Rainy Season

One of my friends conducted an interview for someone with international background. Being an international student that still proudly bears Indonesian heritage miles away from home, I was happy to answer her questions and shares about practices and customs from Indonesia unfamiliar to Americans. One of the questions involve sharing an unusual experience that happened in the hometown. Take a look

Tell me about something funny/hard/exciting/frightening/good/bad/etc. that happened to you in your home country.

Before I begin with my experience, let me give you a proper introduction about the difference between Californian rain and Indonesian rain. A friend rushed into the classroom one day (in Art Center, of course). "It's raining outside." she was controlling her breath with a panic expression on her face. A year ago, I barely experienced rain in LA.



When I finally went outside shortly after, the so-called rain seemed to be just a drizzle for me. Another day, I met a new friend hailing from Florida who also shared the same experience with me. "What Californians perceive as rain here, is nothing compared to the rain in Florida." Well, if you happen to be a Californian and go to Indonesia, Indonesia offered a tropical rain, which is completely different from the one you have here. Imagine the water being poured down heavily from the sky. It almost felt that way. Flooded waters as a result of clogged drainages are nothing new to Jakarta people. So if you asked why we didn't freak out, we literally didn't have time for it. Unless the flood became severe and uncontrollable. Then that would be another story. As for someone with a specific background like me - in this context, which high school I went to - I literally lived with that certain condition every now and then in a year.

Anyway, during rainy season in Indonesia (February, that is), Jakarta would be flooded almost all over the place. My school is located in a basin-like area surrounded by residential areas. So when the water rose, access to school by car is blocked because the water is too deep. My school was pretty stubborn so they didn't just cancel classes when that happened. They still forced us to come to school through an alternative path. 

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As an alternative, we – students – needed to access an alternative path, which is basically an alley that connects the dry main road to school. The alley is still flooded but it's still accessible on foot. So students literally have to walk through the flood. We usually have our slippers ready, so before entering the flood, we would change our shoes to slippers. The water is usually as deep as the knee, but when it's worse, it can be as deep as the thigh. I had to lift my skirt all the way up to the upper thigh just so the water wouldn't soak it. We had to walk through the flood for less than half a mile.

The water was so polluted since the water of the flood came from the trash-clogged sewers. So we literally had to walk in the water mixed with trash. While walking, I could feel bunch of trash from plastic-bags to I-don't-know-what touched my legs. It was pretty disgusting. My friends would also freak out at some points when they stepped on something they had no idea about. At some points in the alley, the flood current was pretty strong and often times, it went against you. So you sort of had to struggle to walk against it.

Some of concerned parents would rather have their students not attending classes rather than getting skin diseases from walking through the polluted water, but thank goodness, I've never got any skin diseases from the flood. The flood also took up the whole first floor of the school building, so all students that just arrived to school would go up to the second floor, where we would wash up our legs from the dirty flood water. It was overall an interesting experience.