In the afternoons, we hold conversational sessions with the high school children who seek us out to practice their English and to learn all they can about life in America. Our Indonesian team leader, Tjandra Visnu, attempts to teach us something new each day about local customs, language and history. We have all selected our service program here largely because of intriguing stories from people who have traveled here before us. The stories emphasized the wonderful, welcoming traditions and the warm, genuine people. We all were anxious to immerse ourselves in the somewhat mysterious, but certainly provocative culture we had heard so much about.
Indonesian culture is so rich and varied.
But we were surprised to learn that few Indonesians get to fully experience the magnitude of their own culture the way we did. This is largely because the country is spread out over 3,000 miles on 13,000 islands stretching from the Asian mainland into the Pacific Ocean. Most Indonesians seemed to know only the ways of their own island, or region, yet within the country there are more than 300 ethnic groups, most with their own dialects, foods, dances, styles of architecture and the like. Because most of the nation's inhabitants are economically poor, they cannot imagine a time when they would have the opportunity to visit an island other than their own. We are all struck by the influence of western media in this town and surrounding villages.