garbage

There is shit everywhere here. Not literally of course (although about some dark corners and abandoned patches of land behind buildings I would rather not know.) One thing I have learned after living in this country for 3 months is that sometimes it’s best not to dig too deeply into unused rooms, or when looking out windows, to keep my focus on the trees rather than the informal trash dump scattered underneath them. Garbage of a different variety can be found in and around most buildings, and my office at the University where I work is no exception. As I sit here typing, my desk is facing a wall of shelves…shelves which are, shall we say, organizationally challenged. Crammed onto said shelves are stacks of old papers covered in dust, yellowed by water-stains; 3-ring binders (not one of the 26 remains with the full functionality of it’s spine or ability to remain closed); stacks and stacks of outdated practice tests (circa 1975); used test answer sheets from students long graduated; sloppy piles of manila envelopes…all of this topped off, like the cherry on the proverbial sundae, by a clock in the shape of a rafflesia flower whose hands haven’t moved past 9:45 since the earthquake 2 and a half months ago.

One of my main goals during my fellowship is to give the English Library here at the language center an extreme make-over. As you might well imagine, the library, normally referred to as the Self-Access Center (SAC), is not exempt from the traditional Indonesian-style organization (the aforementioned method of piling shit everywhere but never, EVER, throw anything away lest it might come in handy some day.) Upon my first introduction to the SAC, after having my mission explained to me, it took every ounce of will-power I possessed not to attack the place with a giant plastic garbage bag (props to the McClintic Gulag of my childhood and its Saturday morning enforced cleaning sessions, which, in retrospect, probably instilled more long-term values than that re-run of Saved by the Bell) Anyway, in an effort to be more culturally conscious, I resisted my impulses to immediately begin re-organizing, deciding to first observe the situation then choose the best course of action.

So after 3 months of observing the routine and browsing through the materials, I deduced that the SAC was used mainly as a lunch room for teachers and a place for the librarian to watch soap operas. Various attempts at sorting the materials had taught me that most of the listening materials hadn’t been touched in years, and the majority of the video tapes couldn’t be played and were, in fact, stuck together and slightly moldy. An obvious and easy place to start weeding out unnecessary items…or so I thought. As with most things here, nothing gets accomplished without the advice and opinion of anyone who happens to be in the building at the time. Which is fine, and I understand it is the culturally acceptable way of doing things here (as with most Asian countries, which all lean more towards the collectivist end of the spectrum) However the problem with my desire to throw out the unused materials came not from the group consultation, but rather from the thought that I would throw anything away at all.

Now, it was clearly logical and made perfect sense to me that, if the video and audio tapes don’t work, and we don’t have a machine to play some of the outdated tapes (some strange mini-videos that I’d never previously seen before digging into the nether regions of our SAC shelves) then what is the purpose of keeping the stuff around? Why not weed out the old stuff and in the process make the stuff we do use easier to see and more accessible? But, if I have learned anything after living in 3 different countries and traveling in many more, it’s that sometimes, culturally speaking, what I consider to be “logical” and what others consider to be “logical” often do not coincide.

With the aid of another English teacher serving as my interpreter I tried to get the librarian to understand my logic. Tensions we certainly running high, and the more I tried to reason with her, the more tightly she clung to the idea that the old tapes might be needed by someone. After an hour of consultation, explanation, and towards the end some pleading, we finally reached a breakthrough in our stalemate. The epiphany came when I told her that I had special funds from the State Department specifically set aside to be used for the purchase of new materials and books…funds that I could use at my discretion, which didn’t have to be approved by the director of our language center. As Oprah would say, it was an “Ah, ha!” moment…and then, for the librarian, it was a whole new world. The tapes…gone….garbage…sent to the dumping ground (i.e. the pile of trash behind the building) She now directed all her attention to making a long and detailed list of all the new stuff she wanted for the SAC.

Since that afternoon, I have been thinking about all the shit piled everywhere in this country. It didn’t really register with me, why everyone, it seemed, was so hesitant to send things to the garbage and accept the fact that sometimes, you have to just let things go. But then it started to make more sense…why, for example, my cleaning lady was saving all the old peanut butter jars I threw in the trash, or why she (even though she can’t speak English) wanted to save the old Newsweek magazine I tried to discard. Even today, she politely asked me if she could keep a worn out pair of flip-flops I had thrown in the trash. Of course, I told her, please take them…and then I felt terrible, that something I had deemed disgusting and unfit for use, was, to her, something to be saved and taken home to her family.

I am starting to understand why people hold on so tightly to things. When there isn’t a seemingly endless supply of money to replace something, the line between what is garbage and what isn’t becomes blurred. Since coming here I have slowly started to re-define what the term “necessity” means to not only me, but the majority of the world’s population. It’s an easy lesson to learn when true necessity confronts me every time I open my front door (and sometimes it even comes inside and cleans my bathrooms for me) I just hope that I can remember it when I get back home…

Audio tape collection at the SAC

Books-on-Tape collection

Photocopied Children's Books

Garbage dump below my office window