I've been back in Europe now for four months. I have had my returning seminars, given my returning presentations and thought long and hard about what happened during that amazing year. I have written a report for my organisation, a reflection of what Indonesia meant.
Indonesia and my time there are still hard for me to understand and the reflection process doesn't just stop. My views might be different in six months or five years from now. But now for your reading pleasure, here it is:
I am now back from Indonesia and have been so for about one and a half months. Now I must reflect about what I experienced during this extraordinary year. It’s been pretty surprising to come back and slide so effortlessly into my old life here in Germany; I get on great with everyone who I am meeting again: my family, my friends and my German network. In fact, it feels as if that gargantuan, self-contained chapter of my life labeled “Indonesia” never happened. And yet I know (not just from myself, but from other people in my life) that I have changed during the year. Most of the other volunteers I spoke with during our seminar feel like this too.
This highlights another difficulty we are all facing, especially with regards to reflecting on our now completed year. Since my arrival I have slipped into dozens of small-talk conversations, mostly sparked by the question: “So, how was Indonesia?”, to which I only ever answer: “It was good”, “It was great”, “It was fantastic” or some combination of those. Every time this happens, I am reminded of how impossible it is for me to accurately convey the things I did, thought, and learned in Indonesia to someone who wasn’t there to share that experience with me, not to mention to cram all of that information into a lighthearted-sounding sentence, which would be acceptable in small-talk. I cannot even explain “Indonesia” to my family, though they know and understand a lot more than most of my social contacts; they avidly followed my blog entries, my phone calls and emails and thus, were able to visualize my time there, as it was happening.
This is why I struggle to consciously analyze my year. It isn’t some solid experience that can be looked at clearly in retrospect, but a narrative which flowed and was most relevant while it was happening. Now I am left only with the result, the impact it has had on my view of the world and its shaping of my character.
The only people with whom I have had meaningful, inspiring and educational discussions about a year like this are the other volunteers that I met at the seminar. It gave me an environment of people who understood me, and who had shared many of the high and low points of my year (each in their individual situation). All had been disappointed by how little they could actually achieve, all had had problems with intercultural misunderstandings or language barriers and the year’s general deviation from their expectations. But all had also managed to overcome these problems and actively shape their own years to create something with which they were satisfied. Even if most of us wouldn’t have wanted to do another year in the same locations, everybody I talked to told me that after the initial low, they improved their own experience single-handedly and that the improvements were constant. The seminar, as well as the exercises lead by the team there, gave us volunteers an important framework. It provided a lens through which we could look at the year and order the jumble of memories which we all carried in our heads. Without it, this report would not have made much sense.
Among other things, this year clarified my perception of the professionalism in volunteering. I discovered my own limitations as a development worker, as I had no qualifications and tried to punch my way through the system with enthusiasm alone. But as my service went on, I stopped scrutinizing myself through that lens, and formulated my own interpretation of what it means to volunteer. The volunteer can, in my opinion, seep into all the cracks which the professionals in the project do not have the time or incentive to reach. The volunteer arrives fresh and eager to give. Oftentimes that means that he/she has the energy and the will to initiate their own projects where the professionals might have gotten too comfortable with the ordinary way of doing things. I did this in my project in part by including the occasional game, song or story I knew into the lessons. The individual attention I gave many of the students (the eager, to boost their confidence and the inactive, to motivate them) in and out of class is another example of me doing a job for which the teacher simply didn’t have the necessary time. The role of the volunteer is similar to that of a man spending his civil service in a German hospital; he’s not a doctor or a nurse, but he does little jobs here and there and spends extra time with the patients. Though these tasks are relatively small, they add up to become a valuable addition to the hospital.
In terms of my personal development, I most enjoyed being around Indonesians during my year. I found it fascinating to observe what motivated them to do what they did and compare that to what motivates my behavior.
As for the culture, I only truly realized what made some elements of Indonesian culture so distinctive until I came back to Germany. All of a sudden it’s no longer OK to eat with your hands, to walk across a busy street with nothing but your outstretched hand to order the drivers to halt for you or to wear a sarong in public. Male friends barely touch each other and strangers find it weird when you smile and greet them in a corridor or an elevator. I often have to stop myself from saying the words “silakhan” meaning, “please, go right ahead” and “nggak apa apa” which means “no problem”. Things that I would associate with the Javanese culture right now are the heavy emphasis on hospitality, solidarity with friends and family as well as platonic intimacy within everyday relationships. These are the things which I currently miss, I only hope that I can carry some of the positive things I have learned within me and keep them from slipping away, as I immerse myself once more in the busy European world.
To future volunteers I would recommend learning the language as quickly as possible. This is the key to successfully integrating yourself into your project and your host family. It is also entirely up to you, how quickly you manage to do this. It adds fluidity to your relationships with Indonesians, most of whom will be happy to know you are trying to learn and will help you along the way. Forcing yourself to speak Indonesian rather than English or German will let you grasp the language far quicker than if you only socialize in the volunteer circles around you. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn a language utterly different from your own, straight from the source. You should make the most of it.
One more note about the language though: during the year you will often still be confronted by situations where you have no clue of what is being said, simply because so many different languages are spoken in Indonesia, and you haven’t the time to learn them all. Right from the start you should therefore make up your mind which language you want to focus on: Indonesian or Javanese.
Inodnesian is useful for travel since almost all Indonesians learn this language in school, usually as their second language. However, it has only been the national language for 65 years and most Indonesians tend to use it only in formal settings, or when speaking to natives of different islands within Indonesia.
Javanese on the other hand is the mother tongue of most Indonesians on Java. In casual situations, or when amongst themselves, they only speak Javanese. If you come along to your circle of Indonesian friends and only speak Indonesian, you won’t understand a thing when they talk to each other. In addition, because the Indonesian language sounds much more formal to them than their casual Javanese, most interactions between them and you will not achieve the laid-back nature of their conversations in Javanese. Learning Javanese is the one thing I would have done differently had I had the chance to.
There is one more question which I have not actually ever been asked by people in person, but which I am meant to answer in part by writing this report: “Was your year abroad as you expected it to be?” The answer is no, and that’s a good thing.
I vaguely imagined (before having left Germany) that I would be working in a both exotic and exciting place, dripping with interesting culture and impressions. I believed that my work, not yet knowing what I would be doing, would be easy, and that I would find independence and fulfillment in the year. That was what I boarded the plane to Jakarta with, and most of these convictions turned out to be wrong. I have trouble describing my attitude just before leaving more precisely, because none of it is left by now and I can barely remembering what I was like back then. Even if I could specify what I expected from my Indonesian year at the beginning, it wouldn’t help to prepare any future volunteers reading this for their own voluntary service; only you can make those realizations. Your year will definitely be different from what you initially expect it to be, but that is part of this experience and will enrich, rather than disappoint you.
Dejavato was great in helping us settle in and aided us in any problems, which it had the power to influence. My host family also supported me, especially when I got sick. Don’t forget that this year is also about you standing on your own two feet, you will of course get support for the major problems which might occur, but you should be able to handle most things on your own.
I hope that you could gain an insight into my mind through this report and that it can help you prepare yourself mentally for the challenge ahead. But in the end even my most vivid descriptions cannot replace what you will experience out there, so have fun gathering your own impressions. All the best!
No comments:
Post a Comment