Week Four: Ladies and Gentlemen

This week, I had the opportunity to attend an event for Lentera Sintas, an Indonesian campaign to promote awareness about sexual harassment and to support survivors of sexual assault. Right now, they’re going around to middle and high school orientations, talking about what sexual harassment is and how to deal with it. There’s a lot of talk in Indonesia right now about reducing sexually based crimes but most of this talk is how to punish the perpetrators with jail sentences and even chemical castration. The legislation doesn’t do much for the survivors of these crimes, so this campaign is trying to help.   

Jakarta high school student shows her support for survivors of sexual harassment

After the event, I got to chat with one of the volunteers who lead the talk. She somehow managed to get about 100 tenth graders to engage in discussion about sex and other often-taboo topics. She told me a bit about herself, and how even though she is probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, she isn’t married. She said she wants to chase her own dreams, not just be a mother and a wife.

One thing I notice walking around here is that there are so many men out in the streets, but far less women. In my neighborhood, men sit out on their porches in groups every night. Boys run through the streets, playing catch and riding bikes. But where are all the women? When I run at the local sports complex I see soccer fields full of boys’ teams, but not a single girl kicking a ball around with pink cleats and a bouncing pony tail.

My country is absolutely guilty of marginalizing women, but I think I’m just used to seeing it in different ways. It’s normal to see girls in my hometown, walking down the beach wearing string bikinis and being hit on by men twice their age.  Girls here often cover themselves from head to toe. Women at colleges across my country are welcomed to frat parties with sickeningly pink punch spiked with cheap vodka, and sweet-talked by boys into bedrooms upstairs. The taboo on alcohol here prohibits the nearly 200,000 people under the age of 21 who are sent to American emergency rooms every year for alcohol related injuries.

Cartoon by Malcom Evans

I guess I’m just learning a lot from a world so different from my own. It would be a lie to say I don't feel vulnerable sometimes, walking down the streets in America. Some men there will say a lot worse things than “would you like a taxi miss?” when you walk by. But some groups of men here just stare. And there’s something about fifteen pairs of unwanted male eyes locking onto you without many other woman around that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. And its not just grown men that do this, but groups of schoolboys who catcall when you walk by.

I think that's why its so valuable that this group is starting a conversation about sexual harassment, and is advocating for women’s’ rights. I never realized how lucky I was to be from a world where girls are ballerinas and soccer players, where women are CEO’s and carpool drivers. Not to say that my country’s way is the right way, the only way, but I’m glad to see people in this country fighting to give girls more choices. 

Week Zero: Pre-departure

I felt like graduation would never actually happen. I had all of these dates on my calendar: The date of my last class, of my last day at the job I had for four years, the date when my parents got to town. They date when I would walk across the stage and get a handshake in exchange for four years of hard work and thousands of dollars. But I was surprised when those dates ran out and I had only one thing left: June 25th, Jakarta.

In my last class, a capstone class for my certificate program in the business school, my professor had every student come forward and share their post-graduation plans. “Investment banking” one student said, “pharmaceutical sales” said another. “Wearing three piece suit and working 70 hours a week, making billions of dollars, and my next vacation will be when I retire at 80,” said another. Just kidding…kind of. I said I was heading to Indonesia to work as a journalist for three months and after that I had no idea what I was doing. Safe to say I was the only one with that plan.

UW graduation

In the few days between graduation and departure, I said goodbye to a lot of friends who I have no idea when I’ll see again. I packed up my room in the house I shared with my best friends, said goodbye for now, and prepared to fly to Asia.

I know everything will be different when I get back in September. I won’t be living within four blocks of all of my college friends. I won’t be going back to school in the fall for the first time since I was four years old. I don't know what I’ll be doing, but I’ll worry about that later.

For the last few months, people have asked why I’m doing this. I say why not. I can’t wait to experience working as an international reporter. I want to learn what its like to work at one of the largest media companies in Indonesia. For me, this program is the perfect mix between doing something productive for my future and getting to see a little more of the world.

I was pipe dreaming when I applied for UW’s Foreign Intrigue Scholarship, the program that sponsored myself and a few other students and recent grads to travel to developing countries (India, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Jordan, and Mexico) to work as journalists for the summer. I’m so incredibly thankful to have this opportunity. In high school, my teachers often reminded students of the value of a good education and told us “to whom much is given, much is expected,” and to always “pay things forward.” That's what I hope to do in my time here: to learn as much as I can and to take that back with me, and somehow pay it forward.

So here we go, see you on the other side of the Pacific.