A Journey of Crowded Hearts

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Courtney Lareau

Today is my last day in Indonesia. By the time I land back in the United States, it will have been 45 days since I last happened on American soil. I will have touched ground in five different countries, including my layovers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo.  I will have stayed in seven different hotels, visited three regencies on the island of Sulawesi (including the island’s three major municipalities: Makassar, Palopo, and Pare-Pare) and travelled countless hours by car.

This also means it will have been 45 days since I last blew dry my hair with a hair dryer, straightened my hair with a flat iron, or wore an ounce of make-up. There will have been weeks without hot showers and days where I didn’t use a western toilet.  My “office” will have included a desk in the Maryland MSS office, a desk in the Makassar MSS office, a desk in various hotel rooms, the lobbies of hotels, the living room of a farmer’s home, and the soil of a cocoa farm. I will have eaten my first rambutan, langsat, and snake fruit and drank both avocado and eggplant juices. I will return to the States a little tanner, but also red from mosquito and ant bites.

Through it all I was guided by an amazing driver who kept me safe on the dangerous roads of Sulawesi, and a fellow student who not only supported our research with his invaluable translating skills, but who started this experience as a colleague and ended it as a friend.

I have learned so much here in Indonesia. I now know how to identify when I am about to sit in rooster manure, and to look up and identify the tree before I sit under it (because if one sits under a coconut tree they are putting their lives at risk from plummeting coconuts). I can now identify the smell of raw cocoa beans drying in the hot Indonesian sun long before my eyes confirm what my olfactory awareness senses. I know how to side-graft a cocoa tree, how to prune properly, and I know about the various phases of the cocoa value chain that takes the cocoa from being a seed in the pod to the chocolate we eat.

More than my newly acquired cocoa knowledge, I have learned more about developing countries in Asia, Indonesian culture, the Islamic religion, and about cross-cultural business and relationship building. But perhaps most importantly, I learned a lot about myself and what I am capable of.

But now my time here is up. While I have enjoyed every moment here in Indonesia, I can’t say that it hasn’t been difficult at times being half a world away and a 12 hour time difference from everyone I know and love. I am certainly eager to get back home to the U.S. And though my work here in Indonesia is up, it continues for a few more weeks upon my return to the States. I must finalize loose ends on my research, organize all my thoughts and findings, and hopefully pull together stellar deliverables to provide to management at the MSS office in Maryland

As I prepare for my departure to the States, many people have asked me, “What is the first thing you are going to do when you get home?” I know that after two days of flights from Makassar to Durham, as soon as I walk through my front door I will head straight for the shower (yay for consistent hot water!) and will then enthusiastically curl up under the sheets of my very own bed. After what I hope will be hours of uninterrupted sleep, I want to enjoy a home-cooked family dinner with my wonderful roommates on our back porch. Guess I am just a simple girl - with a newfound appreciation for chocolate.

Thanks so much for following my blog as I experienced this journey.

Terima kasih Indonesia!