I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled to be heading back to Jember. The echoes of my last visit were still ringing in my ears (but let's leave the past in the past). I was scheduled to spend a month in Jember for work and I was depressed about the idea of four weeks in a village. Well, I guess it's a town but anything that has no McDonalds or J.co feels pretty village to me (Jember's first McDonalds rudely opened less than a week after I left Jember).
I had low expectations.
I spent the day before downloading movies so I would "have something to do", eating my last "non-Indonesian meal" for a while and complaining about the 4 weeks ahead (I'm so sorry Jember for what I said about you). My housemate in Surabaya set me the challenge of sending her a photo of something interesting in Jember every day and it felt like it would be impossible to find that many interesting things.
Luckily, I was wrong.
Immediately I found myself surrounded by a bunch of seriously lovely people, enjoying a social life far beyond my mall-hopping lifestyle in Surabaya. After work I found myself eating delicious local food (as well as some foods suspiciously named "balls dog" and "nugget stick"), watching movies and visiting local cafes.
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| Look at my social life |
The weekends (and many, many public holidays) were packed with trips to beaches, lakes and a waterfall driven by my "fast and furious" manager Puri. On the first Sunday at 6 AM we did "Zumba" (and by that I mean a super weird and hilarious aerobics workout) at the town square which usually I would have opted out of but the thought of "when will I ever get the chance to do Zumba in the town square of Jember again?" won and I have no regrets.
My eventual trip to Papuma beach was also a highlight as I'd wanted to go for years and even more so because they charged me the local rate instead of the normally strictly enforced tourist rate. That made me feel like I really fit in in this country (but in reality the ticket man probably just didn't notice me).
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| We met this man who brought his cat to the park too |
Work was great as well. The students were fun and positive. Some highlights include teaching an Indonesian celebrity, a 7 year old excitedly asking "miss! Are you a bule?" as I walked into the classroom and having my students roleplay having a bicycle accident in Korea (more on that topic next week).
The first week at work went very smoothly until during a game of 'change chairs' one of the larger students sat down and the chair legs gave way. Thankfully he wasn't hurt but I felt pretty bad that he could have been. Immediately after, I was called into my boss's office and I felt even worse about the broken chair. I was freaking out that I’d made my boss angry only after a few days but luckily again it was for an unrelated matter.
During my time in Jember, I stayed in a boarding house which was great aside from two things- the son of the owner's incessant flirting and finding out the hard way that I had a curfew. Actually, the owner's son was probably the reason it took a week for me to realise I had a curfew as he was left in charge while his parents were out of town. Every night when I got home late he didn't mention it, he only asked me to sit downstairs with him for a few minutes. So I did. He didn’t use that time to inform me of my curfew-breaking, instead he told me I was beautiful and asked why I was single ("because I want to be" didn't seem to sit well). He asked me to be a model for his photography, which I politely refused. He then let me try the perfume he'd made himself telling me that my friends would compliment the scent the next day (ummm, nope, I plan to shower). He told me he was going to make me a special perfume as a gift before I left but I guess he lost interest in that because I never got his "special perfume".
When his parents returned, the flirting stopped but I was abruptly told off by his mother when I arrived home at 11:30 and informed that the curfew was 10:00 and that the gate would be locked after that time. I was confused by this as I'd never been told (and it was probably the 5th time I'd arrived back later than 10). Later it seemed to be that it was okay to come back after 10 on the condition that I called them to ask permission beforehand and that I didn't do it all the time. So the next day, I went straight home after work (I don't like causing problems) and was planning to walk straight up to Brian's mother smugly at 9:30 and allow her witness me following the rules. Disappointingly she wasn't home when I arrived and no one got to see my rule following. To make matters worse I heard the bell ring at midnight as someone else arrived late. Tsk tsk, some people have no regard for their curfews.
Getting around by Gojek (an online motorbike taxi service) daily quickly got my presence in town circulating through the relatively small "Gojek gossip ring" which I didn't believe existed until I heard about one driver telling my co-worker that there was a foreigner in town and trying to understand "how she could love Indonesia". Other Gojek drivers asked for photos, I shared my life story daily- why I'm here, why I like this country etc. and while walking by a load of Gojek drivers at the train station several yelled “Miss Sasa, remember me?”. (I used the name "Sasa" on Gojek for privacy reasons but mostly because most Gojek drivers thought Sammi was a man's name and I got tired of the 'jemput dimana mas?' messages.)
The second week at work felt even more comfortable, with some time for guitar sing-a-longs to Indonesian pop songs between classes. I also got to observe a class where a 5 year old was asking the teacher to translate random sentences of her day into English, starting from "mister, what is the English of 'saudara saya nangis' (my relative was crying) escalating to translations of 'I'm going to the graveyard after class' and 'my relative died today' which luckily prompted the teacher to stop translating. Dark stuff.
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| Loving Jember... |
Then it was time for Ramadan to start, which I was kind of nervous about as I wasn't sure if it's be difficult (or even possible) to buy food. When I asked my boss where I could buy food during Ramadan he told me he didn't know where as he'd never bought food during Ramadan before. But in the end it was fine. One cafe with an extensive menu near my office remained open so I went there everyday. At the beginning of Ramadan, the wife of one of the teachers went into labor which he informed the teachers of incredibly casually while eating a banana at his desk, and when sent home instead stopped at the shopping centre across the street to casually buy snacks first.
Not long after that, I took a short trip to Bali. I’d thought I would need the break after two weeks in Jember but I felt oddly sad about leaving (despite the fact I’d be back in 5 days). But 5 days went by quickly and upon returning, I found a new resident in my boarding house- a black chicken. Well actually, I didn’t find it as much as I heard it at 7:00 AM making a load of loud chicken sounds. I came downstairs to find the chicken in a small cage downstairs, eating its breakfast and assumed (wrongly) that she was to become a treat for the boarding house owners come the end of Ramadan. Sadly, Chicky didn’t last that long. The next day I came downstairs to find a man I’d never seen before with a large knife. I knew immediately he was there to murder someone. As I was getting on my gojek, the maid was holding Chicky upside down and the man was lining up his knife. “Go, go, go” I told my gojek driver, but as I drove away I knew what was happening to Chicky behind me.
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| R.I.P Chicky |
Things got louder around the 3rd week in Jember when my boarding house started running English classes downstairs in the mornings. From 8:20 AM I could enjoy the sound of terribly pronounced phrases such as “I take a pee” and "I don't speak English" (pronounced Anglish). Luckily, I had picked up my earplugs in Surabaya, strangely I was perfectly ready for the unlikely event that my boarding house opened an English course.
I also got the opportunity to visit GM around that time. In Surabaya "GM" equates to the modern Galaxy Mall, but in Jember "GM" is Golden Market which, as the name implies, is quite different to the GM of Surabaya. Golden Market is quite simple- the ground floor is a supermarket, the first floor a cheap department store and the top floor is absolute chaos-foodcourt/timezone/car riding place. I went there to buy some more creme-coloured "khaki" work trousers but was shocked to find out that in Jember I'm a size XL (weirdly the XL trousers are slightly smaller than the S ones I bought it Surabaya). Of course buying this caused a massive amount of giggling and staring from the staff at the store. To make matters worse, the XL trousers were so tight that when I was wearing them ten minutes into my class, the button popped off entirely as I sat down. My friend, Maltha and I spent to break between classes frantically watching "life hack" videos and then eventually stealing a button (that's usually used as counter in board games) and sewing it on minutes before class time.
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| I also found the perfect T-shirt in GM |
In my last week or so in Jember, things got busier. My social life really reached it's peak as I found myself eating pizza with a nun (Maltha's friend) and discovering and falling in love with a gelato cafe named 'Bvgil' (how to pronounce the name I have no idea how). Somehow, my friends and I ended up visiting Bvgil on three consecutive nights (I couldn't say no to the salted caramel gelato). I felt kind of weird about the fact that we'd been there so often but then I decided "I don't think the staff remember us" forgetting that I am one of very few (I saw 2 others in my 4 weeks in Jember) foreigners in town. I actual forgot that I wasn't from Jember for a minute. 😂
In that highly social time, I felt like I was always rushing back to my boarding house to meet my curfew. I often found myself running back home and arriving right on the line at 9:59 PM and I also often found myself missing my curfew completely. I just stopped caring so much because I knew my days in Jember were numbered.
I felt a little anxious during the last few days in Jember. On the Monday, I felt overwhelmed and was looking forward to my lesson (I usually forget about my anxiety when I'm teaching). Unfortunately, that happened to be the day that one of my four year old students decided to bring 2 small birds in a cage into class. I thought they were fake but as she was handing me the cage and I reached out to take it the birds suddenly started flying around and I almost screamed. Yes, I have a phobia of birds, but I never thought it would effect my work as a teacher.
My anxiety got worse on my last day at work as I suddenly found out I had to get back to Surabaya earlier than expected to report to the immigration office. Because my passport was in the immigration office in Surabaya and I'm supposed to have it to take a train it became a bit of a logistical nightmare. In the end my work's solution was to edit the expiry date on my old Indonesian ID card so that I could use it.
In the evening, after my last classes were done, my co-workers surprised me with cake and gifts, which was really unnecessary seeming how much I had already gotten out of the experience of working there. I'm so blessed that so many people have been so kind to me and that Jember turned out to be a beautiful place.
After work, I packed up and said goodbye to the owner of the boarding house (and luckily not Brian). I felt oddly sad on the motorbike, seeing the sights for one last time. I spent my last night in Jember with my friends, enjoying my social life one last time before it was to all get away from me. We hung out until midnight when they dropped me off at the station and we said our goodbyes. Puri handed me the print out of my fake ID which was accepted by the security guard and I went through to the train.
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| 25 beautiful days in Jember |
And in the end, the only thing I hated about Jember was leaving it and when you can say that about a place you didn't want to visit in the first place, I think it's a pretty good sign.
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