Editor’s Note: Ethan Perry, a Masardis native and Fulbright Scholar, shares via e-mail some of his thoughts from the small, port city of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia where he is spending a year as a high school teacher and cultural ambassador.
By Ethan Perry
Special to the Star-Herald
As a cultural ambassador, I try to give a taste of “American culture” in return for the Padang culture I receive every day. The baseball and gloves brought from home have served a tremendous role as ice breaker with kids on the street in my neighborhood. A recently arrived football will enthrall people who only know football as soccer. Boy Scout patches from past jamborees in Maine have been a huge success with the young boys and girls in Pramuka, Indonesia’s Scouting organization and the largest in the world. And potato paraphernalia courtesy of the Maine Potato Board is invariably met with the question: “You can grow potatoes, too?”
I have seen aspects of American culture from an Indonesian perspective. Indonesian youth love our music (the more vulgar, the better). And for better or worse, they mimic our movie and television culture. They see the beautiful Hollywood people on the bootleg DVDs and ask if all Americans dress like that, talk like that, and act like that. The topic of WWE Smackdown (professional wrestling) has been a hot one in Indonesia, with the government pressuring cable television stations to stop showing the program because of the behavior it spawns among young people. They ask me with baited breath: “Is, is it real?” Sometimes, I don’t have the heart to tell them it is as carefully choreographed as a ballet.
They assume that all Americans are wealthy, and they are shocked when I tell them that there are poverty-stricken people in America (even though the poorest of Americans still makes more than the majority of Indonesians). Indonesians’ concept of America’s “free society” is often confused with “free love” of the 1960s. There are significant cultural differences between America and Indonesia, true, but I have enjoyed giving them my concept of, and learning how they perceive, my American culture.
People here are concerned about globalization and its tendency to erode traditional customs and languages. The rice farmer of West Sumatra should seem as interested in globalization as a potato farmer in Aroostook County, but they are. They both must be, I suppose, because they are increasingly becoming players on the global stage (through politics, the mass media, the internet, etc.) whether they like it or not. And cultural erosion is not something unique to Indonesia; every population deals with it at some level, whether they recognize it or not.
Maine and Indonesia are half a world apart and yet I see parallels in people’s thinking and actions. Students still fret over late homework and examinations, while teachers discuss salaries, student behaviors and curriculum requirements. And, while it is no “Potato Pickers’ Special,” farmers monitor the price of potatoes and rice religiously. Editorials in the local newspapers seek to strike a delicate balance between natural resource preservation and utilization.
Young people from West Sumatran mountain villages leave to seek opportunities elsewhere, skewing the demographics and changing the way tradition is passed from one generation to the next. In the larger cities, and in the smaller towns, drug and alcohol use among youths is on the rise. Teen (and younger) smoking is rampant here.
A question that all cultures grapple with is: How is progress measured, and what happens when progress comes at the expense of cultural values and quality of life? Indonesian people are optimistic about what the future holds, but they are unsure of the best course to follow to arrive at the desired destination. In this respect, Indonesians are no different from most Americans.
Any conceptions that the vast majority of Americans hold about Indonesians (Muslim or otherwise) is likely flawed. Most of my preconceived notions were shattered within a month of arriving. Cultural differences cannot be viewed as cultural flaws; they are merely differences. And being different is not bad; it is what propels human society forward. As the world becomes a smaller place, we should take the associated opportunity to enrich our understanding of things that we might consider threatening (e.g., political views, religion). Invariably, it turns it out simply to be a misunderstanding. Indonesian views of us are equally wrought with inaccuracy. In the end, cultural understanding between our populations is imperative because of the geopolitical environment that is emerging in the Asian region. The people of Indonesia are poised to become important allies in the coming decades.
Just as I have asked Indonesians to be more open-minded in how they view American culture and politics, so too must Americans seek to enrich their understanding and appreciation of the cultural and religious values that underlie the worldviews held by Indonesians, and others.
