Sunday, December 6, 2015

A powerful thunderstorm was raging when I woke up this morning and got out of bed. It will probably clear up in a while, but for now I’m inside and drinking coffee. I love the rain, so it’s no problem. And it means that there is a lot less traffic. My room is much quieter right now. I know that my nieghbors are gone, so I thought about testing my smartphone and Viber. But it’s a bit late for that. When I called Canada last, I couldn’t get Viber to work and I used Skype instead. There is no strong reason to use one over the other, but I have some credit on Viber, so I might as well use it when I have the chance.

I was awake quite early yesterday morning when I made that call, and I didn’t bother going back to bed. I thought I was rested enough, but based on the events of the day, I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I was quite irritable. Either that, or the people in the market just happened to be a lot crazier than normal. I went into the big market street with my camera. My goal was to just walk through the market and come out the other end and explore a new neighborhood that I had picked out. However, I slowed down and took a lot of pictures of produce and fish and other items. And people were very loud and annoying. They seemed to be much louder and more annoying than normal. There are always the crazy ones. I mentioned before that the truly mentally unbalanced in every country in the world are unnaturally attracted to foreigners. It happens all the time. And a couple of crazy guys latched onto me in the market yesterday and followed me around. One guy was yelling the word “yes” over and over and over again. The other was trying to be helpful, and every time I aimed the camera at an object, he would pick it up and hold it out for the camera. Both these guys really got on my nerves. Other people yelled a lot more than normal. And the traffic was atrocious. I think it was the traffic that tipped the balance and made me irritable. The market road is overflowing with products and is reduced to one very narrow path. Two motorcycles can just pass each other if they are careful, and one motorcycle taxi – or becak – can get through. But that’s it. And with the number of vehicles and people, it was gridlock and people did what they always think will fix the problem – they honked their horns. And they honked and honked and honked. This drives me particularly crazy because I don’t like noise, and it seems so arrogant. You made the choice to drive your motorcycle into a jammed and narrow market lane. You’ve lived your entire life in this city and you know full well that you won’t be able to get through. But you did it anyway, and you think that since you are on a motorcycle and everyone else is walking, you should be able to just blast through and blow your horn the entire time to tell people to get out of your way. It’s stupid and it’s arrogant. People were engaging me in the usual conversations about where I was from and what my name was, and I couldn’t really hear anyone because of the roar of the engines and the endless honking. There was barely any room to stand since the pathway was so full of motorcycles. I don’t know how the people who work in the market can stand it day after day. Perhaps it was this pressure and chaos that led to so many people in the market being so obnoxious and horrible. It’s hard to even describe their behavior. A psychiatrist would probably walk through there and, based on a cursory exam, commit half the people as fully insane. They were that crazy.

The people that truly annoyed me, though, were the dumb ones. I get that there is a language barrier. I understand that. But it doesn’t take language to understand that the other person doesn’t speak your language. That is obvious. If I met a man in Canada that spoke only Russian, I would figure that out in two seconds. And then I’d stop screaming at him in English. I’d know that just yelling more and more English in a louder and louder voice wasn’t going to solve the problem. No matter how loud I yelled, this man was still only going to speak and understand Russian. But the people here never seem able to figure that out. It’s clear that I don’t speak Indonesian and I don’t understand what they are saying. I can even see when the light bulb goes off. I make an apologetic face, and I say to them in English, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Indonesian.” And they understand that. They go “Aaaaah! No Indonesian.” And they turn to their neighbors and explain to them that I don’t speak Bahasa Indonesian. But then they turn back to me and start yelling at me in Indonesian. And they go on and on and on. They just won’t stop. All I can do is shrug apologetically and shake my head “No” and point to my ears and indicate that nothing is getting through and say again that I don’t speak Indonesian. But they just keep yelling. Meanwhile one crazy guy is at my side yelling ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”. The other crazy guy is picking things up and shoving them in front of my face. Motorcycles are blasting their horns right beside me and pushing me out of the way. Other people are yelling at me from all over the place and making jokes that I should take pictures of this or that person or marry this or that woman. It was out of control, and with my lack of sleep, I just wasn’t able to handle it with my usual sense of calm. I could only dial down my reactions and just turn myself off to an extent. I just went deep into myself and walked slowly past and got out before I started screaming at people and punching them.

I got out of the market without hurting anyone or losing my temper, but I never quite recovered. My walk through the new neighborhood was not enjoyable at all. The children seemed annoying and rude. The selfie sessions got on my nerves. One older man grabbed me by the arm so hard that he caused physical pain. He dragged me across the street by force and made me sit down beside a woman on a bench for a picture. Then everyone had to take turns sitting beside me for a picture. A large crowd gathered and the yelling and shouting was unbearable. A lot of groups of men were sitting in roadside tea shops playing cards and hanging out. They all wanted me to join them and have some tea, but I saw no point in accepting their invitations. It would just be me saying that I was from Canada, that my name was Douglas, that I was alone, and that I was staying at the Hotel Asahan, and then they would yell at me in Indonesian and make jokes and laugh until my tea was done. I was in such a bad mood that I started to dislike Indonesians in general. I guess that was my punishment for not getting enough sleep.

Back at my hotel, safe from the madness, I spent some time looking at the pictures that I’d taken. I was pleased with a lot of them. I like close-up pictures of fruit and other market products. I ended up with one or two nice pictures of people. I put a few on Facebook and then on the blog. I tried to dredge up some “deep thoughts” based on my experience in the market, but nothing really came to me. I just had this impression of a lot of really stupid and really rude people. That was my take on Indonesians based on that walk, which is unfortunate. They try so hard to be nice, but with the cultural differences, they often come across as just being rude (if not clinically insane).

Not surprisingly, the young boys had a lot to do with my negative impressions from that walk. Young boys the world over are the same: little monsters. There was one boy in particular who followed me for a long time and yelled at me in a mixture of Indonesian and English. He was clearly making fun of me. If I was going to lose my temper and react to all this insanity, it was going to be at this boy. I wanted to grab him by the neck and push him up against a wall and get in his face. But I knew I would regret it. It may have felt like I was in a sea of anonymous faces, but I was well known in this whole city. As I walked around in this new area, I heard people from a distance shout “Canada, Canada”. These people knew who I was. Maybe they’d seen me walking around in other parts of the city. If I got angry, my behavior would be noted and the story would spread everywhere.

In the evening when I went out for dinner, I encountered a group of eleven young boys. They had gathered on my street underneath the flock of white birds that perch on the telephone and electric wires. They all had makeshift weapons made from tubes and rubber bands and they were firing stones at the birds trying to hit them. When I first saw them, I only saw two boys doing this, and I was going to stop and lecture them and tell them to stop. But then I saw the nine other boys running towards them holding the same tubes. And I saw that all the adult males around me were laughing and enjoying their behavior and encouraging it. Shooting these birds was perfectly fine with everyone here, so I just let it go and walked past. I contented myself with thinking evil thoughts about these boys. In fact, I’d kind of had evil thoughts about men in general all day long. I honestly don’t know what women see in men. It makes sense that men would be attracted to women. Women are beautiful and they are nice. When a woman is in your life, she takes care of you and helps you and does a lot of work for you (particularly here), like washing your clothes and preparing your meals. Who wouldn’t want a woman like that in their life? But what do men bring to the table? Nothing as far as I could tell. All the women I saw on this walk were working. They were cleaning and cooking and carrying and fixing. The men, on the other hand, were playing chess and playing cards and drinking and hanging out with their friends. They were dirty and unkempt and fat and unpleasant. The little boys were evil little monsters interested in breaking things and killing things. What’s the attraction? Why are women interested in men at all? I’d get it if the men were rich. If the men worked and made a lot of money, then I get it. But other than that, there’s nothing worthwhile or attractive there.

In a very odd twist, this group of eleven bird-killing boys suddenly showed up in the restaurant where I was having dinner (that’s how I knew there were exactly eleven of them). They came in with an older man in some kind of uniform. This man settled all the boys down at three tables and then he ordered meals for all of them and then left. The boys were clearly ragamuffins of a sort. Half of them were barefoot. Their clothes were torn and somewhat dirty. If someone told me that they were all orphans living on the street, I’d have believed it. I had no way to get the details, but the man was clearly a member of some charitable group or was acting on his own to help these disadvantaged boys. In any event, the boys were very excited about this food to come. I watched them as I ate my dinner, trying to figure out what was going on. I kept hoping that one of the boys would show a hint of sensitivity and intelligence, but it didn’t happen. They all seemed like monsters to me. They were loud and aggressive. They threw things at each other. They hit each other. And when the meals came, they fought amongst themselves to be the first to get food. I kept hoping to see one boy push his plate across the table and give it to another boy to let him eat first. But it didn’t happen. They all pushed and shoved and elbowed each other as they fought to be first. The biggest and strongest boys got to eat first. The smallest and weakest boy got his food last, and you could see that he was close to tears as he worried that he wouldn’t get any food at all. It was a disturbing spectacle. I hoped that an adult would step in and establish some order and some manners. The man who paid for all the meals had left long ago. He left right after he paid. And the family that ran this restaurant did nothing to control the boys. And out on the street when these boys were trying to kill the birds, no one stepped in to stop them. And when I was walking down the street being tormented by large groups of boys, I kept hoping that an adult would intervene, but it never happened. Pure Lord of the Flies.

These aren’t new thoughts for me by any means. I’ve ended up more or less despising the little boys of every country I’ve ever visited. I just don’t like them. And I usually don’t think much of the men they grow up into either. It makes me wonder about the value of any kind of travel. The big lesson, as I’ve mentioned a few times already, is often that people from other countries come across badly. It could be the language barrier. It could be cultural misunderstandings. Whatever it is, I usually end up with rather a negative impression of just about everyone. I suppose I keep hoping that I will end up actually liking some group of people somewhere, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s not that this is a bad thing. It’s reality. And as such, it’s an important lesson to learn. It would be great to visit a country and come away thinking that the people were wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful, creative, and interesting. But it doesn’t work out that way. And you could argue that it’s important to know the truth. Then you aren’t being sentimental or deluded about how the world works.

In other, less depressing news, I also did some work on my smartphone case, and it looks like I will be ultimately successful. It’s crazy to spend so much time working on modifying an item that essentially came from the Indonesian equivalent of the dollar store, but it’s necessary. How necessary became apparent when I sat down at one of my usual juice stalls upon my return to the area around my hotel. They have low plastic lawn chairs, and you end up sitting in such a way that things tend to slip out of your pockets. Sure enough, I reached for my smartphone and to my horror discovered that it was gone. My pocket was empty! At first, I assumed that someone had picked my pocket during all the insanity in the market and in the neighborhood. But then I looked down and saw that my phone had slipped out of my pocket and fallen onto the ground beside the chair. That wasn’t the first time either. This has happened before while siting in this same type of chair, and I knew that if I didn’t find a new way of carrying my phone, I would eventually lose it. It wasn’t a question of if I would lose it but when. My new case to mount my phone on my belt isn’t perfect, but it is better than not having a phone at all. I have one more piece of sewing to do on it, and then I’ll be done.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01