This is the second remote tropical island that I've lived on in the past 15 years - the other one was New Guinea (considerably more remote than Sumbawa). I stayed in New Guinea for nine years, and I've been here for 16 months and would like to stay for years if this teaching position works out. So it should be apparent that I enjoy living on remote tropical islands. But...
There are times when I would like to be back in San Francisco or Chicago or even Bali. When is a tropical island too remote?
When...
1. you want a double cheeseburger and a large order of fries from McDonalds.
2. you have an overwhelming hardware store attack (this may only be understood by men).
3. you've read each of the books in your personal library three times.
4. you'd like to talk to someone who speaks English and does not work with you.
5. you'd like to have a discussion with someone who reads non-fiction books.
6. you'd sell your youngest child for a container of fresh pasteurized milk.
7. you'd like to buy a few packs of baseball cards to see if you can get an Albert Pujols.
8. reading a Sunday Times in bed seems like the height of living.
9. having a telephone in your house seems really important.
10. you can forget that Bush is still the president of the United States.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Monday, November 01, 2004
Definitions and Parameters
Actually, the title of this blog, Life in the Tropics, is probably a bit too broad for what I am actually writing about – well, planning on writing about since I really haven’t done much writing since I started this as an experiment last month. The topic is analogous to saying that I’m writing about Life in America. America is a large country with a diverse population and diverse climates and environments. If, for instance, I lived in Chicago, I would write something quite different than if I lived in Florida. Similarly, if I lived in a ritzy suburb of New York, I would write something significantly different than if I lived in a trailer park in Rohnert Park outside of San Francisco.
Ok. Now back to the tropics. If I lived in Jakarta with a population of over 10 million, that’s in the tropical zone, but it’s significantly different than living on a remote (which is how Sumbawa and the neighboring islands are sometimes referred to) island with a total population of 800,000. Then, too, there are the other countries in this part of the world like Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore (which I have an intense desire to visit right now for some reason). And, there are tropical areas in other parts of the world than Southeast Asia – the Caribbean for instance.
So to get this more precise. This blog is mainly about Life on a Tropical Island. The connotations that go with that phrase mirror what I am trying to write about: living on a tropical island, rural life, the life of a bule (white person) in Indonesia. Just what are the associations that stick to the phrase “life on a tropical island?” Sunshine, blue water, rolling white waves crashing on a white sand beach, wispy clouds painted on a pale blue sky, heat, brown-skinned natives, coconut trees swaying in a gentle breeze, tropical sex.
Now that the boundaries are somewhat set, let’s see what comes next.
Ok. Now back to the tropics. If I lived in Jakarta with a population of over 10 million, that’s in the tropical zone, but it’s significantly different than living on a remote (which is how Sumbawa and the neighboring islands are sometimes referred to) island with a total population of 800,000. Then, too, there are the other countries in this part of the world like Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore (which I have an intense desire to visit right now for some reason). And, there are tropical areas in other parts of the world than Southeast Asia – the Caribbean for instance.
So to get this more precise. This blog is mainly about Life on a Tropical Island. The connotations that go with that phrase mirror what I am trying to write about: living on a tropical island, rural life, the life of a bule (white person) in Indonesia. Just what are the associations that stick to the phrase “life on a tropical island?” Sunshine, blue water, rolling white waves crashing on a white sand beach, wispy clouds painted on a pale blue sky, heat, brown-skinned natives, coconut trees swaying in a gentle breeze, tropical sex.
Now that the boundaries are somewhat set, let’s see what comes next.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Islands, Paradise and Change
In the last few months, two significant personal anniversaries passed: my 55th birthday and the 15th anniversary of the beginning of my life as an expatriate. When I turned 40 (one of those landmark birth dates like 21, 30, and 50), my life was already spinning on an orbit that I hadn’t planned – my son had left my home to finish his senior year in high school with his mother, my third wife had left me for a career free from my less than supportive comments, and I had been offered a job teaching in a small international school in the highlands of New Guinea where an American mining company had carved out a small town as the base for their gold and copper operations. With my personal life in disarray, a move to a remote island seemed like a sign from the heavens. I took Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West, young man!” to heart in spite of being somewhat past what I considered to be the “young man” years, and I set off for life in the jungle.
When the two anniversaries arrived recently, I was wrapped up in the daily activities of my current teaching job on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia – yet another mining company. It was only with the discovery of a long-forgotten book, Savage New Guinea that I began to reflect on the past 55 and 15 years of my life. The book has an inscription from an old colleague from my days as a graduate student in anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. The short inscription reads, “ A present for Bruce from Lee, fellow travelers.” Lee and I had done fieldwork in the same area during the same period in a rural, mountain area in northern California. Upon discovering the book, I realized that I had never finished reading it, and began to do so.
The Danish author, Jens Bjerre, was a former newspaper editor who reinvented himself as an explorer. Bjerre’s New Guinea book, published in 1964, is amply illustrated with color photographs of tribal residents of the highlands. The book’s dustcover notes that Bjerre “…often shares their life, sleeps in their huts and eats their food…the expedition was twice attached by armed natives and Jens Bjerre himself was wounded by an arrow.” As I read the dustcover, I could remember the bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley where Lee and I had scouted for books before my move to the jungle. This one seemed lurid enough to give me something to compare my future experiences to.
The first chapter of the book starts, as do many travel books, not in the destination, but in the process of reaching the destination. Thus, we get a chapter on the “South Seas paradise” of Tahiti that Bjerre notes is renowned as the “island of love.” Bjerre treats the reader to a description of the treats awaiting the intrepid traveler with the brown-skinned beauties. (Actually he comments that the “pure Tahitian” women is not beautiful at all, but the women who are a mix of Chinese and Polynesian are the most beautiful women in the world.) Bjerre’s “anthropological” descriptions of the Tahitian woman note that they are childlike in their simplicity, easily amused, faithful for the time that they are with a partner, but ready to move on to another partner when the time comes. He recounts his meeting with an elderly American businessman who took up with a vahine and sold his business in the States so that he could live in bliss in paradise. The rest of the book describes his encounters with various tribes in the highlands of New Guinea.
The reason that I bring Bjerre’s book up is more the first chapter than the rest of the book. It is the notion of paradise, free love, the simplicity of life in the tropics that most interests me about Bjerre’s writing. For these are some of the same notions that I held, in spite of my anthropological training, when I first came to Irian Jaya, and then just four months later to the island of Bali – another “paradise” (often mistaken in popular myth as being in the South Pacific). I’ll come back to a few more of Bjerre’s comments later in this article. For now, I want to discuss the concept of tropical paradise.
I consider these topics while sitting under a makeshift shelter of a few bamboo poles and a piece of plastic tarp on the back of my land in Sumbawa while watching my construction crew work on finishing my new house – my latest house – the last house. A troop of monkeys screeches in the bush off to the right that borders our property. A half dozen eagles float in the clear sky looking for meal. A southern wind cools me as the sun travels through the sky up to its noon position. Sumbawa is one more island that presents itself as a paradise. But what is paradise for the foreigner? This certainly isn’t the island of love that Bjerre wrote about – no bare-breasted Tahitian vahines flirting with the foreigners. Sumbawa isn’t even Bali, another of the fabled islands of love with bare-breasted Balinese women gazing doe-eyed at the gaping foreigner.
So what is it that makes a paradise for the Westerner? Let’s make a list: warm weather – the tropics; palm trees, coral reefs, warm seas.
I’ll finish this later in the week.
When the two anniversaries arrived recently, I was wrapped up in the daily activities of my current teaching job on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia – yet another mining company. It was only with the discovery of a long-forgotten book, Savage New Guinea that I began to reflect on the past 55 and 15 years of my life. The book has an inscription from an old colleague from my days as a graduate student in anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. The short inscription reads, “ A present for Bruce from Lee, fellow travelers.” Lee and I had done fieldwork in the same area during the same period in a rural, mountain area in northern California. Upon discovering the book, I realized that I had never finished reading it, and began to do so.
The Danish author, Jens Bjerre, was a former newspaper editor who reinvented himself as an explorer. Bjerre’s New Guinea book, published in 1964, is amply illustrated with color photographs of tribal residents of the highlands. The book’s dustcover notes that Bjerre “…often shares their life, sleeps in their huts and eats their food…the expedition was twice attached by armed natives and Jens Bjerre himself was wounded by an arrow.” As I read the dustcover, I could remember the bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley where Lee and I had scouted for books before my move to the jungle. This one seemed lurid enough to give me something to compare my future experiences to.
The first chapter of the book starts, as do many travel books, not in the destination, but in the process of reaching the destination. Thus, we get a chapter on the “South Seas paradise” of Tahiti that Bjerre notes is renowned as the “island of love.” Bjerre treats the reader to a description of the treats awaiting the intrepid traveler with the brown-skinned beauties. (Actually he comments that the “pure Tahitian” women is not beautiful at all, but the women who are a mix of Chinese and Polynesian are the most beautiful women in the world.) Bjerre’s “anthropological” descriptions of the Tahitian woman note that they are childlike in their simplicity, easily amused, faithful for the time that they are with a partner, but ready to move on to another partner when the time comes. He recounts his meeting with an elderly American businessman who took up with a vahine and sold his business in the States so that he could live in bliss in paradise. The rest of the book describes his encounters with various tribes in the highlands of New Guinea.
The reason that I bring Bjerre’s book up is more the first chapter than the rest of the book. It is the notion of paradise, free love, the simplicity of life in the tropics that most interests me about Bjerre’s writing. For these are some of the same notions that I held, in spite of my anthropological training, when I first came to Irian Jaya, and then just four months later to the island of Bali – another “paradise” (often mistaken in popular myth as being in the South Pacific). I’ll come back to a few more of Bjerre’s comments later in this article. For now, I want to discuss the concept of tropical paradise.
I consider these topics while sitting under a makeshift shelter of a few bamboo poles and a piece of plastic tarp on the back of my land in Sumbawa while watching my construction crew work on finishing my new house – my latest house – the last house. A troop of monkeys screeches in the bush off to the right that borders our property. A half dozen eagles float in the clear sky looking for meal. A southern wind cools me as the sun travels through the sky up to its noon position. Sumbawa is one more island that presents itself as a paradise. But what is paradise for the foreigner? This certainly isn’t the island of love that Bjerre wrote about – no bare-breasted Tahitian vahines flirting with the foreigners. Sumbawa isn’t even Bali, another of the fabled islands of love with bare-breasted Balinese women gazing doe-eyed at the gaping foreigner.
So what is it that makes a paradise for the Westerner? Let’s make a list: warm weather – the tropics; palm trees, coral reefs, warm seas.
I’ll finish this later in the week.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Another Friday
I haven't had much time to post anything here during the week - just too busy as is usual. I wanted to write something about living in the tropics, but I just haven't been able to get around to it. At least it's Friday. Tomorrow is the last baseball game and then my time is my own again for another year, or until I leave here.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
The Last Baseball Game
Sometimes life in the tropics is very similar to life in the US. You have barbeques with friends, go to birthdays, have Friday drinks, and watch little league baseball on Saturday. Today is the last day of the season form my Giants who are without a win. Have to run.
Friday, August 27, 2004
A new skin
I'm testing a new skin here to see how it works. I think that I have to play with the dimensions of the photographs first and then go from there
Blogs, Houses and Time
So this is the second post on my blog. I spent some time yesterday checking out different blogs that I should have spent doing work, but I can't work all the time.
I went to check out the house yesterday and found out that they, indeed, had installed a toilet in the kid's bathroom. Just that the toilet is primarly plastic and will last about two minutes with my four rambunctious kids. The ruang tamu (literally guest room) where guests are entertained when they visit has a large crack in the north wall and we haven't even moved into the house yet. The roof, on the other hand, is almost done, and if anyone showed up who felt like working for more than 10 minutes at a time, they could finish the roof in a few hours. So we are plodding along at a snail's pace still, and each day that passes just increases the tension between my wife and me about "the house," as we usually refer to it.
This is, in part, one of those cross-cultural things that no matter how long I live here, I will never transcend - I have a Western sense of time and work, my wife has an Indonesian sense. There is just something about a work crew going as slow as possible that grates against me - probably all those years that I worked in a factory in Chicago before I became a teacher and anthropologist.
I have to get ready for class.
I went to check out the house yesterday and found out that they, indeed, had installed a toilet in the kid's bathroom. Just that the toilet is primarly plastic and will last about two minutes with my four rambunctious kids. The ruang tamu (literally guest room) where guests are entertained when they visit has a large crack in the north wall and we haven't even moved into the house yet. The roof, on the other hand, is almost done, and if anyone showed up who felt like working for more than 10 minutes at a time, they could finish the roof in a few hours. So we are plodding along at a snail's pace still, and each day that passes just increases the tension between my wife and me about "the house," as we usually refer to it.
This is, in part, one of those cross-cultural things that no matter how long I live here, I will never transcend - I have a Western sense of time and work, my wife has an Indonesian sense. There is just something about a work crew going as slow as possible that grates against me - probably all those years that I worked in a factory in Chicago before I became a teacher and anthropologist.
I have to get ready for class.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Welcome to Life in the Tropics
Hi. I've been reading blogs for the past few days from my old city of Chicago and thought that I would see what it was like to write a blog. I have several websites where I can post anything that I want, but this is something new and as I make my living teaching computer applications, I'm up for a test. More later.
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