Daniel Pope muses on how it is sometimes better to tell fibs when you want to integrate culture.
When I arrived in Indonesia I was surprised by the number of public holidays, or tanggal merah (red days), that people appreciated. This high number of days off is largely due to the government recognizes six official religions - Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. And you need to follow one of them. Atheism is not an option because it is equated with communism, a dirty word dating back to the 1965-66 communist purges that followed a failed coup.
spirit, not to support a football team is looked upon in this country of crazy football also. During major international tournaments like the World Cup, "look to the end of the game" becomes an acceptable excuse for being late for work in Jakarta, next to the perennial 'stuck in traffic'.
The closest I had ever come to attend a football game was on a visit to the home of Indonesia in the last few years, during which I went to see how my local station Oxford was looking after renovation. Unfortunately, I found myself in a crowd of rowdy Birmingham City away-fans being led from the platform by the police and herded into special buses. I tried to separate myself from the crowd of scarf waving, but the police refused to believe that I am a resident of innocent Oxford, primarily because of the color of my woolen bobble hat, and insisted I get on the bus with the rest of the fans.
I do not feel like my chances on this packed bus with a bunch of rowdy, hostile, hooligans beer drinkers. I imagined being forced to sing along in my best accent of Birmingham (which sounded Australia), shouting obscenities about my hometown as we sped through its streets to the football field, in hope to God that no one around me saw through my desperate charade. Fortunately I managed to break free and make a run for it before I had to start kicking and screaming.
After years of explaining to new students surprised at the Jakarta language school where I worked, yes, I'm English, but no, I do not support a football team, and I gave him pretends to be a fan of a randomly selected team. However, too often, I took with questions authentic fans in my classroom. Then I switched my allegiance can an obscure team that no one in this nation enamored Premier League would have heard. Often, I made one. Broadbottom United was one. Muggleswick City was another. Or I said I was a cricket fan. That shut them up.
Something else that prompted my students see me with concern was to learn that I'm a single middle aged man.
It is significant that although the response of a single Westerner to be asked if he is married is usually a simple "No" to an Indonesian is always "No" as if marriage is inevitable.
It should be remembered that polygamy is legal in Indonesia, and a man can take up to four wives. So if you did not bagged a lonely married by the time you're 40, most people look at you with suspicion.
inter-religious marriage is forbidden in Islam, had I wanted to get married, I probably should convert to Islam - indeed become a "Muslim appeasement". This requires several commitments, such as the acquisition of knowledge of the Koran, and adopting an Islamic name. Indonesian invariably mispronounced my name 'Denyel Popay' and I counted it would be like if my Islamic name spoken with an outrageously rude Arabic accent.
So clumsy made my bachelor status admission became the beginning of each new term, I used to say that my wife was dead, a situation that my students seemed to prefer. Naturally, they sought clarification. And so my tragic story, told with a stiff upper lip before a friendly class, she was killed in a car accident. When I was asked if I had children, I was tempted more than once to argue that, no, I did more, as they had been in the car with their mother.
In fact, over the years, I had fun changing the story for each new class. Sometimes I said my wife had been killed in a skydiving accident. Other times, he had been a pile-up snowmobile. Once I explained that she had been shot in an armed post office raid. These were among the most credible stories. His abduction by extraterrestrials head of the list of those weird. But at the end of the novelty of being heart broken widower whose wife had undergone a bizarre death dissipated and I just said that we were separated. - All this to save my students faced with the tragedy of a single adult
Indonesians from poor families tend to marry young, mainly because teen pregnancy downtown without much to otherwise keep busy are common. For other weddings are popular community recreation. Each of my students from the middle class seemed attend a reception every weekend. In fact, my first day in Indonesia, I went to a wedding reception myself. The whole affair was echoed by waiting in a long queue to shake hands with the bride and groom, then the plant around eating from a buffet and fuck off.
There was nothing like the English wedding receptions I am used to. There was no better man to tell racy stories about the groom through a whistling sound system, no disco after with drinks spilled onto the dance floor, no drunken conga dancers winding through the kitchen, no fighting spilling into the parking lot.
I knew nothing about Indonesian culture or Islamic rituals on that first day in the country, and I went around asking other guests where the bar was and there were greaves . I was escorted to a table stacked with cans of a drink called Green Sands, who was a tasteless variegated less than one percent alcohol. It was produced by the makers of Bintang beer in the country. I pretended to approve the box Green Sands. Then I buggered too, and took a taxi home.
Chatting with your taxi driver can be good for both of you - he can practice his English and Bahasa your - sometimes you just want to use your travel time to read the newspaper or daydreaming. I was appalled every time a taxi driver looked at me in the rearview mirror and asked, " Bisa Bicara Bahasa Indonesia, sir?" (Can you speak Indonesian?) Often, I would just say no and give him a big tip when I paid the price.
During my twenty years in Jakarta, conversations with taxi drivers rarely changed much. They always asked the same questions. One was "have you How long was in Indonesia? Even after ten years, my response to that request remained "One year," otherwise they would await my bahasa is impeccable and, having found that I was English, would rejoice to believe they had picked the ideal passenger for a long discussion with soccer and David Beckham.
Another common question was "Do you like Indonesian girls?" To which I had just given the thumbs up and foolishly expected grimace. And then would come the inevitable "Are you married, sir?". And off I go again with the dead woman thread.