ramai.

Ramai




Just days ago I took a few of the kaimana guests into the South Pagai village of Malakopa.
This is the second time I've been to this particular village and was excited to use my new mentawai phrase I learned last trip "anai layo ita" - which is a greeting to someone you already have met in the past... Like "nice to see you again"

I visited an elderly woman who 3 weeks ago showed me her leg which was badly injured in a machete accident... Upon returning to her house this time, I brought obat (medicine) for her in my dry bag.
She was so thrilled that I remembered, her sweet toothless smile made my heart so warm.
We sat and ate mananam - some weird little sweet fruit you peel open.
My collection of little village kids all came running over, putting flowers behind their ears like mine (even the boys)... All singing and dancing and taking turns rolling my name around in their mouths, testing it out- only to find (as usual) it came out as "Jenny".
We walked back down to the beach (as the newly rebuilt post-tsunami village is high up on the hill now)... All the little girls held my hands.
I think I had at least three on each hand- gripping onto various fingers and holding my wrists, running their fingers across all my various bangles and hippie bracelets, giggling and smiling as we skipped down the dirt path, catching a view of the big black and white boat anchored next to a big wave. I could see them all wondering, imagining what that was like- these big boats anchoring outside their village daily- so close and yet so far.

The Aussie kaimana guests, sweating and slightly shell shocked by the village life as they usually are- kept saying I was the pied piper, winding down barefoot through the wreckage of the old village... My anklet jingling with each prancing step we took as a clustered team of flower adorned girls.

We had to walk through narrow coral paths that inadvertently lay between over-turned palm trees and I found I could not get through so easily being the wide load that I was, flanked by my little friends who were attached to my arms.

They gripped so tight and wanted to be exactly side by side with me. As they scuffled over who had to let go and walk ahead I heard the word "ramai" rattled off by the girls a few times. I shuffled through my mental vocabulary list, knowing I knew the definition but unable to remember in that moment.

Blowing kisses and skipping stones goodbye, the tender boat came an retrieved us to return to the boat.

Onboard I grabbed the kamus dictionary and found ramai.

Ramai: crowded.

I laughed remembering the stories my mom tells of when we were living in Switzerland. My parent's close friends had young kids too and lived in a teeny tiny Bern apartment. When our whole family (who take up a fair amount of space) would come over... The little daughter would crack the door open and say "kiene platz, gaila! Kiene platz!!"
Meaning "no room! No room!"

In Malakopa, the little girls were calling the coral walkway between the palm trunks "too crowded" for all of us to go through.

Perspective, huh?


We made the bumpy crossing back to Padang last night... 

At 6am got packed up and picked up from Bungus and taken to the airport.
Shayno, Craig & I jumped on a plane and landed in Jakarta, Java around noon the same day.

The boys went to check into the hotel and do some of the boat stuff they were here to do and took all my luggage with them (cue: copeland's life in a suitcase song)...
With just a handbag, feeling rather naked, I got in a Jakartanese taxi alone to find the Indian Embassy.

I need my visa stat - time is of the essence.
Of course, I was told to return at 9am the following day. (big surprise- the ordeal of doing ANYthing in indo!)
But at least I got the application and my passport photos and a very kind man who offered to help me when I would make the hour taxi trek back to the South Jakarta embassy the next morning.

Back in a cold overly air conditioned taxi alone, I stared out the window and started to think and digest the very full day that began at the dock in padang as i watched the jakarta world whiz by outside- though whizzing at an incredibly slow pace.

Padang is insane- it's the wild wild west over there in West Sumatra... Cars and motorbikes fly every which way- lawless and rule-free.
Everyone seems to zip around with a yee-haw attitude.
Jakarta is all that and a bag chitato chips.

The word RAMAI takes a new definition here... Where there is an emergency lane or even (believe it or not) a concrete center divider- there are cars and people all stuck in gridlock throughout this hazy, steamy, teeming city insanity.
It's industrial and metropolitan, yet poor, defunct & filthy all at once.
The noise is endless.
The atmosphere feels like... 
Horns, whistles, buzzing, humming city chaos vibrating and pulsating in a cranial compressing way.
The essence of Jakarta reminds me of a smudged, dirty window that even degreaser and windex can't clean... Just clogged and stuck. 
Macet. (muh-chet)
This is the word for when a shitty bali DVD sticks or a CD skips... And the word for traffic jams.
This is Jakarta.
Maybe yet another preparation for my arrival into Delhi.

Apparently I have to prove I have booked a hotel the day I arrive (which, of course, I haven't)
Because they don't want poor, waify, wind-carried gypsies and mermaid-like hippies just floating in and getting lost around India.
(which, of course, was my original plan).
Damn.
We will be here in Ramai world jakarta for just 2 nights and then I return to the mentawais just one last time this season.
One more swoop through paradise before I fly into Delhi October 14.
There is something about the islands that has a hook in me... 
There is a call that I hear... Like the echo from inside a conch shell (or maybe that's from dancing too close to the speaker in the Jakarta dance clubs!)

But seriously, my soul is drawn out to the mentawais in such a real way.
I am so happy on land or at sea.
I want to make a difference out there.
I'm not sure how just yet but I have my entire life to do it...

In the meantime, I will be crossing some more items and places off of my 5 year old post-it written bucket list.

By my calculations, I will have been on every continent but Antartica within 2 years.

Manifest publishing deal for Zani that will fund this project/lifestyle choice... GO!!

My mommy does call me zanigo afterall.

Love light bliss kiss to all.