Minggu, 17 Januari 2016
Muktamar – or – Why I Might Be (a) President Some Day
When I came to Indonesia as a Peace Corps volunteer I expected to be living in a grass hut in the jungle somewhere or in a tiny village out in the middle of nowhere and for many of the Peace Corps volunteers here they are in those little remote villages, but I have been given a site in the middle of the most densely populated island in the world, a ten minute bike ride from a decent sized city and a two hour bus ride from the second largest city in the country, so not exactly what I expected.
Additionally, instead of teaching in a little mud floor schoolhouse with about twenty students and no technology or resources I have found myself at the largest boarding school complex in Indonesia in one of the most prestigious Islamic schools in East Java. Basically, everything I am doing here is exactly the opposite of what I expected to be doing here. In fact, sometimes it is described as Posh Corps.
Nothing has been more contradictory to my expectations that the luck and good fortune I?ve had to meet a number of important people I could never have guessed I would meet. About two months ago, when I first moved to my permanent site, I mentioned that my last night at training site we had been invited to have dinner with the Vice Governor of East Java and the U.S. Consulate General and that I was randomly chosen to sit with them as the representative of the volunteers. That was the beginning of what has become an experience I could never have expected or hoped for.
I have been extremely fortunate to make friends with a couple here at my permanent site who are worldly, well-connected people. He is a doctor who is the director of a hospital and she is an the director of the language program at a university and studied in the U.S. for a while and they both speak English very well, which minimizes the normal barrier I have when trying to meet people here.
They are possibly the nicest people I have ever met and have welcomed me to their home on a number of occasions and have introduced me to some of the most important people in Indonesia. About a week ago they were invited to a party at the house of the U.S. consulate general and they invited me to come with them. I did go and was reintroduced to the U.S. ConJen and the Vice Governor of East Java as well as the mayors and governors of many other provinces and islands in Indonesia and the mayor of Surabaya, a highly respected woman who has turned one of the dirtiest cities in the world into one of the most beautiful cities through sanitation, water purification and greenery/park programs unheard of in the archipelago.
Yesterday I was fortunate again to have met them. They invited me to come to their house where they were entertaining a small delegation from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta and I was able to meet with the representatives, but that is only the small part of it.
Right now, in the city that I live near, there is a ?muktamar,? a convention of one of the largest, if not the largest, Muslim organizations in the world. There are (from what I?ve been told) hundreds of thousands of people in this area for the muktamar. Last night was the opening ceremony at the city center and many of Indonesia?s elite were in attendance. There were many activities including a number of speeches inside a large (read: approximately 5,000 people) tent. Outside of the tent there were choirs, bands, carnival type attractions, fireworks, and tens of thousands of people. If you?re a Nebraskan reading this, imagine Big Bang Boom with between 50,000 and 100,000 people in an area half the size of Skyview. If you?re a Winter Havener, imagine Smoke on the Water in its same place behind the boys and girls club, but with two to three times the number of people. If you?re anyone else, imagine a lot of people in a very small area.
Entry into the main tent was reserved for people with invitations, most of whom were government workers and dignitaries. With my continuing luck here, the representatives from the U.S. embassy asked if I would be going to the ceremony and when I told them I didn?t have an invitation they said it was okay because they had an extra and I could come with them.
Once there I was allowed to sit in the dignitaries section with the representative from the embassy where we sat with ambassadors and representatives from many of the other embassies and were given seats in the very front row. I was able to meet even more governors and mayors I had not yet met, a number of important leaders of Islam in Indonesia, the Minister of Religion and a number of other people whose names and titles I didn?t catch.
The biggest privilege of the night was that I was sitting in the same row, though not close enough to actually meet, the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, and former president Megawati Sukarnoputri along with a number of other People I could never have guessed I would ever be in a room with. I tried to take some creeper pictures of them, but all of the other creeps were in my way, so I didn?t get any, but I could see them from my seat.
During our conversation yesterday, the representative from the embassy asked me if I had ever considered working for the state department, and honestly, I never had, but now, I?m starting to wonder if it?s an option or if I want to do that after my Peace Corps service. I?m thinking that with all of my new political friends I might just skip the whole state department thing and run for president of Indonesia. I figure, why not, I probably know as many people as Jokowi does at this point and I?ve only been here two months. Imagine what the next twenty-two months are going to be like.
Yours, &c.
Tyler
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