Thread: Fiction about expats in Bali

Dr Bruce liked the little story mate and thanks for the link to the travel writers site.......very good reading mate thanks.


Spark

Dr Bruce,
I will try to have a read of it soon...
I have had some incidents with Maddy where she has been called names from Blonde haired, blue eyed children in a Supermarket & if anyone has seen me get angry, you have not seen anything until you see me defend my princess &/or racism...
I think the Mother of those children will be scarred for life!!! I do have a vicious tongue!!!

But Maddison now understands it more initially I think she also thought we would start speaking Indo all the time & she would not be able to speak English anymore when Gede first moved to Aus!
Then when hse started school she only wanted myself or my parents to take her & pick her up, when I sat down & asked why she said "Well my Dad is different to the other Dads!" I said "that's Ok, I am different to alot of the mum's & you are different to alot of the kids!" I told her how special she was & made her realise that being the same as everyone else is quite boring & told her that when she is older all the boys & girls will be jealous coz she will have gorgeous skin, can speak another language, is already up to her second passport & has travelled to Bali on numerous occasions & has family there, she has ceremonies etc, etc!!"

She went to school the following dad & at show & tell told the kids about her trips to Bali, her family in Bali & showed photo's of our wedding ceremony & her dressed up in traditrional dress & praying (which she loves doing esp in Bali)...

Her teacher whom adores her & I have spoken & so she has made a big deal of it so it has helped Maddy to realise she should be proud etc... She is really happy about it now & often brags to others about how many times she has travelled there & about her dog in Bali & what things she loves in Bali etc!!!!

She always brings kids home & Gede makes an effort to muck around with them & often they will tell her how cool her Dad is, so now she is not embarassed that her Dad is different!!!

These are just some of the things we have experienced!!!

But there is & are many more stories!!!!

Tracey,

While I have never lived in the States with my kids, I can relate to what you are saying. When my eldest daughter went to an international school, good old American racism popped its head up with some of the comments from white parents and then later, of course, from their kids. As the principal, at the time, I spent a lot of time discussing racism and genetics.

Sadly, Indonesians are not above making value judgements based on a person's skin color. People (Balinese, Madurese, Sumbawans, Papuans, etc) regularly tell me how beautiful my second daughter is (the one who looks like me). They inevitably do this in front of my two other daughters who look like their mother, and to say that this despicable attitude doesn't affect my children would be to ignore reality. I just recently had a discussion with my oldest daughter about what beauty is and what skin color means and how it comes about and how people have very negatively conditioned responses to dark skin color. Well, there's a lot more to say about this, but, as with you, this is one area that really makes me lose my usual calm. We just need to stick with it and attempt to educate people, or at least get them to shut up.

Regards,

Bruce

Yes Bruce Indonesian’s are very straight forward when making personal remarks. There is an obvious cultural difference here. Sometimes I think it is good the way Indonesians remark on the way you look, i.e. wow you’ve put on weight, or the other way round. It takes a little getting used to but once you have you see the falseness of the way westerners can’t do this and appreciate the forwardness and truth behind the Indonesians remarks. Yes certainly insensitive when it comes to children and remarks on skin colour. Luckily my kids are what I call a 50 50 mix and people here like their slightly fairer skin. My kids also luckily get very little racism thrown at them at school but I do remember my elder daughter wanting to have blacker hair when she first went to primary school.

Being a mixed kid has its advantages and disadvantages I guess. The best advantages I see is they can hopefully get a good grasp and understanding of at least two cultures and two languages.

Richard,

One of the issues that I'm trying to deal with in a novel is the affective aspects of culture; both how we deal with it as expatriates, as well as how our children deal with it - and, in fact, where and how they develop the affective side of the self. Intellectually, we can look at cultural traits and patterns, accept them or reject them, adapt them or ignore them. But it is very difficult to change our emotional makeup, and this, I would argue, is one of the greatest hurdles to life as an expat. Food habits are pretty basic, but can be learned and changed to a fairly significant degree. Affective states are much harder. Even now after almost 16 years, my affective responses to things have to be managed and controlled more than I sometimes care to admit as a trained anthropologist.

Ah, and the idea of truthfulness is certainly flexible. An Indonesian may well be willing to tell you how you look or what they think about something, but getting to the heart of affective matters is, I believe, much more difficult. By this I mean the smile that masks the hurt feelings or the anger whereas in the West, the realm of the emotions is much closer to the surface in public interactions.

Well, some thoughts anyhow.

Regards,

Bruce

I remember being pregnant witH Maddison & all the local ladies I knew from our Gg would say "Hallo Tracey, you eat too much, coz your getting fat!" To me I was shocked that they'd say that, but it never really hurt me....
Now I just know, like being dressed on our wedding day by the family, door wide open, for all my brother in lwas, sister in laws, Au8nts, Uncles, cousins, father in law, infact I think everyone in Tuban had a look in at me!

Luckily my friend had given me a tip to wear BIG COMFY knickers, coz no doubt the whole village will wanna see the white chick half naked! :shock:

Reminds me of when we were staying in a Hotel that had open air windows but with bars into our lounge, I heard a noise down stairs & knew maddy was playing down down there, so i walked down & opened up the doors (I had on NOTHING!) tpo find she had opened the door & made my Father in law a drink & they were watching TV! Sadly her saw me from behind wobbling whilst jogging away! He had already copped a good look of my front! I stayed up stairs I was so embarassed & I asked Gede if he said anything, he says NO, but I just hate when I remember that... I feel sorry for him really! What a bad sight! 8)

Bruce

Look forward very much to when you publish your book.

Yes affective response to culture, very interesting. We all know how hard it is when we first start living here and then we get blasé about it until something upsets us and when we calm down and analyse it , it often turns out to be a cultural difference even though we’ve lived here so long and thought we understood it all.

When I first lived here it really bugged me that I could not sit on my own and contemplate, or just daydream on the veranda because to an Indonesian this behaviour is strange and they usually want to sit down with you and talk to you. Funnily enough I’ve grown out of the need to do this.

The worst thing that ever happened to me was suffering reverse culture shock on one of my visits back to Australia. I started looking at all my friends in a different light and thought they were all very false. Luckily I had read about reverse culture shock beforehand and was then able to play it through my head and sort out my problem.

What about our kids? Do they handle being brought up in two cultures? Or do they suffer culture shock as well, or maybe they are more adaptable to us having been brought up with two cultures? Would love to hear your thoughts on this Bruce.