No Explanation Necessary

illustration by Martin Dima

An old college friend sent me a package recently. Foraging through her parents’ basement, she’d found yellowed editions of the campus newspaper we’d both worked on more than 20 years ago. Among the various articles I’d written – the flooding of a dormitory basement, Pakistani students debating whether Benazhir Bhutto could lead their country, an outbreak of homophobic graffiti at school facilities – was one I was most interested in.

It recounted my experiences the previous year as an exchange student in Indonesia. I blushed as I read it, cringing inside at my 18-year-old self’s snarly attempts to be a writer with something potent and profound to say. Beginning with the title – The Year of Living Dangerously, no less – it was a snide, sustained documentation of my frustrations at school, my host family, and the lack of anything and everything I considered worthwhile.

This was definitely one article for my eyes only, I thought, stashing it away in a drawer as though that would whitewash every simplistic thought (and also hoping pre-1990 editions of the newspaper hadn’t been uploaded to the Internet).

I didn’t want to be that person, or be reminded of who I used to be, even if I was aware that some part of him may remain.

In my two decades here, I’ve come to love Indonesia as not my second, but my first home. It’s the place where I made a career, found a partner and came to a better understanding of my somewhat conflicted self through living in a society where so many are far less fortunate than I am.

I’ve also become a defender of this land; I see the good and the bad, but I don’t see it through the all-negative viewpoint of 23 years ago. Of course, in personal moments of turmoil and annoyance, I also slip easily into the stereotyped role of the high-handed and condescending expat, bemoaning this and that, my teen self emerging in an uglier package.

I’ve developed some serious sok value (if you don’t know what that means, I rest my case) following my longtime residence in the country, curiosity about the society and also a desire to fit in as much as possible. East and West shall never meet, it’s written, but I’ve definitely tried to disprove Mr. Kipling’s ballad.

So yes, I can be quite the expat snob. When I hear a foreigner mispronounce an Indonesian word, I mutter a silent correction, and when a newbie to Indonesia waffles on along a fanciful and misleading path, I sometimes speak up, or sometimes just let them stumble along in ignorant bliss.

I did the latter years ago, when a nice lady from Birmingham concluded that Indonesians were a delightfully happy bunch because she could hear them singing from the rafters first thing in the morning from her hotel in Menteng. But when an acquaintance surmised that Indonesians may have a higher adultery rate because, you know, corruption breeds a culture of lies, I countered, as gently as I could through clenched teeth, that cheating and unfaithfulness are human failings that cross all cultures and to which all of us are vulnerable. Tiger Woods, you’re the next contestant on The Extramarital Dating Game.

As much as I’ve earned the seasoned-expat cred, as proficient as I am in Indonesian, as familiar as I am with Indonesian popular culture, as fired up as I am by the prospect of spicy food, and as admiring as I am of what this country represents, I’m not Indonesian, just as I don’t belong to any of the three countries I lived in as a child. My upbringing, although in different countries, was in the West, and many of my attitudes and viewpoints remain typically Western.

That includes the need for answers and solutions, to put a finger on something definite, to demand a rational and scientific explanation when sometimes one is not to be found.

That came home to me recently through a simple slice of life, when my partner’s young nephew fell sick. I’ve never met the little boy, but know him from photos and videos as an insufferably cute, gurgling butterball who has the big eyes and wide forehead of his mother’s family.

His mother, my partner’s only sister and favorite sibling, had graduated from a secretarial academy and worked briefly in Jakarta before returning to her home village to marry. She’d been to the big city and wanted more for her son; she named him Kevin, even though her husband’s family insisted on the traditional Eko (the other nephews are called Reza and Teguh, although one was later named Devin, so she may have sparked a trend for Western names).

“I may be stupid but my son won’t be,” she told her brother, sourcing the Internet for the Glenn Doman infant-teaching videos and setting aside time every day to study.

Then Kevin got sick. They were still in Bengkulu then, where her husband is assigned. It began with a fever, and then he stopped eating, wanting only to drink copious amounts of water. The little boy, shrinking every day, screamed his lungs out on the flight back to Jakarta en route to their hometown in Java.

The doctor at the local health center didn’t know what was troubling him, but I thought I did.

“It sounds like malaria to me,” I offered. “Sumatra is endemic for it, get him tested.”

My partner listened silently, telling me we should let the doctors make the decisions.

But he only got worse. A few days later, my partner called, speaking slowly and deliberately, as he always does when there’s something difficult to express to me.

“You won’t believe this, I know, but I went to a paranormal and he told me a spirit had come with Kevin from Sumatra and is in his room,” he said. “That’s what’s making him sick.”

I listened and offered a few token words, my inner cynic mode in full drive.

Well, Air Asia will certainly have to improve its security standards – “Mr. Jin, I’m afraid we’ll need a valid ID before embarking.” With the free-seating policy, did he get to sit in the overhead bin? And once he was done bothering Kevin, he could always move to Jakarta and find a career in TV.

The recommended treatment was to have seven men come to the house every night and recite Koranic verses. Not one to let the spirit move me from my ways, I continued to proffer that a blood test might also be helpful, until my partner snapped.

“I know you care about Kevin, and also that you don’t believe in what we’re doing,” he said. “But Kevin’s getting better, and sometimes we can’t explain why things happen.”

Miffed, I pulled back, only occasionally asking if the mission to save little Kevin was making headway. But when he got sick again, they took him to a larger hospital in the city. A blood test showed he was dangerously ill with dengue fever.

“Kevin’s gone through so much, what with the spirit and now the dengue,” my partner said, pre-empting any opportunity for an I-told-you-so moment.

Kevin has improved; he’s eating again and putting on weight. It may be due to the prayers or to the hospital treatment, or a combination of both. I also learned a few things from the experience, including that our roots are always there, those experiences that shape us and that we continue to refer to, especially in times of trouble.

Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that sometimes things can’t be explained, and perhaps they don’t need to be. After reading my views from the past, I also know that I’ve learned a lot over the years – and yet there’s still so much more to learn.

+ K. Vickers.

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