Promoting Awareness One PBJ at a Time

With pre-service training winding down, all the Indo trainees were asked to prepare and complete a “community project” within our villages last week. The activity served partly as a “thank you” to our villages while also forcing us to gain a little experience in dealing with local administrators (Indonesian style). After talking with its respective community, each group came up with its own, unique project. Ideas included water mapping followed by a trash clean-up, mural painting, filming a village documentary, organizing an English camp, and helping clear ground for public construction.

At the time of our planning, my village-mates and I were still processing the many traumas of our English camp from two weeks prior when approximately 90-100+ little ones—rather than the 20 we’d ambitiously planned for—personified chaos for several unforgettable hours. Planning another English camp clearly wasn’t up for consideration. Instead, we wanted a low maintenance project that could still be effective. The village head (“kepala desa”) didn’t offer much support for our first idea, enlisting children to help paint a mural. Not too discouraged, though, we returned to the drawing board.

Luckily, my group’s “Plan B” proved a tremendous success. We reserved the village’s badminton gym to hold a two hour “Exhibition of American Culture.” Wanting to control for unexpected crowds, we decided to take a “hands off” by dividing the room into four exhibits: food, music, cultural posters, and a slideshow. Visitors were free to enter, sample food, walk around, and ask questions as they pleased. All my village-mates and I had to do was prepare the materials, which ended up being pretty fun itself. For starters, I got to help make some real American food: spaghetti, PBJs, guacamole, and after some initial failure, coffee flavored donuts (because chocolate powder was too expensive). I also enjoyed the poster-making, and Indonesians all over my village now know about American football, tornadoes, Halloween, and Easter eggs.

Though we quickly ran out of silverware and Springsteen couldn't be heard above the noise, I’m calling the event itself a success. Several people requested the donut recipe, and everyone enjoyed their PBJs. I made copies of the slideshow for a women’s group, and spent most of my time fielding questions about the slideshow photos: “Who is that actor?,” “Are American mountains really that tall?,” “Where is Mardis Gras,” and so on.

I don’t think we bridged any major chasms of cross-cultural understanding at the event. After all we stuck to “safe” presentations that didn’t touch too deeply on controversial Indo issues like gender or religion. However, I’m pretty confident that our event sparked some interest in—or at least awareness of—American diversity: racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or otherwise. When thinking of Indonesia, it’s tempting to focus on outlying examples of extremism and unrest, and Indonesians often fall into similar patterns when conceptualizing America. All in all, I think our exhibition helped muddy some of those conceptions last week, and I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to do the same in my community (maybe unintentionally) over the next few years… one PBJ at a time.

The lighting wasn't good for picture taking, but the event looked a little like this...