Last Friday, my counterpart/caretaker at the university convinced me to take a ‘little trip’ out to a pesantren* in Bone regency for an English camp. On the map, it is something like a quarter of the distance to Tana Toraja. I was also told it would take three or four hours. Again, I found these two things, time and distance, seriously malleable to an Indonesian. The trip to Bone took around seven hours, with one stop for evening prayer and one stop for snacks. The last roads weren’t so bad until the last few kilometers. The last few kilometers was a two track built between rice paddies. The pesantren was in the middle of nowhere.
I was gifted the best room in the pesantren replete with air conditioning. I slept so nicely that I even missed the morning call to prayer. Nevertheless, I was first up in the morning for activities and did my schtick. I kept the kids laughing and gave away some books about US history, geography, and government, all in translation. The kids were happy, and I was tired out.
Afterwards, I was shown the promotional literature for the pesantren. The pictures included the benefactor, a VIP in Indonesia and a few foreigners. It was explained that the young gentleman was the son of Paul Wolfowitz, current head of the World Bank. He had visited some time ago with his mother. One of their donations produced the Mrs. Wolfowitz Reading Room. I have no idea what spurned Mrs. Wolfowitz and her son to hike out to the boondocks. Usually, diplomat types like to make their coming and going high-profile. I have a feeling they might cringe knowing they figure prominently in the brochure.
Another conversation with the English teacher ended up being the usual ‘tell me how to teach English’ chit-chat. A little bit more of talking with the instructor and he confided in me some thoughts you probably wouldn’t tell a stranger. I must have a face that is comforting.
Coming home, we dropped my houseboy, Safir, at his house and had a grand snack. The driver of the truck was not the best and I could natter on about how he swerved to hit dogs or tried to come as close to people on the road as possible with hitting them or how the horn and blinker never stopped, but I’ll just thank him for doing his job and getting to and fro in one piece.
I’ll toss up some photos after the first of the month. My friendly host on the internet is having some bandwidth problems (not due to me). I also got a nifty hat as a gift.
*pesantren – an Islamic boarding school for elementary school students
2 Comments
Wow, another 7 + hour bus ride across sulawesi. Makes my neck ache just thinking about it! You didn’t have to climb up any mountains to get there did you?
Across Sulawesi would have been much quicker. The roads were like the ones we took, only there weren’t so many great looking rocks… I still preferred the A/C bus up to Tana Toraja.