The awesome Indonesian people
It was so common in my class that my
students would ask me random questions especially about Indonesian culture.
“Lina, I don’t understand your people”
“Why?”
“Look, they like to
sitting and talking for hours.”
“O… we call it ‘nongkrong’ ….”
“O… we call it ‘nongkrong’ ….”
“What the meaning of
nongkrong?”
“Sitting, talking and
actually doing nothing”
“O my goodness. And look
at them. They are so happy and do you know they probably don’t make enough money. Do you think they have a life insurance or a
lot of saving in their bank account? But my maid at home she doesn’t have a bank account. The money I gave to her … easily gone”
My other student always asked me
“When some of your
people really want to live in United States, why do you still like to live in this
country? Your country has no future because of the corruption and they hate
each other because of religion or ethnic”
It was so hard for me to explain about
those issues.
I found the way to explain to them at the
end. Here was my explanation
“If you want to buy
diamond, there are some criteria. We call 5 Cs it is color, clarity, carat,
cut, and confidence. The quality of Indonesian people has 3 Cs.
The first C is “Collective”
Western people are individualist, but Indonesian
people are not. We are considered very collective. You can see Indonesian
people like to hang out during lunch. They go together, they eat together,
shopping together. Even they go to toilet together. So it was so common when I
was a teacher at regular school, my teenager student would ask, “Miss… May I go to the toilet
with my friend?” Until now you can see
some teenagers post their picture together in the toilet…
For Indonesian they don’t need insurance, they will help each other. One of the group members
has problem the rest will help. They will collect the money or they will try to
find out the solution.
The second C is “Care”
Indonesian people care so much about their
friends or family, sometimes they care to the strangers. It is very common when
we have a problem, our friends are more curious and even more stress than we
are. Sometimes … in the middle of
nowhere, people can ask, “Are you still single? Why
are you still single? You know you are so pretty and let me introduce you to
someone …”
I could say, “Your stress is not coming from your own problem, but your stress
comes from people who care so much about you”
The last C is “Communicator”
Indonesian people are really great
Communicator. They are so attached with their smart phone. They send text all
the time. And they have more than one number, more than one cellphone. When
they have only one cellphone but inside the phone they carry Dual SIM Card.
They set their phone glued to the hand… They
prefer to forget bringing the wallet and money instead of forgetting their smart
phone. Because with the smart phone if they forget to bring the money, they
still can text to borrow the money from their friends.
If you deny that … you can say …”No… I don’t really care and I am
not a great communicator”
Please look at your phone, how many “WhatsApp” groups you have and
how many people whom you chat with.
Base on those 3Cs character living in
Indonesia is good because we can always count on our friends, we never walk
alone and we always connect to each other’s.
No one knows about the future but at least
we still can hope that Indonesia will be great because we are “The awesome Indonesian people”
**Lina Kartasasmita** 25 September 2017 at
10.12 PM
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