Navigating Banda Aceh
By Emily Peterson ‘19, Syiah Kuala University Fellow 2019-2021
Navigation in Banda Aceh works differently than at home. Instead of maps and street names, most people navigate using other landmarks they already know. To get to our house I learned to turn right at Simpang Mesra, the intersection marked by large statue that looks like the tip of a ballpoint pen. Turn left at a different intersection with a large billboard displaying a woman in a white hijab to get to the mall. Keep going straight and you reach Simpang Lima, the intersection where five roads converge into one roundabout. Turn left and over the bridge to get to the gym and the supermarket. The roads to the right lead to shops, restaurants, and the best sate in town. Navigating by landmarks was difficult at first, but helped me learn the city quickly. It condensed Banda Aceh into a 3-D map of familiar locations, and made it so that I could always find a new place I had never been before, based on the places I did know. This mental map allowed me to feel like I truly knew the place I live in, instead of memorizing the aerial-view Google maps version of it.
Getting to know Banda Aceh made it clear just how much Indonesia there is to know. There is a graphic we have shown to Indonesian students who might be interested in studying in the United States in the future. It places a map of Indonesia over a map of the United States, and to the awe of everyone (Americans and Indonesians alike) the two countries almost match each other distance-wise from east to west. On the map, the tip of Sumatra lays on top of Oregon and West Papua floats over the Atlantic Ocean, just off the shore of Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey. Before coming here, it was difficult to comprehend the vastness of a country I had little context for before my fellowship. While I had read about the 17,000+ islands, the fourth largest population in the world, and the thousands of languages spoken, I couldn’t fully grasp that information before I experienced it physically. It wasn’t until flying from Yogya to Banda Aceh, or driving on the winding and mountainous roads on an overnight bus to the nearby city of Medan, that I felt Indonesia slowly expanding in my mind.
But while my mental map of this new country I am constantly learning about has expanded, my sense of the size of the world has simultaneously contracted. I’ve witnessed the universal joy of hearing a silly knock-knock joke during conversation club, the universal appeal of a sunset as an ideal photo backdrop, the universal comfort of fried chicken. I’ve shared concerns about politics, thoughts about movies, delight over a really good cup of coffee. The exchange of people between Banda Aceh and Oberlin (for the Shansi Fellow or visiting scholars program) has been happening for long enough that it is likely to meet someone in either place who has been touched by the program in some way. Places that seem like they could not be more different from each other on paper can find common ground.
Aceh is a region marked by conflict, natural disaster, and thousands of years of history I’ve just started to unravel. Like almost everywhere in the world, it’s a complicated place. But I have found that many people (even within Indonesia) have a version of Aceh in their head that comes from scary stories and rumors. During my summer language training in Yogyakarta and in conversations with friends at home, people have often asked me (and sometimes warned me) about Aceh. How is it? Is it dangerous? Are you okay there? It’s times like these when I wish their idea of Banda Aceh could expand. I wish they could see all the families, gardens, beaches, coffee shops, surfers, mosques, musicians, professors, students, cooks, fishermen, conservationists, and many others that make up this city instead of the homogenous idea of a place that makes it into news sources.
And in times of stress and homesickness, I have sought out the feeling of a contracted world, one in which I can deliver a message to my parents and friends in 20 seconds, and can sit around a table talking about American movies with my Indonesian friends.
I am grateful that I can experience both.