Indonesia is without any
doubts one of the most racist countries I have ever visited. But it is racist
in a different way. Not like what we know in Europe, America or in any
other country of the western world. I don’t know how to call it so i will call
it positive racism (but in my opinion any kind of racism is wrong).
White people are glorified
here from the first moment they step out of the airport. It is very funny to
watch Indonesians how horny they are when they see white face. Most of the
people here treat white people as celebrities. Except Bali, there they are used
to tourists, but also there we had some weird situations because of our white
faces.
We went to one shopping mall
when we were in Jakarta, and few days before they had some terrorist bombings
in catholic churches, so policemen were all over the city, in the hotels, in
public buildings and also in front of shopping malls. And they had these metal
detectors through which you have to go to get inside, like in the airport. And
we, a group of white asses, are going inside through the detector and every-fucking-one
of us did beep. We were expecting some troubles but the policeman just smiles
at us and waves at us. If I was a terrorist, this would be that lucky moment I am
hoping for my whole life hehe.
They treat us the same here in
Padang Panjang where we live. Everybody thinks that we are something better
because we are white. Just yesterday one guy told us that we are so much
smarter that people in Indonesia just because we are white, just because we are
from the west. When we go to the market to buy some food everybody is looking
at us with open mouth. They whole world literally stops in the moment when they
see a white person. This happens all the time and we live here already for half
a year. I can not even count how many people took pictures with us when we were
walking on the street somewhere. This whole thing gave me one life lesson. I don’t
ever want to be famous!
Maybe it sounds like fun but
it isn’t heh. Everybody knows what we do all the time. Everybody is watching us
all the time when we go somewhere. Everybody knows where we live. And most important
thing is that they all think that we have shitloads of money, because we have
to, we are white and from Europe so we have to be rich. But we are not. We have
to explain all the time that we are poor students who live from the scholarship,
which we are getting every month. In the beginning, when we didn’t know the
prices for food in market, they always overpriced it for us. For example
instead of 5 000 rupiah for 1kg of tomatoes they asked for 10 000, and for
Indonesia that’s a big difference. Now we know the prices for almost everything
but they still try sometimes.
Always an entourage.
Gregi
