Oregon School of Massage Instructor Returns to Indonesia

                                  

Working with Indonesian Spa Therapists – Teaching Pediatric Massage
OSM Pediatric Massage Instructor Marybetts Sinclair is again teaching massage in Jakarta, Indonesia. Here is her letter.

 

Hi Everyone,

It is the morning of my 8th day in Indonesia, today will be my seventh day
of teaching. I am enjoying the students in my classes and Fifi Lim, the
spa franchise owner is a great person. She takes good care of all her
staff and family and is smart, compassionate and motivated, full-blood
Chinese although 3rd generation in Indonesia, speaks fluent Mandarin
Chinese, Indonesian and English and did graduate work in the U.S. Her
daughters go to the same international school that she did and English is
their best language even though they speak Indonesian at home.

Her original idea for a pregnancy and baby spa is being copied all over
Indonesia, as she now has 16 spas under her franchise and they are wildly
successful. She has elected to beat the competition by spending more money
on getting the best training (ahem) for her spa therapists, so her spas
are known for solid substantial work rather than fluff. Because I have
been able to teach them how to work with special needs children (we spent
one day at School for children with Down Syndrome that we visited last
year also) and many treatments for sick kids, kids with headaches, girls
with menstrual cramps, back pain, etc, I feel what I am doing is
constructive. The students in my class are already therapists at her spas,
and this is a chance for advanced training.

I will be doing a one-day class as an introduction to many of her beginning therpists (60-80 at a
time, in a ballroom or somewhere big) I am using some audiovisuals I
brought with me as well as paper handouts and even some YOUTUBE videos for
teaching…As well as my hands of course! One thing I do enjoy doing is a
version of “stump the Chump” where someone brings a pain problem (many
people have poorly healed motor scooter injuries, and one gal fell down a
well and hurt her hip as a child)and we brainstorm how to help with
massage, hydrotherapy, stretching. range of motion exercises, etc.

Jakarta is as I remembered it, crowded, unbelievably polluted (it looks
like there is heavy fog all the time)and with a deep disparity between
rich and poor. I am currently staying at a luxury apartment building 25
stories high complete with marble floors, glass and marble lobby, workout
room , swimming pool, etc., and it is part of a complex in construction
that will have more apartment houses (hence the moving cranes over the
swimming pool)There is a huge shopping mall next door that is almost
completed and some stores are open already, the biggest of which has the
amusing name of Hypermart, white tile floors, blazing overhead lights, and
every plastic consumer item a person could think of, mostly made in
Indonesia but failing that,in China. Some more tenants soon to move in are
familiar to us-Ace Hardware, Ralph Lauren, Starbucks, Crabtree and Evelyn,
both Adidas and Reebok, some others must be European brands.

I noted on a morning walk (while trying not to inhale too deeply)that just a few
hundred feet on the other side of the drive into the apartment complex
from a strategically planted high hedge, is a creek with a shantytown
/slum on the other side. However, truly you would not see so much poverty
if you are picked up by your driver every morning and driven to work in a
van with tinted windows, etc. The multinational corporations are
everywhere and advertising all over TV, so this is perhaps understandable, so while everyone is crazy for Western culture, trying to explain the downside of our consumptive lifestyles fell on deaf ears before and on this trip as well.

Of course it takes many years to understand another culture, so I have little clue how it works for most Indonesians. The people I have met are extremely industrious, and it is amazing how people manage to work so hard out in this tainted air, and co-operate so there are not more traffic accidents. Many of my students have had motorscooter accidents, as that is the major way most people gt
around unless they are wealthy. there may be as many as 200 folks riding them waiting at a stoplight at one time, breathing in diesel fumes.

I like to watch Indonesian TV to help with my Indonesian-although if I get one word per sentence I’m lucky, sorry tutor Hilda!-and I am bemused by the mix of cultures there too. Like watching a Moslem call-in TV show and then seeing an advertisement for
an American product.

I am enjoying the fabulous Indonesian cuisine, with its mix of flavors that we would consider wild. I had a fruit appetizer the other day that consisted of slices of green mango, raw sweet potato, starfruit, some red fruit I had never seen before, with a dipping sauce on the side of peanuts, palm sugar and chiles.. Fifi has graciously taken me to many Indonesian restaurants, as well as Japanese ones and even a luxury French one. There, I was bemused when the waiter put down my glass bottle of water and retreated behind me, then inquired, sotta voce, if he could pour my water into my glass for me. I was enjoying a hot beef soup but when I got a single drop in my eye I had to get up and wash out my eye, there was so much chile in it!

Fifi took me to a produce store to get some fruit for my place, and I saw 8 kinds of fruit I had never seen before, including lichee nuts and mangosteen and some others I like to eat but dont know the name of.

Tomorrow I finish teaching in Jakarta, there is a television station coming to tape something we do the next day, then I am off to Makassar on the island of Sulawesi for a few days to teach, then on to Sumatra, where I will have 3 days off to hopefully get out of large towns and do some walking or biking. Everything here is so interesting, but I would like to get to some other parts of this interesting country as well, especially out farther. I am interested in seeing how some products are manufactured such as the beautiful fabrics from various locales and the famous, to me anyway, powdered ginger drink a lot of which I brought home last year. I do feel
incredibly lucky to be invited by Fifi, and to know her and some of the other cool people round her.

Love to you all, and take good care!
Marybetts

For More Information
Visit Marybetts’ website:  http://www.marybettssinclair.com/
Read an April 2011 blog about her first trip:   http://oregonschoolofmassage.com/blog/2011/04/osm-instructor-teaching-in-indonesia/