MARYBETTS SINCLAIR – UPDATE INDONESIA

Here is report number #2 from Jakarta
From Marybetts Sinclair, Oregon School of Massage Pediatric Massage Instructor 

Good morning everyone,

Cultural Diversity
Its 7:30 AM here and life is in full swing in this island tourist town. Children in uniforms are headed to school on foot and on scooter, tourist restaurants (which surprisingly look much like Nearly Normal’s [1]) are opening, resorts are servicing customers, and its starting to get hot already. This part of Indonesia is 75% Christian, so along with many churches and monuments with crosses on top, there are no mosques whatever, quite a switch from places such as Makassar which has, I was told, about 500 mosques. In Jakarta there are prayers being broadcast by loud (and I Mean LOUD) speaker at enough different times of day that you can hear them much of the day and night. I was told that the local folks, an indigenous tribe,
have kept their own religion because they are “stubborn and aggressive”.

Local Food?
There are dogs here, which I have not seen anywhere else, because they
are considered unclean in Muslim eyes, however here the local folks eat
them, and I note many dogs hanging around houses along with the chickens.

Tropical Trees and Flowers
The tropical plants here are lush and varied.Yesterday on the way from
Medan we passed  huge plantations of rubber trees…English owned…that
employ hundreds of workers. Each tree has to be at least 6 years old
before latex can be extracted, and I noted nurseries of small trees which
must get outplanted, and groves and groves of older trees which went on
for what seemed like miles.  We also went through many plantations of
palm trees which are being grown for palm oil,and of course banana trees
are everywhere. Flowers which are not that easy to grow in  Oregon are in
abundance,ones that we coddle along for a few blooms such as bouganvillea,
cannas, hibiscus,trumpet flower (I think this is the name, enormous white
blooms that hang upside down in tree-size shrubs)and others. I also note
most of our common house plants flourishing as well, and some unusually
shaped flowers which obviously use some strategies that are different, as
I have never seen the shapes before, or one flower which has all the
stamens and the pistil, four times as long as the diameter of the flower,
and hanging straight down like a skirt. Another looks just like a
miniature yellow canoe with a cover over the top, and pistil and stamen
sticking out at a jaunty angle from one end… Lake Toba itself is 50
miles long and about 150 miles around, and is a crater lake like ours in
Oregon.

Working On My Indonesian
We drove 5 hours from Medan yesterday and then took a one hour
ferry, it was incredible to feel a fresh breeze and get faraway views
after being in 3 huge metropolises. The tour guide I am with says 75% of
the companies business is Dutch, if you can believe that, so he speaks
English, Dutch and Indonesian, peoples polyglot abilities here put us
Americans to shame. My Indonesian is not improving very much I am afraid,
since I am interacting with these bright and interesting folks who can
have an interesting conversation together in English, while I can only
converse like a small semi-literate child in Indonesian. Hilda my tutor
take note, we have to work me harder!

Touring The Country – Pollution…and Dutch History
Since my first letter I have been in Makassar and Medan, both large towns
with interesting histories,mixes of many different cultures, tons of
traffic and pollution, and many fascinating business. These folks get up
early and put pedal to the meta! I worry about the pollution, the destruction of rainforest, the mining, and lack of mass transit and recycling, but those are mistakes we made already and can readily see…
Whie in Makassar I was able to visit a nature park where we spent an hour
deep underground in a limestone cave with only 2 wimpy little flashlights,
looking at rock formations, and later watched tourists, foreign and
Indonesian, including many families enjoying themselves frolicking under a
huge waterfall (with people wearing everything from just swim trunks, to
full-body covering including head covering). The waterfall was warm and
the day was beautful, so people were having a great time. I also went to
Fort Rotterdam, the Dutch fort where they kept their stores of nutmeg and
cloves before they were shipped back to Europe to make huge amounts of
money for the Dutch. The original walls where they patrolled, and the
dungeon, and the old moat around the fort were still there to see. what an
awful colonial history. We stood at one point in the locked warehouse room
with high barred windows, and a piece of the original floor under glass on
the ground. Gave me the shivers..I also got to see an 8 story gold buddist
temple, which was just down the street from a cool-looking Christian
church (I went to a service there although I couldn’t understand a word,
because I was so taken with the architecture from the street)

Back to Pediatric Massage
Both MomNJo spas are doing a great business seeing pregnant women, babies,
and with my training help, now children. We opened the spa in each town
for a day to children with special needs, and the therapists did such a
great job with them. They already are really skilled with infants, even a
hysterical crying infant or a real crankbox is going to be soothed, given
a great relaxing warm bath, and a full body massage. So they were able to
work with the special needs children that we saw, many children with
cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autism, hyperactivity and slow development
of unspecified cause.  We fine-tuned the massage for each child’s needs,
using their skills, my background, and some extra items for stimulation I
had brought with me.We had some children that just broke your heart, like
a little girl with hydrocephalus and cataracts in both eyes, who has
already suffered profound brain damage. Her young parents love her
intensely and are willing to do whatever they can to help her, and yet
noone had really explained how she had been treated so far (with a shunt)
and what her prognosis might be. Her father said to me, “will my child
ever be normal?” I was able to provide a good explanation of her treatment
so far, since there is an excellent illustration of a child with a shunt
in my children’s massage book, but of course I could only say, when asked
about prognosis, that they should ask their doctor, and that many children
do much better with physical therapy and massage, than anyone ever
thought. You could see how much they loved her and how hard the experience
has been.

I feel good about the education the therapists are getting, and I know
they are taking massage with children to the next level, but life is just
hard for people sometimes..

Ok, folks, time for me to go, will write again soon. My heart is with you
all, and as much as I enjoy it here, I appreciate you and Oregon as much!
take care,

Marybetts

[1]  Nearly Normal is a restaurant in Corvallis, Oregon