Already, Not Yet

When learning a new language, most people begin with the obvious most important words and phrases: "Hello," "Goodbye," "Please," "Thank you," and "Where is the toilet?" being the top five, in general opinion.  In Indonesian, however, the list of Most Important Words To Know is only two deep, and neither of them have to do with being polite or going to the bathroom.  

Most Important Words to Know in Indonesian (in My Opinion)

1. sudah -- already

2. belum -- not yet

To the layperson, these two words might not seem very important -- but little would that layperson know that sudah and belum are actually rich, nuanced units of language, possessing a depth of meaning far beyond their literal English translations.  Most significantly, the concepts of "yes" and "no" don't really exist in Indonesian in the same way they do in English, such that if someone asks you if you're married or if you've ever been to Bali, you would answer sudah instead of "yes," or belum instead of "no."  Not "I'm not married," but "I am not yet married" -- because as everyone in Indonesia believes, you're going to be married sooner or later.  Just like you're probably going to go to Bali sooner or later too.

Sometimes, sudah and belum are even used in the same sentence -- for example, "Sudah mandi belum?" which translates literally as, "Have you already showered or not yet?"  There are only two correct answers to this question, obviously: already, or not yet.  Since if you haven't already done something as important as shower (in a culture where people shower two to three times a day), that activity should definitely be in your immediate future.

Ever since I first learned the concepts of sudah and belum I've been sort of obsessed with them, in a way that couples fascination with deep affection -- and as I prepare to leave this country where I've made my home for the past year, that deep affection has only deepened.  It's nice to think about the things I've done, seen, tasted and accomplished while I've been here in Indonesian terms: sudah pernah ke Sulawesi, sudah pernah coba pisang goreng, sudah pernah mengajar Bahasa Inggris -- or, in English terms, I have already ever been to Sulawesi, I have already ever tried fried banana, I have already ever taught an English class.  In my opinion, the idea of "already ever" doing something (which exists in Indonesian but not in English) makes the experience more specific, somehow -- better situated within the context of your lived life.  It's not just something you did once, a random event floating in your past, but rather something you have, to this date, already done at least once, and might do again in the future.

Which brings me to what is my favorite Indonesian concept these days: the idea of belum.  It's hard to think about what leaving Indonesia means -- leaving behind my friends, my favorite grilled tempe stalls, and all the things I didn't have the time, money, courage or circumstance to do while I was here: visit Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) or any of the islands of eastern Indonesia, go scuba diving among some of the best reefs in the world, see a Komodo dragon, travel in a longboat, eat chicken feet, or teach a course I designed from scratch myself.  But not having the opportunity to do those things, and countless others, this past year doesn't mean I won't ever be able to do them -- it just means I haven't done them yet.  There's a lot of things I haven't done yet, but that's okay because there's also a lot of time left in my life to do them.  Belum is wonderful because it opens up to us our entire futures; reminds us that spectacular things still await.  Belum is to "No," I think, as See you later is to "Goodbye" -- it doesn't cut you off.  It gives you back all the time that is still ahead.  I am reminded of a line from a poem called "A Color of the Sky" by one of my favorite poets, Tony Hoagland:

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.

I like that idea -- of ends turning out, in fact, to be middles -- especially now.  Even though this is probably the last entry I'll write for "Indo the Wild," you can rest assured that it won't be the last time I'll be writing about my adventures in this wild wild world, and it definitely won't be the last time I'll be trying to get you all to read about them.  (Cue your deep sigh of relief here.)  So as I gather my things and say my see you laters, I also want to say: here's to the middle.  Here's to being in the thick of it, to the now, and to everything that comes next.

Don't Judge a Bule* by her Color

* For those who don't feel like doing their homework, "bule" is the Indonesian term for "foreigner."

Fifteen months ago, as I was sitting in the PiA Director's office being offered the job I'm now about to wrap up, my would-be boss looked at me and said, "You know, it'll be interesting -- people are going to think you're Indonesian."  I accepted this statement with the same clueless enthusiasm with which I greeted all of her musings on my future over those next few weeks, including her warnings not to get on boats and her prediction that, because of Indonesian rubber time, my visa would not come through until absolutely the last minute.  As it turned out, my visa came through with a few minutes to spare, and I've been just fine on the few Indonesian ferries I've boarded -- but she could not have been more accurate in her first prophecy about the way my nationality would be perceived in this country.  I thought I was ethnically ambiguous in the U.S., but here I just confuse the pants off people (or the sarongs, as the case may be).  Being ethnically ambiguous is now the story of my life.

There is easily one sentence I have heard with far, far more frequency than any other single collection of words since last August, and it always comes at the same point in a conversation.  I will be conducting a transaction in Indonesian, and after a few moments the real Indonesian person on the other side of the transaction realizes that, contrary to their initial assumption, I am not, in fact, Indonesian (or at least not a native speaker of the language).  "Where are you from?" they proceed to ask, and, as I have a thousand times previously, I always answer "From America."  "America?" they repeat, looking either baffled, surprised, or amused (or all three).  And then it comes: "But you look Indonesian!"

Wow, really?  I've never heard that one before.  

If there is one thing I've learned during my time in Indonesia, it's that I don't fit the bill of what a typical American is supposed to look like.  This lesson, confirmed for me again and again over the last eleven months, was presented to me on my very first day -- within my first five minutes, in fact.  I had de-boarded my final flight in Yogya, collected my luggage, and exited the baggage claim area, and was looking for the university staff who were supposed to be meeting me at the airport.  I saw them right away, holding up a sign that read: "PiA -- Fiona Miller."  As I approached them, smiling and waving, they continued to look over my head, scanning the crowd  for their idea of Fiona Miller.  It wasn't until I was standing directly in front of them, introducing myself, that they realized it was me.  "Oh!" they exclaimed, and laughed.  "Sorry -- we were looking for someone with light skin!"  This sort of surprise (shared by many) speaks, I think, to an interesting truth about the way Americans are perceived abroad (or at least in Southeast Asia) -- as the blue-eyed, blond-haired, wealthy, big-car driving, hot dog-eating, premarital sex-having, "All-American" of Hollywood.  Isn't that what all Americans are like?  No?  But that's what it looks like in the movies.

I've gone through different stages in my reaction to the oft-received exclamation that I "look Indonesian."  At first, I thought it was funny.  My boss had been right!  "Yeah, I know!" I'd reply, and laugh along with them.  Then, I thought it was cool.  If I wore my batik and didn't open my mouth, I could actually pass.  Real Indonesians didn't give me a second glance, thinking I was one of them.  I had never really fit in visually to my environment before, but for the first time in my life, I was exactly the same color as the vast majority of the people who surrounded me.  This was pretty sweet.  The next phase was irritation.  Not that I'd ever been particularly proud to be American, but not being able to be perceived as such rubbed me the wrong way.  One time someone went so far as to suggest, "But you don't look American," and that really pissed me off.  So what was the deal, I didn't get to fit the visual profile of "American" in the United States or anywhere else?  I AM American, I wanted to snap.  Get over it.  

The stage I'm in now, I think, contains a little bit of everything.  Sometimes the disbelief still exasperates me, but I also can't complain when the color of my skin and the structure of my face gets me the local entrance fee to tourist sites for which I would otherwise have to pay a steep tariff.  I've always been grateful for my mixed heritage and have counted it as an enormous blessing, but I think being multiracial in Indonesia has given me one more reason to be appreciative of the ethnically ambiguous color of my skin, in that it has allowed me to embody an alternative American reality for a lot of Indonesian people.  Most Indonesians I've encountered have never met a brown-skinned American before, and now each of those individuals knows we exist, and has a new understanding of the United States as a nation much more diverse than the whitewashed version of itself it projects to the world.  The election of Barack Obama did a lot to shatter this projection all over the globe, of course, but I'd like to think I also have a small part to play in teaching my Indonesian friends that America is not Hollywood, and that some of us look just like them.  Sometimes I feel like I don't fit in here or in the United States, but it's also true that, looking the way I do, I can move between these two worlds more easily than a lot of people from either one.  Fitting in nowhere can also mean, in other words, fitting in everywhere -- and that's something I don't think I'll get tired of.