I almost went to Thailand...

...in the summer 1988 for my junior year abroad.  But at the urging of the insightful and supremely graceful Judy Mitoma, I ventured to Indonesia instead -- following the footsteps of many esteemed ethnomusicologists before me -- to study gamelan and dance.

our cook and housekeeper

All the Education Abroad Program students in Yogya were put up in faculty housing near Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) for the summer.  Our lodgings epitomized tropical indoor-outdoor living, with tile floors cool to bare feet, wet bathrooms where you created refreshing waterfalls by scooping pitchers of cold water over your head, plantation shutters and doors, verandas, and an open-air kitchen with a fantastic cook to keep us full on Indonesian food.




It wasn't for dissatisfaction that my UCLA cohort and I were eager to leave as soon as we'd put down our bags, it was the fact that we had an invitation to live at the home of our Javanese dance teacher from UCLA.  His daughter and her classmates at the Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) arts school lived there, and we were welcomed as additional boarders.  Juliette and I eagerly headed off on becak (pedicab) to meet our soon-to-be roommates:  a congenial group of Javanese dancers.  We'd also soon come to know their clove-smoking, bohemian artist boyfriends, as well.

It wasn't until we were back in a becak, headed into evening, that we wondered what was the address of our interim lodgings. The becak driver peddled us across town toward campus, then back and forth all around the university while we searched for something familiar looking.  Both of us had taken Javanese and Balinese dance and music classes over the past year, but neither of us could speak any Indonesian to help get us back into our beds.  I'm sure the driver had wanted to dump us out of his cart and abandon us on a random street corner, but I guess we somehow found the way back to the house, with our first Indonesian lesson well-learned: It's not enough to know where you're going, you have to know where you're coming from.

I could say that first night was an allegory for the next couple decades of my life: wandering around searching for where I came from, but that wouldn't really be correct.  However, I do think that the lesson I learned is symbolic of Indonesia. Indonesians ask incessantly "Dari mana?" to find out either "Where are you from?" or "Where have you been?" It strikes me funny, now, that even when the situation clearly indicated the questioner wanted to know what country I was from, I stubbornly told them where I'd just been because I bristled at always being seen as a foreigner -- someone out of place. Now I know that Indonesians ask, "Where are you from?" not just of tourists and foreigners, but each other as well, and I can appreciate the question as a way to set context. In a country of dozens upon dozen of traditionally distinct cultures, complete with their own languages, dances, costumes, food and mannerisms, Indonesians make a point of knowing where they come from.

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Intensive language class, 8 hours per day, at UGM (say oo-gay-M) was good for my Indonesian, but meeting Sekti was better.  I practiced flute nightly in a little traditional-styled pendopo with a ceiling of angled wooden beams and clay tile roof that was perched on top of my boarding home. One evening, Sekti stopped me at the bottom of the outdoor stairs to introduce himself and ask if I'd play "The Fool on the Hill" with his Beatles cover band at a local club.  Rehearsals led to morning jogs, led to gifts of nangka (jackfruit), led to motorbike lessons.  Over the next year, Sekti and I drove on his red Honda motorbike to visit temples, nature reserves, beaches, villages, and eventually, before my year was up, his parents.

Lisa & Sekti at a candi in Central Java, 1988

Lisa and Sekti - backyard bamboo forest 1990

After an uncertain goodbye, many love letters, my graduation, reunion in Java via the Darmasiswa study program, Sekti's graduation, two lavish traditional wedding ceremonies, a state-side MBA, a house near Berkeley, and two kids, my husband Sekti and I are now bringing our girls "back home" to meet their paternal grandparents.  Our thirteen year-old has pictures of herself mosquito-bitten and bathing in buckets at her grandparents house in Jakarta, but really, it's all as new to her as it is for her 7-year old sister.  It's exciting for me to re-live through my teenager the marvel of experiencing Indonesia for the first time.  I'm proud of the photographer's eye she's honed that lets her see and feel the wonder I felt nearly a quarter century ago.

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A couple of days ago Sekti jokes that I'm more Indonesian than Chinese.  He says this now, after all those early years I struggled as a second-time adolescent: having emerged only a few years prior from the insecurities of high school, having to learn how to act appropriately in central Java's culture of royalty-entrenched formalities, desperately trying to fit in, to speak fluent Indonesian without an accent. Actually, it wasn't that radical a statement, anyway, because even though I check the Chinese ethnicity box, I've never felt very Chinese, occupying an untethered hapa middle-ground, instead.  Two years of university classes couldn't make up for only hearing Chinese spoken -- just barely spoken with one word responses from my dad -- during occasional family gatherings. One summer tour to China during high school, where I couldn't talk to anyone and no one acted remotely interested in talking to me anyway, didn't make me feel closer to my roots.  Sekti says this now, following my first return to Indonesia after a 10-year absence, when I no longer feel the need to categorize my identity, when middle age (41 is already middle age?) has finally given me enough time with myself to feel comfortable as the typical atypical Bay Arean-American that I am.

I realize this as I walk the streets of Ubud by myself.  Sekti is out shopping for the store, finding treasures of the kind we admire in our coffee table books and the South-East Asia collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (also check out Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance opening Feb 25 - Sept 11, 2011!).  The girls are with my sister, niece, and nephew swimming at the hotel.  I'm shopping for Christmas presents that I'll give the next morning, wrapped in banana leaves, adorned with flowers like the offerings placed on the ground, in shrines, on statues, at intersections, everywhere.

banana leaf wrapped Christmas presents

Back in the 90s, when I led art tours in Java and Bali, a kind American couple thanked me for being their guide with a generous tip, then added that they weren't sure why I had rejected America, but they wished me the best in my adopted country. I had protested the idea that by embracing Indonesia I was rejecting America.  I don't recall any major changes in my outlook over the years, but this trip back to my second home has given me a time-lapse perspective to recognize that I now feel at ease with my American-ness in a way that I didn't before.  I have no compulsion to prove my Indonesian-ness, and simply enjoy a deep connection to the country through my family and our love of the many facets of Indonesian artistic and cultural expression.  I'm comfortable in both and in-between.

This blog will tell stories of living in the balance between America and the archipelago.

Lisa & Sekti - Lombok, 1988

Lisa & Sekti - Bali, 2010