Indonesian Otherness

My travels had brought me in the past to a fair amount of places where I did not speak the language and a few places where I couldn’t read the street signs, but Indonesia is the first place that I have ever been where my difference is immediately apparent. It feels embarrassing to say it, but I have been traveling exclusively in alien places populated by other white people.

It is one of the first things my gracious hostess mentioned, as we wandered the inner grounds of the Water Palace in Jogjakarta. She warned me that people would approach us and ask to take our pictures. She told me this with the weary voice of someone who had been living in and studying the country for some time, someone who speaks Indonesian and lives the culture and has devoted a good portion of her life to studying aspects of its evolution. She also told me this as a redheaded white girl in a city people who are decidedly not.

At first I shrugged it off, how annoying could it be? But as the days progressed it did become trying. Being called out on your otherness was uncomfortable for me, and surprising, and her response seems not only natural but assertive. Why would you want to take my picture?

I visited the temple at Borobudur, a gorgeous 9^th century pilgrimage site. I went at sunrise when the changing sky mixed with the sounds of Islamic call to prayer and the whole scene was watched over on high by hundreds of Buddhas. Some of these had lost their heads to (mostly Western) museums, clamoring for a piece of this ancient spirituality that continues to be relevant.

Amid all of this overlay of religion, time, worship and tourism, people of all types hiked up and down the temple site, some armed with selfie sticks. I had a few hours before the bus would bring me back, so I spent a fair amount of time sitting and looking out. I was approached by dozens of people, families, and schoolchildren. Some asked, some didn’t, some pretended and some simply focused and snapped as many pictures of me as they could. I watched other Americans and Europeans get cycled through all the members of huge groups for individual portraits.

I suppose I was surprised because I just didn’t think seeing someone who looks like me would be exotic to anyone. I knew I would be immediately identified as a tourist, someone who could afford to pay for services. I was a millionaire in rupias, after all. But this was different. I had known the privilege of being a part of the everywhere-culture that invented the internet and dominates the global media. I had naively thought that this type of experience of otherness was out of date, belonged to a different time. I thought it was limited to the imperialism and orientalism I studied in my cozy forward-thinking California university. I was wrong.

An important reminder to people like me, who speak liberally without really understanding, and who remain, through it all, in a place of privilege. Were I Asian American, African American, or any other color American this would be an entirely different feeling. Art, music, new culture and new places are eye-opening in reference to what we know, but I hope this human experience can better inform my perspective at home.