The Road to Parapat

This weekend we shoved our bodies against a crowd and finally squeezed ourselves into the bus, one that appeared as though that any trip now may be its last. Everything chattered with the engine and it was uncertain how far the domain of the exhaust fumes reached. Despite this, a garland of bright pink cloth flowers wrapped itself around the railing above the windshield and lime green ruffled curtains stained with the gray of the air lined the glass. We finally popped ourselves into our reserved seats and suddenly realized that we were the only riders who bought tickets. The others relied on their brute force to win over the rest. I was smashed between the window, the hard metal seat with a poor excuse for a cushion, my partner’s sweaty cargo pants, and my laptop case. I could move one limb and I decided it was going to be my left arm. But then I didn’t know where to put it so I left it hanging on the railing above the window much as a monkey would do if given the option. The doors finally closed and we were relieved by a small intermittent breeze through the front door window as the movement began. A small man stood by the door frequently sticking his head out the window yelling “Parapat! Parapat!” at people standing at the side of the street. When they yelled back, he would signal the driver to stop, open the door, shove them in, and shut the door again in one graceful swooping motion, and before we knew it, we would be moving again. He also doubled as the bus DJ and shoved an audiotape into the slit by the steering wheel. The lively exotic rhythm and a woman’s voice reminiscent of something familiar but unidentifiable filled the atmosphere already stuffed with exhaust, sweat, and cigarette smoke, and suddenly the picture was complete…and it was perfect.

For the next 6 hours as we drove down the one highway through the center of Sumatra, I watched the people on motorbikes, people leaning against their shops, people frying things behind glass displays, people sitting by the fire…there’s something about watching the world as one speeds along that clarifies things, much like a flip book that only makes sense when flipped through quickly. Perhaps it allows one to catch on to the patterns in the way people move, the way they are when they’re unaware that you’re watching, the way they watch you when they’re unaware that you’re watching. It is like seeing into small peepholes of people’s lives one after another at 50 miles an hour. The woman holding a child waiting to cross the street; the man smoking a cigarette sitting on a stool in front of his shop; the boy holding a stick on a boat in the river. What lives they must have? It is intense. It is powerful. I attempted to digest an episode of The Office at my partner’s suggestion, but it was not long before I found myself turning out the window, seduced by the voice from the cassette player to keep watching the filmstrip going by. This is a place with a compelling story to tell.

Despite the long sleeves and pants, people here are more naked than I am used to – in the way they move, the way they stay still, their facial expressions, and their gaze. It is familiar yet it feels like long ago. They don’t wear layers of make-up, shame, or vanity as do the people we see at home. There is something raw and earthy here, reminiscent of an innocence which may have been found in the Garden of Eden. I’m not sure when that was lost to us in America. Was it when we saw each other on TV? When we picked up our first issue of Seventeen magazine? When we somehow decided that the world was watching us? What were we all like before we saw ourselves being seen? Was there ever such a time?

There is something sacred about this place. With every greeting, we hold the other person’s hand between ours, bow, touch our hearts, and utter ‘selamat pagi’ (good morning) or ‘assaimamulaikum’ (God be with you). The children occasionally will gently bring your hand to their forehead out of respect…and each time, without fail it brings my heart closer to the surface. With entry into every house, we leave our shoes just outside the doorstep. There is often very little furniture, just a straw mat or two people bring out for guests to sit on. The floor somehow remains remarkably clean. Every day at 6pm like clockwork, the town closes its doors for the protection of the prayer hour from the tainted rubble of business. Women’s bodies are covered down to the wrists and ankles, and most wear head covers as well, to protect from the dirt and fumes of the city that which is sacred underneath. Even the smallest glimpse of a bare knee or a fleshy shoulder could arouse the strongest emotions.

The sacredness has remained despite the intrusion of the dust, the water, and the disaster.

The resilience of the people here is remarkable. The night guard here at the guest house showed me his tattered birth certificate. He said he carried it with him as he swam through the waters the flooded the city. That’s why it became so worn. He lost his father in the tsunami as well as his house. He now lives in a new house built by an NGO. He does traditional Acenese dance and likes Ricky Martin. He smiles a shy smile. The pay here isn’t great but he enjoys working here. He is 24 like me.

But this is a people that is used to trying to recover. A 10 year old girl from the barracks lost her father after he was beaten by the army. He actually made it back home and to the hospital and was told to follow-up. 2 days later he didn’t follow-up and died of internal bleeding. Her mother was left with three children on her own and was at work when the tsunami hit. Prior to the tsunami reaching the shore, the water was sucked back into the ocean, leaving hundreds of meters of exposed sand carpeted with flopping fish that were caught off guard. People rushed in to grab the fish believing it to be a blessing, amongst them was the girl and her sister. Only seconds later, the tsunami arrived and took them in. Miraculously, they survived, but the girl was never the same again, not with her friends, not with schoolwork. We always play a game with the kids where we try to throw a ball between people’s feet. She has so far been my all-time favorite player…plays by the rules, but tricky.

An 11 year old girl from a nearby village used to live in the barracks. Her father worked as a security guard at a plantation and was forced to pick up numerous dead bodies of those who had been shot on the plantation during the civil war. The girl was still young back then. These days she struck me as quite mature for her age. She was the leader of the crowd of children in her village and enforced the rules of our dodgeball and kickball games and initiated the singing and drawing amongst themselves when I ran out of ideas and energy. She has a certain way of nodding at the end of each sentence and was one of the few who tried to help me find the words I didn’t know how to say. She always looked at me as though she had so many questions for me that she knew I couldn’t understand. She was particularly good at coloring in the leaves she drew and refused to use one color more than once for her bouquet of flowers.

We bring a ball and 2 stuffed animals every day and other than a few threatening looking “toy” guns that shoot metal pellets, they are the only toys we have seen. But the children make do with what they have. They can be found making a small fire from the trash, teasing and picking up the stray cats, climbing on their family motorbike, etc. Most of the time, they just sit with each other on the porch watching motorbikes drive by. Many of us cannot claim to be much more creative without our shopping malls, television, and Nintendo Wii’s. I always underestimate the children’s ages here. They are smaller, more innocent in some ways, more corrupt and jaded in other ways that allows them to point their toy guns at us and each other and, to our surprise, pull the trigger. The children can be quite dirty here, more so in the barracks than in the villages. Their feet are shades darker than parts of their face, and open sores dot their toes and shins, inhabited with which parasite I cannot recall from my boards studying. They do not mind the piles of trash alongside their roads and underneath their homes. They do not mind the greenish putrid sewage that drains into the open gutters just outside their front door. They seem to play and grow up just the same.

Despite the threat that water brings, I suppose water remains the oldest friend of an island nation. Everything is wet around here: the gutters that line the front porch of every establishment, the floors of the bathrooms, even the toilet seats. Coming from a place where wetness is disgusting, it’s taking me a while to get used to water being my friend. Here, it washes away the odors, stains, and garbage of the day’s spending, leaving things wet in exchange. But I’ve learned that there is nothing so frightening about wetness alone. Water on my clothes, my feet, my shoes – no need to wipe it away – it all eventually dries in the heat.

After a paradise mini-break over the weekend, I find it comforting to return to my room here in the guest house. Despite the lack of a shower, of access to more food options than the handful of greasy fried dishes, and of the opportunity to swim in my bikini in the middle of a lake where I can’t be seen and judged, this is my home here in this country. As I hear the all too familiar sound of Whitney Houston’s voice suddenly parting through the exotic rhythm I’ve been immersed in this entire time, I realize that even more so, despite the lack of the triumph of helping the needy, of the adventure of torturing oneself into fitting in to a foreign culture, and the luxury of discovering a different people, I miss my generic upper-middle class ranch in the suburbs of Detroit, where I can reliably go to the toilet without getting wet at all, wear whatever I choose, and discover only the mundane daily activities of those few people I’ve known my entire life: my family. I have a hard time saying that I miss home…I think this may be a general phenomenon we have, those of us who come from the most fortunate of lifestyles. To say we miss home is to admit that we can’t take the hardship, that we are indeed (surprise, surprise) spoiled. Whereas those who immigrate from the direst of situations may cry out for home with every opportunity and be genuinely glorified for their love of their way of life, we are left to be shunned for wanting too many luxuries. But don’t we have the right to miss home? What about our culture of shopping at Costco, going clubbing on Thursday nights, or lounging in our bikinis at the pool? If missing the US is shunned, then missing Harvard is simply unspoken. Since when did being privileged mean sacrificing one’s right to a home and an identity one can be proud of?

All this because of Guilt. It’s an epidemic that has yet to be identified but it has been there since the beginning. The guilt of leaving others behind, of being happy in a world tormented by war and poverty, of living the supposed “dream” of mankind. Where is true happiness if when one finally achieves it, all one could feel is the guilt of having done so? Happiness becomes a myth and a riddle without a solution.

I should probably stop here before I upset more of you with my ranting. Unlike my previous trip to China, I have a lot of room to think this time around, for better or for worse, thanks to the fact that this project is not run by a slave-driving tyrant (AKA me). All in all Meulaboh is a place I find that I can stay for a short while. The people here are kind and strong. It becomes too much to think of all they have been through so I prefer to think of them as who they are at this moment, and that is not without problems but also not without incredible spirit. Perhaps all people become such when given the opportunity. People in general amaze me, I think.