In Real Life : Reconnecting IRL in Aceh
by Luci Ostheimer ‘21, Syiah Kuala University Fellow 2021-2023
June 15. Today marks the end of my first month here in Banda Aceh and the start of my “summer vacation”, having just finished teaching my final set of classes. After nearly two semesters of teaching online, wondering if I would ever meet my students in person, here I am writing this report, sipping sanger, a sugary espresso riff made with sweetened condensed milk, at my friend’s cousin’s coffeeshop called Blvckbox. It’s a small yet suave cafe that serves a variety of drinks with names like “Smooth Criminals”, “Gangsta”, and “Royal Syndicate”, stylish names that belie a certain edginess common in coffeeshops around here. This is my first time going to a cafe on my own actually, usually I go with friends.While outside is uncharacteristically gray and gloomy for the dry season, things feel relatively normal, though I know that me being here is really the beginning of a new chapter for Shansi and Universitas Syiah Kuala, or UnSyiah, after a two year on-site fellow hiatus.
The first year of my Shansi fellowship was spent pretty much holed up in my “home office” (aka the guest bedroom of my home in Delaware), leading speaking classes on Zoom for curious and earnest first year English Education majors as well as conversation and writing classes for graduate students and faculty wanting to improve their English. My supervisors and coworkers at the Language Center were all mysterious, nebulous figures I would sporadically communicate with on WhatsApp and email. Being a teacher on Zoom was an interesting experience, to say the least. I could only see my students in the context of their tiny Zoom boxes, yet I still was able get to know them and Aceh through our check-ins, homework assignments, and weekly office hours. Landscapes came alive when Zilla wrote about her grandmother washing clothes at a waterfall by her village, or when Wahdina described the peaceful rice paddies across the street from her house. I heard pet birds in the background of Denny and Salawati’s video feeds, the rush of traffic outside Dara’s house, the staticy cut-ins and -outs of mengobrol, or chitchat, when someone inevitably forgot to mute themselves. Around Halloween, we talked about the Salem Witch Trials and Hocus Pocus, the word spooky, and all the things that scared us. My students introduced me to the ghosts that haunt Indonesia like kuntilanak and pocong, entities that put western vampires and werewolves to shame. I learned how to make mie Aceh, nasi goreng, and choclatey “towel crepes” from cooking video finals, how issues like gender equality, labor rights, and deforestation are as salient in Aceh as they are in the US during midterm presentations, and that BTS, One Piece, and Taylor Swift are global phenomena in the purest sense of the word during office hours.
Being a teacher was only a fraction of my identity then. With a time difference of 13 hours between Aceh and Delaware, I led a double life teaching my students’ morning classes by night and cooking at a cafe by day, which, while not the Shansi experience I was expecting, was enjoyable and fulfilling in its own right. In fact, before coming here, I described my life as “supremely comfortable”, something I’m sure is pretty unheard of for fellows on their Shansi journeys. That feeling of comfort, however, was still overcast by the looming question, when will I go? With new coronavirus variants constantly developing and endless pauses in the visa process, the answer was painfully unclear. I would check my email daily to see if there were any updates, and for months there was nothing. Until one day, April 19th, to be exact, I received an email from Pak Faisal, the liaison between Shansi and UnSyiah - “It is good news that your visa has been approved. Kindly tell us when you will be arriving.”
I was elated, shocked, relieved, terrified, and everything in between. It was happening…!!!! Months of waiting, months of growing to love the comfortable life I had built for myself, nearly a year of uncertainty was suddenly inconsequential, and that question loomed more pertinently than ever: When will I go? With my class ending on May 22nd, I knew it needed to be soon in order to finish out the semester in-person. We booked a ticket for May 15th. As I prepared to leave, another question of doubt began to worm its way to the forefront of my mind: will I be okay being on my own?
One of the things that drew me to applying to Shansi was the emphasis on strong, lasting ties between people, both in terms of outwardly joining global institutions and its internal support system. Normally, incoming Shansi fellows spend their first year with a Senior Fellow who passes on knowledge and experiences as their fellowships overlap, showing them the ropes of teaching, navigating their new home, and finding a community. Because of travel restrictions and visa complications, however, there has not been a fellow in Aceh for over two years and the junior/senior fellow rhythm has been put on pause. Even with things returning to “normal”, as if they really can, the road to get here was difficult, and I have so much compassion for my preceding fellows who had to leave early or were unable to make it to Aceh in the face of these outstanding, nearly insurmountable obstacles. I’m beyond grateful that I’ve been able to move forward with my fellowship on-site with the opportunity to help reestablish the connections between Shansi and UnSyiah, a partnership that has withstood the tests of time, space, and now, a global pandemic. I’m also so happy that I finally have the chance to see Aceh in real life, or as I taught my students, IRL. In order to get the most of both, one of the most useful qualities to have is flexibility.
Before coming to Aceh, I poured myself into reading the Stories From the Field from Aceh fellows past, totally engrossed in a wonderful sense of Shansi’s history here. The mythos is so vivid, from pieces of the everyday: motorbike misadventures, weekend trips to Sabang, Aceh’s iconic coffee culture, hearing the call to prayer, the adhan, echo through the city every day, the inevitability of someone shouting “bule!”, or foreigner, at you; to Shansi’s own unique cultural footprint in Aceh: the invaluable network of friends passed from fellow to fellow here in Banda, or how you can go to a coffee farm eight hours away and find that the owner had met a fellow years ago; to the culture within the Shansi experience in Banda Aceh itself, most centrally located around the house shared by Shansi fellows and local housemates since almost the beginning of the fellowship. If you go back into the archives, you’ll find that the house is the heart of fellows’ time here, and, like any other home, it accrued countless memories along with plants, posters, books, spices, and a variety of creatures, developing, in my mind at least, an identity of its own. If I didn’t have a senior fellow, at least I could feel some sense of vicarious belonging through an inherited and well-loved home.
Well, I’m sorry to say, the house is gone. It was torn down last year to make room for a new building, what I’m told will be a new hospital. On my third day here, I visited it with Tryvan, a longtime friend of fellows. It was eerie, dusty, and infested with mosquitoes, but it was all still kind of there. The walls are still up, the flooring is all still down, windows are open, making it easy to imagine what life might have been like when Emily and Sydney were still here in early 2020. I can imagine reading in the front, surrounded by nature, having little get-togethers in the living room, attempting to cook nasi soto or ayam bakar in the kitchen. A lonely blue toilet stands at the entrance, overflowing with plants, a house decor relic from Sydney, according to Tryvan. The ruins are located just a two minute walk away from my residence, the aptly named Guesthouse, which houses myself, an international student from The Gambia, and the occasional transient foreign researcher. The house towers above the rest of the neighborhood and boasts a modern aesthetic, eliciting a sort of architectural whiplash beside its traditional surroundings. It isn’t quite the home I was expecting and doesn’t carry that same cozy sense of history I imagine the old house did. While I am admittedly sad to miss out on what was an iconic piece of the Shansi experience, I’ve realized part of my experience is picking up where Shansi left off two years ago and starting a new chapter, which means some things need to be let go. After all, memories of experience are kept alive by enjoying coffee with friends or going on adventures outside of the city just as well as they can live on passively, settled into the foundations of a home. And besides, a single demolished house is far from the only change Banda Aceh has seen in the last two years.
The remains of the old Shansi house
The Guesthouse, new home for Shansi fellows
I have the really unique privilege of coming to Aceh with connections already formed because of the classes I taught online. Each week here has been studded by lunches and coffee dates with coworkers from Pusat Bahasa, meet-ups and adventures with friends of past Shansi fellows, and get togethers with my students. It feels like I’ve been so busy meeting people that I haven’t had the chance to be lonely. I think the most powerful experience I’ve had so far is getting to meet my students for the first time. It’s so hard to put the feeling of meeting them all into words. Although the fact that we were finally together was momentous in itself, it didn’t feel bombastic or tearful, it really felt like reuniting with friends I hadn’t seen in a while. I made time to spend with anyone who wanted to spend time with me. We went shopping for stationary and reading lamps, ending up with matching friendship bracelets instead, out for tea at riverside coffee trucks, and sat in the park and reminisced about how weird Zoom classes were, among other things.
My favorite “reunion” was my first Saturday night here, when two of my graduate students and their friend took me to a live music show at a coffee shop, the choice weekend hangout activity for young people. The singer-guitarist duo played mostly Indonesian pop hits, sappy love songs that my students knew all the words to. I smiled and nodded, trying to hum along since I had no idea what the lyrics were. They also played some western classics, which I wasn’t expecting. They started with “Creep” by Radiohead, as any good acoustic show should, but what really caught me off guard was their heartfelt rendition of My Chemical Romance’s “I Don’t Love You”, the anthem of my angsty teenage years, and I tried my best to keep my cool. It was so surreal, never in a million years did I think I would hear one of 2010’s hottest emo bangers all the way on Sumatra in 2022. Despite my best efforts, couldn’t help but sing along, much to the amusement of my students. Then, my students’ friend requested “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis and we swayed and sang along together, and shouted it on our motorbikes on the drive home. It might be a little cheesy to say, but I think this was the moment where I realized that even though I was a foreigner in a new place, that there would be ways to find a sense of belonging.
The last day of my FKIP class in December 2021
FKIP class reunion
My first in-person day with my second semester FKIP class
And I’ve had so many moments like that. Really, I feel so lucky to be here and to have such a strong network of people. I go to coffeeshops with my students for live music, conversation practice, or just to hang out. I go to coworkers’ barbecues, get invited to weddings, and tag along on day trips to the beach. Just last week, I went to Sabang, a beautiful island getaway just 45 minutes from Banda Aceh by ferry, with Cutmon, a longtime friend of fellows, and her friends. I feel like I learn something new with every conversation I have here. Aceh is such a complicated place with a rich, multifaceted history marred by hardship, but many people still want to share their stories. There are lots of things I’m still getting used to and learning about, like navigating busy roads on a motorbike; the friendliness of strangers willing to help; the unique, difficult experiences of the Chinese diaspora community here; the curt sincerity of questions like “what is your religion?” or “are you married yet?”; and how Islam is truly a way of life here, manifesting in communal, sacred daily practices like prayer, fasting, modesty, and cleanliness, and in conversations about politics, identity, and the future.
A few of my friends received their Master’s degrees abroad in Australia and the UK and tell me about how they, too, had to adapt to a new place and culture. Aside from acclimating to new climates, new languages, new foods, and everything that goes along with living abroad, they faced Islamophobia, racism, and sexism, and some of the stories about the abuse they dealt with are haunting. One of my friends had an especially hostile and aggressive encounter in Australia that actually made the news, but rather than reflecting on it with anger, as my reaction was when she told me what happened, she was empathetic. She explained, “It happened because their views of the world are tied to where they are from, and they’ve never had contact with anyone different from them. The more places you go and people you meet, the wiser you become.” In Aceh, I’ve received some creepy looks, unwanted comments about my nose, skin, and hair, a few innocuous “bule, bule, bule!”’s, but the discomfort I’ve felt has never equated to being viscerally unwelcome, which I know partly is a reflection of my privilege as a white American. Discomfort and unattention are unfortunately just a part of foreigners’ reality here in a place where there aren’t really foreigners, especially when the pandemic caused most expats to return home. That said, I don’t want to eclipse the genuine kindness of people in Aceh. People here are quick to smile, quick to laugh. They take their time and do not rush. “Tidak apa-apa”, or “it’s no problem”, is a common phrase. The communal and friendly nature of Aceh has made me reflect on my own western upbringing, defined by individualist self-sufficiency and self-appraisal. Being here, where people are happy to strike up conversation with a stranger, calling each other “sis” and “brother”, has helped me settle into the fact that it’s okay to lean on others for support, that it’s okay to relax a little and take things slowly. Another phrase I hear a lot is “enjoy your time.”
Looking back at the Stories From The Field from fellows past, I’m reminded that half of them were written just one year into living on-site, halfway through the fellowship. I am also at the halfway point, yet have only lived in Banda Aceh for one month. There is still so much that is new to me, so much that I need to try, so much I have to learn. I’ve also gained so much from my unorthodox experience, having spent the vast majority of my fellowship on Zoom. The thought of what I’ll be writing a year from now is as exciting as it is daunting, and I can’t wait to see what this next year on-site brings.
Kak Cutmon, Kak Siti, my friend from Canada, Louis, and I at a wedding
Snorkeling
Kak Cutmon, Kak Siti, Kak Dara, and Kak Nono at Freddie’s in Sabang
A brilliant sunset taken on Lamnyong Bridge while on a motorbike (not driving)