Di Antara

Buku-buku dan dua potong ayam…
Surabaya is Indonesia’s second-largest city; much less crowded, much less dense, much less exhausting.

Unless you get lost inside a five-story, six-tower shopping mall trying to find a bookstore where you can on the one hand find a decent novel written in English, and on the other hand purchase yourself a good sturdy notebook in which notes can be taken easily without a desk around (the usual state of my interviews).  Neither of these tasks were easy, and I wandered around Tunjungan Plaza my only night in Surabaya endlessly trying to find both of these items – especially something to read to replace the incredible Durga/Umayi by Mangunwijaya which I finished way before I expected to. 

Strangely, the novels that I ultimately found available in huge quantities were English translations of Yukio Mishima’s works, at a Japanese department store.  I’ve read and enjoyed Mishima before so this wasn’t the most terrible thing, but it is a bit strange to find yourself choosing between Jackie Collins, picture books of automatic weapons, adaptations of Star Wars, Michael Crichton, and a Japanese nationalist who committed ritual suicide after launching a very abortive coup attempt in the 1970s.

I can’t say much about Surabaya – stayed in a very western hotel, visited a very western shopping mall where I have to say that Popeye’s Chicken never tasted better after eating muscular (read:  tough) ayam kampung in Flores for a week.  Maybe I had the bird flu on the brain, but something about picking up an unnaturally hefty chicken breast after three months of no American-style “chicken,” and my mouth was happy.

Babies and cigarettes…
Over the last two weeks, I lived in hotels, and this gave me some occasions to watch TV.  In Surabaya, I was met with the news of the terrible events in Sharm al-Shaikh, and mortified by all the details emerging from the second round of London bombings.  When I woke in the morning, I think I saw on one of the news tickers that small explosions had gone off in Turkey as well, and all I could pray for was a day without bombs, a hope that nothing is coming home to America, and that Indonesia can make it to one year free of major acts of terrorism.

But after watching enough Indonesian TV, I started to get a feel for what drives the ad market here.  You can tell what it is easily in America – it’s all cars, all the time, cars and maybe sneakers and soft drinks on occasion; but car ads are the most frequent, and the most intensely rotated.  “Like a Rock” is forever planted in the American subconscious.

In Indonesia, there are two ad forces most heavily in circulation:

1.  Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes. 
Tobacco is a big business in Indonesia, which I will go into more of when I talk about Madura.  But I would say literally 50-75% of all commercials on TV are for cigarettes – Djarum, Gudang Garam, Dji Sam Soe, L.A., Mild, Kansas, Sejati, and that’s about all I can remember off the top of my head.  These are all local cigarette brands, produced in Indonesia for Indonesians, by Indonesian companies.  If you think our tobacco companies are shameful, wait until you switch on the nightly news at ten o’clock, with an animated cube in the corner that first says “Metro TV” in red, and then revolves to show “Gudang Garam.”  I think half of the Indonesian TV channels now in business would shut down if the cigarette companies were to cease TV advertisements as they have in America for decades; no one would be around to pay for their programming.

2.  Expectant mothers, and recent mothers
This is another good 10-15% of the market for adverts.  All kinds of drink mixes and related products – we’re talking powdered milk and nutritional supplements.  Want your child to be strong?  Make sure they drink this kind of milk.  Want your son to grow up to become a wealthy, handsome corporate mogul?  Feed them this juice mix.  Want your fetus to be healthy and come out of you right?  Make sure you drink this nutrient supplement.  It must work pretty well – standing in line before a very expectant mother in a Carrefour last night, I saw a big basket full of those nutritional items.  Nothing like a little maternal panic to make some money.

Anyway, I don’t know anyone in Surabaya, so after I used a signal flare and a compass to navigate my way out of the mammoth shopping mall and walked ten km to the nearest taxi queue, I watched a few hours of TV in my hotel room.  Wow – after one year of grad school with no TV, I had forgotten what it is like to have sixty channels of TV.

***

And then I went to bed, and early afternoon, Sunday, connected up with a second facilitator, and off to Madura we went.

Welcome back to Maumere. 

I took that picture when I got off the plane.  I was not the first to take that picture, I’m certain, and given the immediate actions of the tourists I watched arriving as I departed, I will not be the last.

Anyways, back in Maumere, where the sun shines, there is a light breeze, and having a hotel parked on the beach is within your price range (or, at least the Bank’s).

Don’t want you to think I worked too hard after all, or sweated it out in mosquito-ridden huts in a dusty village.

(Also, the hotel is owned by the airline, so you get airline pastries for breakfast - a humorous touch)

OK, the beach was not all fun and games.  It was fun to laze and read a book after a day of rambling around dusty inland villages.  But not much in the way of games.  This isn’t really a beach where you’re going to go for a nice brisk morning swim.  Walking around in the water at low tide the first time, I kept thinking to myself “This is a rocky beach.  My feet hurt.  Those volcanoes must have left a lot of rock behind millennia ago.”

That would be wrong.  The sharp rocks I was walking on were not sharp rocks; they were eroded cement.

A few Americans are still thinking about the tsunami in Aceh, but I bet almost none are thinking about the Flores tsunami. An earthquake in the Flores Sea, followed up by a tsunami in 1992, killed thousands (not hundreds of thousands, fortunately), and wrecked infrastructure in many places, but especially in Maumere.  I think there was hope that Flores with its varied terrain and attractions would become something of a second, less trafficked Bali (although it would need to be Bali number three – Bali number two is the island of Lombok, to Bali’s east)  After the currency crisis in the late 90s and the Bali bombing in 2002, that possibility seems unimaginable at this stage. 

Here’s where the eroded cement comes in; after the tsunami, the waves moved inland and re-claimed 15 meters of beach.  The cement that was nicking my bare feet was leftover from whatever people had built out into the water before the tides terrifyingly surged up onto the island. 

The longer-term impacts on Maumere as a city are really fascinating.  This is a place where km after km of beach is not settled by the wealthy and privileged.  Women and their children were meandering about at low tide for shellfish to pick and take home for dinner.  Fisherman had parked their boats up and down the beach, seemingly free of charge.  Children played, and I even got trailed by a barking dog when I strayed into its territory while out for a stroll.  The rich don’t want this beach; so, it belongs to the poor.

I look at that fact, and for a moment I say “Forget development.  If you want to get wealthier, this beach won’t be yours anymore.  This beach will be mine.”  And who is to say what the people here really want – to eke out an existence in this quiet, low employment, low energy, and low stress town of 60,000 (probably about the population of my immediate neighborhood in Jakarta).  Or to charge about in SUVs pitching to tourists why they should deal with annoying guides driving them to and fro as they go visiting “traditional villages?”  It’s not for me to answer that question, but I don’t like SUVs rattling about at home, and I certainly don’t enjoy them here.

A language lesson…and some liquor
Here is the internet’s only Bahasa Sikka-Bahasa Indonesia-Bahasa Inggris dictionary:

Apang Gawan – Terima Kasih – Thank You

Hama-Hama – Sama-Sama – You’re Welcome

Mo-AT – Bapak – Mister

Du-A – Ibu – Misses

Bao Sa-AYE – Sampai Jumpa – Goodbye and have a good day

These are a few important phrases when you are rolling around in quiet villages, talking to locals for whom Bahasa Indonesia is at best a second language. 

Don was my “local facilitator” translating all of my questions about decentralization laws and village governments to the mostly village elites that I interviewed.  He also helped me find my way to decent seafood, bargain for nice prices on the local sarung ikat cloth to bring back home (the secret?  Walk Away!), and know where to get whatever I needed in Maumere.  Don is a native of the town, living the next island over now in Kupang, Timor Barat (the other half of East Timor’s island) with his wife, and soon baby (good luck!).  Don wasn’t just a native of Flores or Maumere – he’s a native of the neighborhood where many of the hotels and airline ticket offices are located.  On the last day in town, Don picked me up and took me over to meet Du’a Dela Santo, and we may as well have walked. 

Don and his mother also fixed me up with a couple of bottles of Moke, that being the liquor distilled from the fruit of palm trees in the backyard stills of countless Florenese homes.  There is quite a lot of moke sold in Flores, but basically no moke industry.  People from the villages who live in Maumere bring some back when they go home, and sell it on the streets…in emptied out bottles of Bintang Beer, with corn cobs to plug up the bottles.  I’m serious.  I’ve got two bottles of the stuff sitting here if you don’t believe me, and I’m wondering what it will do to my head when I drink more of the stuff.

(Party at the International House, September 6…maybe call the CU student ambulance, too)

Actually, I really mean more of the stuff because I already had a taste.  Here is the still in Desa Watugong that I visited. 

Not much of a flavor to it really; and after having a gulp from a hollowed out palm nut shell, I can’t say I felt like I had much of a buzz on, although the locals were certain I would be all mabuk and on my ass by the time I made it back to the road.  These kind of stills are all over the villages, people cooking up the booze first for their own consumption, and whatever surplus they can manage for sale.  We were trying to find the former kepala desa (it literally means ‘village head’) of Watugong one afternoon, and wandered back onto his property looking for him.  We decided to wait, and the place to wait was…underneath his still.  He didn’t turn up.  Maybe he had gone off somewhere to sell his moke…or, perhaps, drink it.

(That’s going to be it for pictures in this post.  I was conserving battery power as I managed to fry out the charger for my camera during the trip.  I’m also not comfortable with taking pictures of villagers in settings like this – I’m not artful enough to portray poverty tastefully)

Cuisine in Flores was underwhelming.  I ate at Rumah Makan Jakarta, Rumah Makan Sarinah, Rumah Makan Borobodur, all very cozy locations at the harbor.  But, I may as well have been back in Java – it was all ayam bakar and ikan asam manis, just like it might be here. 

The culture here uses pigs in ceremonies all the time, so I was expecting there might be restos selling pork products and I could get some locally flavored pork ribs (shhh….don’t tell my Jewish friends and family!).  But, no, not really.  Apparently they just save the pigs for the ceremonies, and that’s the only time they eat pig.  Someone had even stopped by Don’s mother’s house that week and made an offer on the sow that was sunning itself in her backyard when I visited.  So, no curious locally-flavored cuisine for me.

Didn’t you come to Flores to work?
Oh, but I did.  Five days, ten interviews, about 35 pages of notes.  It was hard to do much more than that.  Life here just doesn’t move very quickly.  We could have run around like madmen and tried to interview everyone in site asking zillions of questions, but nothing else would be moving that quickly – it would be like some experiment in relativity where I’d be getting real old real fast and everything around me would be aging slowly. 

That’s how life is in Flores.  People work – they keep cattle, they grow rice and cassava and coconut and palm and corn.

(not to neglect tamarind - it was asam season and everyone was breaking tarmind shells in their yards)

They drive transport buses with annoyingly souped up horns and dirty English phrases in colorful letters on the front windows. 

They are catching fish, and sharpening their machetes for days out in the fields. 

Some of them go to offices that are just as relaxed. 

This place is a little bit plugged into the grid of the tourist economy, but once you get past the hassles of the airport and the bus station, just like the world has forgotten much of what’s going on in this city, it also forgets you.

Errr, sort of.  Rolling through these villages, I caused a lot of rubber-necking, a lot of “hello mister,” even some squeals.  Especially shocked when I declared “Bao sa-aye!” as I roll by.  These are places that Pak Bule the white man just doesn’t penetrate most of the time, even if they are a fifteen-minute motorbike ride from “the city.” 

But mostly, life goes on here.  While I interview the kepala desa in Watugong, I hear chickens clucking and children carrying on at the school across the street in one ear, and a way old school typewriter clacking away in the other ear.  It’s the typewriter in one ear and construction of the new village office going on in the other when I get to Nele Wutung later in the week, that is to say, not all that different (although Nele Wutung was visibly wealthier than Watugong – and before the Suharto-era ended, governed by leadership that was much more corrupt; coincidence?).

In that village, when we were finished one afternoon, I asked Don what was up the hill we were on.  He said “the end of the village.”  So, I asked him to take me up there – and the bike fought its way up the steep hill where the pavement had long ago given up and started returning to dust. 

And there it was – a grotto at the top of a stone staircase, with an empty space for the Virgin Mary.  I immediately wonder about who the poor sucker is that has to drag the statue up there when the occasion requires it.  People come up to the end of the village to pay their obeisance when Mary is on display, and then they must turn around and wander back down into it – the end of the village doesn’t lead anywhere – it just takes you back into the wilderness, and no one really wants to go there.

Indeed, there is no end of the village.  It stretches onward, blowing with the dirt past the signs that say “selamat jalan dan terima kasih!” as you leave every village.  But, when you get to Maumere there are still pigs running along on the beach, goats chewing up the grass on the soccer pitch, and chickens dodging traffic.  Old women still have teeth stained with betel.  And young men may lounge on the street corners in jeans instead of sarung, but they are still lounging, with that expectant look that says “What next?”

Don’t have the answer to that question – don’t want to have the answer to that question for anyone but me.

But let me tell you, when I strolled up the beach, I decided to go back inland and walk down the main road off the beach on my way back.  At one stage, I came to a sign across the road from me, and it said “Maumere” in white letters across a blue background. 

There was another sign pointing away from me, and I turned back to look as I passed it.  And there was the exact same sign, but with a red line drawn crosswards.  I guess that sign, indicating the place I had just walked from, meant “Not Maumere.”

And in this place where some clown of a civil servant can simply draw a line across a sign and say what is and is not the city, and what is and is not the kampung, we know it’s all a lie – this place is no city – it is all kampung.

In the research I did, the villages in Flores came across looking much less encumbered, and much less corrupt, with much for zeal for the reform that works so hard everyday to take grip in this country.  But there’s that cynical part of me that wonders if local political leadership has ceased much of its official theft here because there just isn’t that much to steal.

But enough punditry; you can read the report in 2006 sometime if you’re really interested in all that.

…Sudden Stars
The first thing I really sat back and pinched myself about, assuring myself I was not dreaming, was that, yes, there are stars up in the sky tonight over Moni. 

If I stick my head out the door in the evening in Jakarta, there are no stars to see.  There is haze high up, and light reflecting off the sculpted towers that ring my residence – BNI, Four Seasons, Indosat.  But nothing to look up and see.

Here in prosaic and calm but tourist-savvy Moni, there are stars shining in the sky, more than I can count.  And constellations, none of which I can recognize, because I am in the Southern Hemisphere, and all of the reference points they teach us at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium when we are little just don’t measure up down here.

Seeing something vaguely inviting, but not being able to make it out, as I feel with these stars, perfectly encapsulates this condition I face when I arrive in Moni.  There is nothing I like less than the prospect of arriving at a place for the first time at night.  I like touching the ground somewhere with plenty of daylight, giving me the chance to walk around and starting to make two and two equal something it’s supposed to equal.  At night, the world flattens out, colors disappear, and points don’t connect.

But, I was dragged to a boarding house with the claim that everything else in town was filled (probably true), and paid my US$7 for a night; and also paid my US$6 for a ride up to the top of The Mountain.  And what else is there to say about Moni?  That it gets cold, too an uncomfortable level at night?  That’s it’s a lot less busy since the Bali bombing? Moni is a small little town that has the good fortune of being on the only “highway” through the island of Flores, and is also sited next to a natural wonder of the world.  That’s all there is to it.  Some people farm; others learn enough English to take money from people like me, and hang out the rest of the time.  There ain’t much more to say.

But at night, there were *stars*.

Getting There is Half the….Half the what?
I arrive in Moni after working my way from the airport to the bus station in quiet little Maumere.  Maumere’s airport is easily the most third world travel location I have ever been – we step off the plane onto a tarmac and walk to a dusty, hot and crowded room, fighting our way to the baggage claim.  The biggest concern at this airport is not homeland security; it’s whether the baggage going on the planes is going to be too heavy for them to take off.  They are weighing everything here not so that they can collect a fee for overages, but so the puttering engines can get you off of terra that may not necessarily be so firma.

At the bus station, still seated in an SUV “taxi” I rapidly have the arms of seven different punters reaching into the backseat and trying to take my bag (which is heavy, because a certain Indonesian World Bank staff-member who shall remain nameless has tricked the intern into dragging 15 editions of reports to the other end of the archipelago for his two Flores-based friends who will be in Jakarta two weeks later; apparently, hazing is not haram) so they can drive me to Moni.  I ask when they leave; they all say 5 PM; it is 3:30. 

The bus station is hot, and I see a van pulling away.  I point, a man jumps out of the van, grabs my bag, throws it on the top of the van, and crawls up after it…and then the van starts to pull away.  I am still standing in the driveway of the bus station.  I charge, leap, grab onto one of the back railings, which many people will ride upon during our journey, and shout for them to let me on.  This gets some puzzled looks, and there’s definitely a lack of comfort with the fact that I am speaking Indonesian; not because I am speaking Indonesian poorly – but because these folks are probably speakers of Leo or Sikka or one of the other tongues that disunite this small island within itself, let alone from the rest of Indonesia.  (later I am to learn that only two of the local languagues have words for thank you; you’re welcome).

Then they let me on the bus; I say I want to go to Moni.  They scoop me on board, piling me into the back (di belokang, that is) bench with five other people.  And then they stop again.  And the driver makes a dozen people get out.  And they unload their cargo, and there is a bunch of shouting I don’t understand, and the dozen people look displeased but unsurprised, and I have the back bench to myself, and we are on our way.

Over twisting and turning roads, through mountains, bump bump bump – way high, down low, but never too slow.  All manner of things are being thrown up onto the top of this bus – at one point on the way back to Maumere, a squealing pig, all four legs tied together.  But usually, just a half dozen kids, young folks, who as the bus is accelerating around an unguarded curve up on a mountain, are moving themselves from the top, to the side, to the inside of the bus, with no care in the world.  When one does this, I shake his hand, hoping whatever blessing is keeping him where he wants to be in this world will rub off upon me. 

The weirdest moment came when we rounded one curve.  An older looking man, shirtless, a machete in his hand, looks at the bus knowingly – it turns, he hops on, machete still in his right hand, and climbs up on back.  I never quite figured out when he jumped off, and perhaps he is still with me.

The hidden purpose of this “field research” trip
Okay.  Two of the eight case studies being used in the report I am writing are from the island of Flores.  I even visited and researched an update of an unresolved situation described in one of the villages that was studied two years ago. 

But, really, ever since I cracked open a Lonely Planet and saw a photograph of the lakes at Kelimutu on the island of Flores, I have wanted to come here.  And, with that in mind, I pushed and pushed at work to get to make the trip, and there I was.

Flores is a strange island.  Perhaps you’ve heard about the discovery of the "hobbit-sized" Flores Man.  Well, if not, you have now.  (Actually, I think it was a woman.)  There was also the dwarf Flores Elephant.  I think if you could clone these somehow, they’d make a nice chic pet for the Paris Hilton set.  Speaking of flesh-eating lizards, the Komodo Dragon’s home is also next door; sometimes, it crosses the water, and visits the western end of Flores.  The point I am trying to drive home is that Flores is a unique place. 

But take away the dragons, the pet elephants, the pet human ancestor remains.  Take away the surf and the jungle, most of the mountains, the twisting and turning roads, the good scuba locations at Pulau Besar a two hour boat ride from Maumere.  What have you still got?

You’ve got Kelimutu.

Three lakes up in the mountains.

Try to imagine you are the person who millennia ago first discovered this spot.  What went through your mind at that moment? You don’t know exactly what a volcano is, or what it does, or what it leaves behind.  You don’t know how lakes form up in the mountains like this, or how such perfect walls got hollowed out of the rock.  You certainly don’t know anything about chemistry, and how they make colors bloom forth in our natural world. Perhaps you’ve developed a system of belief; is it ready for this?  Could you understand what you were looking at?

I’m still not sure I do.

There is the blue lake, water more sky-colored than anything on the horizon. 

You can see the “red” lake in the background, too.  Here’s me trying not to fall in while taking a picture of myself hovering over one of its walls.  The lake is supposed to be “red” but it’s really more of a reddish-brown, and strictly appears black in these photos because of the sun.

Those two are right next to one another, separated by what must be a thin wall of rock, the blue and red-brown not quite ever coming together.

And off on its own is the black lake, its waters murkiest of all, it’s location off the horizon in just such a way that you need to wait until at least noontime to get some sunlight down on it.  And, frankly, I just didn’t have time to sit for five hours.

But here’s the crazy part; the lakes change color every so often.  The volcanic life that is going on underneath the lakes and rain from above will inject new minerals into the waters; blue will go green, black will get brown, reddish-brown will changes to really red.  The lakes would be a holy site for the locals on their own without any of this; the changing colors must have made this setting seem even more awesome to the people who got here before the rest of us with our cameras and our chemistries. 

On the way down…on the way back
We got up to the top of Kelimutu at about 5 AM, just as the sun was beginning to rise.  Me and three other tourists beat two locals up the hill who wanted to sell us coffee.  I wasn’t buying.  The sun rose intensely, and just the mountains all around on the horizon were beautiful enough to merit their own attention. 

But there were the lakes.  Look, here’s another shot.  And another.  It’s worth taking a couple of different looks at. 

It was a pretty quiet bunch of us up there for about an hour, and then we were intercepted by a gaggle of Indonesian bank employees who were on some kind of family retreat trip from Flores’ larger towns, along with a couple of annoying western European tourists who were photographing *everything*, including themselves with all of the children of the bank employees, one-by-one.

A little before eight, I started working my way down.  I decided I was going to make a hike of it.  It turns out that a couple who had come up with me in the oh-so-freezing-cold truck had also decided to do this; and they were Americans.  And, oh this is rich, one of them was an undergraduate classmate of Ms. Anna Fewell, my occasional travel companion in Jakarta.  It is a small, small universe.  Of course, it could just be that there are like 100 Americans every generation who choose to make a vocation of Indonesia; Anna, her friend Andy, and I, are three of those 100. 

“Wouldn’t want to be in any club that would have me as a member.”

Karen and Andy and I hiked down 15 KM, but Karen was certain it was more like 20.  The specifics are not important.  The mountain left my legs feeling like marmite.  The mountain, I say, but it was really more like hill after hill after hill, a gigantic volcanic structure.  Tropical palms giving way to leafy deciduous trees, giving way to bamboo forests, giving way to perfectly terraced rice paddies. 

I wanted to take a nap amid all the walking; but I didn’t necessarily want to leave.

But, it was time to go.  Cram myself into the back of another van, with another carsick child, and four more hours of rounding curves, once again in the dark, ready to return to Maumere to get to work, the, um, “real” purpose of this whole journey.

That’s the lemur.  He lives in a much too small cage in the parking area of my office.  I don’t know where the lemur originated, but I would speculate after taking a visit to Indonesia’s Pasar Burung (bird market) that the lemur was bought there.  You can buy just about anything at Pasar Burung - little monkeys, jungle cats, dogs that look tormented, and, of course, many birds of all colors, making all kinds of crazy noises. 

We even have some birds here, too.  Here is my favorite, a spirited little fellow.  When you get close to his cage, he gets all excited, and even starts doing backflips sometimes.  Oh, to be a caged bird.

Or a lemur.  Why are there birds and lemurs in cages at the World Bank’s office in the world fourth largest country?  Well, it’s because there are three WB offices in Jakarta, and this one is the most Colonial Administration-style.  The joke told by my Indonesian teacher’s sister is that in Indonesia, the World Bank has its economists, and its socialists.  The economists are all up high in the sky of Tower 2 of the Bursa Efek Jakarta (Jakarta Stock Exchange).  There’s a definite, professional buzz that goes on there, of course. 

Then there are the socialists (that is, "social development").  Some are in the newly remodeled Diponogoro office, the sign in the reception area reads "Multi Donor Center" and "Decentralization Support Facility" and includes representatives from the Bank, the Asian Development Bank, British and Dutch donors, and other folks.  There is sleek glass tables and fancy new doors, and all kinds of dandied-up fixtures. Here’s a group photo of Tim Conflict (Conflict Team) after one of our staff meetings which we hold at Diponegoro just to, you know, remind people we exist.  Nobody told me I was blocking Luthfi’s face.

But over at Cik Ditiro, it is an older place, the original home of the WB Social Development Unit in Jakarta.  No other donor organizations; just us, and our birds, and our lemur.  And Pak Suanda, who owns the birds and lemur.  Pak Suanda’s family is here, too.  We work in a house.  There’s an effort to get a decent piece of it in one photo.  And there’s the high ceilings of the main reception/conference area, taken from the second floor. 

Pak Suanda makes us lunch every day - just Rp. 10,000 and it’s a tasty little spread, better cooked and of nicer quality than anything you buy on the street usually.  I declared I thought the food was great in June, and my boss remarked "Yeah, I felt that way for the first two months, as well."  And I have to admit that there are days where you can tell Pak Suanda had some other things going on, and lunch came in second or third or who knows where in the order of priorities.  This is the semi-outdoor area where we eat.  You can see the big, lonely fish who gets a bit excited and starts swimming around more whenever anybody enters the room - it’s a Pav-pav-pavlovian world.

And, I have to admit that there are days where piled into this little office, I feel a little bit like the lemur in the cage.  He sleeps most of the day - being noctural, and night time rolls around, and he just walks around and around in circles in that cage.  Some days, I feel like that in the office, wanting to stop "analyzing" and getting out and doing something in the world, talking to people, not even helping, since what is "help" anyway?  I want to get the swivel chair out from under my butt, in which I am circling sometimes, just like the lemur.

(actually, I should admit, that office is new.  we just were moved into it today.  the old office, now empty and bare, didn’t have a window, but it was more spacious and had its own bathroom.  which should I prefer - sunlight, Jakarta-style, or elbow room?)

Well, I am getting my wish.  Not going to be much out of me for the first two weeks.  There’s my name up on the big travel board.

I am off to Flores tomorrow morning at 5:30, an island in Eastern Indonesia, where I will meet up with one of the WB’s researchers, and begin wandering about villages talking to leadership and citizenry about the ongoing decentralization process in Indonesia. 

But before I do that, I’m going to Kelimutu.  Start getting jealous….now.

After Flores, a night in Surabaya, and off to Madura, to the north of Java, where I will basically do the same thing in a different place.

So, maybe the lemur gets out of his cage, and after year after year of his life living in one cosmopolitan city after another (Chicago-Iowa City[OK, not so cosmo]-Singapore-DC-NYC-Jakarta), wonders why he ever left it?  That’s what this summer is all about.

You’ll find out later.  I get back on July 30.  I expect this all to be a little bit silent until then, but I’m still thinking of all ya’ll, and hope yr summers are cool.

My friend Jenna who was recently in Thailand wanted to emphasize in an email how lucky she was to be in a tropical, post-tsunami paradise.  How did she emphasize this?  Well, among other things, she pointed out that although missing everyone back home in NYC, she was enjoying fresh Mangosteen. 

This is the fruit that, when good, is maybe enough to forsake the western world, civilization, power, money, and all sorts of things.  If you had asked me what I was looking forward to this summer, one of the answers was definitely "eating mangosteen again."

Here’s the whole fruit intact.  This is what the "queen of fruit" looks like when you bust it open.

Perhaps it is strange to call something the "queen of fruit."  This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best fruit in the world, but perhaps does mean that like the queen this fruit is a bit sensitive and has to be handled with care, and you shouldn’t leave it out too long because it might expire and declare "orf with his head!"

Which is to say manggis, as the Indonesians call it, is a bit precious and therefore touchy.  We don’t get these in the western world because once you pick these things from the trees where they grow, they just begin to decompose and fall to pieces.  And this isn’t like bananas where there’s that great period where it just starts to rot a little bit and therefore gets all tasty.

No, there’s some intelligent design going on with this fruit.  You see from the outside that it has a rough, purplish exterior.  Sometimes, that shell is hard as a rock - you have to find the vein where you can carefully break it open to reveal that wonderful white fruit inside.  But be careful - the fruit is sweeter than you can imagine when good, but if you bust into the purplish shell the wrong way, it gets all mashed up with the fruit, and what was once the juicy sweet flavor turns bitter and puckers you up harder than the sourest of lemons. 

And this is the other thing - from the outside, they look perfectly reasonable, almost always.  But you never know when you open it up if it is going to be big chunks of liquidy tasty fruit on the inside, or if there will be shriveled little husks, if it’s going to be the illusion of big fruit but really just big, mostly inedible seeds, or if there will be fruit that looks reasonable until you realize that some sort of yellow fungus has started growing on the inside of the shell.  It’s totally unpredictable, and frequently all of these conditions can exist within one fruit.  And there are no rules - hard or soft, small or big, any of these descriptives may apply.

The flavor of mangosteen here are about the same as what I used to get in Singapore, but the barkish husks around the fruit are a bit less intense.  In Singapore (and these were most certainly not *from* Singapore), the husks had a certain amount of moisture absorbed in them to the extent that if you weren’t careful, it was very easy to stain your clothing with purple drippings when you squeezed them open.  The insides of the shells here are a bit more on the pink side, and much more dry.

When you go away to this part of the world, you be a lot of missing people; but until you come back, you be missing mangosteen.  Sometimes, we have to leave the sweetest things behind.

Well, just one friend.

Carlito Caminha came to town!

(Yeah, this is another post that’s way behind schedule; two weeks ago.  I’m la-zeee)

Another SIPA classmate of mine called me up and sent along the good news - our friend Carlito was in Jakarta.  Great!

First met up with Swati, who is from school, and Nita, her co-worker from YLBHI, a large legal advocacy organization in Indonesia.  Swati is doing a better job of being in the middle of the human rights thing this summer than I…it’s okay.  There will be time.  There we are.

We met up at her office which isn’t too far from mine, but in a much more  hopping part of the Menteng area.  Then we headed off to Pasar Baru, a tourist-trappy (but not too bad) area in North Jakarta, and Swati was intent on finding the vaunted Indian people of the area.  There’s a lot of textile places, some of which sell saris.  It was real funny - we were walking through, pointing out people to Swati and saying "Is he Indian?  Is she Indian?"  All eagerly testing out our South Asian-dar.  Finally, we found this guy who looked like he could have come straight out of central casting for "Indian cloth shop-keeper."  He told Swati where there was a dingy Indian grocery store down an alley, and we went and checked it out, and it made me feel a little bit at home.

After locating the Indian grocery store, we located Carlito.  Carlito comes from East Timor.  He was in the Human Rights Advocates Training Program at the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia during my first semester, one member of a whole interesting group of activists from all over the world.  We were also neighbors at the International House.  He helps run a magazine called Talitakum back in Timor Leste.  Carlito also helped found an orphanage for children left with no families in the aftermath of Indonesia’s spasm of violence as it withdrew from East Timor.  He also snuck a camera into an Indonesian jail to take photos of an East Timorese resistance leader, who is now President of that country.   Sometimes, Carlito makes me wonder what I’ve really accomplished with my life.  Actually, all of the advocates made me feel that way - which was one of the nice things about having them around; you realize how much you can accomplish and what a difference you can make with so few resources. 

There is Carlito at dinner, sitting with a friend of his, Nita, who joined us.  Nita is from East Timor; not to be confused with the Nita who I met up with before, who is from the island of Java in Indonesia.  (I decided that we needd to have a "Nita Timur" (East Nita) and a "NIta Barat" (West Nita) to solve this problem).  The restaurant was Chinese-oriented, but most of the diners were Indonesian Indians, including a pair of old guys who were doing some serious work on a bottle of Walker Black…ah, the good life.

We met Carlito at the Galeri Fotojurnalis Antara, that’s the Antara Gallery of Photojournalism.  It was a pretty cool spot, the kind of place you’d totally miss if some Indonesian didn’t tell you all about it.  Here is the stairway with a big Indonesian independence mural.  They had these almost comic book-like panels up on the wall that I wanted to get pictures of, but the lights were out in the room for the reason we were there (below).  It was sort of a picture-based history of how photojournalists contributed to Indonesia’s independence.  There was also a pretty good display of photos from Aceh of the tsunami zone.  Here is a  picture I took of a picture of life going on, someone drying fish to eat.  It’s from a photojournalist named Rully Kesuma.  Can’t find anymore info on Kesuma.  I was also too dumb to figure out how to switch off my flash.

One reason Carlito was in town was to talk about some photos he took in East Timor.  Here is the website for the project on Timorese photographers.  Carlito’s section of the site is there.  Here’s me and Carlito before he went on - rock and roll!  He showed his pictures and offered some remarks about journalism and photography throughout Southeast Asia, which was all in Indonesian, and unfortunately, I didn’t really manage to understand most of it.  Too bad.

It is a great thing to see people from the other side of the world on the other side of the world.

Hello from Singapore.  Look at this.  Yes sir and/or ma’am – there is indeed graffiti up on the walls in S’pore, just so you don’t think the city-state is too perfect.

I am writing about the First World vacation that I took a couple of weeks back now – back to Singapore where I spent an academic year (1999-2000) studying and getting myself into trouble.  I didn’t take nearly enough photos because the power supply for my camera and I did not succeed in rendezvousing here in Jakarta in time, but a certain aunt and uncle of mine are thanked for making it get here despite the vagaries of the Indonesian postal system. 

Yes, back to Singapore touching down by plane at 12:30 AM, much like my first arrival almost six years ago when I startled my poor roommate in the middle of the night by moving into his room.  But this time, it was dear old Jonathan Yuen, one of my Singaporean debating buddies, who instead was prevented from getting a good night of sleep by my late arrival.

But first, what has changed about Singapore?

Well, you can buy chewing gum now – the Office of the US Trade Representative saw to that.  My talkative taxi driver by means of his chatting with me on the way into town suggested to me that the cabbies are getting angrier and less content with “The Way Things Always Will Be.”  He also saw fit to emphasize to me that the famed “Four Floors of Whores” spot on Orchard Road has become quite the hangout.  You know, just in case I needed the information.  And on Clark Quay and Boat Quay where people of my skin tone are bound to be paying too much for an honest drink at any hour of the day, they are building building building (and I did spend probably 3 of 5 nights in that neighborhood).  Oh yeah, and former "Senior Minister" Lee Kuan Yew is now the “Minister Mentor,”  and allows himself to be called this with a straight face.

And what has not changed seems to be given the option, just about anyone who can leave Singapore probably will.

Jon Yuen is in business for himself now.  His godmother/biz partner and he and his girlfriend are all sharing a gorgeous apartment – which I was supposed to stay at until scheduled power outages reared their ugly heads.  Jon left for the US the next night, where he still is staying, so I was fortunate to catch up with from 1:15 – 3:30 AM and a couple of hours in the next morning.

The next day, straight to the Indonesian embassy to get another visa – whoops, didn’t know my visa was not multiple entry – that’ll be S$70, please (jangan lupa!  You can’t wear shorts into the embassy’s visa office – they won’t let you in, and you’ll have to hope someone else is nice enough to collect your passport for you). 

Speaking of visas, I met up for coffee with Sidney Jones.  Yes, that Sidney Jones.  It’s good to know that people in the world who are doing such important work are so accessible and kind – it makes you think you don’t have to be a ruthless asshole to get results.  The first quote of the day, describing an audience with aforementioned Minister Mentor, and he asks her “but didn’t you compromise Indonesia’s intelligence service?”  (To which I responded “I think your answer should have been ‘Well, haven’t you?’”)

Thursday evening I meet up with the great and kindly Harveen Narulla Singh.  He takes me to see Batman Begins, for free, with complimentary popcorn and soda, all on his law firm’s tab.  You’re a great date Harveen.  Harveen will be my ever-tolerant host for the next few days, as he juggles his sweet baby girl, soon-to-be-returning-from-vacation wife, and a big deal injunction that needs to be filed in court on Monday morning.  Harveen gets the second quote of the day:  “Hey, look, you can ask the maid to do your laundry or make you breakfast.  I was going to say pretend like this is your house, but you probably wouldn’t have a maid in your house.  So just pretend like this is my house.”

Friday morning.  Um, it takes a lot longer to get to the National University of Singapore campus from the eastern end of the island than I thought.  Whoops – 20 minutes late for my meeting with Dr. Leo, by far the kindest of professors I’ve ever had who gave me all kinds of great advice five years ago (and fresh fruit) that still guides me forward.  That was the first lunch, the second with Mike Montesano. We had a funny conversation about why Singapore’s national politics is or is not just like city politics in Chicago.  Lee family.  Da-ley family.  Mike is not convinced.  Sometimes, Michael is.

Friday night, and it is time to catch up with Abhishek Jaiswal, one of my greatest friends made back in that great year.  The nightclub we end up at plays bad hip-hop, and the people on the dancefloor all look like they are 17-year old expat children.  There are girls who dance Club MTV-style on platforms (wubba wubba wubba!), then get down and try to sell you a bottle of Hennessy for way more money than it’s worth anywhere in the world.  The drinks here are more expensive than most places in New York.  None of this motivates us to do the hokey pokey or the chicken dance.  Fortunately, Siddartha Karri Rao shows and we tie the evening up.  And Abhishek declares “When you are waiting for things to move to the next level, just remember:  there is no next level.”  Abhishek will hopefully be in Boston or Philadelphia next fall, and maybe we will finally move in for that road trip through northern India we have always been talking about.

Oh, but the night isn’t totally over.  I get the taxi back to Harveen’s – wifey is back from vacation…and they are locked out of the house.  Whoops.  I find them nodding off on their front stoop, and they have been trying trying trying to wake up the maid, but she’s got her bedroom door closed and she is out like a light.  They have been throwing shoes at her door through their security gate and missing…and I manage to save the day, er, the night.

Saturday is great – I finally take some photos – hanging out all day with Amy Lim and her now husband Vernon.  This is a picture I took of Amy with her uncle.  Okay, that’s not her uncle, it’s a really silly way too life-like statue of Admiral Zheng He, the Chinese naval whiz who explored all kinds of parts of the globe back in the 1400s.  Here is Vernon with his uncle.  No, sorry man, that’s just Vernon with a giraffe, which Zheng He supposedly brought back to China from Africa (what do you do with a giraffe that dies on your boat?).  Here is a photo of me standing in front of something or other about eunuchs.  A eunuch is not my uncle (even you, Carl).  This display is all about this controversial claim by Gavin Menzies that China got to the American continent way before Christopher Columbus did it.  And so his book is for sale when you get to the last room in the exhibit.  And this leads Amy to simply declare in what is definitely the quote of the day “This is the cheese at the end of the maze.” 

Yo, congratulations to you two on getting married.  That is a helluva thing.

Saturday night it is a bit of a reunion of former residents of King Edward VII Hall.  Here are four of us – me with Sean, Rebecca, Alex.  Reshma showed up later, and for some reason in all the pictures she is in from Sean’s camera, I look completely psychotic…so, I ain’t gonna give you the link for those.  Alex’s eyes are closed – he was one of my travel companions on my first trip to Indonesia way back when.  And he reminded me of some misbehavior with a durian-flavored donut early one Jakarta morning after we had slept in the park.  Anyway, they all seem to be doing really great, and this was great to see.

I followed on much later into this evening with super-firecracker Maureen, who wouldn’t talk to me for about two years when she was working for the foreign ministry, deeming me to be too much of a trouble-maker and therefore a danger to her career, especially after I sent her a banned book for her birthday shortly after leaving Singapore (which she totally loved at the time).  We wandered the darkened, quickly quieting streets until it was way too late, talking and catching up, ranging way farther on foot than either of us had the energy to accomplish.  She is one of the unique mischief-makers that you find when you look carefully in a place that everyone expects to be completely predictable, and thank goodness for that.

Fortunately Harveen was not locked out this time, although he did beat me home by about 10 minutes when I got in at 3:30 AM.  They know how to kill those young legal associates, don’t they?

Sunday afternoon, it was time to catch up with Ben Wong, who administered what is now the second hardest exam I have ever taken, on Confucian political thought (Peter Danchin gets the privilege of the hardest these days).  Ben isn’t teaching Confucius anymore, but we had a fun coffee break with a friend of his from a Singaporean intelligence service that will not be named, lest I compromise Singapore’s intelligence system.  After that, more coffee with Ngoei Wen-qing, All-Asians debating champion from back in my day, and also just recently married.  Dang, why everybody gotta be growing up so quick?  Wen-qing is now the winningest junior college debating coach in Singapore, and I promised to come through and learn his students about international hokum at a date to be named later.  We hop on subway trains that are filled beyond capacity because “The Great Singapore Sale” is going down on Orchard Road, and there is some major blood in the shark tank.

Sunday night, it was father’s day dinner at Harveen’s in-laws’ place, and it was a grand time - you go to Indian people’s house, and you know they gonna serve up some Indian food like you don’t get when you go out.  Maureen dropped by Harveen’s place afterwards with a bottle of cachaça, and I stirred up some half-assed caipirinhas for the household’s enjoyment. 

Monday morning…dang, is it really almost over?  Cannot spend as much quality time with all the people you want to see, lah!  A quick buzz by Little India to pick up oleh-oleh for friends and co-workers back in Jakarta.  And then for lunch with Harveen and Karen Teo who is also going into biz for herself.  When I grouse about how they keep picking up the checks, Karen reminds me “don’t worry – you can pay us back when we come to New York!” 

Before long, it is time to rampage toward the airport.  Time to go back to snarled-up traffic, bathing in cold water, and rats appearing in the kitchen because my landlady thinks it is okay to leave out food underneath a basket on the table (and dismisses my worries with “ada banyak tikus di Setiabudi!”).  Time to stop speaking Singlish (“No, lah!”  “Roti prata good here, what?”), and re-setting your expectations for the developing world. 

But the last text message from Harveen says it all – “you’ll always be one of us.”  It is remarkable and wonderful that five years pass and the people that made your stay so enjoyable in a place that turns off so many can do it again for you in five days.  Thank you to my Singaporean peoples – you remind me why it is all worthwhile.

Every August, the 50th Ward of Chicago where I grew up had a big outdoor festival in the nearby gigantor Warren Park.  Carnivalish atmosphere.  In the evening half a mile away you could hear the barker encouraging people to make noise while they rode those untrustworthy carnival rides.  And they sold a lot of crap.  Sometimes it was called "The Taste of the 50th" (riffing off of the much larger and more food-centered "Taste of Chicago" around the 4th of July every year in Grant Park).  Later on it was called the "50-Fest." 

My father always had a more appropos name for it:  "Schlock-Fest."  Because, you know, basically everything there was kind of overpriced, and not really that great, and kind of annoying.  You know, schlocky.  Or as one Yiddish-English dictionary phrases it, "schlock" describes "Anything cheap or inferor; junk; trash." 

Maybe in Indonesia it’s hard to translate - "sampah" means "garbage" but usually just refers to what you throw away - Indonesians tend to say things are "not quite nice" instead of saying they are bad, so perhaps "schlock" would be "kurang halus" - "not well made."

But, it turns out that Indonesia has its own name for its was Schlock-Fest Jakarta:  the annual "Pekan Raya Jakarta" or colloquially "Jakarta Fair."  All over the city right now there are elaborate, lit-up signs in front of all of the buildingds that read "Dirgahayu Kota Jakarta ke-478" - basically a celebration of the founding of Jakarta’s 478th anniversary.  PRJ, Jakarta Fair, is the main event - a big outdoor fair.

Maybe the government news agency’s description takes us a little bit further, in which President SBY explains his hope that:

"…the exhibition would also help investors to indentify (sic) the products that attracted the public the most.

The government, he said, was resolved to revitalize all economic
sectors to spur growth that would eventually promote the people`s
welfare.

Economic growth would help create employment and thus reduce poverty, he noted."

Nowe we can see why SBY got that PhD in Agricultural Economics two days before he was elected.

From what I could see, the key products displayed for investors to focus on were:

1.  Motor oil, or maybe it was the girls in short dresses who appeared to be promoting it
2.  Motorcycle helmets
3.  Cheap flip-flops
4.  Dunkin Donuts
5.  Things to which you can add hot water and mix and then consume

Anna Fewell and I managed to connect up on a crowded street corner in North Jakarta and work our way to Arena PRJ where the event was being held.  After paying Rp. 15,000 for our entrance, we navigated our way through all manner of chaos.

Anna made a friend, for instance.

But I showed him an old fashion American carnival tradition - beating on anything in a costume!

Shortly after finishing our photography, a girl with a t-shirt for the candy company ran up to me and handed me a sample "This is the candy you just took picture of."  How sweet it was…

Later on, we saw some of Indonesia’s culinary output.  Although not really the type you would imagine being crucial to a country’s image.  For instance, there was the whole principle of "One Nation Under Instant Noodles."

There was also "One Nation Under Shitty Instant Coffee Because We Exported All the Good Stuff to Starbucks" but I won’t go too far into that right here.

After all this we were kind of hungry (lapar sekali!), so we walked into the food area.  In this photo, I am thinking to myself "Okay bapak-bapak (gentlemen), which of these 17 different menus that you’ve just shoved into our faces do you want us to order from?"

But we got fed.  Let’s face it:  fairground food in Indonesia kicks fairground food in America’s ass.  A fairground in the US sells elephant ears and expensive lemonade that’s such as made from Country Time powder.  You go to a posh restaurant, you get satay chicken for like $20.  Here, it’s at the fair, and so is the Avocado Juice with chocalate syrup. 

Okay, now I am a little bit happier.  Anna is already eating.

Oh yeah, there was some driver’s education at the Jakarta Fair, too.  Cuz, you know, that’s pretty much how traffic looks in Jakarta most of the time.

And, finally, here is a photo with some more gaudiness.  Maybe Anna can fill in the gap on who this is - I don’t know.  There was a second one with a guy in red and a scarier mask, but it didn’t come out so good.  This was near the "traditional Betawai Village" which seemed neither traditional, nor Betawai, nor photo-worthy.

We choked our way through the air pollution of the motorcycle parking area to a taxi and made our ways home, all the richer from having wandered through the schlock of Indonesian commercial output, and more headachy than before we left.  Hurrah!

Hi Mom.  Hopefully you got your wireless  internet set up now, and didn’t instead hang yourself from a  wire due to the incredible frustration that results from anyone who tries to set up a PC network.  Good luck there.  Everyone in the comment box, tell Ma she is brave for trying to set up a PC wireless network.

I have some more fruit to write about.

So, here is before, and there is after.

1.  Jeruk Imperial

The one that looks like an orange.  It is an orange.  "Imperial Orange"  From Australia.  Small, and unusually tasty. 

If I were a wealthy man, I would have a bushel of these little things shipped to my compound everyday, and before retiring for my morning avocado bath, I would have a fresh squeezed glass of juice made from these little things, and it would make my day that much sweeter.

And like a proper imperialistic exercise, it is small, and leaves little footprint, but enriches your own personal culture with refreshing flavors.

It’s really small, and reall sweet.  Get it?

2.  Markisa

At home we call this Passion Fruit, although I find that the Latin American variety is usually purple in color apparently?

You just tear through the packaging foam-like shell to reveal the wealth of seeds inside, which are not un-pomegranate-like - a small amount of fruit around a small seed, best consumed in large bursts all at once.  Of course, I had a mouthful of the fruit-covered seeds in my mouth, trying to spit out what was left after carefully disconnecting the flesh from the pits before I found on the internet that you’re just supposed to chew the seeds.  *Crunch* *Crunch* *Crunch*.

The appearance of this is totally Star Trek fruit, you know?  A Klingon general tears into one while watching Captain Kirk throw out his back during hand-to-hand combat with something that looks like it got laid off from the Magic Kingdom.  Geordi La Forge mistakes one for a tricorder while Captain Picard performs a soliloquy and endows a human rights scholarship (way to go Captain Picard!). 

Jack, I tried to come up with a Chakotay joke just for you, but I’m afraid I didn’t watch enough Voyager in my day.

It’s the weird conrast between the yellow fruit and the somewhat slimy, alien-color purplish-gray seeds that makes it Star Trek fruit.  That’s what I mean.

It’s delicious.  I only bought two because I was skeptical, and had not figured out how to eat it, but I think I will buy more.

I promised my Mom I would take pictures of strage fruit that I devoured here in Indonesia and send them to her.  Instead, I’m going to make the pictures and whatever I have to say about the displayed fruit available to anybody who might stumble onto this page with an empty stomach.

Today’s fruit is here.  That was the before.  There is the after. 

(Don’t worry - no photos of me looking satisfied after eating.)

1.  Jeruk Mandarin Thailand
Um, that just means "Mandarin Orange from Thailand."  Nothing special about the taste, but that green skin is something else - so bright and inviting.  I was pulled in by the green - it just grabs your eye and says "pay a few thousand more rupiah per kilo for me, take me home, and eat me."  Like someone thought that maybe if they start selling green-skinned oranges, people will buy them because they are oranges that are not orange.

It seems that the Thai people know a thing or two about marketing.  Oh wait,  haven’t I heard something about that before?

But really, Mom, I just wanted to remind you that I am in fact getting enough Vitamin C.

2.  Salak
See that weird brown thing in the photo?  That’s like one of my favorite fruits ever.  It’s called salak.  I bought some in Yogyakarta the first time I travelled there in 1999, and immediately devoured the whole bunch. 

Sebuah (one piece of) Salak might fit in your palm.  It has brown skin that is almost scaly, thus the appelation of "snake fruit" it is often given.  In the after photo you can see what happens when you peel it open - there is a white fruit that surrounds a large brown seed, which is not edible.  There are usually three full pieces inside each scaly cover, though sometimes only two grow fully and crowd out the third which comes out shriveled. 

The fruit has a light, sweet flavor - nothing too overwhelming, making it a great snack.  Biting into it, it almost has the texture of fresh, ripe garlic.

My only complaint is that for a skin covering that looks so durable, it molders and begins to rot very quickly.  I remember trying to sneak a few back into Singapore with me, opening  up my bag when I got home, and finding that the tips had already rotted to a mushy brown pulp with mold over the skin.  So, don’t count on me to bring any of these home.