In the beginning...

Moving In-
Our House- When we arrived at our house we were very excited, but it was also very overwhelming because it was much larger than we expected. We were totally exhausted from our long flight and crashed almost immediately. However, we met our new pembantu, which is Indonesian for servant. Her name is Lilis and she is from a small village in the mountains in eastern Java. She is twenty-two years old and has been a pembantu for a few years. She works to support her family back at home and pays for her younger brothers and sisters to attend school. It is pretty common for girls to move from their villages to the city to work as servants and nannies. She is a devout Muslim and speaks very good English. She is pretty great and is so helpful. It is definitely a wonderful thing to come home from work and have dinner already made and the house already cleaned. I think we got pretty lucky with her, because some teachers have terrible stories about what they had to go through with their pembantu.







Jakarta Life-
Transportation-
Traffic- Traffic in Jakarta is something unexplainable and can only be understood when seen in action. The entire city seems to move as one giant entity, albeit a slow blob-like entity, making its way to wherever blobs go. As with Jakartan life, Jakarta traffic takes it’s time, without immediacy. Cars, motorcycles, giant buses, little buses, bajaj, taxis and even the occasional ricshaw, manouver the roads as if no one else is on the road. It is acceptable and even encouraged to turn right from the left lane, or to pass everyone else who is waiting in a turn lane and cut in front of the first car. Another nice feature of the traffic is stop-lights. If you want to stop, then you stop. If you don’t want to stop then just make everyone else wait. There is always plenty of honking but there is absolutely no road-rage during any of these situations. Everyone does it, so why hold it against anyone else. The most important unwritten rule of Jakarta traffic seems to be whatever is behind you is not your concern. For example, a little mini-bus, called ankot, sees a person on the side of the road waiting for a ride. The bus will just zip on over, making everyone else swerve for their lives (often a dangerous choice given the open sewers…I mean canals, along every street). Somehow this system works. And even with the police hard at work (I will explain later), I don’t think a reform is anywhere in the near future. As horrible as it seems and as horrible as it was upon first arrival, I can’t believe how immune to it we have become. Now, I often encourage the driver to do crazy moves to get around a slow car.


Bajaj- Bajaj, pronounced bah-ji, is another unexplainable…the sound, the smell and the orange and green color. It is a three-wheeled buggy thing, that runs with a lot of gas and a steering wheel that directly controls the single front wheel. It spits out a ton of exhaust and sounds like a Harley-Davidson Chopper, however it doesn’t even move a quarter as fast. For RP4000 (about 40 cents) you can take this thing anywhere you want. The bajaj holds three people tightly but you can often see more squeezed in plus all of their shopping bags (also to be explained later). It is one of the loudest and hottest rides I have ever taken. Not my first choice but on occasion, we take it for short distances.

Ojek- Ojek is the funnest ride of all. It is pretty much a motorcycle taxi that can buzz in and out of traffic, around turning cars and even drives onto sidewalks. The ojek can be quite dangerous but luckily, they give you a helmet that is about as safe as wearing a plastic mixing bowl turned upside down. If the traffic is actually stopped at a light, the ojek driving will just move his way in and out of the gridlock and often move around pedestrians who are inconsiderately walking on the sidewalks (not so much sidewalks as side of the streets).

Bis- This is the little mini-bus, that I talked about earlier. Leah and I take these to school a lot of mornings. They save us from the fresh Jakarta air and allows us to miss the smell of the beautiful canals (the Dutch can be thanked for them). These buses always have people overflowing out of them and are always willing to squeeze on one more. The cost is RP2000 (about 20 cents) and to let the driver know you want to stop you have to flick the ceiling. Although, whenever we get in, they seem to know we either want dropped off at school or at the mall, maybe it’s the white skin.

IndoSquat- This is a bizarre phenomenon that occurs all over Indonesia. People (mostly men) line the streets and hallways, squatting in a very, very low crouched position. This may seem normal but the entire sole of their feet are completely on the floor, go ahead try it. In Indonesia, there is a lot of free time amongst the general population. Many people don’t have jobs and if they do have a job there are about 100 other people doing the same job (as described in shopping), leaving them with free time at their job. In order to kill this free time, the preferred activity is to squat. This can happen anywhere at anytime. However, squatting is not just a one or two minute activity. The indoSquat is done for extended periods of time only. The most exciting IndoSquat sitings are when they are performed on ledges and even road barricades on the tollways.

Food-
Kaki Lima- Kaki Lima, literally five legs, are the street vendors of Jakarta. The name is because the stands are traveling carts with three wheels. Add that to the two legs of the vendor and there you have it. They sell all types of goods from clothes to a number of foods that so far we have dared not tried. Each Kaki Lima has a little sound or song that is sort of his signature to let the people know that he is coming. They travel through the different neighborhoods selling their wares to construction workers and pembantu. For weeks, we sat at the breakfast table laughing and singing along to the songs but now we are just excited if a new vendor comes to the neighborhood with a new song.

At this point in writing this blog, Leah has informed me that I write too much and that no one on earth will want to read all of this. I will try to be less longwinded.


Shopping-
Shopping could possibly be considered Indonesia’s national past time. The entire city of Jakarta is covered with huge buildings painted with a tacky teal color and an equally distracting redish-brown. On top of all that wonderful paint is tons of lights and billboards. People flock to these havens of air conditioning and clean smelling air. On Sundays, the hallways are almost packed wall to wall. Only a true Indonesian can skillfully maneuver and weave through the gauntlet of people. Shopping is the standing version of the IndoSquat. People are not in any hurry to get anywhere and over half of them aren’t even shopping. The pace is slow and friends line up in straight lines to block the entire hallway from fast paced Americans like us. That is the other thing when Leah and I go to the mall we are pretty much the only white people in the building unless we stop by the Starbucks where the rest of the teachers hang out.

Spas- One of the most appreciated parts of living in Indonesia has to be the spa. For a mere, six or seven dollars, you can indulge yourself in a hour long full body massage or whatever else you want done. Depending on where you go, whatever you want done can really mean whatever you want done. We have a little place about a two-minute walk from our house that we stop by every once in a while. We think it is really sad that you have to pay so much for a massage in the States. If everyone had them done regularly, people would be more stress-free and a little friendlier. When or if we move back the spa will definitely be missed.

Heat- It is always hot and always humid. Everyday.