So far I’ve had two occurrences of scaring a child into crying just by being white.  That’s a new and notable experience in my world.

White tourists are still fairly novel outside of the few cities on the island of Flores (Indonesia).  Adults and children alike will quite happily yell “Bule!” (foreigner) at you as go past on the street and the younger generations seem to view you as a personal gift of English practice delivered from Heaven and will descend upon you en masse and wait upwards of 20 minutes at your elbow to gain your attention for long enough to practice even the tiniest amount of English they have. My friend and I being two young white foreign women, we quite often get to “enjoy” the experience of men approaching us, quickly exhausting their few phrases of English, then proceeding to just hover around and stare at us for annoyingly long periods of time before they finally give up and wander away.

While that all sounds rather charming when experienced one at a time, after being delayed on a busy market street in a rural town for three hours it quickly becomes extremely overwhelming because it. never. stops. and you realize your dearly held beliefs in common rules about personal physical and mental space don’t exist at all in this new land. (Seriously. The teenage girls in the schoolyard persisted in yelling at us from across the street and clapping their hands trying to engage our attention even though we were obviously involved in dealing with an issue. for. hours.)

Through those very long hours at the kiosk as my friend tried to solve her telephone problem, I had the joy of being entertained, and entertaining, a small herd of beautiful children with nothing more than silly hand games and faces and pictures. They spoke to me, even though I know next to no Indonesian and they didn’t know English, and I tried to figure out what they were saying and respond. It was a wonderful experience.

One of the great things I got from those few hours was how easily I could enjoy their company simply because they weren’t expecting anything from me, nor could I expect them, at their age, to be cognizant of whether they were being rude or disrespectful toward someone from a different culture. They were simply joyfully curious and happy to be engaged with, as was I.
It was a very gentle reminder to check myself on how I was being in the world and is still giving me a lot of good food for thought.

Thank heavens for the unassuming sweetness of children in the world to bring us back to the root of ourselves.