Saturday, September 26, 2009

Tidak, tidak, tidak: Lampang! (No, no, no, lampang!)


Are we heading home? I ask. Nanti (later) Is the response I get. The children need food.

We drive far away. I laugh at my insistent need to get things done, when I know this is enough. We go for babi guling at a grimy warung. I snap a couple shots (in case there was any doubt just how Indonesian I am eating these days) and watch a busload of tourists unload, and walk by without a glance. The kids hand me things to smell and taste. I like the slightly spicy fried bean crackers called lampang, I’m ok with the flavorless fried pig skin that acts as babi guling spoons, I devour the meat and start in on the nankat (jackfruit?) fruit soup eagerly. The yellow-brown broth is delicious, savory and sweet.

As I drink more and more, the broth slowly lowers. Finally I have to lower my head to the cup…allowing me to see the inch long tufts of thick pig whiskers attached to a large bit of pig meat that finally rose to the top of my soup cup. In my fearless mission to try it all for the last couple weeks, it’s the first time I am really, truly floored by nausea. I look again. Yes. Tufts, floating in a pool of green-brown savory broth. The smell of everything—the once delicious soup, the bits of nankat, the spicy meat, even the bland white rice--suddenly seem raw and clammy. I try not to think of the pig, or it's origins. But only think of it more. Snorting and moving...and...If not eating is rude, I imagine throwing up would ruin my “accepted” status with Oka’s children. As the room spins and my stomach churns, I sip on my Coke, I reach for more lampang, I laugh, I eat bits of white rice, I try not to glance at the butcher’s block at the front of the store where a woman hasn't stopped hacking at the steaming hot flesh of another pig.

I ask for more words and the distraction works. Oka’s children are all eager to teach a ton of new words: “Saya mao pergi ker pura”, bulon, bintang (they all laugh when it hits me that bintang, or star--we create little fists for "star"--is also the most popular Indonesian beer--we create circles with our hand and pretend to drink!), engat, lampang, cupu-cupu…and then always "Tidak, tidak, tidak!" (No, no, no!) My brain is on hilarious overload trying to keep them straight. Plus the price for getting it wrong is nerve-wracking! Not understanding the complexities of a new language yet, children are brutal teachers: erupting with laughter at my every hint of a mistake, firmly correctly the slightest miss-pronunciation in a chorus of: “Tidak, tidak: lampang. Lammmmm-pang! Lammmmm-pang!” slowly sounding out each syllable until my slow ears find the right match for my slower tongue.

It's awesome playing with them, learning words from them. Watching them warm up to me. I am their non-stop entertainment. I try to imagine what they must think of me. The puti-pale, tall girl who can just barely form the words they mastered years before. No idea (or care) that I once climbed a corporate ladder, have my own house and pay a mortgage, live by my mad-crazy Microsoft Excel skillz that are just above my mad-crazy mountain bike skillz. They don't care at all, about any of it. Instead, we chomp on fried pig skin and spoon rice, with the fingers on our right "good" hand, to our mouths as they also grow more comfortable with my big camera. Often it captures their laughter. Other times, I’ve seen each pause, for minutes at a time to look into my lense with the most genuine, curious, or serious face I have yet to see.

1 comment:

  1. we hit a hog and grog last weekend at our CSA. The pigs were butchered the day before. Everything was thrown on the grill, hunks of skin and dainty hooves. mmmmm, piggy!

    I like the last picture the best. The iris of both are so large and dark.

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