Thoughts in Manjau

Learning Indonesian is probably the most difficult thing I’m doing this summer. Not because it is difficult in the intellectual sense – I’m happy with my progress – but difficult in terms of the energy learning requires! Every night I fall into bed exhausted. At first I thought my tiredness could be blamed on the hard physical labor we are doing every day, but I think learning Indonesian is even more draining. Whether I choose to listen or not, when people talk Indonesian around me my brain is constantly trying to process the conversation, and understand. This, added to the fact that I usually try to be an active listener, means that my brain is in overdrive – thinking and talking consciously in English, and subconsciously learning Indonesian. I’ve never done language immersion like this before and I find it very interesting to take a step back and think about the language learning process from an observer’s perspective.

Other thoughts? Manjau is a really beautiful and kind village, but it has its sad side just like any other place. Today I visited an old man who seemed near death. I’ve never seen anyone so skinny before, and it was difficult and disturbing to look at him. He is receiving basically no medical care – the hospital rejected him (I suspect he has lung cancer or some other terminal disease) – and his family is treating him with herbs. The house where he lives was filled with people when I arrived – maybe twenty villagers, of all ages, male and female. It made me think about end of life issues – in the US, the same man would probably be in the hospital, possibly with the support of his family but without a whole community of people with him as he passes on. Eek…depressing thoughts…I promise I’ll write about something nicer next time!