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I moved into my new house on Saturday, August 17,
Indonesia’s Independence Day. So the
last two weeks of August I focused on settling into a new house. Since I moved here with only a few suitcases,
I had very few things. The house comes
with some basic furniture (including three mattresses) and a beautiful teak
dining table. There is enough for my
needs. A CIFOR colleague was moving away
from Bogor and selling a lot of her stuff.
Thanks to here and to the advice of another friend, I bought most of my
kitchen stuff from her, including a juicer for all the lovely fruit
here! Beyond that the next few weeks
involved the adventures and misadventures of settling in. I don’t know if it is okay to name names here
of all the colleagues, friends, and random people who helped me with the above
and dozens of other things. They fed me,
had me over for yoga sessions, took me to parties and shopping, brought bottles
of wine (no small thing given that wine here is sooooooo expensive), set up
emergency internet and then permanent internet, dealt with inexplicable loss of
electricity (just n my house not neighborhood), ith made dripping water
dispensers work, helped deal with dead fish in the pond in the back yard,
helped commicate with the old retainer associated with the house (he does not
speak any English and my language skills were rudimentary though they are
improving), find domestic help, give me rides to and from work. The list goes on and on and on, and I was
accompanied at each step (even by Robert who was hearing about all this by
skype, including hearing about my first sighting of a civet cat, which is not a cat), and never felt alone!
I am slowly establishing new routines. But in addition to missing Robert and the
animals, I really miss the Mill River, our neighborhood, and especially the Y
and my yoga classes. I’ve had no luck finding an Iyengar yoga teacher in
Bogor, and I’m not yet up to the ordeal of facing the macet (traffic jams) of Jakarta for classes. So I invoke my wonderful teach Suzie
Goldstein of the Rivervalleyyoga studio in Florence (www.rivervalleyyoga.com) as
I focus on my home practice.
Another kind of home practice involves settling new routines
for cooking and eating. The CIFOR
cafetaria is great and convenient though the food is mixed. They always
have Indonesian dishes and other cuisines (wednesday is Indian food). They
also have local vendors sell all kinds of things periodically (bread organic
rice and veggies, tofu, etc). Though
CIFOR had an orientation session, none of these most important things were
covered there – things that are basic to living! A few weeks ago, I hired a part time pembantu to help with the cooking,
etc. Like many who claim to have a
social consciousness and/or come from or have lived in the west, hiring
domestic help is a complicated issue. It
remains complicated for me. But it is
equally complicated to face work, home and in a new place, in a new language,
with all kinds of logistical and cultural challenges. I soon realized that I need an Ibu (literally mother though the term is
used as a prefix to the names of all older women as a mark of respect. I am certainly Ibu Kiran – no mistaking
middle age here!). Once again, the help
of friends and particularly my friend Iir was invaluable. There is also a gardener and general
factotum, Pak Hasim (Pak, pronounced Pa, is the short form of
Bapak and is the term used as a prefix to the names of all older men as a mark
of respect) who has been associated for
40 decades with the house I rented.
Whether I like it or not, he turns up at the house and hiring him was
inevitable. That’s another story, which
I am sure I will tell you when we talk in person!
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