I'm home.
It was a life changing trip, and at this point a lot of it is really hard to articulate. The crushing poverty, the incredibly strong women, the artistic mastery of artists from practically every corner of the globe, the friends I made. At one point I was sitting and laughing with some women who's entire community had been destroyed by the tsunami almost two years ago, at another a women told me about how she had been unable to present her speech at the conference because her country's ambassador had unexpectedly appeared at the conference, and her speech was one critical of her government's censorship. I was in the company of women who had been to prison for the their writting, women who had been circumcised as children, women who believed in serving their husbands... Women who in spite of all odds were finding their voice through art. It was very powerful.
I got back home to over a foot of snow. The shock of having been swimming in the ocean in the blazing heat 36 hours before made me start to shake really hard - not from the cold, just from the impossibility of getting my brain to accept the change climate and 13 hour time difference.
Jakarta was mind blowing:
the traffic, the contrast of
rich and
poor... it was so much to take in. (Note that the shot of my hotel's pool and the slum on the river are shots taken out of the same window at just slightly different angles.)
The performances I got to see were incredible. From
women jumping up and down on shards of broken ceramics in protest to the suffering of women in their community to
the traditional dance/music/theatre to a puppet show about terrorism with puppets specially rigged to have their
faces cut off or
puke out ramin noodles, it ran the full gamut of serious to silly. Getting to know and work with so many
Muslim women was also very enlightening.
When it came to food, I
tried just about everything that was offered. The food was mostly unpleasant - too totally unfamiliar to be truly enjoyed. To be honest, I longed for North American cuisine and I'm still suffering from all the fruit and rice I ate.
I went to Bali for the last part of my trip and it was amazing. All the conference delegates were given a police escorted motorcade through the streets of Bali to the Bali Classic Centre. When we arrived we were ushered in by
these lovely ladies , and followed behind by [ulr=http://www.flickr.com/photos/side_show/311301770/]these lovely men[/url] playing a myriad of instruments. We sat under
gorgeous canopy and watched performances all night long, only to escorted by police motorcade back to our hotels.
In Bali my hotel room had two balconies, and I
watched the sunrise over the ocean every morning. Naturally I swam in the ocean too, and I went to
the Enchanted Monkey Forest with two Australians, another Canadian and an Italian (the Italian and myself not pictured here). The monkeys were good natured and
cute. In the Monkey Forest, we visited the Temple of the Dead, where there were some incredible statues like
this one. There were a couple of these where the babies look totally content with being eaten, and another holding a severed head. Near the end of our visit, I got distracted by some monkeys who decided to go for a
swim, and dislocated something in my foot, and painfully limped for what little was left of the evening, but I was basically too caught up in enjoying myself to let it bother me. Thankfully I got my foot on ice right away and the next morning there was a loud "pop!" and magically everything was all right, and the pain was gone.
I could go on and on and on. Really what I took away from the experience is that I am so very fortunate, and my country is so very wealthy, and that there is so much more I need to do to help the women who do not share the level of freedom and comfort that I do.
I have more pics on flickr, and loads more photos to upload, but I've already filled my quota for the month on the site today, so they'll have to wait.
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Topic: Holy Shit! I'm going to Indonesia! (Read 17203 times)