Ohh back to school, back to school..

11 January 2010

I began language classes this morning at Alam Bahasa language school. My day started with, in my mind, my most traditional breakfast yet; a white bun filled with chocolate (roti coklat). While this was at first a welcome change from noodles or rice with sautéed meats, vegetables, chillies and tofu served for breakfast in Indonesia, it soon became apparent – due to the Halloween-like gut-rut it induced – roti coklat was not to be a mainstay of my breakfast routine. I will stop for rambutan (very similar to lychee fruit) and snake fruit (a fruit with apple-like flesh covered in a shell with snake-skin texture and appearance) tomorrow.

My morning commute consisted of a 15 minute bike ride down one of the many congested and motorbike-riddled jalans (roads) of Yogyakarta. To my left, Mount Merapi – Indonesia’s most active volcano (a dubious honour) – peaks through the gaps between the jalans two-story houses, a few dozen kilometers away on the cloudless morning horizon. I blink and the images I recently viewed on Wikipedia of the pyrocastic flows from the 2006 eruption, with an accompanied earthquake some 4 weeks later which killed more than 5000 people, flash through my mind. I continue my ride through the residential streets where I am confronted by the fast flowing road race that is North Ring Road morning commute. I, together with another motorbike, cross oncoming traffic at the lightless intersection in what feels, to me, like a truly cavalier and daring feat. As we stop in the middle to merge, I catch a glimpse of my fellow daredevil; a young, prepubescent girl with her 5 year old brother standing between her legs on the bike`s frame. I continue peddling down the jalan underneath an endless constellation of dirty billboards. My eyes dart in search of “Alam Bahasa”. I see my turn and glide off into gated school.

The school, like most other buildings and houses here, has an amber brown wooden door opening into a room of high ceilings, ceramic tiles and white cement walls. I am greeted by a number of smiling, welcoming people as I make my way into the lounge area in the middle of the house-like building. I mutter “selamat pagi” (good morning) to everyone I pass and understand nothing, beyond “selamat pagi”, that is said back. A woman introduces herself as my teacher (one of three I will have during my 6 hour courses) and we make our way to the “Krakatau” room. I wonder, of the pending onslaught of new words and phrases, if my head is destined for the same fate as the volcano for which the eponymous room was named.

I sit in the room, one-on-one with each teacher, memorizing, repeating and writing out the vocabulary and phrases. We run through numbers (satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima, enam, tujuh, delapan, sembilan, sepuluh), greetings (selamat pagi, selamat sore, selamat malam), phrases (Nama anda siapa? Nama saya James) and vocabulary (HP, pronounced “haap-eh” – cell phone, kacamata – glasses, sepeda – bike). I am deluged by these words repeatedly. I say them aloud multiple times until I am released, catching my breath in the inner courtyard for fifteen minute breaks. The words appear, to me, to have unlimited influences from all over the world. Some are obvious; pensil, telephone, jaket – English. Some draw, I’m told, direct Dutch influence; tas (bag) and kaos (t-shirt). Others carry the intonation of Chinese dialects, with lyrically rolled r’s evoking an origin somewhere in India, or the n’s and g’s of the Thai language whose sounds emanate deep in the back of the throat. My tongue contorts into forms I didn`t have the courage to try before today.

I finish my 6 hours, set loose back into a kota (city) within which I feel emboldened. I peddle back down the busy jalan, searching and listening for any sign of a word I might recognize. “Apa?” (what?), jumps out from a girl at a stop light who shouts to a friend. Success! I have made the slimmest bit of progress! I continue on down the jalan, feeling more comfortable and at home. This will be my route, I think to myself. I now have a purpose in these streets. I have a direction and a reason to be travelling along them. I feel less surrounded and crushed by the crowd of cars and motorbikes. I feel, a part of that crowd.

I roll back into my housing complex, Merapi now covered by the daily afternoon rainclouds that approach from the southwest. I am greeted by Angga, my roommate, and he asks me of my day. “So, how was your day?”, followed quickly by “What did you learn?”. “Lots”, I respond. Searching for an example to show off my newly acquired vocabulary, my mind draws a blank. “Apa!” (what!), I blurt out. Angga looks puzzled and repeats his question: “What did you learn?”. I sigh and repeat, searching for his comprehension: “apa, what”. “Ahhh!”, he exclaims as he laughs and then encourages my modest progress.

Angga departs for an internet cafe and I sit down on the front stoop to wash out the accumulated dust from the room`s small rotating fan. I gaze across to the stoop in front of me. The landlady`s cat (who I`ve named Rambutan) is casually stretched out, slightly reclined, with his back against the wall. He licks the tuft of fur on his front left paw and then gets up, limping over to some garbage and begins to eat at some discarded chicken bones. Above his paw, from ankle to shoulder, Rambutan`s leg is bare of fur with the muscle, joints and tendons completely exposed. The remaining fur of the leg runs from his shoulder to the ankle, which appears almost like a sling to support the injured leg. Rambutan appears satisfied with his snack and hobbles back to the stoop where he regains his reclined pose.

I leave for Kalimantan in four weeks to conduct my interviews and participant observation, alone, in an area with little to no English spoken. 6 hours of class down, 114 to go. Hopefully, I too will find a way to scrape by.

Update: Fiiiiiine, apparently most of you can't deal with the sight of poor Rambutan.