I can sometimes tell a great deal about how my subconscious is handling a situation by the things that I dream. When I first arrived in Malaysia, I dreamed only about people and places back home in the U.S., and every morning I was confused about where I was when I woke up, but in the past few days that has shifted. Now I am dreaming about a strangely integrated world in which people from home are here with me! Last night I dreamed about being very excited to take my mom to an Indian restaurant in KT that I like. I take this as a sign that I am getting more psychologically settled in.
TCC has a small booth at the Chinese Lantern Festival on the new KT waterfront this weekend, with which I have been helping out. Snapshots of interest from the Chinese Lantern Festival so far have included: several dozen middle aged Chinese ladies performing line dances to Latin music, a man missing both hands who does beautiful Chinese calligraphy, the mysterious descent to Earth of a hot-air-balloon style lantern that had been launched near the exact same spot 24 hours before, loudspeakers blasting Lady Gaga followed immediately by Cotton-eyed Joe, and a VERY long shadow puppet show, the dialog of which was completely unintelligible to everyone in attendance (I did get to go behind the scenes and see the musicians and the puppeteer at work, though!). The ways that Western, Chinese, and Malay cultures do and do not mix here continue to catch me off guard.
The mixing of languages in particular provides endless puzzlement and hilarity. For example, yesterday Pelf, Euson (a University of Malaysia Terengganu student) and I were returning from the Lantern Festival, and Pelf and Euson were speaking in Chinese, which I don’t understand at all. But there were enough names of people and places I knew and English words like “hospital” that I could tell what they were talking about. I chimed in with some additional information in English without even thinking about the fact that they had been speaking Chinese. We were all surprised! I guess I am developing a heightened sensitivity to context clues.
I also created some confusion at McDonalds last night when I stepped up to order chicken rice porridge (probably the best thing I have ever eaten at McDonalds) and milkshakes for the three of us, and said “Helo!” to the woman behind the counter. She assumed I only spoke English and went to get someone who could take my order in English. I then proceeded to place my order in Malay, which cracked up all the ladies working the other registers. Despite my ability to order food in Malay, I still cannot remember the Malay words for Men and Women, so I was lucky that McDonald’s bathrooms had little “Man” and “Woman” pictures on their restroom doors!
A note about McDonald’s: I NEVER go to McDonald’s in the states. Ever. But here I have already been several times. They have pretty much all the same things that they do in the U.S., except it is halal, and they also have things like the amazing chicken rice porridge (which an American would probably call chicken rice soup).
Something I miss from home is cheese. I have not eaten cheese in several weeks, which is kind of unbelievable. I might have to go to the Pizza Hut downtown and remedy that situation at some point soon. However it seems a little silly to complain about the lack of cheese with such a huge variety of new foods from which to choose a substitute. I have recently tried the following: fried squid balls (that is, balls made of squid), black bean dumpling (practically a dessert), deep fried honey-dipped jackfruit (much better than fresh jackfruit), keropok lekor (fried fish sausage), dragonfruit/pineapple juice, and some very addictive plain buttery buns sold out of the back door of someone’s house in Chinatown. Durian flavored cake is one of only two things I have tried so far that I REALLY did not like. The other was a supposedly plum flavored, but somehow extremely salty drink.
I see this has devolved into another post about food. There is just so much to report on that subject! I have actually been doing some scientific things related to turtles in between meals and snacks, so I will be able to post something sciencey soon.
I am headed back to the Kampung in the next couple of days, where my broadband connection is much more dicey, but I should still be able to check my email, and I am looking forward to being by the sea and part of a family again.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Sips from the waterfall
You can see photos here--I'm having trouble uploading them to the blog itself.
When I am staying in Mangkok, I wake up to the sounds of many roosters crowing, goats and sheep maaaing and the mother and grandmother of the family out in the kitchen making the pre-dawn meal to be eaten before the Ramadhan fast begins at sunrise. The food is great: lots of curries, spicy fish, and stir-fried vegetables all eaten with rice and followed by various kinds of very sweet sweets. Luckily I was schooled at an early age in the art of eating rice with my hands (thanks Mom!) so I jumped right into that with no problem. Locals boil their water, but almost never drink it plain. It is made into tea (often VERY sweet, even by Southern U.S. standards) or mixed with fruity syrups in alarming colors, but it is liquid, so I am happy. Everyone in Mangkok has been warm and welcoming to me. They ask how old I am and if I am married and are very curious to know about my family. They are surprised when they learn that I will be staying in the village so long, and they seem pleased that I love to wear sarongs and t-shirts like everybody else does. The kids have already accepted me and will often wave and ask where I am going as I walk by. They call me Kak Meg. Kak is short for kakak, which means “older sister” and is used as a respectful form of address for young women—something like “miss” in Southern U.S. usage.
In the daytime I have often been occupied helping with craft projects that the kids are doing at TCC. They are making lanterns for the upcoming Chinese Lantern Festival. We also have several clutches of young turtles for which we collect morphometric data (weight, length and width) periodically. They are so cute!
Wherever I go I am usually the only white lady around, so people are very interested in my appearance. Four or five people have complemented me on my “tall” nose, the kids are very curious about the fact that I have hair on my arms, and lots of people want to take my picture. I am flattered and rather amused.
This past week we hosted Debbie and Marilyn, two Australian ladies who visited TCC as part of a six-week tour of various river turtle conservation projects around the world. They are involved in the conservation of the Mary River Turtle in Queensland, which was only discovered in 1996, and is endemic to (only exists in) the Mary River. It was great to get to know them, and helping to show someone else around made me feel a bit more confident myself. They stayed at a small family run resort not far from TCC, which would be a great place to stay if you ever think about coming to visit me here.
Earlier this week our Aussie friends accompanied Pelf and me on a little Setiu River reconnaissance mission. We scoped out various points along the river where I may be able to take water samples from land rather than having to hire a boat. It was great to get out in the field and explore the back roads along the river. I saw rice paddies, small oil palm and rubber tree plantations, sand mining, grazing land, and lots of beautiful birds and flowers. On our way back to Mangkok I spotted a monitor lizard just walking along the side of the road. These lizards are SO BIG--close to 2 meters in length--but apparently they are scared of people so they are not dangerous. Phew!
We also got Malek, one of my neighbors in Mangkok, to take us out in his boat at night to see the famous synchronized fireflies. I tried to take a picture, but it just came out black. Perhaps you can imagine…Pelf, Marilyn, Debbie, my host family’s eldest daughter Atikah, and me are all piled into a little flat-bottomed boat with jolly Malek manning the motor and a generous dusting of unfamiliar stars overhead. It is very dark and still on the river. I cannot tell exactly where we are because the bank is obscured by the complete blackness of the tall mangrove palms and their mirror image in the water. Here and there I can see lights on houses blinking through the trees to the East. We move farther upriver. There are a few fireflies in some tall trees that we pass, but Malek says, this is nothing. Finally we are just about to turn around, thinking it is not a good night for fireflies, when we come upon some low bushes right at the bank that are absolutely FILLED with them! The tiny beetles give off a faint greenish yellow light and they all blink together like a much more beautiful version of Christmas lights. It looks like a crowd of stars have gotten tangled in the shrubbery and are trying to signal a rescue by flashing in unison. We cannot stop saying “Wow!” Malek brings us right up to the bushes so that we can hold the fireflies in our hands, and I am trying to soak up the magic of being surrounded by these little creatures. On the way back to the dock, I am wide-eyed and grinning in the breezy darkness. Malek is singing Hari Raya songs and announces happily that there are only two more days of fasting left in Ramadhan. As we all walk back into Mangkok by flashlight, he makes me laugh by telling me that I look like a fisherman with my pants rolled up and my sarong-turned-purse holding my camera across my shoulder. Marvelous.
Ramadhan, the Muslim fasting month, ended on Thursday evening. Pelf and I tried fasting for the second time on Thursday. It was easier the second time around than it had been when I tried it a few days before—probably because I made a point of drinking a lot of water before dawn. Thirst is definitely harder to endure than hunger. We broke our fast at “my” house and later let the kids play with the lanterns they had made. Turns out the main activity with lanterns is relighting them when the candles blow out, but I think they had a lot of fun with it. At some point in the evening we got a call from Zam, one of the guys who runs the WWF sea turtle hatchery down the road, saying that many green sea turtle hatchlings were emerging. We dashed out, piled about ten kids into our two cars, and drove down to watch the release of the baby turtles. I had never seen sea turtles in the wild before! It really does look like the sand is boiling with baby turtles. They are black with white edges on their flippers, and they flap and scramble over each other without ceasing, trying to get out of the protective cage placed over the nest and out to the sea. I was impressed by their stamina.
We carried the 100+ anak penyu (baby sea turtles) that emerged that night out onto the beach in buckets, and Zam made us all stand behind a line in the sand. On his cue we poured out the turtles and they ran toward the glow of his headlamp as if it were a magnet and they little iron filings. As they neared the water, he turned off his light and stepped out of the way as they disappeared into the waves under cover of darkness—off to try their luck in the big wide world.
The following day was Hari Raya Aidilfitri (the celebration at the end of Ramadhan known in some places as Eid). Everyone dresses up in new clothes and goes to prayers, and then goes around visiting friends and family. We visited a number of families over the course of the day in Mangkok and everywhere we were invited to eat and drink. I was so full! We sampled a wide variety of sweets that you can buy in the store, but every family also served two homemade traditional Hari Raya foods: ketupat pulut, which is sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves, and tapai, a packet of rice that has been fermented with yeast and wrapped in a rubber tree leaf. Tapai tastes a bit like Japanese sake (rice wine). After a whole day of visiting and eating I was exhausted and happy to head back to KT for a few days to stay with Pelf while my host family visits relatives.
When I am staying in Mangkok, I wake up to the sounds of many roosters crowing, goats and sheep maaaing and the mother and grandmother of the family out in the kitchen making the pre-dawn meal to be eaten before the Ramadhan fast begins at sunrise. The food is great: lots of curries, spicy fish, and stir-fried vegetables all eaten with rice and followed by various kinds of very sweet sweets. Luckily I was schooled at an early age in the art of eating rice with my hands (thanks Mom!) so I jumped right into that with no problem. Locals boil their water, but almost never drink it plain. It is made into tea (often VERY sweet, even by Southern U.S. standards) or mixed with fruity syrups in alarming colors, but it is liquid, so I am happy. Everyone in Mangkok has been warm and welcoming to me. They ask how old I am and if I am married and are very curious to know about my family. They are surprised when they learn that I will be staying in the village so long, and they seem pleased that I love to wear sarongs and t-shirts like everybody else does. The kids have already accepted me and will often wave and ask where I am going as I walk by. They call me Kak Meg. Kak is short for kakak, which means “older sister” and is used as a respectful form of address for young women—something like “miss” in Southern U.S. usage.
In the daytime I have often been occupied helping with craft projects that the kids are doing at TCC. They are making lanterns for the upcoming Chinese Lantern Festival. We also have several clutches of young turtles for which we collect morphometric data (weight, length and width) periodically. They are so cute!
Wherever I go I am usually the only white lady around, so people are very interested in my appearance. Four or five people have complemented me on my “tall” nose, the kids are very curious about the fact that I have hair on my arms, and lots of people want to take my picture. I am flattered and rather amused.
This past week we hosted Debbie and Marilyn, two Australian ladies who visited TCC as part of a six-week tour of various river turtle conservation projects around the world. They are involved in the conservation of the Mary River Turtle in Queensland, which was only discovered in 1996, and is endemic to (only exists in) the Mary River. It was great to get to know them, and helping to show someone else around made me feel a bit more confident myself. They stayed at a small family run resort not far from TCC, which would be a great place to stay if you ever think about coming to visit me here.
Earlier this week our Aussie friends accompanied Pelf and me on a little Setiu River reconnaissance mission. We scoped out various points along the river where I may be able to take water samples from land rather than having to hire a boat. It was great to get out in the field and explore the back roads along the river. I saw rice paddies, small oil palm and rubber tree plantations, sand mining, grazing land, and lots of beautiful birds and flowers. On our way back to Mangkok I spotted a monitor lizard just walking along the side of the road. These lizards are SO BIG--close to 2 meters in length--but apparently they are scared of people so they are not dangerous. Phew!
We also got Malek, one of my neighbors in Mangkok, to take us out in his boat at night to see the famous synchronized fireflies. I tried to take a picture, but it just came out black. Perhaps you can imagine…Pelf, Marilyn, Debbie, my host family’s eldest daughter Atikah, and me are all piled into a little flat-bottomed boat with jolly Malek manning the motor and a generous dusting of unfamiliar stars overhead. It is very dark and still on the river. I cannot tell exactly where we are because the bank is obscured by the complete blackness of the tall mangrove palms and their mirror image in the water. Here and there I can see lights on houses blinking through the trees to the East. We move farther upriver. There are a few fireflies in some tall trees that we pass, but Malek says, this is nothing. Finally we are just about to turn around, thinking it is not a good night for fireflies, when we come upon some low bushes right at the bank that are absolutely FILLED with them! The tiny beetles give off a faint greenish yellow light and they all blink together like a much more beautiful version of Christmas lights. It looks like a crowd of stars have gotten tangled in the shrubbery and are trying to signal a rescue by flashing in unison. We cannot stop saying “Wow!” Malek brings us right up to the bushes so that we can hold the fireflies in our hands, and I am trying to soak up the magic of being surrounded by these little creatures. On the way back to the dock, I am wide-eyed and grinning in the breezy darkness. Malek is singing Hari Raya songs and announces happily that there are only two more days of fasting left in Ramadhan. As we all walk back into Mangkok by flashlight, he makes me laugh by telling me that I look like a fisherman with my pants rolled up and my sarong-turned-purse holding my camera across my shoulder. Marvelous.
Ramadhan, the Muslim fasting month, ended on Thursday evening. Pelf and I tried fasting for the second time on Thursday. It was easier the second time around than it had been when I tried it a few days before—probably because I made a point of drinking a lot of water before dawn. Thirst is definitely harder to endure than hunger. We broke our fast at “my” house and later let the kids play with the lanterns they had made. Turns out the main activity with lanterns is relighting them when the candles blow out, but I think they had a lot of fun with it. At some point in the evening we got a call from Zam, one of the guys who runs the WWF sea turtle hatchery down the road, saying that many green sea turtle hatchlings were emerging. We dashed out, piled about ten kids into our two cars, and drove down to watch the release of the baby turtles. I had never seen sea turtles in the wild before! It really does look like the sand is boiling with baby turtles. They are black with white edges on their flippers, and they flap and scramble over each other without ceasing, trying to get out of the protective cage placed over the nest and out to the sea. I was impressed by their stamina.
We carried the 100+ anak penyu (baby sea turtles) that emerged that night out onto the beach in buckets, and Zam made us all stand behind a line in the sand. On his cue we poured out the turtles and they ran toward the glow of his headlamp as if it were a magnet and they little iron filings. As they neared the water, he turned off his light and stepped out of the way as they disappeared into the waves under cover of darkness—off to try their luck in the big wide world.
The following day was Hari Raya Aidilfitri (the celebration at the end of Ramadhan known in some places as Eid). Everyone dresses up in new clothes and goes to prayers, and then goes around visiting friends and family. We visited a number of families over the course of the day in Mangkok and everywhere we were invited to eat and drink. I was so full! We sampled a wide variety of sweets that you can buy in the store, but every family also served two homemade traditional Hari Raya foods: ketupat pulut, which is sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves, and tapai, a packet of rice that has been fermented with yeast and wrapped in a rubber tree leaf. Tapai tastes a bit like Japanese sake (rice wine). After a whole day of visiting and eating I was exhausted and happy to head back to KT for a few days to stay with Pelf while my host family visits relatives.
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