The American and the “Yeti”

For those of you who never believed a Yeti existed, I have news for you. I met one last night. But this one is much smaller than you'd think and she spells her name Yetty. She's an Indonesian girl from this city, very articulate in English and teaches at the private school Intrax here. I met Yetty in a not very surprising series of events that is entirely based on my nationality.

Being here at IAIN for a month means that word has been leaking out that there is an American teacher roaming around Banjarmasin. Aside from constantly being asked to ride on someone's motorcycle (generally following the question "where are you going?") and having camera phones pointed at me all the time, I'm most definitely talked about as the high point of people's day. I can just hear the dinner conversation. "Honey, I saw a bule today! I asked her 'How are you' in English!" <followed by much laughing and smiling> It is likely that I saw, met, waved to Yetty's mother in all the 'hi miss's' and 'hi misters.' She is also somehow connected to IAIN and knows Nida.

Earlier this week one hot mid afternoon while lounging under the AC at home between classes, Nida called and told me about this friend's daughter who knows some Americans in Banjarmasin, can she give her my number and then I can meet them… Why not? So this leads me to meeting Yetty which in turn led to my meeting the blog title's said American." Bet you thought I was referring to myself in the title of today's entry… I'm not THAT self absorbed!!

Last night, Puji and I met with Yetty and Jeremy, the man from Tennessee. We all went to a small restaurant across the busy street from the IAIN campus and I learned that he works for what sounds like a great non-profit U.S. based and Indo sponsored company. One of the things they do is help poor families/communities get good drinking water here. Indonesian tap water is NOT for drinking so many families who can afford it buy bottled water for a dispenser. If you can't afford it you boil it which takes time and energy either by burning expensive gas or burning who knows what (garbage, plastics, rainforest?) for a fire. One of the projects this company does is help the locals make ceramic filters much like the technology in the Katadyn one I brought with me. These will filter out all the bad guys and voila, drinking water. Oddly, I had read about these and other groups before coming here when researching safe drinking water. It was really cool to reflect back on that and know that like finding a needle in a haystack, I meet someone working on one of these projects. The company is called Oasis if you want to check them out.