KCAB NI GNOK GNOH

I am back in Hong Kong, another lengthy layover. But I seem to be doing everything in reverse. I sat at this exact same computer almost 6 months ago after a long flight from San Francisco and typed a blog entry before meeting my friend Gregory and seeing a bit of the city. Today, I have seen a bit of the city and am now at the computer and then headed for my long flight to San Francisco. For some reason I find it extremely satisfying to be retracing my steps.

Well, the last entry didn't go so well. I am going to try to rewrite as naturally as I can the entry I created a week ago and subsequently deleted. There is so much to say about my experiences, and I intend to use most of the upcoming 14 hour flight to try to recount all that transpired over the last 6 months (most of it is extensively recorded in my journals, but in preparation for the strange transition I am making back into "normal" life I feel prompted to relive it and rewrite it all one more time :) I can't even begin to retell all that happened on outreach, especially because there is a fifteen minute limit to these computers.

But there were a couple stories and a some thoughts I wanted to share.

One highlight was the time I ate chicken head. I thought it was a leg. Until the host started rattling off in Bahasa Indonesia and the only thing I could catch were the words "kepala" and "ayam" which I unfortunately understood to mean head and chicken respectively. I tried to pretend in my own head that I didn't understand. But she persisted. She really wanted to know whether I liked the chicken head or not, so she asked the translator to ask me. When he said in Bahasa "no, she doesn't know, let's not tell her, it's better that way" I could no longer feign ignorance. I looked down at my plate and sure enought there was the place where the eye ball used to be and there were the neck muscles and part of the beak. I will never look at a chicken the same way again.

Another highlight of outreach was Senter Klas, the dutch holliday where a big, jolly, old fellow comes in a suit in the middle of the night and leaves kids presents. No, this is nothing like Christmas I am assured because unlike Santa Claus, Senter Klas deposits gifts in shoes not stockings and because instead of coal if you are naughty, Senter Klas's assistant will come and take you away in the middle of night to Spain for a whole year. I don't know what the Spanish did to the Dutch that was so bad that a year spent there is considered punishment rather than a vacation. Anyway, we got gifts in our shoes and we each wrote a poem for another person on our team, like Senter Klas does (another clear distinction between the big bellied holiday heroes), and read them out loud in the morning. To use my friend Amanda's favorite word: it was "precious."

On the serious side, it is times like the last three months that I really appreciate the education I got in sociology. Indonesia is a great place full of incredible people. It seemed the worse off people were economically the more hospitable, loving, and generous they were. While some were reserved, the vast majority welcomed us into their homes and yes, many invited us into their hearts. We developed relationship with people, which proved to be of more worth to many than gold, literally. Not just for us, but for them as well. Several people commented on the fact that they had seem many "bule" (foreigners) come in before. They drop off food or try to start a service project and then leave as quick as they can. But not us, they said, we kept coming, not just to give them something but to know them. Many couldn't understand why. Why would we have interest in them? That, we quickly discovered, would be our main "mission" in the slums of Jakarta. Everywhere we went they called us beautiful. It was a nice compliment we akwardly accepted at first. But when women started asking us to pray for their babies to be born looking like us a huge flag went up. It was then that we realized what they meant by "you are beautiful" was also "we are ugly." More and more we tried to show people and tell people of the value they have, their beauty and worth, not just in our eyes but in God's eyes, even if the whole world would tell them otherwise. I learned alot more about poverty in the last three months. Sociology at Cal taught me unbelievable things about the way the world is structured, how poverty happens, and how inequality is perpetuated and exacerbated along racial lines. What I learned in school helped me to explain to the wealthier Chinese-Indonesians why people in the slums are not lazy, not less. And it gave a voice to those afflicted by Indonesia's racial economic system. But with all that I learned at Cal I did not understand till recently that poverty is not just material, not just physical but spiritual also. Poverty doesn't only cause empty bellies, it empties people's souls. The people we met had been taught all of their lives by all spheres of society that they were ugly, valueless and meaningless. That is a kind of poverty and lack that clearly affects quality of life. I also discovered that it affects the material as well. Many of the people we interacted with, spent time with, prayed for started looking for jobs for the first time while we were there. Sometimes poverty is caused, or worsened, by hopelessness and fatalism, and feelings of worthlessness. Poverty is not only material. Nor is the solution. Unfortunately we had a church back out of slum adoption because of concerns over the world economy. It was such a sad day. The lie that money solves everything paralyzed a group of people that had the potential to continue what we had been doing for the previous eleven weeks (without a penny). I don't know if I am doing a very good job trying to articulate this, I hope I am making some sense. What I learned is that the problem isn't only material nor is the solution purely material. If we want to address poverty, we have to recognize and address all the needs, not just some. Without hope, faith and love the material will never be enough. I wish there was more we could have done, but I know we did alot. And I know it is not over. This is the first of many experiences in the world's most desperate places. It's where God's heart is. And now, it is where mine is, too.

Fresh Air, Ozone-Free

I am back in Australia. So sorry that it has been a MONTH since I last wrote. The internet situation in Jakarta was dire, and only got worse as outreach continued.



I am sitting in a pleasant cafe in Perth, enjoying my Early Grey and the soft breeze and pleasant smells. I haven't really enjoyed breathing for the last eleven weeks. The air here is so delicious.


Wow... I just wrote a huge entry and spent nearly two hours writing and editing it. And it got deleted somehow. I am very sad right now... will try to rewrite it later... may not happen till I get to the states again... :(