Monday, July 30, 2012

Back to Bali (By Myself)


Tentena Good-Bye


Family Farewell Pic


I’m typically not an emotional good-byer, but my final Tentena departure had some surprising moments.  One was when 4 different adults started to cry all at once as I was leaving.  None of them were me.  2 of them hadn’t even had that much contact with me. It sort of touched my heart.  Another was when Sondang agreed to hug me during her send off.  (Huge!)  A third was when I was sitting at the Makassar airport Starbucks, between my flights from Poso and to Bali, and I started to think about Sophie and all her moments of glory, and realized I was going to miss her and everything around her, a lot.  There’s nobody at home that agrees to consistently call me Putri Tentae Hanna (Princess Auntie Hanna), though when you think about it, it’s alarming that I’ve ever answered to anything less. 
Thanks, Elly, for all the WiFi
you provided for Jai & me!

Also, even though there’s still so much to be done with Lian and Mosintuwu and I am confident that our working relationship has a lot of life in it, it’s always strange to live a place unsure of if and when you will return to it again. 

Loka Pala Again


Now I’m back here where I started in Sue’s home of Loka Pala, mainly by myself again.  Sue was here for the first day and a half, but has since fled to South Bali to reunite with her new Jewish Chilean lover.  Everyone’s jealous.

I’ve been a bit sick since arrival so I’ve spent the past few days doing little else aside from poolside lounging, reading Game of Thrones, eating, strolling, and some lowkey yoga.  But, one HUGE development:  I got a pedicure!  I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dead skin come off of one person’s body before.  Astounding!


Also, I managed to make it out to a major cremation ceremony that happens here once every three years.  Or at least I sort of did, before I got hot and tired and decided I need to go find a refreshing juice drink.  Can you believe that these guys actually carry these behemoth creations on their shoulders??  







And Now It’s Over!


It’s a strange/exciting reality to face, but today this Indonesian whirlwind adventure is coming to an end.  I leave for the airport in 4 hours and after that, all the stands in the way of me and my cellphone service again is near 24 hours of travel.  For my SF loves, I’ll touch down there mid-afternoon on August 4th

Looking forward to all the reunions there are to be had and those reunions will start with you, Mama Bear!  See you at Tom Bradley so soon!  










To everyone else:  Thanks for reading! It's been a pleasure getting to document this time with all of you.  xx

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Children’s Festival! (Tentena, Week 7)




In honor of Indonesian Children’s Day, Lian and her Institute Mosintuwu network set out to put on a pretty impressive two-and-a-half-day long Children’s Festival here in Tentena this week.  Pulling in children from all 17 of the villages that Project Sophia has ever visited, 250 kids descended upon this little place this week to sleep in a mass dormitory, make books with Lexi, make kites with Jaime, learn about recycling with Lita, perform their traditional songs and dances, and peacefully interact in an interfaith setting.  

Welcoming ceremony

I made a conscious decision to keep my role in the Festival minimal.  I wanted to focus on my other work in my winding-down time here, so I can’t take credit for any of the successes of the event.  But I was there to participate and help out when needed, and there were some really wonderful moments.  Especially at the good-bye ceremony when we all got to do this Indonesian-version of the Horah together.  It was fun.  Though I seriously remain baffled as to why—in the midst of this space where previoulsy-engrossed-in-essential-civil-war sects of society had peacefully come together to share traditions—the thing people couldn’t get over were the white girls from America.  (See this news article where the only picture included is this really awful shot that doesn’t focus on the kids at all, but instead includes all three of us…wtf.)




Also really fun was the AMAZING dance party we had the last night post-clean up, after nearly everyone had gone home.  If I had done nothing this summer but rocked out for one night to Jessie J, Justin Beiber, and Lady Gaga on the open Children’s Festival stage with the ladies of Tentena…Dayeinu, it would’ve been enough.  

 More pictures:




Sophia in the Project Sophia Tent



Recycling Tent:
Pretty sure it was a first for a lot of these kids



Tentae Lexix:  Book making hero. 

We love book making!!


Talking Books!
(Where are you from? Says one face to the other...)

"I look like I've been doing Crack for two days." ~ Jaime

"Seriously.  What is wrong with my head?!" ~ Still Jaime

Raka & Lita man climate change.
Thanks, guys. 
No clue how Masna and the other Muslim participants were
able to Ramadan it up in the heat/with others eating around them. 

Kids Celebrating their Dance Competition Win



Meet Lexi/(Meet Mie)


Alexis Silent ‘S’


 Lexi Brayton, or Tentae Lexix as Sophie calls her, has a mortgage in Oakland and a dog named Lola Johnson, but that has not stopped her from descending upon this little community for her own 2-month span to take a mainstream life break like the rest of us and bask in her love of book-making and Indonesian music. 

Lexi more or less sums up the definition of badass.  Aside from being wonderfully creative when it comes to crafts for kids, she is an accomplished Gamalan player.  Gamalan—which I’m probably spelling wrong—is an instrument used in traditional Balinese music (duh).  After Tentae Lexix seemingly-unwillingly fell in love with the Balinese music community during her time at Colorado College, she spent 7 months of her life living in a small Balinese village, studying, and picking up the language.  As a result, she now speaks Indonesian better than anyone here (except for, of course, all of the Indonesians) and, five years after her first go, has returned to this country to maintain her ties to the culture and language.

With her, we are now an unstoppable Bouleh (“white person”) force of three.  I’m also thrilled for new Bay Area-based friends!  The first pictures I took of her happened to be while we were eating Mie Ayam (Noodle-Chicken Soup) at our favorite Mie Ayam Warung.  So along with meeting Lexi, you also get to meet Mie.  

Homemade noodles!


Tentena, Week 6

The Language I’m Really Trying to Learn Isn’t Indonesian At All, and Other Reasons why Lian’s a Super Smart Cookie 




For a second this week, I kind of hit a wall.  We returned from the Togeans to find that Lian’s resident 19-year-old nanny/cook, Eka, had left for Palu to unwillingly marry the father of her unborn child in attempts to uphold the honor of her family and self.  This was a tragedy for her and she had wept openly about in the weeks leading up to the event.  More importantly, though, it was a tragedy for me.  Eka’s an amazing cook and during the transition to the new lady, I spent three full days eating nothing but white rice, fried bananas, fish bones, and some curried jack fruit.   What I learned is that full belly starvation is real; I have no ability to sustain myself in the absence of veg and protein.  What I also learned is that if I want more veg and protein, I should just tell Lian and she’ll take care of it.  Really, Hanna, no one has time for your could-have-been-avoided-nutrient-deficient-emotional-meltodwns. 

Look: other people advocate against
women & children violence too!
We now have a selection of three different kinds of vegetables at every meal. 

To add to this, working through my survey results this week, trying get a grasp on the women’s attitudes towards DV and gender roles here, was overwhelming.  I kept trying to find a linear correlation amidst the scatter plot of answers I was visualizing but nothing was emerging.  Over 90% of the respondents believed that it is not okay for a husband to take out a bad day by physically hurting his wife, but over a quarter agreed or weren’t sure whether or not physical discipline could help bring order back to a marriage. 

Jaime’s doing a lot of reading up on DV law here this week via her favorite book in the world, Indonesian Law & Society (“favorite” as defined by a woman who brought Rethinking Negotiation Leadership 2.0 to the Togeans as her beach read), so the two of us have talked about what’s driven the thinking here.  She discovered that prior to 2004 (when an official DV law was enacted), any violence against women was treated as a crime against morality: on par with animal abuse, prostitution, gambling, etc.  To violate a woman’s safety, security, and liberty was not to violate universally determined human rights, but to instead violate a general code of conduct, a social order. 

With this things began to make more sense.  For the most part, women are in favor of birth control not because it’s indicative of personal liberty, body-ownership, and reproductive rights, they’re for it because they’ve been told that population control is good for society.  In fact, there are quite successful campaigns here advocating that “2 [kids] is enough,” and at 2.1, the fertility rate in Indonesia is the exact same as the States’.  No, a husband should not take his bad day out by physically hurting his wife—that’s not helpful and violence could lead to divorce (another deviation from order)—but a wife should also and absolutely be able to control her husband’s temper.  A good wife obeys her husband, she reports everything she does to him, and in return, should be protected by him.  Protection is important, and abused women should definitely be protected by law (Kita negara adalah negara hukum, “Our country is a country of law,” as many women have explained….ironic considering that Jaime and I frequently refer to this place as a lawless society) but less than half agreed that it’s actually okay for a woman who experiences DV to get a divorce. 

This adherence to the social order thing is an adherence to a thinking extraordinarily far removed from everything I know.  Much of it comes from the religious & government zealot education here that does nothing to encourage free and liberal thinking; everything to encourage patriarchy, conformity, and obedience.  That mindset is how you best integrate here and how you best survive.  People believe, quite unquestioningly, what they are told by leaders and I am flailing a bit in how you work within this to promote human safety and wellbeing.  Especially when I feel that, on one hand, maintenance of the social order here contributes to an unyielding amount of internalized and gender-based oppression and, on the other, that the disruption of social order here very recently resulted in a violent conflict that left many murdered and many more displaced. 

When I met with Lian to discuss next steps for me, she asked me to do another survey—this time for the religious leaders—assessing their feelings on DV.  I was pretty hesitant.  What good are these surveys bringing us?  I’m so perplexed by the inconsistency of answers, I’m not sure how they are helpful, and I don’t know what to do with them.  Some of it just seems like lip service.  I don’t even know where you start having a conversation about individual human rights amidst this extremely collectivistic thinking. 

"Candid" photo of me putting the finishing touches on survey 2.
Lian gave me a “welcome to my world” look and explained that she understood.  She, too, had been there.  She had gone off to school in Yokyakarta, been exposed to free thought, to personal and civil liberties, to the knowledge that the bible or qa’ran was not the ultimate charter on human rights, and had come back struggling to match those ideas to this society.  So when I cried out, it’s a totally different language!  She smiled and said, yes, it is, but through these surveys we’re learning to speak their language.  And she’s totally right.  The only way to truly have a conversation on gender-based violence in a place like Central Sulawesi is to find out how Central Sulawesians perceive the problem for themselves. 

Assessing Religious Leaders’ Attitudes on Domestic Violence Survey, here I come.



Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Lari-Lari Club

I don't want to talk about that bandana headband. 
I run here.  I look ridiculous doing it.  As consolation for the bewildered stares of the villagers as I spandex my way past them, I’ve begun to envision a day when one local will emerge from her home and wordlessly begin yogging with me.  Over time, others would join.  Like Forrest Gump leading a pack of strangers in a joint purusit of endurance and wellbeing, I, too, would inspire an entire community to revolutionize the way they care for themselves.

This week my Gump dream was realized.  Or at least it would’ve been if everyone huffing along with Forrest had been 8 and under and demanded he hold their hand the whole time, sometimes needing to be carried.  Can’t say that 4 year-old-Sophie and her neighborhood friends are the best pacers I’ve ever had (man are those legs little!), but running with a bunch of actually-overjoyed children is really, really cute. 

Jaime snapped some shots of the Lari-Lari (running) club from Lian’s porch when we took a pit stop between laps around the hood. 

Serious meeting about whether or not everyone was up for another lap.
Only after I saw this picture did I realize that my shirt was stuffed into my
sports bra.  When will I learn to dress appropriately in public? 

And we're off!  Check out Sophie's little green velcro addidases blasting
off and try not to die over her cuteness. 




Wednesday, July 11, 2012

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 27th.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Togean Islands, Week 5 (Part 1)


The Prettiest Place You’ve Never Heard Of:  A Mixed Review

This week Sue, Jaime, and I rode in a car for 7 hours, on a ferry for 4, and on a separate boat for another 1 to make it to the Togean Island of Kadiri, a white-sand-utopian-feeling-heaven located just south of the Equator.  The whole way there we sweat profusely and smelled awful, but the second we arrived we were like, Yes.

Here are some reasons why: 







Regular nightly ritual of watching sunset with all other island-goers
at the end of the pier. 
Kadiri Sunset. 
According to my Lonely Planet Guide, the Togean Islands are the only place in Indonesia where you can find atoll, barrier, and fringing reefs in one location.  It has over 500 types of coral and 600 types of reef fish species.  Tourists from at least 6 different European countries, Australia, and Argentina.  It’s the sort of place where you sit idly for hours, absorbed in the beauty, thanking whatever higher powers you can think of for the fact that you’re alive and mobile enough to make it to such a majestic land.  I snorkled everyday and the second I’d put my head in the water, it felt like I was in a completely separate world.  The sea was so calm and the visibility so clear, I’d find myself floating/swimming for hours, staring at the ocean floor below me, the reefs next to me, and all the eccentrically colored things existing on them, feeling so amazed and so happy. Unfortunately for everyone, though, I had no means to take pictures under water.  I also, for the first time ever, scuba dived (scuba dove?) and took no pictures of that, either.  But to sum up the experience for you: I am now an underwater pro. 

On Thursday, the three of us, along with Saul, the British, 45-year-old aspiring writer, and Winni & Melanie, the German recent college grads went on an all day snorkeling extravaganza.  It was a really fun day and I took pictures for your viewing enjoyment.  

Group shot!
Bajo hut in this clearly marked plot of land. 


What's for lunch?!

Oh, rice. 

There was literally nothing cool about Winni's hat.  

This pose was no accident, ladies. 


Friendship!

But then after that, some things started to not go great.

Coming up in Part 2:  The 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.