Traditional Thinking

Above is a photo of Shirley Strum working in the field with Papio anubus (olive baboons).

I’ve been thinking about Strum a lot since I arrived here. Her memoir, Almost Human, is the best possible manual to prepare for working in the field. She wonderfully describes what it was like to become an uninteresting baboon and the pains of resisting their attempts to start a friendship. She even writes about what it was like to pee in front of the baboons for the first time. I learned a lot from her, and I find her words creeping up from long-buried depths of my memory as I too attempt to become a boring monkey. 

I forgot how important these stories are. Stories are what make it all. The reason I even decided to pursue primatology is greatly thanks to the stories of Goodall, Strum, even Haraway. The science was the bait, the stories the sinker. I didn’t bring Almost Human with me, or any of the many other books that make up my primate book collection. Big mistake. Luckily I have a good family and my boyfriend will soon send me the book again. If you’re interested in primate work, read this book. Shirley is incredible. And please, please remember: Never forget the stories that take you.

OK, true story. These are contact lenses that makes your irises black and larger than they are naturally. The first time I saw a girl wearing these I almost tripped all over myself. I was almost literally head over heels for this girl. Awe-struck. I kept staring to try to figure out why her eyes looked so intense. I recognized the “baby doll” eye makeup (white eyeliner on the lower lid) and chalked it up to that, plus a pretty strong dose of “maybe she’s born with it.”

It wasn’t until later that I started to suspect they were contact lenses. For one, I kept seeing Indonesian girls with these outrageous eyes. Plus, I’ve noticed lots of people wearing more obvious colored contacts: purple, blue, green. I decided that if indeed they sell black contact lenses, I’m buying them. Ever since my dad told me that the Egyptians took drugs just to make their pupils larger, I’ve wanted deep dark eyes. But thanks to my affinity for the tropics (and hatred for sunglasses), the color of my irises have gone from deep reddish brown, to brown, to light brown, to honey. I’m disappointed.

So this week I finally went in search of the contact lens counter at the shopping mall. And there they were! They’re called “Baby Eyes” by X2. This ad makes them look kind of creepy, and they kind of are. Nonetheless they make girls look to die for and in the United States most people will have no idea I’m faking it (except everyone who reads this, of course). They’re around $10 for a pair that lasts you 6 months. Sold!

Note: This is one of the many fashions that probably comes straight from Korea. I’ve been informed that all the really awesome styles I see here are Korean rip-offs. I need a trip to Korea!

As a non-primatology and non-culture aside:

My two favorite people that I’ve met in the one month I’ve been in Indonesia are:

1. An Iranian guy who studies IT in Malaysia and came to Bogor to do an intensive meditation retreat. He recommended I listen to Dead Can Dance and told me a lot about living in Iran. He was probably the first Middle Eastern friend I’ve ever made and I’m ultra thankful it was him! He expressed gratitude that I was here while he adjusted to the real world. A couple times we met for dinner and he still had tears on his face: A sign of the panic he had been experiencing as the chaotic world started to make him feel physically sick. 

2. A Chinese woman who has been travelling alone for the past 14 months. She had to fight with her parents to do what she truly wanted to do: Study philosophy in college. She told me that time only exists relative to velocity, ie movement. I told her how I think about this all time time, especially when I’m lonely. She expressed how pleased she was to meet someone else who gets really giddy over simple things (the water going down the drain in the opposite direction, getting to practice foreign languages) and how travelling alone has made her become very close to her own heart. She is so fiercely alone that she knows her one travelling companion better than most people ever get to. 

Culture-shopping, headscarves and feminism: Part 2

The hijab.

This is something about Islam that I’ve really come to honor. In America I was always attracted to the style; I was even jealous of muslim women because I thought it was such a good look. I soon adopted headscarves back home, but in a fashion that was more appropriate for my general look.

Well now I’m facing a similar dilema. At the advice of the two men in my life (my boyfriend and father, of course), I’m trying to adopt a headscarf into my everyday fashion. This is because, as a lone Western female traveller, I get a lot of attention. And the majority of it I don’t like (I’ve had at least three “body massage” offers). Since the rest of my body is usually pretty well covered, I was advised to start covering my hair. This is a way to adopt the subtle signifiers that the culture uses to identify other people. Since I can’t wipe of my Western-ness, or my femaleness, or my body, I have to try to use the cultural tools that are available. Now, Indonesian women (at least where I’ve been staying) are almost 50-50 in the number of them that wear the hijab. So I initally felt that it wasn’t necessary for me to do so. Now, after a month of learning about how disrespectful men can be, I’ve decided to give it a try.

Easier said than done. First off, I’m only interested in communicating that I’m modest and not interested in sex. I feel very uncomfortable signifying that I’m muslim. And, as you may be able to gather from my last post, I feel uncomfortable looking like I’m trying to fully adopt this foreign culture. That leads me to many trials with a scarf, attempting to cover as much of my hair as possible (my bangs always stick out) without looking like a crazy anthropologist or a bad imitator. 

The results: None so far. I had maybe more attention directed at me today than I usually do. Perhaps one problem is that I find it extremely difficult to feel good about looking ugly. I need to look pretty, at least a little! It seems so wrong to dress myself into a funk, so I’m avoiding that. So can a headscarf combat my whiteness and my femaleness? Most likely not. I’ll give it a try a few more times, but I may have to ditch it, at least so I can get some air on my neck! 

Culture-shopping, headscarves and feminism: Part 1

When I first came to Indonesia, I engaged in what I like to call culture-shopping. It started with fashion: Checking out what women were wearing, deciding if I liked it or not, if I wanted it. I do this at home, often when sifting through tumblr photos. I’m always looking for new styles that I want to emulate. Often old photographs or ancient cultural symbols will inspire me and I’ll try to adopt various aspects of what I’ve seen: Wearing French schoolboy satchels, 1940s fur coats, scarfs that make me look like an early 20th century Russian immigrant (or so I like to think). So naturally when I came to Indonesia, I did the same thing. I noticed all the attractive wedged sandals that women wear; the sparkling jewels pinned to their hijabs; the flowing, colorful blouses hanging from their well-concealed bodies. I thought about bringing garmets back home, or about adopting the fashions while I’m here. 

Soon it spread to more basic practices. Maybe I want an Indonesian toilet in America, maybe it is better to not point with your index finger, and finally, a culmination at a Sundanese wedding that I was honored to attend. 

This photo is better than the ones I was able to take at the wedding, but is used to illustrate a traditional Sundanese wedding. The website it comes from has more illustrations of Indonesian traditions.

The experience was phenomenal. The costumes of the attendees and the wedding party were to die for: Sparkly, colorful, elaborate. The bride wore a crown with what looked like metal, dangling fireworks coming out of it. The couple changed out of their all-white costumes in exchange for all-purple outfits covered in glitter and jewels. I was in awe. I witnessed a traditional Sundanese gamelan band while a traditional dance performance went on to welcome the entrance of the couple. Later they did a powerful call and response drumming and dance performance. It was absolutely incredible. And as someone who has plans to get married one day, I am always “wedding-shopping.” I tend to dislike the average American wedding style, so I’m always looking for something that I find more pleasing and more true to what I think a wedding should be. Well, this dance performance impressed me beyond any wedding band I’ve seen before. 

It was at this point that I began to notice how I couldn’t actually take home the culture. I couldn’t have Sundanese dancers at my wedding, because it wasn’t mine. The only real connection I have to this culture is that I’m here, and the only role that allows me to adopt what I like from other places is the “crazy anthropologist” role; and that’s one that I’m not too keen on adopting. Soon I started to realize how many things in this culture (often the most spectacular and traditional) that I could only appreciate from afar, without owning. Simply put, adopting traditional garb from such a vastly different culture just doesn’t fit against the backdrop of my own culture. I can easily engage my Scottish or Swedish heritage, but I cannot simply take the outward manifestation of a long history of a distinct culture that I have no important ties to. 

So that’s when I stopped so actively culture-shopping. I’ll tell you, the engagement you experience is lessened quite a bit when you know that you cannot own or adopt something. It’s interesting to experience. To witness beauty, and to witness it as something that you can never have. Now, to many of you what I just described is not culture-shopping, but appropriation. I didn’t use that term firstly because it’s not how I thought of it on my own, and secondly because it’s too contentious of a topic. And there’s no better way to engage a topic freshly than to give it a new name. So I’m a culture-shopper. An image-shopper. I don’t think this is a bad thing, and I don’t plan on necessarily stopping. But what I have learned is that if you wish to adopt something new for yourself, you have to be aware of what it means in your own setting. 

Up Next: The hijab!

Me with students from a Chemistry high school at the National Museum in Jakarta, Java. The students had an assignment to tell English-speaking visitors a little about specific exhibits at the museum (like mini-tour guides) in English. They were all extremely excited to talk to me, and some of them a little nervous to speak English to me. I was very proud of them because I know how nerve racking it can be to try to speak a foreign language with a native speaker of that language. 

They were so cute! They told me all about the 17,000 islands in Indonesia and about Java’s famous wayang performances. Here we are standing in front of a display of a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) set-up.

After the mini-tour I was asked a barrage of giggle-interrupted questions like “Do you have Facebook or Twitter?”, “What’s your hobby?”, “Do you like Indonesian food?”. We took pictures together and said farewell. All together a sweet experience. The girl to the right of me was a total go-getter, speaking good English and really guiding the group forward. Not shy at all; and look at that smile! You go girl.