Assignment 3 - Dani Fauzi

The summer after freshman year my family traveled to Indonesia and stayed for two months. My parents hadn’t been back to their motherland to see their family in nearly a decade, and in that duration both my parents’ fathers and two of my father’s siblings had passed away. So I remember my grandmothers’ faces when they saw their respective children walk through the doors of their childhood homes, the tears of joy, the laughter they shared together late at night over cups of hot teh melati.

Our time in Indonesia was spent between the hometowns of my parents. They were small, dusty acropoles in East Java whose centers were the morning markets, filled with piles of spices, fresh vegetables, and meat ready for purchase. My cousins and I went down to the markets together every morning to find ingredients for meals--a bushel of sweet potato leaves, a pound of galangal root, a bag of turmeric. My paternal grandmother’s home was bare concrete-floored, traditionally thatch-roofed, housing an extended family that shared rooms and beds. My maternal grandmother’s home was nicer--tile floors, terracotta roof. Neither had AC or internet.  

In hindsight I wish I’d been more eager to explore my motherland; I’m ashamed to say I spent a lot of time there alone with the fan on in my mother’s old bedroom, drawing dumb cartoons alone and avoiding socialization with with anyone. Since our return I’ve delved into the works of prominent Indonesian writers like Chairil Anwar and Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Toer’s works especially help me to see Indonesia through a secular lens--I often felt stifled by an omnipresent religious atmosphere on the islands. I’d like a chance to redeem myself in a way, to return to Indonesia and focus on the culture and language. Thus I am thinking of applying to the new NSLI-Y summer program in Indonesia.

My two months there raised a number of questions for me--for example, the benefits and drawbacks of a worldwide economic system. Often I saw roads and waterways littered with shiny plastic packaging, bearing names of foreign products from global conglomerates eager to penetrate new markets in the developing world. The increasing worldwide division between the rich and the poor was also in the back of my mind as I witnessed jarring income inequality in the larger cities of Indonesia, their gleaming high-rises surrounded by slums and shacks.

Living in Java for a month increased my interest in world history, public health, and environmental issues. Nowadays, whenever I read an article or book about public health and environmental issues I think about how the issues present in the text appear in Indonesia, and how the solutions presented could be applied in Indonesia. I am genuinely thinking of pursuing  a career related to public or environmental health, in large part because of those sweltering two months I spent on the archipelago a year ago.