Togean Islands, Week 5 (Part 2)

The Really Long Story of the Time I Got Two Men Fired, Made a New Friend and then Lost Him, Kind of Practiced Restorative Justice, and Late Night Sailed in a Single File Wooden Canoe by the Light of an iPhone During the Course of 48 hours. 

When we first arrived at the Kadidiri Paradise Resort we were particularly excited by our given cabin’s unique bathroom, which was carved out of a rock cove.  We were like: This is perfect!  This is what paradise looks like.  When the door to the bathroom didn’t shut properly, we barely flinched because, hey, we’re a friendly bunch.  No big D if we can’t get total privacy from each other while showering or toileting.  We rough it!  Had it not been for the bats that flew out of the rock cove and into our room during hour one of us being there, we probably wouldn’t have even thought about finding makeshift ways to keep the door closed at all.  

Rock Cove me. 

No one at the resort bothered to mention to us, though, that our rustic litle “rock cove” was really just an open pathway to the jungle behind us and in actuality, anyone stealth enough to get back there could freely cruise by and check us out while we were showering, or even walk right into our room while we were out or sleeping if we didn’t make sure to lock the bathroom door.  This fact was made glaringly apparent to us, however, when we returned home from our snorkel adventure on day three to find that all the cash I had brought with me for the trip, around 3 million rupiah, or $320, was gone. 

Upon discovering the theft, I immediately went to the manager of the resort to tell him what had happened.  Andriyus, or Andri to friends, was the 22-year-old half Chinese-half Indonesian very-smart-but-very-inexperienced kid left in charge of running his family’s resort while his family was god-knows whereelse not caring.  His reaction was hardly satisfying.  He looked kind of confused, but mostly unphased, and cooly came back with us to the room to confirm that yep, looked like I had indeed been robbed.  He offerred some hesitant condolences: he was sorry, but didn’t we see the signs telling us the hotel was not responsible for stolen items?  We could’ve put our stuff in the safe box.  (WHAT SAFE BOX!)

After that I started to cry a little bit.  I was mad at myself for leaving my money alone. I was mad at the Togean Islands for violating my personal property.  I was obviously mad at colonialism for propogating oppression.  I was REALLY mad at the resort for not caring enough.  I yelled at no one in particular for a while, drugged myself with two benadryl, and went to sleep resolving that if I had any chance of getting my insurance to reimburse me, I would have to find a way to file a police report. 

Andri during happier times. 

The next day, our last full one on the island, I told Andri I needed someone to take me to the nearest police station on the island of Wakai.  He wasn’t too excited.  The police, he said, wouldn’t care; they definitely wouldn’t find my money.  They’d also make me pay them for even drawing up a document.  That’s extortion, I said.  Would they not understand that I was coming to report I no longer had any money?  He shrugged, “That’s not how it works here.” 

Despite the apparent apathy, though, he agreed to take me over later in the afternoon, when we could be sure there would at least be electricity available.  So at 4:30 with a looming thunderstorm ahead of us, Andri, boat driver Mamet, and I climbed into a single file, long, wooden, motorized, canoe and set off on the 30-minute ride to Wakai. 

On the way over a friendship was born.  Andri and I talked the whole time. He had gone to college in Surabaya and studied law.  He was interested in going to business school in America, actually in San Francisco, and was already thinking about the GMAT.  We talked about the difficulties of achieving justice in Indonesian society, the need for education, the American pursuit of happiness, the excessive amounts of liter, and the problem with the carbo-heavy Indo diet.  I started to like him so much and things no longer felt that bad.  I explained to him that given the circumstances, I believed that he should be the one to pay the approximate $10 for the police report.  After consideration, he agreed.  He then revealed that he believed he knew who had taken the money—a construction worker at Kadidiri Paradise who had failed to show up for work that morning. 

"Andri, take my picture of me looking sad because all of
my money is gone."

When we arrived in Wakai the two of us walked through town to the police station.  Since no one was there when we got there—why would they be?—Andri suggested we might just drop by the house of the construction worker nearby and confront him. You want to go to his house? I slowly spelled out.  Yea, Andri replied.  Why not?  Explain we’re going to the police and give him a chance to confess.  So five minutes later I found myself removing my shoes (customary signs of respect are always important in accusatory moments such as these) and standing barefoot in the most dilapidated of ramshackle homes, with my arms crossed, looking sternly on as an Indonesian confrontation ensued.  While I could barely understand what was being said, I could quite clearly hear the sounds of children crying behind a sheet separating us from them in another room; I could clearly see the splinterring, soping wood holding up the barely functional home on stilts; I could clearly tell that this man was flat out denying any wrong doing and was not pleased with our abrupt allegations.

We left in peace, but not before an unconvinced Andri told the suspect not to come back to work.  And not before I—even still feeling violated and angry and totally unsure of his guilt—understood in extensive ways that that man unquestionably needed that $300 more than I. 

As we set off again towards the police station it started to rain hard.  The station was still empty so we continued on, through the streets, fairly drenched, hoping to run into an officer.  Prayer time was coming up on the Muslim island and there were few people around to ask for help but somehow, fifteen minutes later, I found myself sitting on some regal, Persian looking chairs in an otherwise sparse, lime-green painted living room, listening as Andri explained my story to two Muslim women and their police officer tenant.  The rest was sort of pleasant.  It took a little while for everything to be drawn up, but Andri hooked me up with some wifi and I got to sit and read my emails from the week as he took care of essentially everything for me.  Also, the Muslim women told me they thought I was pretty.  At 9 pm, I left the home, got on the back of an awaiting motorbike, and traveled in the darkness back to the Wakai beach where Mamet was dutifully ready to greet Andri and me and guide us back to the canoe.   And aside from a brief glitch mid-trip back to Kadiri where a piece of trash stalled the engine (“This is why I hate littering,” Andri said) our iPhone-lit sail back to the island was post-the rainstorm, calm, and beautiful too. 

When I got back to Kadidiri it was momentarily wonderful.  All of my Westerner friends that I had made in the past week were together in the main dining hall, socializing, and playing games, and they gave a big cheer when I walked in, safe, after having seen me set sail into the rainy abyss five hours earlier.  Aside from Jaime and Sue, they included:  Belgian Carl and his 22-year-old daughter, Lisa; the Dutch girls Monique & Ava; British Middle Aged Saul; German young couple Winni & Melanie; The gorgeous Argentinians and the two very French Parisians; Swedish Dive Master Caroline and Canadian Dive Instructor James; Dutch solo middle aged traveler, John; the Australian older couple; and British recently-recovered-from-the-Bends Danny.  Someone also brought out some dinner that they had saved for me and everyone sat around to eat again with me and hear about my afternoon abroad.  Because many of us had plans to leave the next day, the local liquor, Arak, flowed freely and everyone seemed drunk and merry. 

Unfortunately, some of us got a little too drunk and merry.  Shortly after the power on the island had been shut off and Sue and I had retreated back to our room, we were packing our bags and getting ready for bed via flashlight when we heard some slurred speech outside our cabin.  Sue came to the door to find one of the Kadidiri Paradise staff members mumbling half Indonesian/half English nonsense about having come to “stand guard” for us.  It’s okay, he said, he’d be the police.  Sue was polite.  No, she said, no thanks.  Yes, he insisted.  He could come in and stand guard.  He made a move to come in.  Sue remained polite.  No, no, we were fine.  Please go home.  He wasn’t hearing it.  He would stand on the porch.  He would stay there for us. 

Our porch/scene of the crime. 

For a second I sat on the floor behind her, calmly folding up my clothes and letting her—a lady much more knowledge about how to engage in this country than I—handle the situation.  But after about approximately a minute, I was no longer having it.  It was dark, it was rainy, Jaime was not yet back and I was uninterested in having her return to a stranger sitting on our porch in the nighttime.  The threat of bodily harm was minimal.  This man was 100 lbs and was too drunk to form a full sentence.  There were two of us, one of him, and I had peper spray that at that point, I had no reservations about using.  But the invasion was real.  I had already had one srange individual violate my space on the island in the past 24 hours and I had zero interest in having another do it again.  Oh, you just want to casually sit directly outside our window while we sleep strange, foreign, highly intoxicated adult male? I think I’ll pass. 

At that moment Jaime arrived, I pulled her inside the room, slammed the door in the guy’s face, locked it, and yelled that he needed to leave.  I stay, he said.  YOU NEED TO GO, NOW.  We heard him slink away, victory felt achieved, and we all climbed into bed and began to work towards sleep.  But then Jaime sat up and declared that she had left her laptop charging in the main dining hall.  I told her I would go with her to retrieve it.  Though everyting felt okay at first when we got there and discovered it had not yet been stolen, when we saw the drunk staff member sitting on a chair, on the beach, alone in the rain during our walk back, and he called out to us, confidence was lost.  He followed us to our room and again began with his declarations of standing guard.  Go away.  I screamed through our lock door.  Go the fuck away.  I hate you.    

In continuing with tradition, I drugged myself with two benadryl and fell asleep thrilled that my departure from Kadidiri Paradise was only hours away.    

When we walked into breakfast the next morning, we learned that the drunk staff member’s pursuits had not ended with us.  After stopping by our cabin for his visits, he had descended upon the Belgians, spent awhile screaming out Lisa’s name from outside, and then actually let himself into their room and stood there creepily while they slept until Lisa awoke and found him there and screamed. 

Additionally, everything logistically seemed to be running amok at the resort.  There were 10 of us needing to eat breakfast before departing on a boat to Wakai in 45 minutes and a plate was coming out from the kitchen about once every 15.  Everyone needed to pay and there was only one staff member there with messy records trying to individually sort all of us out, accepting cash only.  Everyone with a credit card had to wait for Andri and he was nowhere to be found.  The dive instructors were uninformed and confused and people were not being charged for their dives.  As the disorderly conduct started to exacerbate my grumpy mood and poor feelings of the Kadidiri Paradise experience, I started to feel more and more like I should receive compensation for my struggles.  This was first compounded by the other guests who kept encouraging me to demand to pay less.  Then, as I was sitting next to the very hung over and nearly asleep diving instructor James, an Indonesian man who looked familiar stormed by and locked eyes with me sort of threateningly.  It took me a second to realize it was the accused construction worker. 

James!  I said, That’s the man who took my money!  Allegedly took your money, he corrected.  And yea, he said, uninterested.  “He’s here and really angry.  I don’t really know why he came.  There was a lot of yelling.” In that moment Andri finally appeared with one other resort worker named Farid and the drunk staff member from the night before.  They were escorting him in sort of a civilian’s arrest hold and they marched him in with alacrity and purpose, brought him over to Lisa and said: Is this the man who was in your room?  Lisa shook her head nervously and diplomatically said she didn’t know, it was dark.  She directed them to me.  Was this him?  Andri asked.  I was less inhibited.  Yep.

And with that, I had contributed to the firing of two Kadiri Paradise Resort employees in two days. 

At that point it was time to go and we all climbed into the boat to Wakai with Andri carrying his credit card machine, finally ready to collect payment.  By the time he got to me we were already at Wakai and though I knew he had been through a lot, so I had.  Andri, I said, I want you to know how much I appreciate your help, but I can’t pay you all the money.  I’m sorry I said, but your staff member robbed me.  I no longer have it available.  I offered to pay 75% of what was owed:  essentially asking to be be exempt from my third of the hotel room for the two nights of trouble since Jaime and Sue had already paid.  He said aboslutely not.  He could not aford that, no way.  Had he known I would try to do this he would’ve never helped me.  Things were getting heated.  “This is not how this works here!”  He cried.  How what works?? I shot back.  Customer service!  Ethical business principles!  Your staff member robbed me!  Another one harassed me!  I’m asking you to exercise some empathy.  He refused to budge.  “You don’t know my problems,” he said. I was furious.  After ten minutes of static arguing, and full awareness that my new found friendship had crumbled before my eyes, I nearly threw my debit card at his face and as he charged it in full and I muttered something about writing him a horrible review. 

I turned to walk away and suddenly a huge commotion broke out behind me.  Both the fired construction worker and drunk staff member had appeared on Wakai and had lunged themselves at Andri.  Everyone standing on the dock had circled around or tried to intervene.  People were screaming.  I was dumbfounded.  How had it happened that I was somehow involved in all of this?  Someone standing close to me commented on how they would’ve never attacked him if it weren’t for the fact that he was Chinese.  Racism’s everywhere.  I suddenly felt so awful about the ways in which I had contributed to Andri’s stress.  I did like him so much, and didn’t feel that he deserved all of this.  I walked up to him and tried to say I was sorry but he brushed me off and walked away.  My heart broke.  I boarded the public ferry to Ampana exhausted and fed up with the uselessness of my moral compass.    

It was 10 am on Saturday at that point and for a little while, I exercised hope that the trip was almost all over.  Sadly, though, that was not to be the case.  The ferry to Ampana that was supposed to take 4 hours took 8.  The driver sent from Tentena to meet us at the port never arrived.  The new drivers we found in Ampana could not locate any Petrol.  The only ATM machines that we all needed to access because were out of cash were broken.  I only had crackers to eat.  When I finally pulled up to my hotel at 4 in the morning on Sunday I promised myself once more that never, ever, ever again will I leave the calm of Tentena.  Let’s see if I can hold true to that until my official departure back to Bali (by myself) on July 27^th.