Uncertainty

People that know me generally say that I’m quite a self-confident person. And I think I am one too. However, finding yourself in such a different environment, with such different norms that vary not only depending on nationality, but also on ethnicities within a nationality, makes you feel very uncertain. About everything! The following bullet points will comprise examples and situations where uncertainty dominates my and generally other foreigners’ behaviour!

1. Clothes. Obviously, some might think. We came here and during the training we got the whole “dress respectfully, cover yourselves and be careful not to offend” speech. Easier said than done! Especially since KL is quite an open city, where even if some people stare at you, people basically dress whichever way they want. Nonetheless, there is always the “is this dress too short? is that too much cleavage? is this appropriate?”. For us this is made more difficult by the fact that we are living in the same building with the boarding room students. So even when dressing for going out (where people are VERY open about dressing style:)), we need to be careful as students will see us when going out.

2. No one says things directly! We were away for the weekend, and by complete accident we left the aircon on. Obviously, that is really bad and we should never do it again. Also obviously, we did not plan on doing it, it was a mistake. Now, instead of hearing something about it, we just noticed yesterday that a poster appeared in our room with “Keep calm and turn off the aircon & lights!”. That is only one of the now increasing number of situations where similar types of behaviour have been demonstrated. And it is tough to get accustomed to!

3. Even locals with a high exposure to Western culture do not do better! 🙂 My recent acquaintance is this really funny guy, who’s Malaysian but studied in the UK for 3 years. He’s an astrophysicist as a background and he showed us around KL (and took us to a very very very good food place!!). His English is very good, to the point that you almost cannot tell he’s local. And yet, even he answers to questions with “maybe”, when he actually means no! I asked him about it cause it was a tiny bit annoying…he just went “Yeah…that’s something I could not get rid of…”. This basically means tough times are ahead…

4. Appointments. People make plans easily and give up plans just as easily. Logistics takes forever so you really need to want to do something, to actually succeed! So you can’t really count on anything. People say something will start at 5p.m. It will be 5.30 by the time people gather and 6p.m. by the time everyone actually leaves. It can be frustrating but I must say, I am coping with it way better than I anticipated. My open and positive attitude is totally working out!

5. Trips. It’s basically the same thing as with appointments, just at a different scale. You never know where you’re going to end up, who will be coming and what exactly will happen. We seem quite set to go to the island this weekend (as in, tickets bought and stuff), but I am not holding my breath that we will actually make it!

As time will go by, I am sure this post will have sequels 🙂 

The Farm

I’ve been thinking and talking about many things these days and it’s becoming really difficult to choose the topics to write about, because I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT IT ALL!!!

But for this post I will focus on The Farm. Or the place where I spent the weekend, next to a town/village called Rembau, which is about 1h – 1h30 drive from KL. We were there because the organisation has these regular meet-ups for the people that work in their community centres across various regions in Malaysia. This is the reason why around 30 people gathered on the respective farm, where we did team-building activities, got to know more people and just talked a lot! And ate a lot!

Now, when I say farm, do not imagine anything extraordinary or colonial or whatever else. It was a very basic farm, in the middle of “the jungle” (not really jungle, but lots of weird vegetation and stuff) – 4 rooms and a veranda where we all talked, played and slept. Yes, there were literally people on the floor everywhere! 🙂 Food was provided by some uncles and aunties and it was delicious! People were open and fun and, if you leave out the horrendous heat and the stickiness that ensued, you get a rather nice way of spending a weekend.

As always with these gatherings, the people and the conversations were the most interesting part. From the basic centres and NGO work conversations, to the nice life stories of various people there, to inspirational stories, to ghost stories, to discussing about science and religion and how people look at them in various cultures, to holiday plans, to plans for after the “NGO bubble” (this topic will require its own post:)), to comfort zones and how you should enlarge it (or not).
I enjoyed that people were coming from very different backgrounds (astrophysics, psychology, nutrition studies, international politics etc.), that everyone was open and non-judgemental, and that people were talking with lots of love and affection about “their centres” and “their kids”. It also concerned me that I was soon “the Putrajaya girl” – I have a feeling that my centre is more politically loaded than I would have desired. And that I will end up dealing with high-end stakeholders – which was one of the things I was hoping not to have to do for a while. But I am totally embracing my new “be open and positive” philosophy! So let’s see what happens!

Last but not least, we just bought our bus tickets for a trip to Penang, an island in the North, next weekend! It’s Independence Day on 31st August, so we’re going to experience it all in Georgetown! Yeyyy!

And here are some photos to reflect the farm experience 🙂

Tired

I am tired. Very very tired. So tired that I actually chose to sit in my bed with my laptop and book, rather than go out and explore Little India (yes, of course we have a little India. Two actually:)).

The last days have been busy and eventful. Lots of thoughts and impressions have been registered. Many not processed yet. But I am working on it. To give a few headlines:

– The big news came yesterday. Namely, the location of the community centre I will be running. Putrajaya. That’s basically a Federal Territory, 25km from KL. Good news: it’s close enough to the city to be able to see people and do stuff in the weekend. Yet it’s sort of its own community, so it will not feel like the big city (so far I reached the conclusion that I would be ok with not living in KL:)). Bad news: the centre is completely new, meaning I will be the first person there, having to set up everything from scratch. I am however trying to see a positive part in that also: I will be able to install my own system there, which will definitely be much better than any other system could ever be! 🙂 Also, a massive selling point: it’s much easier to travel everywhere from KL, so logistics will definitely be easier! 1st September is moving day!

– I am teaching now every day – I generally run a one hour session and assist two of my colleagues for another 2 or 3 hours. It’s massively energising, tiring and fun at the same time! I am still figuring things out – particularly the personal development part I found very challenging. These kids are really cool, and yet some of them are so shy that you can barely hear them when they open their mouths (or if they open their mouths). My main achievement for today was that I made a Chinese girl speak…she was brought up in a full Chinese community, so not only does she not speak English, she barely understands Bahasa also! Tragic! And yet, she now brings us candy every day, today she sat at lunch with us (the first day she moved away from our table because she was afraid we would make her speak) and she spontaneously hugged me on the hall. Anyways, my point is, it’s very difficult to do all sorts of cool confidence boosting exercises when people don’t get what you’re saying 🙂 There is a way though! So I will just search on until I find it! 🙂

– I discovered that Malaysian men can dance. Very very well. That is a very positive thing about this country, and one that made my yesterday night very good! 🙂 (I do realise my sample so far is not big enough to generalise but I will keep things on the positive side, and just believe that to be an absolute truth)

– Indian clothes are lovely! I intend to purchase more of those! 🙂

First teaching practice

Today I started teaching. Like, literally, 3 hours ago. And it is awesome! Completely energy draining but totally rewarding.
I had to teach kids with various degrees of English (some are fluent though without much notion of grammar, whereas some can barely understand). My lesson was about nouns…you know…using a, an, s for plural etc. I found it quite challenging to explain sort of abstract notions to kids that do not really understand anything else and that also do not have much vocabulary in English. The method they use here to teach helps, but you need to be very creative, flexible and patient!

I am not sure how well it went – the kids were happy, we kept them active and tried to engage as much as possible. It goes slow…it takes a long time for kids to get all that into their heads but I must say…I thoroughly enjoyed it!!

We still have the afternoon to go, so let’s see how that will turn out!! 🙂

Meeting the Malaysian police

As many of you know, I’ve had my share of meetings with the police. Some more exciting than others. Sunday was the day when my relationship with the Malaysian police started. I am also hoping it is the day when my relationship with them ended for good!

People around here had been telling us, the newcomers, that in case the police stop us, we should not necessarily take it as a good sign – that they might want money and since we are foreigners we are sure to have them! That we should be polite, not get intimidated, stand our ground, know our rights and not give in!

So when my room mate and I saw 6  police officers hanging around on the road to the train station, we had a “is this good or bad?” moment. They obviously stopped us! And asked for ID. We had photos of our passports with us and driving licences. A Kafkian conversation followed: “why don’t you have the passport with you?”; “because we don’t want them to get stolen.”; “you should at least have a copy”; “we have photos of them”; “how can I know if that’s real?”; “how could you know if the copy would be real?”; “you need to have ID with you” – and on, and on, and on…
We stood there for quite a while…Joie and I had already agreed in Spanish (the only language we both speak that they do not understand), the following:
– we are not giving them money!
– we are not getting in the car with them!
– they can walk with us back to the dorm if they want to see our ID!
In the meantime, they kept checking our passport numbers in the databases…Joie checked out ok. I however was “not in the system”! He kept telling me that. I kept telling him that there must be a mistake and kept showing him the photo of my recently obtained visa! He kept telling me I am not in the system. I kept saying that it’s not my fault and I am not really sure how I could help the situation now. He kept saying “you are not in the system”. If this seems redundant, it’s because it was!!

In the end, I think we tired them out! They let us go with the wise advice of carrying copies of our IDs with us…

I dare say that when the presence of police makes you feel more anxious than safe, is not a good thing. I was not necessarily missing that feeling.

To end on a positive note though, I just came back from the neighbourhood Monday food market where I ate EXQUISITE Chinese food, and bought lovely fruit: dragon fruit, lychee, passion fruit, oranges…a feast! I love the market! 🙂

Anutza dancing house!

And loving it!!

Context: one of room mates is into hip-hop, house and the like. She has been involved in a lot of activities in her home town in the US, she has been in touch with the hip hop community wherever she has travelled, and now she wanted to do the same here. Since I’ve been wanting to try some sort of street dance for a long time now, I tagged along when she mentioned she would go to a class at a dance studio here. And it was awesome!!
More context: my room mate is ethnically Chinese, so she fit in quite well in the world of Mustang Dance, which is the studio where we went to. Because everyone (and I seriously mean everyone!!!) was Chinese! And me! 🙂 I have not felt so white or so special in my whole life! Plus, being a foreigner was a definite plus, so everyone wanted to talk to us and see why we are there. Add to that the fact that we got there early and got to see some of the previous classes, and how terribly good those people were, and you have a fairly intimidated Anutza 🙂

However, the experience turned out to be really really awesome! The teacher was this 25 year old guy who was actually an excellent teacher. He taught a rather beginners routine (for us :)), but he also mentioned lots about house history, why it is called house (it’s actually the name of the club where it all started – Warehouse), how it came about and stuff like that. Needless to say I had no idea of any of this and things made so much more sense afterwards!

As for the dance itself…it’s so much like the latin dances that I was stunned! Has a lot (and I seriously mean a lot!!!) of salsa steps and beats. A lot was recognizable also from zumba stuff (though there, probably zumba got the house steps and not the other way around). What differs is just the feeling you have with it and at times a bit the rythm, but even those where much more to my liking than I had anticipated! It had lots of energy to it, but also smoothness.  It was quite intense (I was sweating like mad half way through already :)), but it was really fun!
And I guess what made it more enjoyable also was the fact that the people were so so nice! Very good atmosphere, lots of laughing, very welcoming and really good dancers! I really liked what they were doing with their bodies…they were very loose and relaxed but in a controlled way that made the dancing very smooth. I enjoyed it terribly! And gained serious respect for house dancing!

So at this moment, I am seriously considering going to some more house lessons while I am still in KL. Who would have ever thought? 🙂

Inspiration

People need inspiration. Or most people need inspiration. I believe most people search for inspiration quite constantly.
So yes, one of the things I am looking for in Malaysia also in inspiration. And as with most valuable things, inspiration sometimes comes when you least expect it.

Last night it came under the shape of a person and a conversation. Teacher Jo is her name and she is orang asli, so part of the aboriginal people in Malaysia.  (short note: around here, people teaching are called teacher to make it less formal that Mrs but to differentiate them from students). Anyways, teacher Jo is part of the first generation of students that SOLS ever had. Apparently the organisation started with her and another 7 students, living and studying together in a sort of an empty apartment – literally empty! Now, the purpose was that of a boarding school (which it now is). However, at the time, things were very different. Students had no beds and were sleeping together with the teacher on the floor in one room. They had no tables or chairs, and were studying again on the floor in another room. The teacher who started the organisation had not managed to get enough funds to provide food for the students,so they had made a deal with some food places nearby to give them the uneaten food. This was once a day and generally not much, but enough to survive.
Their learning schedule was tough – waking up at 5:30 for exercising, lectures of English, maths, and other basic subjects, but also discussions on “science of life” topics. This is a tradition the boarding school has kept until today. Every week the students have a life topic – this week they had “I want to or I need to?”. Every day starts off with a half an hour discussion on the specific topic. And Friday is seminar day! Each student tells a story or shares how they think about the topic discussed. There is interaction and moments of illumination.

I was inspired by Jo for various reasons. Her story is touching and her pride shines through. She is now basically running the boarding school, that has become just one of the many projects SOLS runs here. Her passion is obvious in the way she talks about these children, most of who are also orang asli and have very few means of survival. In Malaysia, learning English is basically your key to rising from poverty.
But I found even more touching her answer to the question “what is your ambition for SOLS? What do you want it to become?”. She said she wanted the boarding school to be a large nice building, where students could live 2 or 3 in a room, have higher standards of living and more materials to develop. She made it very specific: “I want better conditions for students, not for teachers”. Her point makes sense. The boarding school is not a bad place – the conditions are not very good for the kids, but they do have everything they need. However, there is a considerable difference from the boarding school and the headquarters of the organisation where most of the people working in the organisation live.
I found it impressive also because her motivation for wanting that was “most of these kids have been treated like dirt their whole life. And I would really like them to see and experience that things could be at least a bit different.”

I have come to realise that this blog of mine is a bit of a one-way communication. So, hoping to change that a bit, I will pose a question (hoping someone will answer it :)): What’s been your last source of inspiration?

Things you don’t realise you haven’t been doing in a long time.

It’s raining! It’s raining now for an hour…I haven’t seen a rain of this intensity to last so long and not lose power. It’s raining with thunders and lightning and the level of water in the streets is rising dangerously. Nobody seems too preoccupied by this though and everybody is enjoying the breath of freshness that the water brought with it.

So, the organisation I’m working for has their own particular system of teaching English, so as to bring someone who does not speak a word to the level of being able to have basic conversations on a wide range of subjects in 3 to 6 months. The system is organised obviously around the bahasa – English conversion. And in order for us to feel its effectiveness, they are teaching us bahasa using the same system. Obviously, we will not spend 3 months learning that but we are getting the basics in order to be able to make basic conversation with our students who will speak no English in the beginning.

Bahasa is a very simple language. Luckily! Don’t get me wrong, the vocabulary is completely non-related to anything I’ve seen before. But there is very little grammar. There are no times, no singular and plural, no articles, and even the verb “to be(is/are)” is not really used. It exists but many people don’t use it and you can get around without saying it much. They also don’t care much most of the times about the order of words (with some exceptions of course). So what this boils down to is basically an exercise in memorising. And here comes the realisation of the day:
I HAVEN’T MEMORISED ANYTHING IN AGES!!

Really, since I left school, I haven’t really been memorising anything! Dutch words for a while, but I stopped doing that also at some point. Work-wise, there’s google to answer all your questions. And for the rest..not much opportunity for it! So this is quite a challenge – I can feel the muscles of my brain stressing and focusing. Not to mention that I am super tired at the end of the day though technically I have not done much. But it does bring with it a sort of satisfaction. I just hope I don’t forget it all too fast! 

Patung Beruang

That’s teddy bear in bahasa!! I find it cute that on the first day of learning the language, we learnt this word! 🙂