I

have lost the habit of goodbyes. Somehow, with ingenuity and a little luck, I fashioned a life for 18 years here in Jakarta. My love affair with Indonesia has been a sputtering courtship. It wasn't the lambent, tropical airs of Bali that seduced me but rather the entire archipelago.

Based in the Big Smoke, the Big Durian, the sprawling city by the sea, I have been fortunate enough to travel the fabled archipelago from Sabang in Aceh to Merauke in Papua, in my work as a public health advisor. Now, while the love affair remains, it will have to be memories because in June I will no longer be a resident.

So goodbye to silken yellow soto ayam, perfumed with cilantro and other spices, the broth of home-comings and departures. Goodbye to our Kemang garden, with cecaks and tree frogs, saffron-throated emerald lizards and rats that strolled with impunity past our cats. Goodbye to the crooked tails and bent tips of the Jakarta street cats, two of whom we rescued when they were thrown over our garden wall. Goodbye to learning how to chew betel nuts on a floating community health center in Santani Lake, and to the nurses in Banten that stitched up my son at the Puskesmas (public health center).

Goodbye to subuh (daybreak) and maghrib (sunset), the rhythmic chants of neighborhood mosques punctuating our days, and to the Ramadhan music at the Hero, the fasting season heralded by a bounty of dates available in the local market. Goodbye to the mosque where we have sent goats every year for Idul Adha; goodbye to Chinese New Year, which was forbidden when we first arrived and now is a munificent red and gold celebration.

Goodbye to a magical dinner under the full moon in the Yogyakarta Sultan's Water Palace, where a pawang hujan kept the rain at bay and one of Indonesia's elder statesmen asked my husband if he heard the melancholy notes in the gamelan. Goodbye to arriving late at night in this city of teeming masses and having the Silver Bird taxi-man recognize me; taking me cocooned in the luxury of black leather and cold air conditioning for the two hours it took to wend our way through the eternal and infernal traffic; goodbye to riding the busway to Pasar Baru and the glimpses of an older Batavia.

Goodbye to travel, to all the islands, East and West, North and South, rural villages where I talked to women about family planning and shared their sorrows when they talked about infants dying; goodbye to Sumba, my favorite island despite the fact my infant daughter got measles there; goodbye to Aceh, where months before the tsunami, I walked the streets and had a massage in a local beauty parlor run by transvestites, the owner twirling on wooden heels.

Goodbye to the biodiversity that stuns in its beauty, the orangutan Emily who walked out of the Borneo forest to grasp my hand in her leathery grip, the motionless barracudas of Raja Ampat and the soaring majestic beauty of black and white manta rays. Goodbye to picnics in the Thousand Islands, hollowed spaces created by ruling elites so they could water-ski at any time, giving way to the burning tires of May, 1998 and changes unforeseen.

Goodbye to rainy seasons that are shifting, elongating the months with the drum of drops on tin roofs and gnarled traffic, goodbye to floods and earth quakes, volcanic eruptions and forest fires creating haze. Good bye to sex scandals and intrigue, as my language capacity grew and I had more Indonesian friends, the byzantine drama of politics was riveting and kept us talking over coffee for hours.

Goodbye to the pig markets of Tanah Toraja, the black sand beaches of Lombok, the yawning mouths and the rotten breath of Komodo dragons. Goodbye to the canopy of stars you can see at night when far away from the cities, and to the white mourning flowers. Goodbye Indonesia, tanah airku, good bye

Lucy S. Mize
Public Health Advisor
Jakarta