Adventures in Shopping

In just a few weeks, our family will be heading to the U.S. for a short summer furlough.  After a challenging two years that included a move, various community crises, noise adjustments, aging, dealing with inebriated people, adjusting to D's new travel schedule, and a busy teaching schedule, I am feeling super ready for a break.  One of the things I always enjoy and look forward to is the U.S. shopping experience.  I can't wait to shop in a climate-controlled, clean grocery store that has everything I need IN ONE PLACE.  Or to go clothes-shopping and find clothes that actually fit me.  Luxury.

It's a far cry from the shopping I do here, which is adventurous at best.  I usually get groceries from the local pasar (open market) plus several other stores and the experience is spread out over several days.  Shopping for clothes is very hit or miss, as sizes are different and we just don't have petite Asian bodies.  Recently during a jeans-shopping excursion with my daughter, we couldn't find anything longer than 28. 

And yet, despite the shopping challenges, we continue to eat well and to accumulate stuff.  It's embarrassing.  Today we were able to download some of our excess at the community Barang Sale. [barang is one of those great Indonesian words that doesn't have an exact English translation; we use it to mean "stuff," "things," "junk," and "jive," as in, "Carter, get your barang off the coffee table."] The sale is held at the kids' school, and the local expat community, along with local friends and workers, turn out in force.  Our goal was to leave with less than we brought, because inevitably the kids (ahem, and not just the kids) see other people's barang they want.  

The hordes waiting to get in

 As my friend, who was manning a table next to mine, philosophically mused, "It's not so much a sale as it is a missionary swap."  We sold lots of clothes, and came home with two surfboards.  

Over the past few months I've fallen into a Saturday morning pasar shopping routine with my friend Libby. The pasar is not the best-smelling place, and it can be rather warm, and if you're claustrophobic you would hate it.  Other than that, it's the best place to find fresh food. I took my camera along last week and got these shots:

 

This lady has a sweet smile.  She usually adds in a few extra tomatoes to my bag.

 

Did I mention it was smelly?  This is one of the contributors: dried fish.

Below are two ladies selling cones of sago, which are cooked into a thick porridge called papeda, a local dish with the consistency of glue.

This is where plastic bags go to die.

 

This is my chicken man.  Note the blue money lying right next to the entrails.  Lovely.  He cuts up the chicken however I want it.  If it's a big order and he can't do the math in his head to figure out the cost, he uses his finger to "write" in the chicken juice on the table.

 

I've never actually bought one of the bundles below, but I think they're cool.  Little bunches of the spices, chiles, and leaves you need to make a certain dish.

This is my coconut lady.  For about 30 cents you can buy a small bag of freshly grated coconut. Hello, coconut cream pie.

 

This photo shows some of the produce available: guavas, bananas, corn, pineapples, cucumbers, and jackfruit.

In addition to sago, sweet potatoes are a staple of many locals' diets.

I love greens.  For about 80 cents a bunch, you can get the green of your choice.  I'm partial to the type in the middle.

 

Just bought your veggies and suddenly decide you need to get your pants hemmed?  No problem.  There's a tailor at the pasar.

 

Libby and I usually hire a guy with a wheelbarrow to follow us and help schlep our stuff around.

 The rest of the pasar experience is continued at home, where I spend a few hours putting everything away.  It's a lot of work, but I'm thankful for what we can get. 

When My Husband Travels

As of this May, my husband will have made four trips to America on MAF-related business since we were last stateside in ’13.

Four times he’s traveled to the other side of the world, and oceans and land masses have separated us.

I know there are men and women who do this ALL THE TIME for their work, be it military assignments or airline jobs or international intrigue or whatever.  And my hat is off to them.  I feel like such a wimp when David’s gone for just two or three weeks at a time. I can’t imagine a six-month or year-long deployment.

There are different stages I typically go through during a separation.

1.       I am Superwoman. 
2.       I am Emotional.

3.       All Hell Breaks Loose.
4.       We Eat Junky Meals.
5.       I Rally.
6.       Resentment Toward Everyone Who Has a Spouse At Home.
7.       I Stop Counting the Days.
8.       A Minor Crisis Occurs.
9.       I Start Counting the Days.

 I am currently at Stage 9, with only one day to go. 

I have a wonderful group of friends who are awesome at helping out when D is gone.  They have us over for meals, let me cry on their shoulders, pray with me, go to the spa with me (it’s a sacrifice, to be sure), and help put out fires (both literal and figurative).

As amazing as my friends are, I still miss David.  I don’t know if I can accurately describe the feeling, but I almost have to block the thought of him being on one side of the globe and me on the other, because it weirds me out – like thinking about eternity and how long it is. I miss him because he is half of my heart, half of my life – our shared experiences, our children, our hard times, our inside jokes; those are ours alone, and when he’s not here, I feel it.  I guess it’s reassuring to know that after almost 19 years of marriage, I miss him when he’s not here.  That’s a good thing, right?

It seems like I learn something new each time he travels – about myself, about him, about the way we interact, about my kids. 

Here are several lessons that come to mind:

1.       Sleep.  This seems so obvious, but I’m always cutting my sleep short when David’s gone.  I piddle away the evening hours, putting off the inevitable – climbing into bed (which sometimes has Zoe and 17 stuffed pandas in it), closing my eyes, praying the “big one” doesn’t happen that night (one of my fears when he’s gone is that an earthquake will happen).  If I don’t sleep enough, it only makes life for all those around me – but mostly me – worse.

2.       Accept help if you need it.  This can be hard for me, because I’d like to think I can handle it all on my own.  But when your stove is on fire, or your electricity isn’t behaving, or your kids need you to be in two places at once, it’s okay to ask for help.
 3.       Have little treats to look forward to.  Chocolate.  A tv show. A hoarded stroopwaffel.  A cream bath. Enjoy without guilt. Have treats for the kids, too.  Their main treat is to take turns sleeping in my bed.  The second treat is to (gasp!) eat supper in front of the tv.  It’s the little things.

4.       Keep your routine very, very simple.  Other people could probably do more, but not me.  I pare it down to the basics, which right now is: my kids, my teaching, our food.  And believe me, it’s enough.

5.       Remember that he misses you, too.  I have to remind myself, he’s in America working – not going to Disney World, not relishing trips to Target, not partying every night.  He’s working, and he’s missing us. Try not to make him feel too guilty about perusing the cereal aisle or enjoying a burger.

6.       Go easy during the Change of Command.  This has been my hardest lesson.  The Change of Command is those few days when he’s just back – we’re excited to be together again and that lasts for a blissful 24 hours or so, then reality hits and I’m saying stupid things like, “But I don’t lock the doors that way, and I’ve been locking them for the past few weeks just fine.”  Yeah.  Don’t do that.  Better to slowly hand the reins back over than to shove them in his face, or forget to hand them over at all.  
7. Don't dwell on the "what if's." This also has been a hard lesson.  I have an overactive imagination that can dream up all sorts of horrible scenarios. What if something happens to us? To him? What if a tree falls on the house? (It's windy season and this scenario is very likely.) In the Bible study I attend, we've been learning about putting the correct ending on those "what if's" and that is: God.  I cannot anticipate or control every situation that might come up while D is away, and I have to trust the LORD with the outcome.

Okay - enough lessons for tonight.  One more sleep!

 

What to Do About the Drunks?

This post has been brewing in me for a while now (no pun intended).  It’s about the drunk young men who terrorize the area where we live known as Pos 7. 

I used to find drunks humorous, or at the least, mildly entertaining.  Otis Campbell on “The Andy Griffith Show” cracked me up, the way he’d stumble in to the Mayberry jail, let himself in, and sleep off his binge on a lacy pillow tatted by Aunt Bea.  If only the drunks I met in real life were like Otis.

 

Drunk dude passed out on our driveway

Instead, they’re mostly angry and unpredictable.  Sometimes they’re so drunk they can’t even stay upright as they totter across the road.  The worst is when they’re angry, clutching rocks or waving sticks and threatening to hit you or your vehicle if you don’t give them money.

My fellow Pos 7-ites and I sometimes exchange text messages with warnings, like the morning traffic or weather report: “Expect a few drunks at the T in the road, heavily intoxicated, should taper as the morning goes on and they finally pass out.”

Once, two drunken teenagers on a motorbike chased me in my car up my driveway then stood outside the car yelling at me.  I was so shaky I could hardly hold my phone to call for help.

A few days ago, in the middle of the day, a drunk young man came into our yard and attempted to steal a motorcycle helmet.  David was able to chase him off, but it’s hard for me not to think, what if David hadn’t been home?  What would I have done?

Even now, as I write this, I hear an inebriated man singing his lungs out down the hill from our house.

The reasons for the drunkenness are multi-layered.  Lack of education.  Lack of work.  A feeling of hopelessness.  Peer pressure.  

And there’s no AA.  There’s no rehab.  There are churches galore, but they don’t seem to know what to do.  There are families who cower in fear of their drunken loved one – a son, brother, husband – and wish they knew how to help.  David has had conversations with some parents, and they seem utterly hopeless.

They make me at once angry and sad and frustrated.  We try to joke about it.  But truly, no one who’s had an angry drunk man lunging at their car thinks it’s even one bit funny.  And for those who saw my “Let it go” video this summer where I sing the line “the drunks never bother me, anyway,” you need to know that was me poking fun at myself, because the drunks very much do bother me.

I don’t want to live in fear.  Nor do I want to turn a blind eye to this huge problem or adopt an “I just want to be left alone” attitude.  But I honestly don’t know what to do.  

So there it is.  What do we do? How do we become part of the solution?

Would you join me in praying for the families affected by the drunks?  For the churches?  For those of us who live here and long for this to be a safe place? And for the drunks?

40

If the blog seems to have a more mature timbre to it, it should.  I'm now 40, and as of this weekend, so is my husband.

40!  It just doesn't seem possible.  I've been dreading leaving my 30s, which were awesome.

I think I've been dreading it because of the memory I have of my mother turning 40.  She had a terrible bout of the flu the week before her birthday.  One night while she was sick, she got up, passed out, and gashed her head, resulting in a midnight trip to the E.R.  A few days later it was her birthday,  and I can see the photo in my mind's eye - my brothers and I gathered around our mom, who is sporting a tired face and a head wound.  I hope I gave her a nice present that year, but seeing as I was a preteen goofball, the chances are good that I didn't.

Not "the" photo, but same era

Now, I know her appearance in that photo had nothing to do with being 40, but my subconcious has held on to the idea of "40 = tired and wounded."  And I'm happy to report that the Big Day arrived and it felt normal.  Not old.  Not wounded.  I spent a lovely day with my five favorite people in the Big City, doing some of my favorite things - eating good food, and sitting on a beautiful beach.  Then -to take advantage of being in the big city - we did one of my most unfavorite things - shopping for jeans. (Grace: why can't I find jeans long enough? Me: Because you're a giantess living in Asia, my dear.)

After pondering 40 for a while I came to the conclusion that it feels about right. We're past the little kid years and firmly planted in the middle years with kids in elementary school and high school.  
I still play basketball (more than I ever did as a junior varsity Jenkins High School Warrior Bench Warmer), I watch cartoons, I love candy, I like comics, I listen to whatever music my teens do.  I Just Dance.  That all makes me feel young, and like I couldn't possibly be older than 26.  But then, there's the side of me that seems a bit old, if not old-fashioned, the side of me that likes to take naps, read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and resist new technology. I took an online quiz that said I was 64.  David says I was born a hundred years too late.

So maybe 40 is about right.

In other news, we sent our two high schoolers off on the annual Outdoor Education trip this week.  They're deep in the interior of Papua now, serving the people of the Kosarek area in a variety of ways: water storage projects, kids' clubs, HIV-AIDS awareness programs, and medical clinics.  Grace left not feeling well, and she was a bit nervous about the whole thing.  Carter - this being his third OE - was hyped about the trip.  David got to fly them in and see them off.

I struggled with saying goodbye to them.  Each small goodbye like this feels like a warm-up, a rehearsal for the BIG goodbye that looms in the not-too-distant future for our family.  Carter graduates from high school next year and will be moving back to the U.S., and it is a scary thought to ponder, him on one side of the globe, and us on the other.

The updates we're getting are very positive - kids are healthy, they're vaccinating people against measles, hiking to other villages, doing work projects, just all kinds of cool stuff.  Hopefully in my next post I'll have some of their stories and photos to share.

Christmas in Papua, or All I Want for Christmas is some Quiet

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I think I'm over my recent bout of Seasonal Delusional Disorder.  It's a good thing, because now it's time to face Christmas.

I long ago stopped trying to recreate American Christmas in Indonesia.  Our first Christmas in the country, way back in 2001, taught me that it wasn't possible, and not even desirable, to make it "feel" like the kind of Christmas we were used to.  We found a happy compromise of incorporating some of our traditions from our home culture into the local Christmas culture.  It worked for us in Kalimantan.  But here in Papua, I'm struggling.

This summer I read an enlightening article about Highly Sensitive People.  Apparently, according to the quiz I took, I am one.  You can check it out for yourself here and see if you, too, are an HSP.  I guess up until I had my unofficial HSP diagnosis, I thought I was a bit weird for getting so bothered by loud noises, freaked out by violent movies, grossed out by the tiniest smells, and I'd wonder, how can David take all of that in stride?  How does the constant noise/puppy smell/etc. not bother him? What's wrong with me????

Well, apparently, nothing.  According to one website, HSP'ers cry easily (check), feel things deeply (double check), get upset when hungry (isn't that called being 'hangry'?), have a hard time saying "no" (me? no...I mean yes), consider noise to be a mortal enemy - and they are perfectly normal people.

The Christmas noise is what I'm struggling with most right now.  Papuans have a tradition of setting up pondok Natal every December.  These quaint, wooden Nativity structures disguise a hidden evil within - a sound system - that blares out the worst variety of Christmas songs, 24-7.

Pondok Natal

Up until this Christmas, I had only observed them from afar.  But since our move up to Pos 7, we're right smack in the middle of Pondok Natal Central.  There's no rhyme or reason to what is played (right now, it sounds like one is blasting out a movie and another is playing Vince Gill's Christmas with Donald Duck - I swear that's what it sounds like), or when it's played.  We've heard it through the night, early in the morning, at supper time.  The only respite we get is if it rains hard, or the power goes out.  The power went out yesterday and I actually raised my hands to Heaven and thanked the good Lord for power outages.

One Sunday afternoon the noise was starting to make me batty, and David brought his new noise-canceling headphones over and lovingly put them over my ears.  It was nice, but that's not how I want to get through the next few weeks, with headphones on my head, shouting "what?" at my kids when they try to talk to me.

I've tried to make light of it, to laugh about it - but friends, at 6 a.m. when I get up and just want a few minutes of peace, my sense of humor is nowhere to be found.  Even stopping to ponder the irony of "Silent Night, Holy Night" played at volumes that can be described as neither silent nor holy, won't bring a smile to my face.

After struggling through the first few days of Noise Assault from the pondoks, I thought, "maybe I'm missing something culturally.  Maybe there's something behind it all that I'm not understanding."  Seeking insight, wanting to be culturally in-tune, I started asking different Papuan friends what was the deal with the pondok Natal.  Did they like it?  All the people I asked responded, usually with grimaces on their faces, that they were too loud, that they couldn't sleep at night, that it was the young men who do it, that they ask them to turn it down but they won't listen.

So it's not just me being a culturally insensitive American.  And it's not just the music from the pondoks.  There's also fireworks, and bamboo cannons, and the worst, the carbide cannons that guys set off and make it sound like we're living in a war zone.

My nerves are frayed.  And my Christmas spirit - well, I'm having to dig deep and the well is still dry.

So it's back to the internet to find coping mechanisms for HSP'ers like me.  I've already tried most of the suggestions I've seen: headphones, barriers (we hung quilts over our windows one night to try to block out the sound so we could hear our movie), having a quiet place to retreat to (my English classroom).  Other suggestions aren't feasible, such as approaching the local authorities about noise ordinance violations.  Yeah, that won't be happening. 

Trying to block the noise with quilts

There is one other approach I'm trying this weekend: escape.  Our family is planning to head interior to the village of Mokendoma where our friends the Wilds serve.  How does this sound: 7,000 feet elevation, gorgeous mountain views, and nary a pondok Natal. 

But enough about me and my issues.  Here's some fantastic news: our beloved helper Orpa gave birth to her second child last week, and named her Natalie!  It helps that my name means "child of Christmas" and it's almost Christmas.  Isn't she beautiful?

This is how awesome Orpa is: she went into labor, hopped on a motorbike to ride to the midwife's house, gave birth, and a few hours later got back on the motorbike with the baby and went home! 

And if one namesake isn't enough, my lovely cousin Lindsay went and had a daughter a few days ago and also named her Natalie. 

Babies at Christmastime are so special; three of my kids were newborns during Christmas and I remember snuggling them, spending lots of time contemplating what it must have been like for Mary when she had Jesus. 

And look at those babies now:

 And their mama - despite her struggles with noise - is still able to find something to laugh about:

Merry Christmas dan Selamat Hari Natal from the Holstens!

Something to Smile About

Get up. Cook. Get the kids going.  Go to school. Teach.  Come home. Cook.  Repeat.  Repeat. Repeat.

That pretty much sums up the past few months for me.  Throw in bouts of fatigue and a traveling husband and it's easy to find myself soldiering through the monotony of day-to-day life, head down, forgetting to remember the blessings.  Here are a few things that made me laugh, sigh, or say, "thanks, Lord!" in the past few months:

 I finished the "scarf" and who knew? All along, it really wanted to be a blanket for Zoe's babies. People, I try, I really do.  But I am just not meant to be crafty.  I'm sorry, Mom, but you won't be getting a scarf for Christmas.

 This beautiful orchid bloomed in my yard.  Not a huge deal, but it has brought me joy for a few weeks, and I am thankful for the beauty of it.

 A new Kodiak arrived in Sentani, and this one is especially cool since it was assigned the registration letters "MAF."  

 We made a trip recently to the picturesque "Base G" beach.  Love the blues of the water there.

 This bit of English on a bread wrapper particularly moved me.  "Return the nature."

 David had the opportunity to go to Tarakan a few weeks ago for some meetings, and was able to visit with Orpa, our lovely friend who is like a daughter to us.  She's expecting her second child and is doing really well.  

Zoe turned 9, and to celebrate she wanted a party where she could dance with her friends.  She was insistent upon dancing the Virginia Reel, which I felt was a little complicated for younger kids.  But she was determined, and it ended up being really fun.

 A really cool aspect of being part of a larger expat community is the concerts that happen twice a year.  The junior class puts on a classical concert in the spring, and in the fall the senior class puts on a themed concert.  This fall the theme was songs from Disney animated classics, and it was a blast.  I dressed up as Jessie from Toy Story and sang "When She Loved Me" while Grace and Zoe acted out the part of Emily.  It was fun to do it together, though I heard from more than a few moms that we made them cry.  I'm always amazed at what the community can come up with far from costume shops, thrift stores, and other places you might get props and costumes.  

 What would you do for love?  David probably wrestles with this every time I ask him to dress up in a goofy costume.  He agreed to be Woody so Jessie could have a cowboy date, but he went the extra mile by shaving his beard into a handlebar.  Isn't he great?

 Words cannot describe how beautiful, how exquisite this road is to residents of Pos 7.  The road before was mostly pothole, and driving it wrecked your car's suspension and could possibly have even shaken teeth loose.  It was awful.  But then a few months ago a paving project began and with joyful anticipation we watched it progress.  It's officially finished from top to bottom.

 I'm feeling a bit more part of the neighborhood since we've been graffiti'd. 

As much as he drives me crazy, I have to admit that our puppy Charley is cute.  Especially when he gives us this face.