Your going to feed your... ghosts!?!

One of the stories people get the biggest kick out of from my repertoire of funny language learning stories, is the mixup with the ghosts... In fact, on a recent trip back to Bunaken last month, I found out that the family that this occurred with still recounts the tale to all family and friends as well as any travelers passing through!

It was one of our first visits to Bunaken Island and the village of Alung Banua, where we would come to feel like family in short order...  And needless to say, we were still very much in the steep part of the learning curve of the Indonesian language.  Every day, early morning, Vera's father, a lovely man and respected leader in the community, would head off to the kebun (the farm/garden).  When we would all meet up in the afternoon after our days' activities, we would sit and relax in the cool shade of their luscious green garden and try to converse.  Vera's father, although not fluent, certainly had a decent English vocabulary, and was very patient and kind in aiding our attempts at learning Indonesian, so we stumbled along through stories and conversations, not getting much past the contents of our days...  When I was asking about what he did when he went to the farm, he would tell me about the crops, and the animals... And he said he would "kasih makan kambing"... 'kasih makan' I knew (he would 'feed')... but kambing was a completely new word for me... we played a little charades, and I still didn't get it... couldn't figure out which farm animal he might be referring to... then he said, in his timid English... 'ghosts'...   

Ummmm.... OK?

So, I tried not to blanche visibly... and carried on the conversation... asking him if he visited the ghosts every day... what did they 'eat' (since he had ostensibly been feeding them)... could anyone visit them, or was it only him that could see them... had they been there forever....  

I was getting more and more confused... and thinking that either this senior was not as on-the-ball as I had taken him to be originally or, he had some mystical connection to the next world... (you never know really - I wasn't willing to make any assumptions... what with the language and cultural barrier and all)...

When Vera came out with some fresh young coconut to quench our thirst, I couldn't stand it any more... I thought I must be going nuts, sitting having a conversation about this man and his ghosts that he visited daily, like there was nothing more normal in the world... I mean, if it were ghosts, you would think he would recognize the rarity in the situation, right!?!  So I asked her if she happened to know the English word for kambing... 

She said "Of course, you know, GOATS"!

I cracked up laughing and proceeded to try to explain to them the misunderstanding... and once we finally found the Indonesian word for ghost (hantu), we were all practically rolling around on the floor, tears streaming down our faces in laughter trying to imagine the two completely different conversations that were happening at the same time about the ghosts/goats!!!

Delicious body

This has to be my favourite one...

If you're just sort of feeling a bit off... you know, under-the-weather, but not sick with any identifiable illness... you can use the term "tidak enak badan" to tell everyone how your "body is not delicious".  Fabulous!

http://bullypulpit.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008d0e0018834011168590176970c-800wi

I guess it's a better excuse than 'not tonight honey, i've got a headache'...  ?

Unless of course, you're feeling that your body really is delicious... But the inverse ("I have a delicious body") doesn't work in bahasa... although I bet it would for this chocolate-covered beauty!

photo:  http://catherinesouth.blogspot.com/2010/11/delicious-body-art-chocolate-body.html

You have 'Entry WHAT?'

Hehehe... another one of my favourite Indonesian sayings that just simply does NOT translate into English...

Masuk Angin = Entry Wind, or Enter Wind  (it really doesn't matter how you translate it, it's just as funny)

Basically it means to have gas, I guess... but I prefer the Indonesian term!

Flying Water!

A great little side trip on our Ambon trip was an impromptu hike to the Waka Waterfall...

We had just stopped along the side of the road to admire some spices (more about this in another post)...  As is my style, I ended up chatting with the locals who were standing around... asking about the area, the spices, their gardens and farms... chit-chat.  Of course, my obvious interest led to an invitation to go see some of their lush forest gardens, with promises of not only all these spices on the trees in their natural state, but almost all the fruits I have ever heard of in Indonesia, plus a few I never had!

Pala, or nutmeg... one of the main export commodities of the spice Islands.  The fruit is actually quite tasty, and the under-ripe fruit (above) is extremely sour, but supposed to be very good for cleansing the palate, or curing halitosis.

Oh and that wasn't all... our elderly gentleman tour guide was eager to show us the villages 'flying water' (air terbang).  Huh?  Yes, you heard it right... When I first heard him say this, it took me a few seconds, then a smile of recognition played on my lips as I realized he was talking about a waterfall (usually, air terjun)!  Only here in Waka, the water doesn't just fall as it does in other part of Indonesia and the world, it FLIES!  YES!  Sign me up, that was the clincher... flying water... let's go!

Well, the flying water was no longer flying in all the glory of its more formidable days when it was given the moniker, but we enjoyed the walk through the forest freshness anyway!  It seems agricultural activities up-stream have stemmed the flow of water and reduced it to a mere quarter of its original size.

Waka "Flying Water" Waterfall

Of course, it started to POUR just as we were heading back down, and after taking shelter for half an hour it was apparent the rain wasn't letting up, so we fashioned ourselves some local umbrellas and continued on our way!

Turtle Rescue

In the village of Waisilip, as we were coming back from a field trip with the students, we passed a sea turtle, which, upon closer inspection I found to be alive.

He was helplessly on his back.... barely breathing.

Ironically only a few hours previously we adjusted the schedule so that we would be studying about sea turtles and their vulnerability to extinction the following day.  Even so, not only the students, but also the educators, just walked right by!?

Have they not been toting the conservation line for two years now???

Anyway, I couldn't ignore it, and directly asked if we could find the 'owner' to see how we could rescue this turtle before he became sausages (as we know would happen)...  my thought being that even if we had to buy the turtle in order to release it, we would do just that...

After speaking with the fisherman who had captured the turtle, he agreed to release it.  We explained that we were there to teach the students about sea turtles and conserving nature, and did he know that Raja Ampat is one of the few places that sea turtles still seem to be in abundance (and even then, the anecdotes tell the tell of drastic population declines)... that they are protected internationally because they are in danger of extinction.  We got him to agree that it would be a great lesson for them to see the turtle released.... and he seemed understanding... and we didn't even have to offer anything.  Whether from embarrassment, or comprehension, at least the turtle avoided being on the menu that day!

Unfortunately, we know that every year hundreds of his cousins aren't so lucky...

Dying or Leaving

here's another pair of words to be sure to distinguish between:

meninggal (to die)    &   meninggalkan (to leave)

telling folks "i am going to die and go home now" just might not leave the right impression!?

Your Mother's a Virgin!?

Yes, it could only be... another one of those silly little slips that one makes while learning a new language...

Because the word for virgin and nurse are different in only one letter (perawat versus perawan), and hardly audibly distinguishable, a friend went around getting funny looks from everyone as he told them that his mother was a virgin!

Modern-day immaculate conception!?

What's Burnin'!?

I have my dear cousin Caroline to thank for the newest addition to my language-learning stories theme.... she has been visiting for the last ten days, and since I immediately dragged her to the far-flung reaches of the earth, to the field with me in Papua (probably one of the most remote place still in existence), where I work in local villages where no one speaks English... she put on a brave face, and started to learn some Indonesian!

The best of her little slips, which I think actually works really well, and may just become the next new, hip, catch-phrase of the decade, was consistently dyslexic.... she likes to ask people "What's burnin'?" instead of "How are you"/"What's up?"  I love it!

She also thought I was calling a perfect stranger 'my love'... which the entire crew and team got a real kick out of!  (I was actually saying "Selamat siang", which means, "Good mid-day"... she thought I'd said sayang (which is like calling someone 'dear one', 'dearest', or 'my love')!!!  I know I'm not generally shy... but really???

Plastic Scrotums and Big Shyness

I was reminded of a few more language stories this evening... when it came out that 'butuh', which in Indonesian means 'to need', in Balinese, actually mean scrotum!  (We could have water bottles that say "The Sea is not a Plastic Scrotum" instead of "The Sea Doesn't Need Any More Plastic"!?!? - hahaha!)

So, to add to the theme I started on this a few weeks ago, I want to share the story about having big shyness, as experienced by another dear friend while learning the Indonesian language.

The Indonesian language has a very interesting grammatical construction whereby with the use of a combination of prefixes and suffixes, you can create a plethora of words from a single root word.  In fact, this is one of the things that can make this language so easy to learn... At least there aren't a thousand exceptions for every single rule, as in English... however, the few exceptions that you tend to stumble upon are the most embarrassing possible words!

So, one way in which you can make a noun or adjective in Indonesian is to take a root word, add the prefix ke-, and the suffix -an... now USUALLY, the root word used in directly related, or at least logically related to the new word produced.  But sometimes, it's not entirely intuitive.  Such is the case with shyness....

My friend thought, ok, so I take the root word shy (malu), add on the pre- and suffixes, and I can express the feeling of being shy (which in Indonesian, one would think of as 'having shyness'... another example, as in Spanish you 'have thirst'....)... so the root word 'malu' turns into 'ke-malu-an', kemaluan.  Grover would have so much fun with Indonesian!

Near the beginning of her time in Indonesia, everyone wanted to introduce her to the heads of organizations, and government ministries... but my friend wasn't yet entirely confident in her language ability... telling everyone that she had big shyness about talking with these higher-ups, and maybe the meeting could wait until her big shyness subsided a bit, and she could talk more constructively with them.

Turns out kemaluan means something entirely different - she wasn't telling people about her 'big shyness' as she thought, but instead about her big genitals!!!

Just imagine the confusion of her colleagues as to her reasoning!?!

Nice to meet you Mr. Village Coconut!

People often tell me how they enjoy my anecdotes and funny language-learning stories of my time here in Indonesia... I realize I should have been writing a series on this all along!

The best one to date, and thus the one I will start this series with is how I went around for an entire year, being introduced to the most important people in the villages in the Raja Ampat archipelago, and greeting them as the "Village Coconut"!

You see, kelapa (coconut) and kepala (head) were easily interchanged in my brain, got mixed up early on, and took a long time to sort out!  So the head of the village became...

"I'm so honoured to be here, Mr. Head Coconut"

"Pleased to meet you, Sir Village Coconut"...

What baffles me is, A) that no one ever let on that anything was amiss... no one cracked so much as a smile!? and B) that they let me go on saying that for AN ENTIRE YEAR without tactfully letting me know!?!

"Oh isn't that nice, little Johnny, so when you grow up you want to follow in your dad's footsteps and be the Village Coconut, too!?!"