This is another installment of Cedar’s Digest, a series of poetic stories about the experiences my husband, Ren Ruslan Feldman, and I are having living for six months in Central Borneo. We are volunteer teachers in a small, innovative Indonesian school. The school is child-centered with a focus on hands-on learning and character development. Classes are taught in English and Indonesian.



we’re back on the river
in the boat
this time for an overnight
more orangutans
more little motorized river boats (klotok)
we stop at a remote village
still only reachable by boat
we are welcomed by a ceremony
Ren, as the elder among us
is invited to break the egg with his foot
he is symbolically breaking the barrier between us
then each of us is asked our name
and our purpose and where we are from
and receive some white paste on each cheek–
our passport to the village
teenage girls in matching yellow whirl
and smile demurely in their Dyak dance of welcome
one comes to get me to dance
and the others draw Ren in
the steps are easy to get
and impossible to keep

the midwife and the head men lead us
down the one street in town
past the mosque, the hindu temple,
and the church with one member
we easily engage with the villagers
especially, of course, the children
we stop and play hand games
and sing and dance and ask their names
and meet their pet cats
and collect rubber seeds like marbles

no electricity or running water
but generators and satellite dishes
provide a bit of light and black and white TV
virtually all the houses are plain, simple, and humble
people on the porches readily laugh and joke
we visit the school
fine buildings for a small town
return to bigger places on the weekend
Indonesia is a remarkably literate country

we are shown how to drain latex from a rubber tree
(cut slit in bark and hold tin can under the drip)
we see how coffee is roasted (2 1/2 hours over an open flame)
and ground in a wooden mortar and strained through a sieve
straight from the beans picked in the back yard
one meter from the house
we each have a cup
sitting in the front room of the midwife’s house
she has a painting of The Last Supper on the wall
and a guest book for us to sign
the coffee is strong and sugary
I sit on the floor with a gaggle of sweet little girls
I’m dripping with sweat and happy

on the boat with us are
two NASA scientists who are
studying the complex interactions of particles
in the atmosphere in twenty international locations
“The A-train of satellites crosses directly above us
every noon taking measurements gathering data
to help us understand climate change so we can
figure out how to mitigate it in whatever ways we still can.”

Jon, another passenger, is a 21 year old Dutchman
who is visiting remote villages trying to bring some
increased and dependable income to them.
His company has developed a machine that can
instantly make rubber seeds
(which haven’t been used for much of anything until now)
into bio fuel (a remarkable 60% of the seed is used).
The villagers collect the rubber seeds,
bring them to the truck that puts them through the machine.
The villagers instantly get paid back in whatever combination
they want of bio fuel and cash.
The truck then goes on to another village
and returns again periodically.
The idea is for the company to just break even
and as soon as possible pass the business on
to the villagers as a franchise.

food and conversation on the boat are rich and nourishing
the day cools down
the movement of the boat brings a breeze
and then the bats come out
big bats, streams of bats
suddenly it’s like going down the river
in Lord of the Rings….enchanting
stars are clear
no light pollution here
peace
I remember the Girl Scout song
“Peace I ask of thee oh river
peace, peace, peace
When I learn to live serenely
cares will cease.”

A tepid, sweaty night
turns into early morning
glorious on the prow of the boat
sweet coffee in hand
occasional excitement of orangutans
swinging in the trees
by the river’s edge

now passing river villages and
bone houses for the ancestors
back to our boat landing

This is another installment of Cedar’s Digest, a series of poetic stories about the experiences my husband, Ren Ruslan Feldman, and I are having living for six months in Central Borneo. We are volunteer teachers in a small, innovative Indonesian school. The school is child-centered with a focus on hands-on learning and character development. Classes are taught in English and Indonesian


I hold the kaleidoscope to my eye
do a tiny twist with my hand
and a new image appears
I look, twist again
and another image crystallizes:

a selamaton (ceremony) marking 1000 days
after the death of Pak Boesch’s mother
the men get out the mats
we women sit with the children off to the side
men chant and pray sacred text
prostrating, standing, kneeling

then women and children join the men
sitting opposite on the rattan mats
the children are suddenly very quiet
the imam offers special prayers for the dead mother
we intone some parts of the prayers too

we are individually invited to
a feast cooked by Pak’s wife
silahkan (please, come, enjoy)
delicious

some of the women are covered
others not
I inquire, “What does this mean for you?
I hear most often, a sincere, “It helps me feel closer to God
because it is a constant reminder.”
the Muslim head coverings are quite beautiful here
with jeweled pins and color coordinated with clothes
lovely fashion statements actually

other conversations bring in other points of view:
“She says it’s her choice, but really
she’s responding to her husband’s request.”
another: “My fiancé and I talk about
everything and we make decisions together.
I like being covered. I made this decision on my own.
No, I don’t know how common this is
for Muslim men and women to talk equally.
In the city it is more common than the country.
I wonder if anything will be different when I get married.
Was it different for you?”
another: “I had a good job in the city
and my Korean employer would have given
us a car and my fiancé a job…anything, for me to stay
but a woman must follow her husband
so right after we were married
I went to his work in a rural village
with no running water or electricity. I cried.
Now we live in town and have three beautiful boys.”
another, a white woman: “From my sense of it,
these women would find it
very hard to stop wearing head covering.
I think it is a kind of protection for them.
They imagine that it keeps them safe
from all their faults showing. They hide behind it.”

The seventh graders interview parents
or grandparents about their lives.
Adella says, “My grandmother said, ‘You have
a teacher who wants to know about ME?’”
Sean writes: “If my mother [named Larissa, age 39] wanted to go from one place to another, she rode a horse. Her favorite food was fried rice. If she was sick she ate soup [and got a massage].” Alsha writes: ” When [my father] he was a child, he just had a radio, a watch, and a traditional toilet called ‘jambon.’ They used fire and wood for cooking. When they were on holiday, they just went to the forest. They used boats to get from one place to another.” Adella writes: “I have someone to interview. She is Tati Kena Laba, my grandmother. . . now she is 74 years old. . . .I live with her. When she was six year old, she could cook for her parents. Tati’s favorite food was manghahai soup, a traditional food from Central Kalimantan.” Segah says that his grandma Ranti Batus who is 65 “played with dolls with her sister and was scared of the dark. . . . She didn’t go to school because there was no school.”
Most of the children in our school come by bus, have cell phones, access to computers, and their families have motorbikes and houses with electricity and running water.

In Janny Scott’s wonderful biography of Ann Dunham, Obama’s Mother
who spent 20 plus years in Indonesia, I read: “Like pretty much everyone is Indonesia in those years [she arrived in 1971], they had no running water, no plumbing, no telephone service. To brush their teeth, they pumped water from a well, boiled it on a single kerosene burner, and spat it off the front porch. . . .They had fenced a five-foot pit in the yard for use as a toilet. Bushes served as a clothesline.” (Scott, chapter 4) In rural villages that we have visited, things are much the same, with the additions of a few generators and dish satellites.

The sixth graders love to use new American expressions like
“It’s a bummer.” “Piece a cake.” “Holy moly”
Reading together “The Phantom Tollbooth”
they buy some words at the word market:
quagmire and flabbergasted
we look up the meaning in the dictionary
the next day, one of the buses is late
Bagus says “The bus is in a quagmire.”
and laughs
“People will be flabbergasted
when you use these words,” I tell them

“You wrote really great stories for homework!
I want to read a few excellent sentences.
Here’s one from Syifa’s story
‘Suddenly, the Princess heard a small voice saying,
You can make some money by dancing in the street,
and I will sing a song to make it more colorful.’
What I like about this sentence is that it uses dialogue
and suspense to keep us interested and curious.
She could have said, ‘Then the bird told the Princess
that she could make money by dancing.’
That would have been kind of boring, right?”

Ibu invites me on a motorcycle ride
to some off road places.
“Will you come?” “Sure, I’d love to.”
“But I have to ask your husband for permission to take you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I am going into ask him.”
she drops me off at our cottage
and formally asks Ren’s permission
he smiles and says, “Yes, she has my permission.”

Education Day
a national holiday
the students
have practiced well
they line up at attention
while the Indonesian flag is raised
and a formal declaration is read
teachers on the other, salute
the students sing several patriotic songs
the co-principal speaks
this is a very formal event
as different as it could be
from our Monday morning assemblies
the students do both equally well

5 pm swim
Ahhhhh, a delight
water like getting into a lukewarm bath
refreshing anyway, deeply refreshing
floating on our noodles
looking up at the amazing cumulus clouds
like living sky creatures
horse (kuda), dog (anjing), cat (kucing)
sky darkens and bright, bright Venus emerges
other swimmers join us sometimes
palm trees surround the pool
this is an Indonesian loveliness
the magrib Muslim prayer
coats and blesses our ears

This is another installment of Cedar’s Digest, a series of poetic stories about the experiences my husband, Ren Ruslan Feldman, and I are having living for six months in Central Borneo. We are volunteer teachers in a small, innovative Indonesian school. The school is child-centered with a focus on hands-on learning and character development. Classes are taught in English and Indonesian.

We meet our guide, Rom, after lunch at the hotel
He too has the Fren(ch) English pronunciations
so it takes a few hours to understand clearly

it is hot, very hot
after our long drive
surrounded by peasant life
and jungle foliage
we are inside a journey
the temples emerge from the jungle
all the more grand for being in some degree of ruin
Rom says, “Root quake and plunder.”
In many places the roots have won and
the enormous stones give way to the persistently, silently growing
mass of tree life
built with rocks from quarries far distant
brought in by elephants and put in place
with pulleys and ropes and
masses of men
laborers and stone carvers
Hindu temples in the 8th century
modified to Buddhist temples in the 12th century
four directions, four walkways, each for specific persons
the highway for the kings–the grandest
the kings retinue
the common people
the generals and soldiers

In Indonesia, my friend Hermia handed me a book:
“You’re going to Cambodia, here take this one,”
The Gentleman in the Parlour by Somerset Maugham–
about his 1920s trip through Southeast Asia
I immerse myself in the book and through Maugham’s eyes
I can feel the place from an earlier time before thousands of tourists
when the jungle had truly taken it over

To quote Maugham from page 136
“If indeed you are curious to know what this stupendous monument looked like before the restorer set to work upon it…., you can get a very good impression by taking a narrow path through the forest when you will come presently upon a huge grey gateway covered with lichen and moss….Entering you find yourself in a vast courtyard strewn with fragments of trees, towering above you, shrubs of all kinds and dank weeds; they grow among the crumbling masonry, forcing it apart, and their roots writhe like snakes upon the surfaces of the stony soil. The courtyard is surrounded by ruined corridors and you climb hazardously up steep, slippery and broken stairs, threading your way through passages and vaulted chambers dripping with wet and heavy with the stink of bats….Here and there great pieces of carved stone hang perilously. Here and there on a bas-relief still miraculously in place stand the dancing-girls veiled with lichen, mockingly, in their everlasting gestures of abandonment.”

In 2012, the grand arched entrance is made even more grand
by elephants carrying tourists across the moat
monkeys, thought to be the souls of monks come back to guard the temples,
make the place their home and are not shy
even when carrying their tiny black-furred babies

For me, the visual images here are inscribed
with heat, sweat, and the physical effort of clambering
through doorways, over fallen rock,
through courtyards, into dark alleys
now, I come upon this one carving,
this one lovely woman in formal design
carved in this very corner
100s of years ago by an ordinary laborer.
through a tunnel my view opens
to an enormously tall tree
its roots like a giant’s fingers
holding an entire wall in its hand

endless and intricate bas-reliefs
“Here you have princes on elephants with the state umbrellas open over their heads making a progress among graceful trees; they form a pleasing pattern which is repeated along the length of a wall like the pattern of a paper. There you have long lines of soldiers marching into battle, and the gestures of their arms and the movements of their legs follow the same formal design as that of the dancers in a Cambodian dance. But they join battle and break into frenzied movement; even the dying and the dead are contorted into violent attitudes. Above them the chieftains advance on their elephants and in their chariots, brandishing swords and lances. And you get a feeling of unbridled action, of the turmoil and stress of battle, a breathlessness….only the chariot wheels rest the eye in the chaos.” Maugham, p. 140

In the center of the great 5 towered mass
are very steep steps up to the top level
Ren’s knees are a bit tenuous
so Reatrey, Ren, Rom, and I
hold hands and help him up
counting aloud each step … 6, 7….
we get there…32…together

The view out to the jungle in three directions
and the vast courtyard and pool in the fourth direction
is potent with triumph
of both nature and human skill and ingenuity

at a turn in the tower
in a nook built into the walls
I’m astonished to see
a consummately peaceful reclining Buddha
the orange scarf wrapped around him
is magically lit by a ray of sun at just this one moment in the day
he radiates golden light almost too bright to bear
he is immersed in incense and prayers
and worshippers on their knees
there are many more Buddhas
some left alone, some sitting, some standing
some draped in orange and attended by incense

one of the seven wonders of the world
centuries of heinous war, killing, and death
millions of suffering enslaved laborers
gave their lives to make a place for the Buddha
who wanted tranquility and equanimity.
In the remains of this costly ancient pillaged temple
lies a Buddha in eternal peaceful repose
visited by thousands of respectful and peaceful people
from multitudes of cultures speaking multitudes of languages

at days end we emerge from the temple complex
to walk the grand passageway of the kings
as wide as a highway
built of 1000s of great light stone blocks
surrounded by a vast moat
reflecting the five towers
in the softer colors that evening brings
and, ahhhhh, there, right there is the rising full moon!!

the amount of attention and creativity involved
in communicating with Rom and Chan and Reatrey
has created a magical feeling of cross-cultural intimacy
Ren has been calling Reatrey our granddaughter
and she sweetly uses a fan
to cool off “grandma”
Rom has one last thing to show us
in a remote corner of the last gate
“the only smiling figure”