Campaign camouflaged as culture expo

Last weekend I followed a trail of motorbike and truck passengers marked by their bright orange t-shirts to a huge cultural event at a park in Jambi (I was most surprised to find out there actually is a park here!!  It is actually really nice looking too, with traditional houses from every district of Jambi Province).  Well, the event turned out to be a Javanese cultural exposition put on by the Jambi-Java Friendship Group and it featured dance and musical performances from all over Java, and a few from Sumatra.  
 Then the political connection came in.  Not surprisingly, the head of this friendship group is also running for Deputy Governor in next spring’s gubernatorial election.  Programs for the event were passed out all over- but used by most people as fans instead of reading material- and featured his profile on the front and back cover with the inside detailing all of the good works he has done for Jambi.  There was no direct mention of the campaign though, just showing him as an exemplary public figure with his name repeated over and over in large font (name recognition being key in Indonesian elections).  And of course, the best part, every attendee received a complimentary t-shirt for showing up, in the beautiful colors of bright orange with bright blue trim.  I definitely grabbed one for myself, hoping to eventually be able to recount the campaign period in t-shirts.

A truck of onlookers resting in the shade with their new multi-purpose t-shirts.

Baby passed out from the heat and excitement on a bed of newspaper and said multi-purpose t-shirt.

Safe, responsible sex in Indonesia

In a recent casual chat with Sumi about sexual health in Jambi- a daily topic of conversation for us but this time sparked by the approaching World HIV/AIDS Day- the issue of teaching women the importance of condoms and how to use them came up.  She explained how PKBI uses dildos to demonstrate how to correctly put a condom on.  So then I mentioned how in the U.S., sex-ed teachers sometimes use a banana for simulating the real thing in demonstrations.  Her reply to this bit of information shocked me into disbelief when she said that they also used to use bananas but later found out that method had given the wrong impression when it was reported that village women were putting condoms on bananas right before have sex with their unprotected husbands!!  Yes, the condoms were on the bananas while the couples were doing it.  I felt like I had heard this as a joke somewhere before so I interrogated her as to who she heard this from and when it was supposedly happening.  It was in fact just 3-5 years ago and she heard it directly from the concerned women village leaders.  While Sumi attributed this behavior to the lack of general education in Sumatran villages, I can also somewhat understand it since women are much more familiar with the bananas that abound plentifully rather than the male anatomy.  Thankfully this potentially problematic behavior was corrected and PKBI Jambi has purchased a collection of dildos to prevent future miscommunications.

Ahh beautiful Washington apples!

Just had to give a shout out to Washington and its obviously world class apples.  Brightened my day when I found these at a market in a small town in North Sulawesi.

Cinema diplomacy failing?

With the movies at the local theatre only $1 on weeknights it has quickly turned into a fun, budget friendly, language/culture lesson for me.  The theatre actually frequently has American movies passing through- always at least a year after they came out in the US- and after seeing a couple I think I have figured out why the American stereotype here is so extremely Hollywood-centered.  In a city that gets very few, if any, tourists each year and is obviously outside of the US Embassy’s Public Diplomacy reaches, these cheap movies that make it to the theatre in Sumatra are really one of very few representations of American culture and people.

The last film I saw called Redline came out, unnoticed by me, in the US in 2007 and is basically an even trashier version of Too Fast Too Furious (I didn’t think that was even possible).  But to give you an idea, the IMDB summary says: “A gorgeous young automobile fanatic--and front to the hottest unsigned band on the West coast--finds herself caught up in illegal drag-racing competitions organized by exotic car fanatics.”  The gratuitous overload of skimpy clothes and cheesy lines is really just a cheap rendition of someone’s shallow fantasy.  This can be harmless, but the significance here is that it is probably being shared with millions of foreigners and some of those will never experience the opportunity to have those images challenged.  So it develops into a permanent stereotype and in this conservative Muslim culture I live in, it helps foster an environment where I am always aware of how my behavior and clothing can be interpreted.

Technologically challenged in the third world

Busy day in the office today, while I was working on Letters of Inquiry for funding to start a Community Health Based Management initiative in Padang, I also had to help my coworkers with their projects.  I am really seeing how technology impacts the work of NGOs in the developing world, not just as a vital tool but also a source of frustration and stumbling blocks.  While I was working on grant proposals, my boss Helfi and Sumi were busy compiling the data they collected from a survey on drug use in Jambi.  It really showed how having local people on the ground able to carry out projects is only half the work.  They also need to be able to compile the data they acquire on a laptop (assuming they can afford one), and then enter all the information into a program (Microsoft) that is not only challenging for many Americans, but also stumps them with all of its English commands.  These English commands stump them on everything from computer virus warnings to editing text alignment.  I ended up having to spend a surprising amount of time explaining how to enter data in Excel, create graphs from that data, and then move the finally successful graphs into the Word document they were working on to present their data results to local government offices.  Simple challenges like that are all it takes to slow down progress and inhibit efficiency but in the US we take such office capabilities for granted.  Part of my job here is capacity building so I make an effort not to just fix problems myself but show them how to do it themselves, it takes time but short of giving a comprehensive lesson on Microsoft Office its seems the most helpful.

Fried chicken and rice?

KFC is everywhere here but having taken into account local culinary tastes, the fried chicken is served with a mound of white rice (nasi) and hot sauce

Narcotic prevention and cash handouts

This morning I joined Sumi and the rest of the SIKOK staff in going to a conference about narcotic use in Jambi. A delegation from the National Narcotics Commission had organized it at Jambi’s swankiest hotel and representatives from the community joined to discuss the current situation and potential methods for drug use prevention ad rehabilitation. I thought it notable that the opening ceremony was marked by everyone standing to sing the national anthem- and then pray together. While the subject was interesting- Jambi City turns out to have the 6th highest population percentage of drug users in Indonesia!- I went back to the office after lunch to work on grant proposals.

This decision meant that I missed the conference’s conclusion when every participant received 100,000 rupiah (about $10) for attending! (That is about three days of spending money for me here so it’s a lot!) This last step in a series of perplexing money handouts is starting to give me a better idea how money politics is so entrenched in Indonesian society. About a month ago I was unexpectedly given 100,000 rupiah for being a monitor at the leadership election for a national women’s organization. Then my staff all received the same amount after helping with last week’s film showing, a program that to me just seems like it should be part of our job. And today, attendees at a government-organized conference on narcotic prevention receive a small token of appreciation for sticking it out to the end of the day! I am going to have to find out now if people always expect this kind of reward for their “presence” and where else this goes on. If the public agrees with receiving this money for attending an informational conference on a subject they already work on, it seems logical they would expect to get money for showing up at a election rally for a candidate, whether or not they support them.