had cost about $3.25, and I refused to spend that much again. So after achieving my visa extension, I hopped in a bajai (3 wheeled, golf car type taxi that's super cheap) and went to the busway. The busway has the feel of a subway, but its just a bus system that has its own lane (and is subsequently unaffected by the constant traffic that plagues this city). The fare is only 3,500 Rupiah (about 40 cents). I had no idea which direction I was going, but with my basic Bahasa I told people where I was trying to go... and people were SO helpful! I had no problems getting home, and only spent about a dollar- much less than the cost of the taxi! Getting home by myself on public transportation felt like such an accomplishment!
I have to say though, by this point I had been in Indonesia for almost 2 months and had not volunteered, which is what I came here to do. I had been in Jakarta for 10 days now (although I had been on a 4 day trip with the WADAH women), and I have been so bogged down with figuring out the logistics of daily living that I hadn't been able to meet with non-profit organizations and volunteer hands-on (the WADAH experience doesn't count because I wasn't actually working or engaging with any of the people that I met). Honestly, just getting from point A to point B, dealing with the inefficiency of everything, the language barriers and the blazing heat made me physically fatigued and emotionally worn out everyday. I literally got only one task accomplished everyday. Sara and I were getting really frustrated with out daily lives! I found myself questioning why I left California (where I could have invested myself in a meaningful job and routine) and my friends and family, to move to Jakarta to deal with this and live a life that was so seemingly meaningless.
I have to remind myself all the time that I came to a developing country to experience life in a developing country.... and this is it! Setting up a household (and a life) is all part of the experience. And by no means is what I'm doing pointless. This is life! Around the world, for so many people, this is life as they know it.
Anyways, Sara and I have had some good conversations about it and are moving forward on a positive note, and I'm starting to fall into a routine... exercising, eating healthy, and taking care of myself in general definitely helps (travelling is not conducive to those things!)
I have also allocated days to visit organizations. Yesterday, I visited an organization that I am very interested in, called the Foundation for Mother and Child Health ("Yayasan Balita Sehat" in Bahasa) and they have a number of great programs. Their services include feeding programs to feed malnourished children, cooking classes to teach women how to cook nutritious foods given their limited resources (the cooking classes are held both at the Foundation's center and also in women's own slum homes), health education, sewing classes, preschool classes, and scholarship funds. I am going to the center both tomorrow and Saturday to help out and observe their numerous programs. Because I don't speak the language I don't think I can truly volunteer (a very sad reality) but I hope to help out in any way that I can and see more of how Indonesian non-profits operate. I really think I want to pursue public health in the future, and to see it in the context of a developing country is going to be a great experience!
Today I went and talked to an organization called Hope Worldwide. They have a number of programs that cover education and health, and I plan on volunteering (or at least checking out) their various centers and programs. I am, again, very interested in the public health programs, and would like to see/participate in their tuberculosis control efforts and nutrition training events. Additionally, because I don't speak the language, I have been told the best way I can actually help the organization is to teach English or assist in English language tutorial programs for students, so I'll definitely do that too.
I really need to get some sort of part-time work while I am here to subsidize my expenses (I'm draining my life savings- ahh!), and unfortunately the substitute teaching idea hasn't pulled through like we would have hoped. We have been in touch with several English teaching institutions, and I hope something works out. Many of them are pretty far away and don't pay much, so we are weighing our options.
A big problem is that it is illegal to work while on a tourist or social-cultural visa here (I have the latter). Work permits are rarely given to foreigners like myself who are just living abroad. If the government found out that I was teaching English I would be deported and fined! Yikes.
To wrap up, I am doing well, and proud of myself for starting a life in Jakarta. Everyday is an adventure that's for sure!
