Serli and the Satay

Our Indonesian exchange student is a big fan of tomato catsup. She has to have a bottle of it on the table for every meal. Not that she really likes catsup, mind you; she only uses it to disguise the taste of American food, which tastes strange to her, and seems rather barbarous. Two weeks ago I served barbecued ribs. One look at those bones sticking out and she couldn't bring herself to eat them, not even with catsup.

Anyway, she found a recipe for an Indonesian dish called Satay--skewered, seasoned chicken bits served with rice and a peanut butter-based sauce. Tonight we bought the ingredients for her and she prepared it. For once, there was no catsup on the table. Turtle threatened to spice it up a little with barbecue sauce, and she promptly told him that it would ruin a good dish and that if he wanted to eat her chicken he absolutely could not use it. After all, nobody has to disguise the taste of that wonderful Indonesian food.

It was pretty good. I'll give her that.

Let Those Sleeping Dogs Get Their Rest

Our Indonesian student, Sara Lee, is a solemn little girl who bursts out with sudden laughter whenever she catches a joke: "Oh I get it. I understand!" Then she makes little jokes of her own, behaving for all the world like an American teenager--not one of those who ignore all adults with an air of "only my friends on facebook are granted an audience...and then only if I choose to acknowledge them", but an open, "love to learn, love to share complaints and triumphs" kind of teenager who views people of all ages as potential friends.

Turtle is from Arkansas, a state he blames for all his linguistic anomalies, and he delights in tossing idioms to her so that he can explain them. A few weeks ago he had to explain the phrase: "let sleeping dogs lie." Later that day, when he was asking me questions about something in the past and getting off-putting, roundabout answers, Sara Lee, broke into the conversation with a light-hearted warning: "Don't wake up the dog!"

I think it will become a classic around here.

The World so Far Away and Close

About a dozen years ago I read a book by Don Richardson called Lords of the Earth. It featured the Yali and the Dani people of Irian Jaya(now called Papua) and gave an amazing view into tribal lifestyles and recent history. Over the years I've read the book a couple more times, along with some of Richardson's other works (Peace Child, and Eternity in Their Hearts).

Today, after meandering through a discussion in Bible class--a discussion about Jonathan Goforth and the Boxer Rebellion, then David Livingstone and Cameron Townsend and indigenous languages, one of our Indonesian students suddenly asked me if I had ever heard of the Dani tribe? I said yes, and told him about reading Lords of the Earth. He then informed me that he was a Dani. A real Dani. It was an amazing moment, almost like "the white rabbit" stepping out of the pages of Lewis Carroll's book--well not quite; Richardson's book isn't fiction, but it was still a weird feeling.