Emma’s Year in Indonesia

I’ve had another weekend in Yogya. Its been a while since I got out of Yogya, so I’m making up for it by going to Bali this weekend. These next couple of days are the end of my first phase here really. From Friday I’ll have Roz here for 2 weeks and Paul here for 6, and I fly home with Paul in Janaury. So from now on I’ll have important people from home nearby, which will be strange. Jess was in Semarang this past weekend as well, so I didn’t have her around either. But it was fine, I have enough friends here now that people going away doesn’t mean I can get lonely. I think I’m just beginning to really feel like I’ve made a world for myself here. Its just a shame that most people start leaving soon – most of the ACICIS students are heading home before Christmas.

It hasn’t rained here for about 5 days, which is strange because it was raining every day before that. Life’s starting to return again – noones nipping out quickly before the rain. All the street sellers are back on the sides of the streets, or pushing carts. As I’m sitting here I can see a guy across the road with bottles of bootleg petrol, sitting in glass jars. Occasionally when a bike pulls up he fills it up. I have a feeling its mostly ethanol. Another guy just went past pushing a cart of something sausage shaped wrapped in cloth. Most of the time you don;t know what people are selling, if you’re lucky you might learn what one or  two of them are. I’m driven crazy by the carts that play music as the seller peddles. In particular there’s one that comes past my window every morning at 6am and night at 8pm. I’ve decided I have the noisiest room in the house – I’m near the tv, the garage and the street. So I usually get to sleep between 11pm and 5am. You get used to it after a while.

Yesterday we had a wake for Lestari. It was the 40th day since her death, and according to Javanese tradition this is commemorated. We just had our own thing at the ACICIS house. About 12 of us went over for some mountains of spaghetti and bolognaise cooked by Phil and we sat around and talked. Phil put up displays of all of the cards and messages that had been sent, along with some photos. I took along the tributes that had been posted on my blog. Lestari’s 2 sisters and their kids came over to talk with us and to read through all the cards and tributes. They were quite overwhelmed with just how far Lestari’s reach had stretched. We don’t think they knew just how many people, particularly Australians, were affected by her death. It was a very emotional day, with big hugs when it came time for them to go. It was terrible to see just how hard it is for them to deal with. Phil told us that ACICIS is paying for Lestari’s nephew’s school fees, and are looking at setting up a scholarship in her name to help a local student who can’t afford to go to university. It was a really nice day though, and it was good of Phil to organise it. I think a lot of us got the closure that we needed, as the day of the funeral was so sudden and rushed we didn’t really know what was going on.

I’ve had a couple of frustrating weeks with uni. The problem is that my lecturers have stopped turning up. In the past 2 weeks I’ve had about 1 class a week that’s actually been on. It was great last week, when my parents were here, but I was surprised to find the same thing was happening this week. I’m meant to be getting assignments at the moment but I don’t seem to be being given any. I suspect the lecturers don’t want to have to mark anything. For example, in one class the other day the lecturer came in, gave us a quiz to do, and left again. This quiz was a group assignment, to be done for next week. We had to do it in groups of 8, and produce a 2 page answer to the 3 questions. 2 pages between 8 people… its been interesting to try and organise…

We had a checkpoint meeting last night, which is a briefing meeting for all the ACICIS students with Phil, the Resident Director. It was at a really nice hotel, and we had access to the pool during the afternoon. There was a massive buffet for us, with really great food. At the meeting Phil introduced the new support staff member, who replaces Lestari and Wawan. Her name is Sinta, she’s been a tutor with INCULS for a couple of semesters. She’s tiny, especially when she stands next to Phi, doesn’t even come up to his shoulder. After the meeting most of us went to this great cafe place that serves mini-chocolate puddings that are runny in the middle - absolute heaven!

In other news, I’ve decided to not go on to Malang next semester. I was never really keen on the idea as it didn’t really fit with my plans or interests. So I got in touch with my uni back home and they’ve offered me a program to make up for the exchange next semester and it sounds good so I’ve agreed to that. I’ll be heading back to Australia on the 16th of January.

Its been a really long time since I’ve updated this! Well, not really, nearly a couple of weeks. But still!

Lots has been happening, so much so I haven’t had time to sit down and write for a while. In particular, my parents came on the 3rd for a week to visit me here. It was so nice to see them and so great to show them around my ‘home’. It was also good to do the tourist thing with them, and see some of the sites of Yogya. I had visited most of them on previous visits but had avoided going to them so far on this trip because I wanted to save it for my visitors.

I found my parent’s visit quite refreshing, because they were seeing things and noticing things that I had either become used to or hadn’t paid attention to. I enjoyed seeing Yogya through their eyes, and the new perspective that provided. There were some things that were quite amusing, such Mum’s fear of crossing the road (I admit I dread it too) and their disgust at chocolate and cheese, which seems to be the hottest dessert combination in Yogya at the moment, on bread, icecream and banana. I’ve tried it, and its strange. I’m not sure where it came from. Does anyone know?

We saw quite a few places in the week they were here. Most of the places we visited are looking quite different since the big earthquake that struck last year, with either structural damage, collapsed areas or cracks. We went to the Kraton (Sultan’s Palace) and did one of the tours there. We also visited Prambanan, which is still a very sorry sight after the earthquake. Its a collection of monumental ancient Hindu temples. Previously you could walk around them and inside them. Now you can only look at them from behind a fence. Some are leaning on angles, and others misshappen because so many parts have cracked or smashed. We also visited Taman Sari, the water palace, and the underground mosque nearby, that we didn’t know was there and was really interesting. The remains of a big wall that used to be part of the water palace complex is still dangerously standing - parts fell down during the earthquake and killed 2 people. Its amazing to visit these places nearly 18 months after the quake and still see so much evidence of it. We also checked out the old Dutch fort, which I wasn’t even aware of before. It was quite interesting.

Last Thursday was my 21st birthday (the main reason for my parent’s timing). It was a really nice day. Mum and I had a massage, we did a bit of shopping and hung around. My friends here in Yogya were all really lovely - I was woken in the morning by a knock at my door and opened it to find a cake. Around 25 came to dinner that night at one of the nice restaurants here. They were mostly ACICIS students and some friends from around here. It was good fun and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. It was great to be able to do something biggish for my 21st, seeing as I’m in another country and have only been here a couple of months. I know I’ll treasure it.

I’ve been sick for the past few days with a flu. I went to the doctor on Saturday after I’d had a terrible night of a fever, headache and nausea (I feared the worst and was worried I was coming down with Dengue Fever). I went to the “Happy Land” Medical Centre and was inspected by a very jolly doctor who said ‘you have…typhoid! No wait, I mean… a common cold”. It turns out tropical colds and flus are very different to the usual ones - more symptoms yet at the same time presenting itself in an unusual form. For example, my sinuses are fine, my throat was a little sore and I’ve only got a slight cough - so none of the usual symptoms. Yet the same feeling of unwellness.

I’ve just finished my mid-semester exams, with my last exam this morning, at 7.15am. I’m pretty tired, getting up this morning was a bit of a struggle. Especially since (for the 3rd time since I came here) I forgot that my phone was set on Australian time, so when my alarm went off at what should have been 6.15, it was actually 2.15. The exam was pretty hopeless. For this one we’d been given specific instructions on what to study, and then weren’t tested on those things. The exam required us to write a research proposal for our essay due at the end of the semester, where we had to outline what country we’d chosen, what issues were faced by that country, then formulate a research question and propose a conceptual framework to answer it. A lot to ask of my Indonesian, particularly at that time of the morning! The main problem with this question is that this is the subject that started off great but now involves only class presentations each week - where students present their RESEARCH PROPOSAL to the class. So for around 6 people, all they had to do was re-write the speech they’d given. Others just had to write the speech they were about to give and others sat there looking blank as their presentation is 4-6 weeks away and they haven’t started any research for it. Fortunately, I’d done a little bit of research on mine last week, but I had actually researched something different to what the question asked, as the original instructions for the research proposal presentation were much more vague. So I did what I could, given the circumstances.

Today isn’t starting well. After the exam I went to get a drink at a cafe and then rode home. On the ride home my bike started playing up, it feels like the bearings are going again because as I pedal, my pedals get stuck or skip, instead of rotating smoothly. I just took it to the bike repairman and he had a quick look and said that its not broken, and sent me away. Typical approach to problem solving here - the scary thing is that the health care system is exactly the same. So now I’m tearing my hair out a little, as I can’t really ride the bike far in case it gets worse and becomes too dangerous. I’ll have to think of a new way to try and demonstrate to the repairman that it is broken.

Becky and Sarah set off for Kalimantan yesterday for 4 days. They bought plane tickets there without really knowing what its like, so hopefully its not too daunting for them and they come back unscathed. As they were setting off Sarah said “I hope there’s phone reception in the middle of the jungle”. They mainly going there because they wanted to see orang hutans, but a couple of days ago realised that to get to one of the sanctuaries involves a 20 hour bus trip. So they’re playing it by ear I think.

I’m quite excited because my parents arrive on Saturday. I’m trying to think of things to fill the next couple of days so that time goes quickly, instead of slowing down in anticipation.

The rain has arrived! We just had out first afternoon downpour for the wet season. It was great, it was the first time it rained properly since I got here. You could smell rain in the air, and everyone from my kos gathered around our open grass area and watched the rain fall. It made studying feel a lot more cosy. Even though the temperature rose a fair bit, as the humidity increased. I think that the roads will be slippery for a while, and it will take a while before the water can start soaking into the ground. It hasn’t rained properly since May after all.

I’ve been spending the past few days in my room studying for my upcoming exams. Its a shame to not be out and about exploring, but its nice to stop and sit down and actually have something to do. I like the desk in my room because its next to the window, so I can glance out every now and then. Even better, the window one-way (i forget what the actual word is), so I can see out but noone can see me. Its nice being able to watch the world go by, when people aren’t too busy noticing me and my whiteness. Yesterday a guy came into the front yard to go through our rubbish bin. Its hard to believe that scavenging is the livelihood for quite a few poor people here, who collect scraps of things to on-sell for a few cents or a dollar or 2 if they’re lucky. There’s a general rubbish area down the road, where rubbish is sorted and the scavengers pick through it. The one going through our bin left with an empty plastic bottle that looked like it had contained cleaning products or something.

On Friday night Sarah came over. Actually, she came over after lunch and didn’t leave. It was great fun. She and Becky made a vege soup. It tasted great, and was so nice to have. We went to the supermarket that afternoon, which was great because the one we went to sold fresh meat. I bought some chicken to cook up. Unfortunately last night the electricity went off and my chicken defrosted, and the big tub of icecream I bought also melted. I was very disappointed.

Last night we (Leah, Becky, Sarah and I) went to the big mall Ambarrukmo to see a movie. It was great to be out on a Saturday night, as everyone was out and about. The streets were packed, and all of the road-side eating places were full. We bought tickets to the movie not knowing what it was about, but it was ok, if not a little scary. We saw The Seeker. We saw a late session, at 9.20, which was quite funny because the kos I’m living in has an 11pm curfew, and so we had to worry about whether it would finish in time. So we messaged the family who run the kos and they said they’d wait up for us. It was just like living at home haha.

I’ve just hit the end of a busy couple of days, and could really do with a few days rest. The rest of my time in Jakarta was great. Stephen’s birthday party was a lot of fun, and lasted into the early hours of the morning. This meant that I was pretty stuffed on Saturday, when I got taken out shopping again by the girls. They also wanted to take me out for dinner that night, for my last night in Jakarta. I agreed to, but said that I needed an early night. They then changed my plans and took me to Burger King for dinner instead! I said that the restaurant would be quick enough, but they insisted on taking me there instead. Which was good fun. And for those who are curious, yes Burger King here tastes the same as it does in Australia.

My flight back to Yogya the next day was a safe one. There was a fair bit of turbulence as we started our desent (because of the wet season), which made me even more nervous about the landing. I was flying on a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Yogya, just like the ill-fated one that crashed earlier this year. It was a little eerie to go through it all thinking of those who had gotten on the same flight but never made it into the airport terminal. By the time we hit the tarmac I was gripping my seat and shaking, a little dramatic I know, but I’ve become a bit of a nervous flyer. It was a relief to see that Garuda pilots are now very careful to slow down when landing at the airport at Yogya, and our landing was great, we stopped well ahead of the end of the runway. The runway at Yogya is very short, so much so that it doesn’t meet international safety standards (for those coming to Yogya, don’t worry, planes are constantly landing there every day and they all land safely). They were meant to extend it after the crash earlier this year, but have done nothing so far. The only thing they seem to have done is put up a sign in the baggage collection area saying that they are currently renovating and apologise for the inconvenience. That’s it.

I was pretty pleased that my Jakarta trip had gone well. It was the first trip I’d embarked on on my own (bar the odd trip to Tamworth on my own), and I managed to look after myself reasonably well. It helped that I had people to meet up with and stay with in Jakarta.

As soon as I got back to Yogya I paid a deposit on a new room and moved kos. I was getting too lonely in my ghost kos, and decided I wanted to live with people, not on my own. My airconditioning had also begun to channel smells of cigarettes and/or garbage into my room. I’ve moved about 5 minutes down the road, and am living in a really nice place with Becky and Allison. I’ll put up photos soon, as soon as I’ve unpacked everything in my room I also have wireless internet access here. Such a luxury!

I had an exam today, so I’ve been busy studying for that. A few others who have had exams this week have turned up to find that they’ve been postponed, because the lecturer hadn’t bothered to write an exam paper yet. One of my exams has been cancelled, as the lecturer hadn’t gotten around to organising a textbook or an exam for us. My exam today was on, albeit a bit strange. It was for International Relations, for which there are 2 classes - A and B. Becky and I are in the B class, and before going to the exam we checked the noticeboard to see what room we were in. It said that we were in rooms 8 and 9, with the A class in 3 and 4. So we went and sat in room 9, were given the exam paper and started the exam. Around 15 minutes into the exam one of the supervisors checked our details and told us were were in the wrong room. We told him the noticeboard said 8 and 9, but he said vaguely “no, its 3 and 4″. Someone must have swapped the rooms around, but we had no idea. So we had to run around and find the correct room, and then be given a different exam paper (surely the 2 classes for 1 subjects should do the same exam, but it seems not…). We had to catch up on the 1st 15 minutes of a 90 minute exam. But hey, we’re getting used to uni being as strange as this.

Tonight I bumped into one of the guys who is a really keen surfer. He had gone to one of the beaches for Lebaran, but had to return shortly afterwards because he witnessed a really horrific motorbike accident. I wont go into the details but it sounded really traumatic, the worst part being that those on the scene didn’t know what to do. He had to tell them things like not to throw this guy on the back of a truck because he may have internal injuries, and to shelter him from the heat. But even once they got the guy onto the back of a truck the hospital was at least an hour and a half away. You hear and see some pretty awful things here, and one thing that a lot of us can’t cope with is the different approach that some Indonesians have to these things. Whether its a lack of knowledge over basic first aid, the inability to react quickly and rationally to emergency situations. One thing that many of us have trouble with, particularly since Lestari died, is how it seems that within Indonesian the norm seems to be that you move on straight away. You can also see this in the stuff with the Garuda crash, there is no desire to take action or to get to the bottom of things because everyone’s already put it behind them and moved on. Maybe we dwell on things a lot more, I don’t know, I guess its just another cultural difference that is hard to cope with sometimes. In situations like this, I think we’d all like to take charge of things and say what we think should be done, how things should be done. But in the end there’s not much you can really do, and if you spend your whole life saying “if we were in Australia we’d do it like this…” you’ll never last here, you’ll just get far too frustrated.

This week has gone so quickly, I can’t believe I’m nearly at the end of it. Its been a great week. Although I have to say that I’ve spent most of it shopping - there’s so much stuff I can buy here that I can’t buy in Yogya. For example, today I went to the supermarket and bought things like arrowroot biscuits, thousand island dressing and cous cous. Unexciting I know but I was thrilled.

I’ve had plenty of company this week. After having dinner with Tatap and all the girls on Monday night I went shopping with some of them on Tuesday (in a mall so large it reminded me of Singapore). This mall was great, as I could get things like English books. Across the road was a centre dedicated to technology and computer software and support. Which was useful as I think its impossible to find anywhere in Yogya that has support for Apple computers, as I don’t think anyone owns them there. Anyway, the result of that is that I own a headset so I can use Skype. Free calls to Australia!

On Wednesday I went to Monas on my own (Monas is a big column, like the one in America, that was built by President Sukarno). I quickly realised was a mistake to go on my own, and to walk there. It took me about 40 minutes to get there, in the hot sun, much of which was spent trying to not get run over and avoiding cat calls from guys. Once I got to Monas, this guy decided he wanted to be my friend, and despite my best attempts to get rid of him, followed me around for around an hour. He seemed a little strange, as he kept going over things again and again, and was saying things like “Australians all have blonde hair, blue eyes and pointy chins why are they like that?” and didn’t seem to understand that no, we weren’t actually like that and no, I didn’t have beautiful golden hair. I got particularly annoyed when I went up to buy my ticket, and he stood next to me at the counter. As I started speaking to the ticket-seller, the ticket-seller took one look at me and started speaking to the guy about what ticket I wanted, assuming I didn’t speak Indonesian and was being looked after by this guy. So I got very cranky and cut off the strange guy, who was now speaking on my behalf, and told the ticket-seller that he was to talk to me and was not to sell me a tourist-priced ticket.

I wasn’t able to go up to the viewing platform at the top of Monas, as there was a 4 hour wait. So instead I had a look at the Monas museum (closely followed by this guy), which presents a highly selective history of Indonesia. For example, it says things like “a request that reflected the desire of the East Timorese to become part of Indonesia meant that the Indonesian government was forced to integrate it into Indonesia.”

After leaving Monas, this guy continued to follow me, insisting that I should go to his house, wanting to know the address of where I was staying and my mobile number. I said no to all of the requests, and in the end had to jump in a taxi and slam the door on him to stop him getting in. Then the taxi driver ripped me off, insisting that I pay Rp40,000 for a 10 minute car trip.

After this trip, I decided I was much better off doing things with other people. So yesterday, I went with a couple of Tatap’s daughters and nieces to Kota, which is the remains of the old Dutch buildings that used to be home to the Dutch administration of Batavia. This was really interesting, as the old square and the surrounding buildings looked so Dutch and out of place. Some of them date back to the 17th century. Unfortunatly, not many attempts have been made to restore them, and some are quite visibly falling apart. Its a shame that they can’t be fixed up, as they’d look lovely. But I guess there are more important things to spend money on in Jakarta (poverty, transport, infrastructure and pollution are some of the biggest issues here). Then we went to Sunda Kelapa, which is a jetty with heaps of old fishing boats along it, which was interesting. After this, I had wanted to go to Taman Mini, a theme park that was designed as a minature version of Indonesia. I’m not sure why but instead of being taken there the girls took me to Seaworld. Which looks exactly the same as an aquarium in Australia. So Taman Mini will have to wait until next time.

Last night I tagged along to the monthly drinks for the Jakarta foreign correspondents (I’m staying with Stephen, who is The Australian’s Indonesia correspondent) It was a little daunting to go to, as I was merely a student and didn’t have a card I could exchange with anyone, but by the end of the night I’d met some really interesting, fun people and enjoyed myself. I got to meet the “celebrities” of foreign correspondents, like Geoff Thompson, the ABC’s chief correspondent, who is a really lovely guy. I’ll meet most of them again tonight, at Stephen’s birthday party being thrown at his house.

Its been great to come to Jakarta and see some of the things I’ve learnt about in classes over the years but never actually experienced. Things like the super-slang Indonesian that they speak here, and the air and water pollution. On Wednesday when i was out with Stephen and his girlfriend Lydia, we got lost and came across a slum that lined railway tracks. I had learnt about the slums of Jakarta mostly during my HSC, and it was amazing to see one with my own eyes. These people were living inches away from the train lines, in homemade shacks made of material and bamboo. There were no facilities for things like toilets. These people really had nothing. It is such an amazing contrast to the majority of Jakarta, which is so wealthy.

I’ve been meaning to update this for a while, but the past few days have been quite hectic. I preferred to keep myself busy over the weekend, and yesterday I flew to Jakarta for a holiday.

The weekend was mostly focused around Lebaran, or Idul Fitri, as it is also known. It is the day that celebrates the end of Ramadan. Yogya had become quite deserted by Thursday, as everyone had gone home. There is some confusion over what day Lebaran occurs on. I’m not entirely sure myself but it seems that followers of Muhammadiyah celebrated it on the 12th and followers of Nadhatul Ulama observed in on the 13th. Or maybe the other way around. It was very confusing and it was hard to tell who was celebrating on what day.

On Saturday morning my friend Miko took me to a ceremony at the Kraton (the Sultan’s Palace, a source of great pride to locals) to commemorate Lebaran. This ceremony began a parade of the Kraton’s soliders from the courtyard of the Kraton to the Alun-alun - the grassy yard in front of the Kraton that is home to the sacred banyan trees that frame the entrance to the Kraton. The parade of soldiers was great to see. My friend Miko told me about how these soldiers only perform ceremonial tasks for the payment of Rp 500 (to give you an idea of how much that is, an Australian dollar is worth Rp8000). So basically they work at the Kraton for the honour of serving the Sultan. Many of them are quite old, and Miko pointed out the pride on their faces as they marched past. Each regiment had its own uniform, own style of marching, musical instruments to accompany their marches (most had flutes and drums, some had gongs as well) and their ceremonial weapons (spears, bows, traditional knives, rifles). Once reaching the alun alun, the soldiers were inspected by the Sultan’s brother. Following this, the gunungan was brought out - a mountain of food made to commemorate that everyone can eat during the daytime again! The soldiers and the gunungan were marched to the Sultan’s mosque, just across from the Kraton. There, the gunungan was placed on the ground and the crowd went wild, all trying to get some food from it, as it was a source of great luck. We stood back but at the end Miko ran in and grabbed a bit of the food. He said that he’s been to it nearly every year, as he grew up just near the Kraton (the area surrounding the Kraton is only allowed to be inhabited by Javanese people) and this was the first time he’d got something from it.

On Sunday I went with Miko’s family to accompany them to visit a family that lived near Magelang, a couple of hours outside of Yogya, near Borobudur. Unfortunately, being the day after Lebaran, everyone was on the roads returning to their homes and the roads were packed. It was a really pleasant place we went to. It was in the middle of rice fields. The family were lovely and welcoming and it was quite a calm afternoon, spent chatting and wandering through the rice fields.

I flew into Jakarta yesterday. In some ways it was good to step away from Yogya and realise how draining the past few days had been. I must admit I’ve found Jakarta a bit of a shock - its much more Western here than Yogya and I’m not used to that. Its also much more expensive! Jakarta’s great so far, I really like it. I’m staying in Menteng, with a friend of my dads, Stephen. Another of Dad’s friends, Tatap, also lives locally and took me out for dinner last night with her 3 daughters and 6 nieces. It was great fun, they’re all around my age and for some reason were really excited to meet me. I went shopping with some of them today. I had a good time, as it was the first time I’d gone on a big shop for a while, and gave the credit card a good workout! I’ll start doing some sightseeing tomorrow I think. And then maybe study for a bit.

Today has been a very long and very emotional day for us. It began when we received a message early this morning saying that Lestari, the staff member of ACICIS with the job of looking after us, had passed away unexpectedly. We had known that she was sick for quite a few months, and she had been in hospital for a couple of weeks, but noone expected that she wouldn’t make it through. None of us thought that she wouldn’t recover.

 As Islam requires, funerals must take place within 24 hours of death. So the day has been a long one, with a group of us from ACICIS organising ourselves some black clothes and finding our way over to Lestari’s house to pay our respects. For many of us we were too shocked to know how to react, and it wasn’t until we arrived at the house that it began to sink in. Unfortunately, as it is the eve of Lebaran, Yogyakarta is empty, with everyone having gone home for celebrations. In addition to this, most ACICIS students had gone on holidays already. This meant that there were a lot of people who were very upset that they could not be there for the funeral. Of the ten of us who were able to go, it was a very hard day for us. We banded together to get ourselves through the day. What was nice to see, in the hours spent sitting at the house, was the people that turned up - the Australians who appeared out of the woodworks, from their homes somewhere in Yogya, who had come to pay their respects to Lestari. There was such a range of people there - what seemed like half of a Matahari (department) store, in their uniforms (Lestari’s sister works for Matahari), friends and family from around the neighbourhood, and a large representation from ACICIS - the students, past and present, the pendampings past and present, and Phil, who knew Lestari both when he was a student here and as his collegue while he is the Resident Director. A couple of us tried to go to the actual funeral, which came after paying respects and prayers at the house. But unfortunatly we lost the procession, and the funeral was somewhere distant and hard to find, so we had to give up and turn back. Phil made it there at least.

 

I think it will take a long time for ACICIS to recover from losing someone as important as Lestari. She has been with ACICIS for 10 years, and many of the older students and pendampings commented that it wouldn’t be the same without her. She was the mother figure to so many Australian students, taking them under her wing to help them through the first daunting stages of living in Indonesia. If you needed to go to the doctor, Lestari would take you. If you needed help, or just someone to talk to, you could go to Lestari. I think that many of us who have only started this semester are sad that we did not get to know her better, that our experiences with her were so brief. 

 

After returning from the gathering, we (the ACICIS students) sat around together and reflected on everything. One strong emotion that we all felt was frustration and anger that Lestari had not sought treatment. She had been sick since at least July with chest problems, but had refused to see a doctor, despite everyone telling her too. Phil had tried really hard to get her to go to see one, we found out today that she had lied to him and told him she’d taken herself to see a chest specialist, to stop him taking her to one. Even when she got really sick it was around 3 weeks before she would agree to go into hospital. She always said that she was scared about what the doctors might tell her. We think she was scared that she had cancer. What killed her was tuberculosis, the pneumonia she’d contracted from not having the tb treated, and a fungal infection in her lungs from having neither treated. She died from diseases that were treatable. She should still be with us today. But instead she left the treatment so late all she could do was to fight a really hard battle. She was doing this, and had been fighting it hard for the past few weeks. Phil said that when he visited her yesterday, she was saying she was feeling better, and thought she might get to stop taking oxygen soon. But that night she didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.

She will be sadly missed by a lot of people, in Australia and Indonesia. I’m sure that there are many out there, in both countries, who will spend the next few days reflecting on the fun times they had with Lestari, and also the time when she was the support they needed to get through challenges here. I think there are also many students, past and present, who mainly think of her as the party girl, who turned up to every social occasion, insisted everyone have a beer and was the last to leave.

 In my brief couple of months with Lestari, she was more of a support person for me. We bonded over our “chronic coughs” swapped remedies, shared an enthusiasm in volcanos, I could talk to her about my experiences here , past and present,  she knew my dad and talked to me about him, giving me a link to home. In my first couple of weeks here I probably talked to her more often than I did other ACICIS students. I enjoyed talking to her because I found that she understood. Since she went into hospital I’ve missed having her around, I missed being able to go into uni and sit down and have a chat with her. I was looking forward to when she was back on her feet. We all were. I think I’d heard nearly everyone comment that they’d wished Lestari was around sometime in the past few weeks, to help them out. I visited her in hospital once, not long after she’d first been admitted. I said I’d come back again when I could, but she said not to worry, as she was sure she’d be right in a couple of days.

 I hope that at the least a lot of people learnt an important lesson from today. Don’t let things go untreated, don’t be scared to find out what’s wrong with you. Because in the end what is wrong could be a lot more treatable and managable than what you might expect, and its not worth risking your life just because you were too scared. Lestari told one of the girls that visited her that this was her lesson, that she would do things differently in the future. She was only 39.

I’ve commenced my holidays, and am getting into holiday mode. So much so I think I’m going to have trouble doing uniwork! Yesterday was a great day, I lay around in bed until about 10, did uniwork until about 12 then went to get lunch and bumped into some of the other Australians and didn’t get home until 4.00. During the day I’d gotten a text message from my Yogya friend Miko, who I’ve known for quite a few years as a family friend. He invited Jess and I along to a work dinner that was on that night. He works for an language school here that teaches English, Indonesian and Javanese. We agreed to go along, not knowing what we were in for (after the UII thing I keep an open mind about these things). It was actually a really fun night. There were Indonesian and Japanese students there, and us. The teachers had organised the evening mainly to teach the Japanese students about what fasting and breaking the fast is about, and while we waited for the sun to set we swapped stories about what its like for Muslims who fast in each of our countries. Only one of the Japanese students thought that there might be Muslim people in Japan. After hearing that Muslims in Australia have to fast while everyone around them is eating, the Indonesians were pretty grateful that they were living in a society where everything revolves around supporting the fast. It was nice to be asked something different about Australia, other than the usual  things we get asked (what are Australian’s perceptions of Indonesia,  why do so few people live in Australia etc) After dinner we played more games, one involved singing, which Jess and I managed to avoid. There was a band playing music too, and it was a really nice resteraunt we were at, it was outdoor and set around ponds and a stream (we were wearing lots of mosquito repellent, but didn’t have any problems with mozzies).

 

Today we had to go to another welcoming ceremony, this being our second one. This one was for all new foreign students. We were given our student cards and a UGM badge, and the talks only went for about an hour. And it started on time! We were all in shock, a couple of the Australians turned up half an hour late, expecting it to just be getting going. It seemed a little strange to be welcoming us 6 weeks into the semester, but oh well. We also got to see the Rektor (Vice-Chancellor of UGM) for the first time, and had to stand for the UGM song (yep, the uni has a song. Imagine having university songs in Australia!)